USA - The tech entrepreneur Ross McNutt wants to spend three years recording outdoor human movements in a major US city, KMOX news radio reports. McNutt’s technology is straightforward: A fixed-wing plane outfitted with high-resolution video cameras circles for hours on end, recording everything in large swaths of a city. One can later “rewind” the footage, zoom in anywhere, and see exactly where a person came from before or went after perpetrating a robbery or drive-by shooting … or visiting an AA meeting, a psychiatrist’s office, a gun store, an abortion provider, a battered-women’s shelter, or an HIV clinic. On the day of a protest, participants could be tracked back to their homes. “If a camera that watches a whole city is smart enough to track and understand every target simultaneously,” he writes, “it really can be said to be all-seeing.”

EUROPE - Temperatures were climbing on Sunday as Europe braced for a blistering heatwave with the mercury set to hit 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit) as summer kicks in on the back of a wave of hot air from North Africa. Europeans are set to bake in what forecasters are warning will likely be record-breaking temperatures for June with the mercury set to peak mid-week. Hot and humid nights can be expected, officials say, with many issuing guidelines for surviving the scorcher, and local authorities and hospitals on high alert for a surge in cases of dehydration, heat-stroke and other weather-related conditions. They are also warning that the extreme heat could bring on violent storms.

USA - World’s 76 Best Tide Gauges Show ‘Negligible’ Acceleration Of Sea Level Rise. A new scientific paper affirms “all the long-term-trend (LTT) tide gauges of the world consistently show a negligible acceleration since the time they started recording in the late 1800s/early 1900s” and there is “no sign of climate models' predicted sharply warming and accelerating sea level rise.” An accurate determination of sea level rise acceleration trends requires at least 100 years of data due to the natural (60- to 80-year) oscillations that could bias the results depending on the start and end dates. There are 88 world tide gauges with a record length of at least 100 years in the psmsl.org database. Of those, 76 have no data quality issues.

USA - A US official said the military made preparations Thursday night for limited strikes on Iran in retaliation for the downing of a US surveillance drone, but approval was abruptly withdrawn before the attacks were launched. The official, who was not authorized to discuss the operation publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity, said the targets would have included radars and missile batteries. The New York Times reported that President Donald Trump had approved the strikes, but then called them off. The newspaper cited anonymous senior administration officials. The White House on Thursday night declined requests for information about whether Trump changed his mind. According to the official who spoke to the AP, the strikes were recommended by the Pentagon and were among the options presented to senior administration officials. It was unclear how far the preparations had gone, but no shots were fired or missiles launched.

USA - The US has issued a shock ban on flights over Iranian airspace amid concerns that the military strikes Trump cancelled last night could go ahead in the next 72 hours. However, the threat of all-out war is not over yet with reports that a US missile-launching cruiser has been put on 72-hour standby to attack Iran. A Pentagon official confirmed the Ticonderoga-class guided-missile cruiser USS Leyte Gulf has been mobilized for a possible strike. The 72-hour standby alert suggests that a military strike could still take place in the next few days.

GERMANY - Angela Merkel's conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) is continuing its divided approach to the threat from the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD). As elections approach in three eastern German states in September and October, a pattern has begun to emerge: While the federal party leadership condemns the AfD, local politicians flirt cautiously with the right-wing populists. The clash came into focus on Thursday, when Ulrich Thomas and Lars-Jörn Zimmer, two CDU deputy parliamentary leaders in Saxony-Anhalt, produced an eight-page internal memo arguing that CDU voters and AfD voters actually had similar goals. The CDU had failed, they wrote, to properly counter the "multicultural currents of leftist parties and groups." "We must succeed in reconciling the social with the national once again," the two politicians wrote. They also said a CDU coalition with the AfD at some point in the future should not be ruled out.

USA - The gap between Texas’ Hispanic and white populations continued to narrow last year when the state gained almost nine Hispanic residents for every additional white resident. With Hispanics expected to become the largest population group in Texas as soon as 2022, new population estimates released Thursday by the US Census Bureau showed the Hispanic population climbed to nearly 11.4 million — an annual gain of 214,736 through July 2018 and an increase of 1.9 million since 2010. Soon to become a plurality, the Hispanic population in Texas has grown massively since 2010. Meanwhile, the white population is barely staying ahead of the Asian population in growth.

