RUSSIA - Russian President Vladimir Putin has demanded three conditions to achieving peace with Ukraine — he wants it to give up all of the eastern Donbas region, give up its NATO ambitions and remain neutral and keep Western forces out of the war-torn country, according to a report. The Russian strongman outlined what it would take to end the more than three-year war during his high-stakes summit meeting in Alaska with President Trump last week, three sources familiar with top-level Kremlin thinking told Reuters. Russian sources insisted to Reuters that Putin has cut down on his territorial demands from June 2024 that included four provinces that Moscow believes is part of their country: Donetsk and Luhansk, which encompasses the Donbas in eastern Ukraine, and Kherson and Zaporizhzhia in the south.

UK - The UK is no better prepared to feed its population during wars, pandemics and climate disasters than before the COVID outbreak, the head of the National Farmers Union says. With threats to our food supply increasing, Tom Bradshaw says, the UK has a "criminal" dependence on foreign countries to source some of its food. He warns if Britain continues down this road for another decade, it will be too late to "turn the tap back on". "We're living in probably some of the most volatile geopolitical times we've known," he says. "If we are worried enough… to be investing more in defence, we should be having the same conversation about food security."

USA - In a June episode of The Diary of a CEO podcast, he said that the engineers behind today’s AI systems don’t fully understand the technology and broadly fall into two camps: one that believes in a dystopian future where humans are displaced, and the other, dismissing such fears as science fiction. “I think both of those positions are extreme,” Hinton said. “I often say 10 percent to 20 percent chance [for AI] to wipe us out. But that’s just gut, based on the idea that we’re still making them and we’re pretty ingenious. The hope is that if enough smart people do enough research with enough resources, we’ll figure out a way to build them so they’ll never want to harm us.”

GERMANY - Berlin has begun testing open source tools to replace Microsoft software in pursuit of digital sovereignty. Germany is considering abandoning Microsoft software in favor of open-source alternatives, Bild has reported. The move has come as countries across the world seek to boost their digital autonomy and reduce dependence on American technology firms. Germany’s Federal Ministry for Digital Affairs has confirmed that it intends to increase the use of European solutions and open-source software in government operations, according to the report, which was released on Wednesday. In a statement to Bild, the ministry said it is already testing Open Desk as an alternative to Microsoft Office, which could replace Outlook, Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.

EUROPE - US President Donald Trump has delivered a “brutal wake-up call” to the EU, shattering the bloc’s illusion of geopolitical power rooted in its economic might, ex-Italian Prime Minister and former European Central Bank chief Mario Draghi has said, warning that the bloc must undergo major reforms to remain relevant. “For years, the EU believed that its economic size, with 450 million consumers, brought with it geopolitical power and influence in international trade relations. This year will be remembered as the year in which this illusion evaporated,” Draghi said at a conference in Rimini on Friday. Trump’s broader policies have left the EU with only a “marginal” role in Ukraine peace efforts, reduced it to a passive “observer” in Gaza and Iran, and prompted China to “make it clear that it does not consider Europe an equal partner,” he added. Trump has given us a brutal wake-up call – the thing to do is to pull ourselves together.”

UK - It seems that actually understanding things is no longer necessary. Congratulations if you are reading this. And have got this far. You are in possession of a rare and archaic skill: the art of reading. We are now entering the post-literate age. If anybody from the distant future delves back through our remains and finds that most obscure of things, a book, they will be as entranced and mystified as we are when we stumble across the fossilised remains of a brachiosaurus. Reading is dead meat. It is vanishing before our eyes.

SOUTH AMERICA - The earthquake struck more than 700 km (435 miles) southeast of Argentina's city of Ushuaia, with a population of about 57,000, the USGS said. There was no tsunami threat after Thursday's earthquake of magnitude 7.5 in the Drake Passage between South America and Antarctica, the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center said, following its brief warning for Chilean coastal areas. The United States Geological Survey (USGS) revised down the quake magnitude, initially reported at 8, adding that it hit at a depth of 11 km (7 miles).

UK - The Chancellor’s response has been to target wealth-creators in an attempt to prop up a bloated welfare state. The rise in inflation to 3.8 per cent in July, almost double the target set for the Bank of England, should sound alarm bells everywhere, not least in the Treasury. The increase was blamed on higher food prices, which can only go up further after an expected poor harvest, and air fares.

