LEBANON - Hezbollah supporters blocked the streets in Beirut’s southern suburbs with burning tires on August 8 as they protested against the Lebanese government’s endorsement of a plan to disarm the group. Lebanese prime ministers are expected to have tough skins to survive at the helm of a fractious country, where previous leaders have been assassinated. Nawaf Salam, the country’s present leader, appeared shaken this week, however, when Hezbollah defied his calls to disarm and raised the spectre of civil war. “Our decisions are purely Lebanese, made by our cabinet, and no one tells us what to do,” he said in a statement. “Any threat or intimidation related to such a war is totally unaccept­able.” His interjection came after Naim Qassem, chief of the Iran-backed militia, raised the threat of descent into civil war in a televised speech. He said: “The government has taken a very dangerous decision… it is carrying out US and Israeli orders to end the resistance, even if that leads to civil war."

UKRAINE - The final stand for thousands of soldiers, rich in coal but ruined by war — no other territory in Ukraine has seen a similar toll as the eastern Donbas region. Its fate may now decide the future of the war during today’s meeting in Washington. Ukraine has clung to this industrial heartland ever since fighting erupted there in 2014, when pro-Russian separatists first began to clash with Ukrainian troops and declared Donetsk and Luhansk self-styled independent “people’s republics”.

USA - Vegetables Are Up 38.9%, Coffee is Up 25%, And Electricity Prices Are Rising Twice As Fast As Inflation. Do you feel knots in your stomach due to financial stress? If so, you certainly have lots of company. All of a sudden, everyone is talking about the cost of living and prices are rising by double-digit percentages all around us. There are so many people out there right now that feel like they are “drowning” because no matter how hard they try there simply isn’t enough money for everything. Unfortunately, we are being warned to brace ourselves for even more inflation in the months ahead.

USA - The insects are not only a nuisance, but they also pose a major threat of mosquito-borne diseases such as dengue fever and West Nile virus. If at one time it was thought mosquitoes couldn’t survive in desert climates, this city is a case study in how wrong that is. Mosquitoes typically prefer more tropical, humid conditions, but these biting machines have exploded in number throughout the Las Vegas Valley in recent years because of a host of changes. A mix of urban development, climate change, insecticide resistance and genetic adaptations are creating a more hospitable environment for the insects in southern Nevada.

USA - European leaders have revealed they will join Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky when he meets Donald Trump for peace talks at the White House tomorrow. Sir Keir Starmer, European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen, German chancellor Friedrich Merz and France's Emmanuel Macron will travel to Washington. Ms Von der Leyen said 'at the request of President Zelensky, I will join the meeting with President Trump and other European leaders in the White House tomorrow.' Other European leaders confirming they will go tomorrow included Finnish president Alexander Stubb, Italian PM Giorgia Meloni and Nato secretary general Mark Rutte. Russian president Vladimir Putin is said to have demanded full control of Donetsk and Luhansk - two occupied Ukrainian regions - as a condition for ending the war.

SPAIN - The Spanish PM had been criticised for failing to return home. There are 26 active blazes in the northwest region and four deaths so far. Wildfires continued to rage on Monday morning in northwest Spain, particularly affecting Castile and Leon. There were 26 active fires in the region, according to news service Europa Press, ten of which were at the highest level of severity. On both sides of the border between Spain and Portugal, angry and despairing residents of the worst affected areas — which are rural and facing steep declines in their population — have voiced their sense of abandonment by the authorities in the face of the fires. About 139,000 hectares of Portugal have burnt so far this year, with almost half lost in just the past two days. The area under fire is 16 times greater than last year. In Spain 115,000 hectares have burnt this year.

USA - Chairman of the US Federal Reserve will have a chance to respond to attacks from Trump but few expect him to change his tone. Jerome Powell’s speech at the economic policy symposium in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, is seen as a blockbuster event. The world’s most powerful central bankers will gather for their annual jamboree at Jackson Hole, Wyoming, this week where the attention of financial markets and the US president will be squarely on one man: Jerome Powell. The embattled chairman of the US Federal Reserve has been the subject of a torrent of attacks from President Trump for not cutting interest rates.