USA - Ham, luncheon meat, sausage and bacon have been linked to cancer, obesity and heart disease, but Americans still can’t kick their processed meat habit. Although American adults are eating less red meat than they did 18 years ago, processed meat consumption has remained the same — accounting for one quarter of all red meat and poultry eaten in the United States every year, according to a study published Friday in the Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics. Yet even for bacon-lovers who know it’s bad, its appeal is strong. “Processed meat is cheap, convenient, it’s everywhere and everybody loves the way this stuff tastes,” said Marion Nestle, a professor emerita of nutrition, food studies, and public health at New York University.

USA - Six earthquakes have struck in the dangerous Cascadia Subduction Zone (CSZ) off the coast of Oregon, and THREE of those quakes were higher than Magnitude 5.0. "The Big One" might be coming soon! This earthquake fault system is considered to be "the most dangerous in the world" because its location and the type of earthquakes this system can create, in relation to its location near heavily populated areas, means it can generate devastating earthquakes which could kill tens of thousands and destroy entire cities. Making the system even worse is its location in the ocean. A Mega-Thrust earthquake from this system (the type of quake that subduction zones typically cause) would generate a TSUNAMI WAVE that would move at 600 MPH into the US West Coast, obliterating almost everything west of Interstate 5. This quake swarm - at these magnitudes - is unprecedented.

MIDDLE EAST - We could be on the verge of the most cataclysmic war that the Middle East has ever seen. We are being told that there will be a “measured” US response to the downing of a US Navy drone by Iranian forces.  In other words, we should expect some sort of US military action against Iran to happen soon.  If the Iranians choose not to respond to that attack, that will hopefully be the end of it for a while.  But if the Iranians respond by firing their highly advanced anti-ship missiles at US warships in the Persian Gulf, the Trump administration would feel forced to use overwhelming force in return, and that would likely spark an all-out war in the region.

EUROPE - Currency war is the next phase of global conflict and Europe, the chief parasite, is defenceless. There is going to be an ugly fight for scarce global demand. Europe has been warned. Any use of monetary levers to hold down the euro exchange rate will be deemed a provocation by the Trump administration.

UK - Michael Gove has been eliminated from the final round of voting, with Boris Johnson [160 votes] and Jeremy Hunt [77 votes] now going head-to-head in the race to become the next UK prime minister. Boris Johnson secured the most amount of votes yet again in the final MPs' ballot, pushing him closer towards winning the Tory leadership and entering Number 10.

EUROPE - Angela Merkel and Emmanuel Macron have clashed again over who will fill the EU’s most senior posts, prompting one frustrated national leader to claim it would be easier to elect a pope. An unproductive meeting on Thursday between the German chancellor and the French president appeared to dash any hope of a swift resolution to their dispute over the future leadership of the EU’s institutions, including a replacement for Jean-Claude Juncker as president of the European commission. The EU’s top five jobs – presidents of the commission, council, European parliament and European Central Bank and high representative for foreign affairs – are all changing hands. Ireland’s taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, quipped as he arrived at the summit: “It’s quicker to elect the pope very often than it is to fill these particular positions.”

NORWAY - “The world’s largest gang of thugs, murderers, and rapists is masquerading as a religion of peace,” says Adrian Stavig, a resident of Oslo. Beginning this past January, the new Norwegian Prime Minister, Erna Solberg began a program which targets and deports Muslims who have ties to radical groups. Something stunning occurred: the country’s violent crimes are down more than 31% in less than a year since Muslim deportations began! Liberals everywhere are crying “Racism!” Al Jazeera has blasted Solberg relentlessly for her so-called “Islamophobia”, but she has pressed on by deporting any Muslims who belong to radical mosques or threaten violence against “non-believers” — and sent their entire families home too. Perhaps the rest of the world could learn a lesson or two about radical Islam here. Deport the radicals, keep the moderates, and everybody wins.

VATICAN - Cardinal Kurt Koch, president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, said in a recent message that “it is crucial also to share with our non-Catholic brothers and sisters what the Holy Spirit has sown in the Catholic Church, which is also intended to be a gift for them ... The communion among Christians can grow only if Christians are true disciples of Christ. It is fundamental to learn from Him how to create the bonds of communion. Therefore, ecumenism is part and parcel of our very identity as Catholics.”