PAPUA NEW GUINEA - Papua New Guinea is on high alert after the Maman Island volcano erupted yesterday, forcing 2,000 villagers to evacuate, as concerns grow over the volatile site along the Pacific Ring of Fire. Papua New Guinea has deployed armed forces to help emergency evacuations… The massive eruption sent a plume of ash nine miles into the sky, blocking out the sun for several hours and triggering panic among villagers. Around 2,000 villagers from three separate villages have fled so far from the flowing lava and blanket of ash. Maman Island, just six miles wide, is one of the world's most active volcanoes and sits along the volatile Pacific Ring of Fire. The ash has been so heavy that trees have snapped under its weight and at least two houses have collapsed.

GERMANY - In a stunning vote of "no confidence" in the US monopoly over global payment infrastructure, Germany’s foreign minister Heiko Maas called for the creation of a new payments system independent of the US that would allow Brussels to be independent in its financial operations from Washington and as a means of rescuing the nuclear deal between Iran and the west.

UK - Deaths in Sadiq Khan’s London in 2018 have topped 100 with the discovery of a 73-year-old woman’s body on Wednesday. Carole Harrison was found dead in her house in Teddington, in the capital’s south-west, following a house fire, but police say she appears to have suffered injuries “consistent with an assault” prior to the blaze. The investigation into the pensioner’s death is the sixth murder inquiry launched in London in a week, according to MailOnline...

USA - Here we go again. Did Bolton just give jihadists facing imminent final defeat under Assad and Russian bombs an open door invitation to initiate a chemical provocation? As CNN and others warned this week that Syrian and Russian forces are closing in on the "last rebel stronghold" in Syria in the country's northwest pocket of Idlib province, US National Security Advisor put Syrian President Bashar al-Assad on notice, saying the United States would respond "very strongly" if pro-government forces use chemical weapons in their campaign to retake Idlib. 

RUSSIA - The US and its allies are preparing new airstrikes on Syria, the Russian Defense Ministry said, adding that militants are poised to stage a chemical weapons attack in order to frame Damascus and provide a pretext for the strikes. The attack would be used as a pretext for US, UK and French airstrikes on Syrian targets, Russian Defense Ministry spokesman, Major General Igor Konashenkov said. USS ‘The Sullivans,’ an Arleigh Burke-class Aegis guided missile destroyer, was already deployed to the Persian Gulf a couple of days ago, he added.

RUSSIA - The Vostok 2018 military exercise in eastern Russia was already billed as Russia’s largest war game since 1981. China’s Defense Ministry announced on Thursday it will send 3,200 troops from the People’s Liberation Army to join over 100,000 Russians in exercises from September 11 to 15. The Chinese troops will bring at least 900 tanks and 30 aircraft with them. If Russia’s boast of the biggest exercise since the Cold War is accurate, over 1,500 Russian tanks and 120 aircraft will be involved. A small force from Mongolia has also been invited to participate, mirroring the way Russia’s huge Cold War exercises included partners from Warsaw Pact countries. Most of the actual former members of the Warsaw Pact will be eyeing Vostok 2018 with some trepidation. This week marked the 50th anniversary of the Pact’s invasion of Czechoslovakia.

SWEDEN - Sweden’s public broadcaster, SVT, has come under fire for revealing “inflammatory” statistics proving foreign-born men commit around 85 per cent of stranger rapes ahead of the country’s general election next month. Broadcast on investigative journalism show Mission Review on Wednesday, analysis of 843 district court cases over the past five years found that 58 per cent of men convicted of rapes and attempted rapes in the period were born overseas. Looking at just assault rape cases, in which the perpetrator and victim were not previously acquainted, the proportion of foreign-born grew to more than eight in ten, almost half of whom had been living in Sweden less than a year when they launched their attack.

USA - Harvard Law School Professor Emeritus Alan Dershowitz said Michael Cohen, President Donald Trump’s former attorney, is “pleading guilty to a crime that doesn’t exist” to further Democrats’ plans to impeach the president. He offered his analysis during a Wednesday interview with Breitbart Senior Editors-at-Large Rebecca Mansour and Joel Pollak on SiriusXM’s Breitbart News Tonight.

USA - A group of local pastors in Mobile, Alabama, are speaking out against a public library for hosting a Drag Queen Story Hour, and are voicing their concerns with the city to stop the event. The pastors throughout Mobile are hoping to get the city to cancel a September 8 event at Mobile’s Ben May Main Library where an adult drag queen is expected to read to a group of children between the ages of three and eight years old, AL.com reported. The pastors are scheduled to voice their concerns about the event at next Monday’s Mobile County Commission meeting, in the hopes the city can put a stop to it. “This is far, far from the moral values and the morality of Mobile, Alabama,” Pastor Fred Wolfe told WALA.

USA - It’s the ultimate annual destination for top Silicon Valley techies to practice hedonistic pleasure, drugs, eastern spirituality and social engineering. This year could see as many as 100,000 people create a pop-up city in a northern Nevada desert. The Utopia-like Technocrat culture is ‘other-worldly’. TN Editor

SOUTH AFRICA - South African Cardinal Wilfrid Napier has decried media spins on the current clerical sex abuse crisis, declaring that the scandal is rooted in same-sex activity by predatory priests. The cardinal was tweeting in response to a newspaper headline in The Mercury, which proclaimed that “Churches may have to allow same sex unions” as a result of the most recent revelations of sexual abuse and impropriety by bishops, priests, and cardinals. Allowing same-sex unions won’t solve the problem, Napier stated, since it is precisely homosexual activity that “is the scandal rocking the Catholic Church to its roots!” “Deviation from God’s law always brings grief,” he added.

IRAN - Hundreds of people have been injured and at least two have died after a powerful 6.1 earthquake struck western Iran, near the border with Iraq. The quake struck some 31 kilometers from Javanrud, Kermanshah province, at a depth of 10 kilometers, USGS reports. There were no immediate reports of major damage, but the powerful jolt was reportedly felt as far as the Iraqi capital Baghdad.

GERMANY - It is high time to re-evaluate our partnership — not to leave it behind, but to renew and preserve it. Sharing responsibility as a blueprint, we have the idea of a balanced partnership, in which we take our balanced part of the responsibility. In which we counterbalance where the US crosses red lines. In which we bring in our weight, where America withdraws. And in which we start a new conversation. Single-handedly, we will fail in this task. The outstanding goal of our foreign policy is therefore to build a sovereign, strong Europe.

EUROPE - The European Union agreed 18 million euros ($20.6 million) in aid for Iran on Thursday, including for the private sector, to help offset the impact of United States sanctions and salvage a 2015 deal that saw Tehran limit its nuclear ambitions. The announcement is part of the bloc's high-profile efforts to support the nuclear accord that President Donald Trump abandoned in May. It is part of a wider package of 50 million euros earmarked for Iran in the EU budget. The EU is working to maintain trade with Iran, which has threatened to stop complying with the nuclear agreement if it fails to see the economic benefits of relief from sanctions. The bloc's foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini said in a statement the bloc was committed to cooperation with Iran.

USA - The entire media-political-government-power complex camped along the Potomac River in this fetid August heat officially lost its collective mind this week. In an orgy of political drama playing out in courtrooms up and down the Acela corridor, President Trump’s lawyer and his one-time campaign manager stand convicted of various crimes. In this fever worse than Joe McCarthy’s Red Scare, President Trump — therefore — has been officially declared guilty by association!