UK - Rachel Reeves is preparing to strip back environmental protections in an effort to boost the economy by speeding up infrastructure projects. The chancellor is considering reforms that would make it far harder for concerns about nature to stop development, which she insists is crucial to restoring growth and improving living standards. The Treasury has begun preparing for another planning reform bill and is thinking about tearing up key parts of European environmental rules that developers say are making it harder to build key projects. Labour ministers have repeatedly insisted that their current planning overhaul will not come at the expense of nature, promising a “win-win” system where developers will pay to offset environmental damage. But Reeves is understood to believe that the government must go significantly further, after expressing frustration that the interests of “bats and newts” are being allowed to stymie critical infrastructure.

UK - Have you ever been injured by a Union flag? Has one, for example, mugged you at knife-point for your iPhone 16? Or perhaps a gang of teenage Union flags, out of their minds on weapons-grade skunk, have ambushed you as you walk home on your own after dark? I’m relieved to say that I for one have never suffered any such misfortune. But then, I don’t live in Birmingham. And it would seem that the Union flags up there are an awful lot deadlier than the ones down my way in Kent.

UK - Rose Docherty is a woman of few words. You’d never have heard of the 75-year-old if it wasn’t for what she didn’t say. She’s the activist who staged a silent protest outside the abortion clinic in Glasgow last February, holding a sign reading: “Coercion is a crime, here to talk, only if you want”. Hers was a simple offer of conversation, made without a sound. You know what happened next. The septuagenarian was arrested under Scotland’s “buffer zone” laws, which prevent anybody engaging in harassment or intimidation in the vicinity of abortion facilities, or influencing a woman’s decision to use them.

UK - Most European countries use detention centres but Britain puts undocumented men in accommodation while British families struggle under taxes. This Isn’t Compassion. It’s State-Sponsored Danger. You can’t claim to protect women while placing unvetted illegal migrant men, whose criminal histories are completely unknown, into our towns and villages. These aren’t refugees or tourists. They are men of fighting age, arriving without documentation, placed in communities at taxpayer expense, while British families struggle under soaring taxes.

UK - The Ricky Jones and Lucy Connolly cases have put the system’s hypocrisy on full display. After Labour councillor Ricky Jones stood at a demonstration in Walthamstow decrying “disgusting Nazi fascists” and telling a crowd through a microphone that “we need to cut all their throats and get rid of them all”, a jury of Mr Jones’s peers cleared him of any offence.

UK - Out of the 38,023 small boat migrant arrivals recorded in the year up until March, 87% were male and just 13% were female. In the same period, a total of 25,879 male migrants were found to be between 18 and 39 years old, with only 5,907 over the age of 39. In terms of nationality, the top three countries were Afghanistan (5,766), Syria (4,368), and Eritrea (4,229). Reform UK's deputy leader Richard Tice responded to the new findings, warning of an "escalating crisis" threatening the economy and living standards.

UK - As gusts of up to 124mph strafed the nation last week during Storm Floris, many of Scotland’s new wind farms stood stock still. For the energy system that is supposed to power the country’s future, it was not a good look. It wasn’t that the wind turbines weren’t working. It was actually that they were in danger of working too well. Energy suppliers to homes had contracted to buy the wind power because it could be generated more cheaply than anywhere else in the country. But the National Energy Systems Operator (Neso), Britain’s grid operator, realised it was in danger of generating more than power lines could deal with.

UK - Smoke from Portugal’s wildfires has reached southern England. The Met Office confirmed that smoke from the fires had drifted up from the Bay of Biscay into parts of the UK and Ireland. Craig Snell, a meteorologist with the Met Office, said there was a “fair amount of smoke” heading off the Iberian Peninsula towards the UK, particularly towards the south-west of England. Mr Snell added that it was possible the smoke could drift into Wales and parts of northern England.