MEXICO - A freak storm left the city of Guadalajara in Mexico more than six feet deep in hailstones. Guadalajara is north of Mexico City and has a population of around five million. Approximately 200 homes and businesses have reported damage from hail according to authorities. State governor, Enrique Alfaro said: “I’ve never seen such scenes in Guadalajara." Jarring images show ice burying cars and covering streets as residents stand by in t-shirts and shorts. Despite the ice-covered ground, today temperatures in Guadalajara are expected to rise to 28C (82F).
UK - If you thought the EU’s demand for £39 billion of British taxpayers’ money was off the scale then be prepared for a shock. There’s a further huge contingent liability to the EU in the event of a Eurozone crisis of hundreds of billions pounds more, that Theresa May agreed to keep us on the hook for and which Jeremy Hunt and Boris Johnson have not yet commented on. The secret has been revealed, however, in a new 40-page report written by City banking specialist Bob Lyddon and published by the economic think tank Global Britain. The unpalatable truth that Remainers don’t want to acknowledge – and which you’ll never hear on the BBC or broadcast news channels – is that huge financial liabilities associated with EU membership cannot be avoided without a quick, clean Brexit. Surely one of the candidates for Prime Minister must recognise that the UK cannot be left in a position where we could be liable for hundreds of billions of debt that we had no part in creating and sustaining?
USA - US President Donald Trump, during the conclusion of the G20 summit in Japan, said that if a peace deal between the Israelis and the Palestinians is not reached during his presidency, then it will never happen. "With me being president, if you don't get that deal done, it will never happen," Trump said. This comes exactly one week after the "Peace to Prosperity" economic plan for the "Deal of the Century" was released to the public. The plan was released ahead of the Bahrain summit hosted throughout the past week by Jared Kushner, which focused on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. During the Bahrain summit, Kushner said that he will reveal the political portion of the peace plan "soon." He also said that the plan will go forth when "both sides will be ready to say yes," but admitted that such an occurrence may never happen.
EUROPE - The European Union announced that its INSTEX mechanism to facilitate trade with Iran was up and running on Friday. "France, Germany, and the United Kingdom informed participants that INSTEX had been made operational and available to all EU member states, and that the first transactions are being processed," said an EU statement. INSTEX, which stands for Instrument in Support of Trade Exchanges, is a payment system that will allow companies to trade with Iran despite harsh US sanctions. It will function as a diplomatic shield allowing the exchange of goods without requiring direct transfers of money between Iran and EU companies.
BAHRAIN - In a stunning admission, Sheikh Khaled Bin Ahmed Al-Khalifa, Foreign Minister of Bahrain, acknowledged the historical legitimacy of the state Israel, telling Israeli interviewer Barak Ravid, “Israel is a country in the Middle East. It is part of the heritage of this region. The Jewish people has a place amongst us.” Raphael Ahren of The Times of Israel noted the unprecedented hospitality of Bahrain toward the Israeli journalists at the conference, writing, “The exceedingly warm way in which Israelis are being received here is a remarkable testament to how times have changed. The last time Israeli journalists were officially invited to Bahrain was a quarter century ago.”
USA - Anti-conservative forces of many different stripes are waging asymmetric warfare against all conservative elements of society to completely silence them. Mastercard has already crippled several conservative groups by withdrawing their ability to receive donations. TN Editor
On Tuesday, leftist activists targeted Mastercard’s shareholder meeting, demanding the Board of Directors adopt a “human rights committee” dedicated to blacklisting organizations unfairly accused of being “hate groups” by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). Activists with the group SumOfUs pestered the board with spurious questions about “doing business with criminals” in pursuit of its “blood money” campaign.
JAPAN - World leaders have warned Donald Trump and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping MUST reach a trade deal or risk wrecking the global economy, as they gathered in Japan for the G20 summit. Russian president Vladimir Putin, Indian prime minister Narendra Modi and European president Jean-Claude Juncker heaped pressure on the two superpowers to settle their differences when they meet on the sidelines of the Osaka summit tomorrow. But financial markets fell across Asia today amid growing fears the talks will fail to break the stalemate and see the US president carry out his threat to slap more tariffs on Chinese goods. Vladmir Putin launched a scathing attack on Western views on gay rights and multiculturalism by claiming Liberalism has “outlived its purpose”. The Russian President said gay rights, immigration and multiculturalism were an attack on “traditional family values” at the G20 summit in Osaka, Japan, yesterday.
RUSSIA - In a lengthy interview with the UK-based Financial Times on Wednesday, Putin candidly addressed questions about the Russian intervention in Syria – and lack thereof in Venezuela – as well as nuclear proliferation, North Korea, immigration policies in the US and Europe, Russian economy, relations with the UK, and the failure of what he called the “liberal idea” to provide for the people’s well-being. While the Cold War was bad, Putin told FT’s Lionel Barber and Henry Foy, “there were at least some rules that all participants in international communication more or less adhered to or tried to follow. Now, it seems that there are no rules at all. ”So, the liberal idea has become obsolete. It has come into conflict with the interests of the overwhelming majority of the population. The same thing is happening in Europe", the Russian president said, noting that other leaders he spoke with saying nothing can be done because there are laws. “Well, change the laws!” he said.
