GERMANY - Angela Merkel was put under pressure by a prominent opposition MP over Germany’s crumbling military infrastructure as she faced calls for fresh investment in the sector. Germany’s military has been heavily mocked in the past for its inadequacy and lack of potency. American diplomats have lambasted Berlin for failing to invest in the armed forces despite their economic might. Merkel is now facing down demands from Bundestag members to shift the German attitude over military size – despite the announcement on Wednesday that they would develop a landmark new military laser.

USA - A new research paper published last week by a staff member of the women’s studies department at SUNY Brockport makes the case that the dairy industry’s production process involves the “rape” and “sexual assault” of cows. According to a report by Campus Reform, a staff member of the women’s studies department at The College at Brockport, State University of New York argued in a recently published academic journal article that the production of milk on farms is akin to “rape” and “sexual assault. The research article’s author, Mackenzie April, is in charge of social media for the women’s studies department at the college.

USA - This week, the gay news site Pink News posted and then deleted a fawning profile of a gay couple with a troubling age gap. The article reported that the younger man, Kayleb, is 22 years old while the older man, Mark, is 55. This is creepy enough, but it gets much worse: the two have been "dating" for six years. Kayleb claims he was 17 when he met Mark, but the math would seem to put him at 16. Either way, it's repulsive and wrong.

USA - Widespread efforts to silence speech deemed to be offensive threaten US constitutional rights, Democratic presidential hopeful Tulsi Gabbard says. Her latest campaign ad takes aim at the hot-button issue of political correctness. In a new campaign video posted on Twitter, Gabbard lists political correctness alongside things like overly powerful IT corporations and government overreach. All three infringe on Americans’ personal rights, she says. Big tech, overreaching government, political correctness – our constitutional rights are under attack. As president, I’ll protect your rights to free speech, civil liberties and personal privacy, because they’re essential to our American values and must never be compromised.

USA - All of a sudden, it seems like the mainstream media just can’t stop talking about “the coming recession”. If you go to Google News and type in the word “recession”, you will literally get dozens of articles from the last couple of days with “recession” in the headline. And of course it is true that there are signs of global economic trouble all around us, and I have been documenting them on my website all throughout 2019. So we don’t want to criticize the mainstream media when they actually decide to tell the truth, because a recession is definitely coming, but could it be possible that there is also a hidden political agenda at work?

USA - US President Donald Trump said on Tuesday that the United States may pull out of the World Trade Organization (WTO), following what he claims are years of mistreatment at the hands of the organization. "We will leave if we have to", Trump said during a campaign rally in Pittsburgh. "They have been screwing us for years, and it's not going to happen any longer". Trump said the United States does not need the WTO if the organization fails to address loopholes that favor certain nations.

NORWAY - Norway could be on collision course with the EU in the next few weeks with eurosceptic parties aiming for huge gains in the Scandinavian country’s local elections. Norwegians will head to the polls on September 9 to vote in their next government, with three anti-EU parties keen to drop the nation's membership of the European Economic Area (EEA). The right-wing populist Progress Party, Centre Party, and the left-wing Socialist Left Party are hoping to make gains at the polls, which could mean they could be influential in forming the next government. This could see Norway on collision course with the EU if any of the three parties, who are calling for Norway to leave the EEA, form a coalition with the leading centre-left Labour Party. Although Norway is not a member of the EU, it is part of the EEA. As a member of the EEA, Norway has access to the single market so has to abide by EU laws and regulations when it comes to trade.

USA - Any violence used against “peaceful protesters” in Hong Kong would be a “mistake” for China and will trigger a “swift” response, a congressional foreign affairs panel has warned, insisting Beijing is responsible for the unrest. The ranking members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee – Chairman Eliot Engel (Democrat for New York) and Michael McCaul (Republican for Texas) – issued the warning in a statement on Wednesday, drawing parallels with 1989 protests in Tiananmen Square that ended in bloodshed, also known as the ‘June Fourth Incident’. “We urge China to avoid making such a mistake, which would be met with universal condemnation and swift consequences,” the lawmakers said.

