UK - When Sarah Pye and her partner Doug Knight bought a small property on Anglesey in Wales, it seemed to be the rural idyll they’d always wanted. Quiet and picturesque, the smallholding was meant to be a place to raise their children and run a local tourism business. Or at least that was until a solar developer warned it could seize control of their land – casting doubt over their future plans and life savings. “Out of the blue, we had a series of letters from LightsourceBP, a solar energy company, saying they may need our land for a solar farm,” says Sarah. The letters, describing plans for the 3,200-acre Maen Hir solar fields, arrived just after she and Doug had finished four years of work – including planting 4,000 trees to create a woodland camper-van site. “They want to run cables right through our new woodland and campsite and surround our property with solar panels,” says Sarah. “And it seemed like we had no choice because if we refused, they would use compulsory acquisition powers.”

JAPAN - Exactly 80 years since an atomic bomb was used in war for the first time, thousands bowed their heads in prayer in Hiroshima on Wednesday, as the city's mayor warned world leaders about the nuclear warheads that still exist today. The western Japanese city of Hiroshima was leveled on August 6, 1945, when the United States dropped a uranium bomb nicknamed "Little Boy," killing about 78,000 people instantly. Hiroshima was the headquarters of some military units and a major supply base during World War Two. US war planners calculated that the surrounding mountains would concentrate the force of the bomb and enhance its destructiveness. "Little Boy" unleashed a surge of heat reaching 4,000 degrees Celsius and radiation that killed tens of thousands more by the end of the year. It was followed by a plutonium bomb on Nagasaki three days later, and Japan's surrender on August 15. "To all the leaders around the world: Please visit Hiroshima and witness for yourselves the reality of the atomic bombing."

RUSSIA - Russia "no longer has any restrictions" on deploying previously-banned types of conventional and nuclear missiles, the Kremlin said on Tuesday, vowing to "take appropriate measures if necessary." Moscow's Foreign Ministry had said in a statement on Monday it "no longer considers itself bound" by previous restrictions on US and Russian missiles with a range between 500 and 5,500 kilometers. NATO also accused Russia of violating the treaty, which Moscow denied. Both sides had suspended participation months earlier. Russia then said it would not deploy missiles banned under this treaty "until US-manufactured missiles of similar classes" are rolled out, known as the INF moratorium.

HAITI - The United States Embassy in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, closed its doors on Monday, August 4, 2025, due to intense gunfire in the Tabarre neighborhood, where the diplomatic compound is located. The State Department announced that all personnel have been confined within the compound, suspending any official movement outside of it, in response to the growing wave of violence affecting the Caribbean nation.

UK - Nigel Farage has erupted at reports that at least 211 people living in asylum seeker hotels have been charged with criminal offences this year. Court records show that 211 residents in the hotels have been charged with a combined 425 offences. There were 109 violent offences, 44 sexual offences including four counts of alleged rape, and 63 theft-related offences. The analysis by The Telegraph was based on court records linked to 50 known asylum hotels.

UK - Children are spending more time “detached from the real world, either stuck in their bedrooms or behind a screen”, the prime minister said as he announced an £88 million package for youth clubs and schools. Sir Keir Starmer said that children were too often isolated at home, with outdoor activities no longer being the default option for young people. Starmer said that the “worrying trend” meant that children “find themselves isolated at home and disconnected from their communities”. Instead, funding aimed at building new climbing walls and launching music lessons will give “life skills that no algorithm can teach”. The move is part of wider efforts to “reconnect young people with the world around them”, No 10 said.

UK - Private security guards have been recruited to support police patrols in a seaside town in an attempt to stop children from terrorising residents during the school holidays. Businesses in Herne Bay, Kent, say groups of children have been stealing from shops, shouting abuse and using catapults against animals in the park. Akon Security has been given an £8,500 contract, funded by the Kent Police and Crime Commissioner’s office, to help council enforcement officers crack down on antisocial behaviour. Two security guards will work five days a week to patrol the streets, while police increase their presence on Fridays and Saturdays. Akon workers cannot arrest anyone, but will act as a deterrent, assisting officers and reporting crimes straight to police.

UK - Britain’s legal profession – once a byword for rigour, intellect and integrity – now finds itself the latest battleground in the war against excellence. A cohort of aspiring solicitors has taken to petitioning for the Solicitors Qualifying Examination (SQE) to be made easier. Their complaint? The exams are “too hard, disproportionately challenging”, and, of course, “biased towards certain backgrounds and learning styles”. In other words: “We didn’t do well, and it must be someone else’s fault.” There could hardly be a more telling parable of our times.

USA - President Trump has claimed that JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America refused to do business with him for political reasons. Trump said that two of America’s largest investment banks rejected his business, forcing him to go to “small banks all over the place”. In an interview with CNBC he said: “They totally discriminate against, I think, me maybe even more, but they discriminate against many conservatives. I think the word might be Trump supporters more than conservatives.”

ISRAEL - 'Entire attack livestreamed on Facebook': October 7 victim relatives file lawsuit against Meta. Relatives of October 7 victims are suing Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Threads, for livestreams of Hamas's massacre, broadcasting footage of their relatives' murder. A motion for certification of a class action lawsuit for more than NIS four billion ($1.15 billion) was filed on Monday by October 7 victims, their families, and users on Facebook and Instagram against corporate parent giant Meta.

UK - The collapse of human civilization is now 'inevitable', according to a scholar who's combed through 5,000 years of history. Dr Luke Kemp of the University of Cambridge has exposed clear and alarming patterns of inequality, environmental damage, reckless leadership and fragile systems that lead to ancient collapse in the modern world. 'We can't put a date on Doomsday, but by looking at the 5,000 years of [civilization], we can understand the trajectories we face today, and self-termination is most likely,' he told the Guardian.

RUSSIA - Last week, Russia's Kamchatka Peninsula was hit by a magnitude 8.8 earthquake – the sixth largest ever recorded. The tremor released enormous amounts of destructive energy, triggering tsunami warnings as far away as Chile and the western United States. But when the activity had subsided, scientists from the Russian Academy of Sciences were baffled to find that the peninsula had actually moved away from the mainland. In some places towards the peninsula's southern tip, the landmass had drifted as much as 6.5ft (two metres) to the southeast. That is similar to the movement caused by Japan's 9 magnitude Tohoku earthquake in 2011 – the fifth largest earthquake ever recorded. Scientists believe that the flurry of activity following the initial earthquake has now also triggered two volcanic eruptions in the region.

RUSSIA - The massive magnitude 8.8 earthquake that struck off Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula last week has triggered the activity of seven volcanoes in the area, according to the Institute of Volcanology and Seismology of the Far Eastern Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS). The RAS said this is the first time in almost 300 years that seven volcanoes erupted at once in the region. The director of the institute, Alexey Ozerov, described the situation as an “extremely rare phenomenon that can be described as a parade of volcanic eruptions.”

USA - Why have there been so many large earthquakes in recent weeks? This is something that people on social media are really buzzing about right now. And I am certainly glad that they are buzzing about it, because what we have been witnessing is not even close to normal. We really are in the early chapters of an extremely apocalyptic chapter in human history, and people need to hear the truth. I wanted to independently verify that this figure was accurate.

ISRAEL - Will construction of the Third Temple soon begin? For years, the Temple Institute has been preparing for the rebuilding of the Temple in Jerusalem, and now it appears that they believe that the time has come. Needless to say, any effort to rebuild the Temple would create a firestorm of controversy all over the globe. But there is clearly a tremendous amount of momentum inside Israel to allow construction to commence, and someone has been putting up road signs that literally point people in the direction of the coming Temple…