USA - Google has now flatly stated its intent to influence and control public perception so as to manipulate and determine national political election outcomes. It does this by using AI algorithms to skew search results, presenting only their political views, and suppressing dissenting or alternative views. However, this is not a free speech issue. Google is not a news organization. It does not hire journalists nor does it create original content. Rather, Google is an information utility that simply indexes existing and new journalistic content. Google’s all-powerful and pervasive Internet crawler is able to discover virtually 100% of everything published in the world, on an hour-by-hour or minute-by-minute basis. In other words, Google knows everything there is to know. The question is, will it tell all that it knows or only part of it? This is what is called “weaponizing data” to actively and intentionally lead people to false conclusions in order to modify their behavior.
USA - Tuesday on Fox News Channel’s “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” psychologist Dr Robert Epstein explained how a recently released Project Veritas undercover video, which shows Google executive Jen Gennai proclaiming the tech giant she works for is determined to prevent the re-election of Donald Trump, verified what he has concluded from his research. Epstein told Fox News’ Tucker Carlson it confirmed that Google could influence votes and is willing to do so. “I’m not surprised in the least,” Epstein said. “It confirms in glowing terms, or in very ugly terms if you want to look at it that way, that Google not only has the power to shift opinions and votes on a massive scale but they exercise this power. This is what I measure in my research. So, I can tell you fairly precisely how many votes they can shift. I can tell you fairly precisely how many votes they shifted in 2018.”
USA - The anti-vaccine event’s headliner was Robert F Kennedy Jr, founder of Children’s Health Defense, who has become the celebrity face of the national anti-vaccine movement. “We have the most aggressive vaccine schedule in the world and we have the sickest children in the developed world,” Kennedy said at the event, chastising pharmaceutical companies, regulators and lawmakers. Representative Ron Hood, Republican for Ashville, is sponsoring a bill that would prevent employers from taking adverse action against workers who refuse to be vaccinated for medical reasons or “reasons of conscience,” including religious beliefs.
USA - Donald Trump has accused the European Union of treating his country worse than China does in a scathing attack ahead of the G20 summit in Japan. Mr Trump told the broadcaster: “She hates the United States perhaps worse than any person I’ve ever met. What she does to our country. She’s suing all our companies. We should be suing Google and Facebook… They’re suing Apple. They’re suing everybody.” Finishing his anti-Brussels rant, he blasted: “Europe treats us worse than China.” The combative US President also lashed out at this year’s G20 summit hosts, by insisting the US-Japan mutual defence alliance is unbalanced. He said: “If Japan is attacked, we will fight World War 3. We will go in and protect them with our lives and with our treasure. We will fight at all costs, right? But if we are attacked, Japan doesn’t have to help us at all. They can watch on a Sony television.”
USA - The heat has risen to a whole new level in Miami over the past week. The city has experienced heat that is extreme, even by its own sultry standards, with a slew of new record high temperatures. Most notably, Miami soared to 98 degrees Monday, tying its highest June temperature ever recorded and its second-highest temperature in any month. Miami has a reputation for being hot and steamy in the summer, and for good reason. June through September, high temperatures typically range from 89 to 92 degrees, and they're accompanied by suffocating humidity levels. Without the periodic cold fronts that offer relief to locations farther north, the steamy conditions are unrelenting. But over the past six days, high temperatures at Miami International Airport have ranged from 94 to 98 degrees with low temperatures of 80 to 81 degrees.
EUROPE - Authorities raised alerts Wednesday as Europe's record-breaking early-June heatwave threatened to intensify with temperatures heading into the 40s Celsius. The choking heat has prompted traffic restrictions, sparked forest fires and fanned debate over public nudity in Germany as sweltering citizens stripped off. Meteorologists blamed a blast of hot air from northern Africa for the heatwave so early in the European summer. They said it is likely to send thermometers above 40 degrees Celsius (104 Fahrenheit) in France, Spain and Greece on Thursday and Friday. Authorities were taking no chances after a heatwave in August 2003 was blamed for 15,000 deaths in France, with television and radio broadcasts issuing warnings.
USA - Once upon a time, some of the most beautiful cities in the entire world were on the west coast, but now those same cities are degenerating into drug-infested cesspools of filth and garbage right in front of our eyes. San Francisco is known as the epicenter for our tech industry, and Los Angeles produces more entertainment than anyone else in the world, and yet both cities are making headlines all over the world for other reasons these days. Right now, nearly a quarter of the nation’s homeless population lives in the state of California, and more are arriving with each passing day. When you walk the streets of San Francisco or Los Angeles, you can’t help but notice the open air drug markets, the giant mountains of trash, and the discarded needles and piles of human feces that are seemingly everywhere. If this is what things look like when the US economy is still relatively stable, how bad are things going to get when the economy tanks?