UK - After months of drought and sunshine British peas harvested this year will be “exceptionally” sweet. But for farmers in the driest parts of the country, it is shaping up to be a bitter harvest. Martin Williams, 60, a third-generation arable farmer on the River Wye, in Herefordshire, said the “devastatingly dry” growing season had led to a 50 per cent drop in his cereal and potato crop yields, and between a 70 and 80 per cent drop in grass grown for animal feed. Standing in the middle of a desert-dry field of brittle yellow grass, which has yielded nothing worth harvesting for animal fodder this summer, Williams said: “In 2024 we had 192mm of rain between March 1 and August 1, and this year I have had 71mm and its still not raining and we have a dry forecast for another two weeks."

UK - Farmers across the UK are grappling with extreme conditions across the country, as five areas are officially in drought, and six more are experiencing prolonged dry weather. A Lincolnshire farmer has labelled the situation as “catastrophic” due to a significant decrease in crop yields. In the South East of England, Winter Barley yields are down almost 20%, as rural workers fear for the knock-on effect to both livestock and the UK’s food security. Andrew Ward MBE who farms near to Leadenham is one agricultural worker with “a very, very reduced amount of grain due to the dry weather”. By this time of year, the farmer explained that he would usually have a heap “three feet higher and it would be full to the door”. “The lack of rain has been catastrophic, especially to spring crops,” he told GB News, adding that he also faces selling his wheat and barley for less than the price more than 10 years ago.

ISRAEL - Thousands of Palestinians told to leave their homes as Israeli military enters ‘new phase of combat’ in the Strip. The first stages of Israel’s operation to capture Gaza City are under way, Israel has said. Troops are circling the outskirts of the city according to Brigadier General Effie Defrin, the military spokesman. After a clash with Hamas south of Khan Yunis on Wednesday, he told reporters: “We have begun the preliminary operations and the first stages of the attack on Gaza City, and already… forces are holding the outskirts.”

ISRAEL - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Thursday that he had approved plans to take over the last Hamas stronghold in Gaza City — while also pursuing negotiations for the release of all Israeli hostages. In a statement translated from Hebrew and released by the Government Press Office, Netanyahu, speaking during a visit to troops deployed to Gaza, said: I came here to approve the IDF plans for taking control of Gaza City and defeating Hamas. In parallel, I instructed to begin immediate negotiations for the release of all our hostages and the end of the war, on conditions that are acceptable for Israel. We’re at the decisive stage. I came today to the Gaza Division in order to approve the plans that the IDF presented to me and to the Defense Minister for taking control of Gaza City and defeating Hamas.

UK - The ‘Godfather of AI’ has issued a terrifying warning the tech he created will take over the world - and there is ‘no chance’ it can be stopped. In a chilling new interview Brit computer scientist Geoffrey Hinton said he fears "super-intelligent psycho scumbag chatbots" will realise they have no "use" for mankind in their society. Hinton, a cognitive scientist and psychologist whose pioneering work on artificial neural networks paved the way for thinking ‘bots, worked for Google for 10 years before quitting so he could speak out about the dangers of AI. Last year he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for foundational discoveries and inventions that enable machine learning with artificial neural networks. “The risk I’ve been warning about the most, because most people think it’s just science fiction, but I want to explain to people that’s not science fiction - it's very real - is the risk that we develop an AI much smarter than us and it would just take over. It won’t need us anymore."

USA - Technology is moving faster than the buildings meant to contain it. Data centers take two to three years to construct, but demand can flip in half that time. JLL warns that without a precise read on future workloads and target customers, new facilities risk opening already obsolete. Power densities are exploding. Rack loads are forecast to rise from 36kW today to 50kW by 2027, and AI training clusters could draw 80 to 100kW per rack. That level of heat forces cooling systems that most sites are not designed to handle. By 2030, nearly $7 trillion will have been poured into data center infrastructure, with more than $4 trillion going directly into computing hardware alone. That is fixed capital chasing a market that mutates every six months.

CANADA - Road closures, evacuations, travel chaos and stern warnings from officials have become fixtures of Canada’s wildfire season. But as the country goes through its second-worst burn on record, the blazes come with a twist: few are coming from the western provinces, the traditional centre of destruction. Instead, the worst of the fires have been concentrated in the prairie provinces and the Atlantic region, with bone-dry conditions upending how Canada responds to a threat that is only likely to grow as the climate warms. Experts say the shift serves as a stark reminder that the risk of disaster is present across the thickly forested nation. In recent weeks, tens of thousands of people have been evacuated from their homes due to the wildfires. Saskatchewan and Manitoba have been the worst hit, covering more than 60% of the area burned in Canada. But the fires have also seized strained resources in Atlantic Canada, where officials in Newfoundland and Labrador are struggling to battle out-of-control blazes. The concerns in Canada echo those emerging across the Atlantic as southern Europe grapples with one of its worst wildfire seasons in two decades.