RUSSIA/CHINA - Similarities between the protest movements in Hong Kong and Moscow have not gone unnoticed by the authoritarian rulers of China and Russia. Russia’s state-run Tass news service on Wednesday quoted the new Chinese ambassador calling for the two countries to “cultivate our relations at a higher level” and “open a new page” in their friendship. Zhang issued a warning from Moscow on Wednesday that Hong Kong is not “American” or “English” but Chinese, so the US and UK should not “stick their noses in our affairs.”

USA - Google appears to have maintained a ‘blacklist’ for dozens of websites on one of its mobile apps, as well as a ‘fringe ranking’ system that scored sites for “quality,” according to documents leaked by a company insider. Published on Wednesday in a report by conservative transparency group Project Veritas, the documents appear to include hundreds of pages of technical details describing Google’s behind-the-scenes projects, as well as internal communications between employees. The insider, Zachary Vorhies, told Project Veritas he spent over a year collecting the documents – noting they were available for any full-time employee to see – and said he feared the American “election system was going to be compromised forever” by Google’s control of the flow of information online. “I saw something dark and nefarious going on with the company and I realized that they were going to not only tamper with the elections, but… to essentially overthrow the United States,” Vorhies said.

USA - If that headline sounds really bad to you, that is because the situation that we are facing is really bad. Over the past few months, I have written article after article about the unprecedented crisis that US farmers are facing this year. In those articles, I have always said that “millions” of acres of farmland did not get planted this year, because I knew that we did not have a final number yet. Well, now we do, and it is extremely troubling. Of course there are some people out there that do not even believe that we are facing a crisis, and a few have even accused me of overstating the severity of the problems that US farmers are currently dealing with. Sadly, things are not as bad as I thought – the truth is that they are even worse. According to the US Department of Agriculture, crops were not planted on 19.4 million acres of US farmland this year.

UK - Last year 25 governments imposed internet blackouts. Choking off connectivity infuriates people and kneecaps economies. Yet autocrats think it worthwhile, usually to stop information from circulating during a crisis. This month the Indian government shut down the internet in disputed Kashmir — for the 51st time this year. “There is no news, nothing,” says Aadil Ganie, a Kashmiri stuck in Delhi, adding that he does not even know where his family is because phones are blocked, too. In recent months Sudan shut down social media to prevent protesters from organising; Congo’s regime switched off mobile networks so it could rig an election in the dark; and Chad nobbled social media to silence protests against the president’s plan to stay in power until 2033.

USA - On Saturday the most notorious prisoner in the US prison system committed “suicide.” Since his death we have learned a number of things that make you question this man’s death. Here is a Complete List of Inconsistencies in Prison Policy Surrounding Jeffrey Epstein’s Death:

USA - Those screaming loudest about “climate change” are flying around in private jets and living in luxurious, energy-wasting homes. Hollywood A-listers like Leonardo Di Caprio, George Clooney, Harry Styles, Chris Martin, and Katy Perry recently attended a Google Camp to raise awareness about global warming.

GERMANY - German military experts have presented their first concrete plans for an EU naval operation in the Persian Gulf. According to the draft of two well connected government advisors and a Bundeswehr professor, warships should be cruising at the two entrances to the Strait of Hormuz. Supplementary warships should escort oil tankers through the strait with armed troops on board to ward off possible attacks - depending on the disposition to escalate. This would necessitate "between 10 and 30 percent of the EU's naval capacities," and Berlin should be in command of the deployment to demonstrate its aspiration to shape global policy. Whereas sectors of the SPD and the opposition reject the operation, the chancellor and foreign ministry are promoting the plan also within the EU. Previously, Foreign Minster Heiko Maas had rejected the US demand for Germany to deploy warships in a US-led naval mission in the Middle East. Berlin is positioning itself to be an independent power in global politics.