IRAN - Iran’s “supreme leader” Ayatollah Ali Khamenei warned his underlings in a meeting on Wednesday that making a “nontactical retreat” would meet the “divine wrath” of Allah as the world awaits a highly touted attack by Tehran on neighboring Israel. Iranian officials have been boasting that they would attack Israel for all of August following the elimination of Hamas “political” chief Ismail Haniyeh on July 31. Haniyeh was killed by a yet-unexplained explosion in his lodgings in Tehran, which he was visiting to attend the inauguration of President Masoud Pezeshkian. Iran is believed to be one of the top funders and political supporters of Hamas, the genocidal terrorist organization responsible for the massacre, torture, and abduction of hundreds of Israeli civilians in an unprecedented siege on October 7.

MIDDLE EAST - There is a rising risk of “full-scale regional war” in the Middle East, the foreign secretary, David Lammy, has warned, amid frantic international efforts to calm tensions with Iran and reach a ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas. With the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, flying into Israel this weekend to push for a deal, Lammy has joined forces with his French counterpart, Stéphane Séjourné, to warn that now is a “perilous moment” for the region in the midst of widespread fears of escalation involving Tehran and allied militias in Lebanon, Iraq, Syria and Yemen.

USA - Every @harleydavidson rider is going to want to see this. It sure sounds like CEO Jochen Zeitz admits that he took the Harley job because it was an opportunity to transform an American icon into embracing wokeness and DEI. Read the quotes below carefully. He said this at a Synergos ‘David Rockefeller Leadership Award’ event. Synergos says they work to “dismantle systems that create the most urgent problems of our time... social injustice and climate change.” Doesn’t that just scream HARLEY-DAVIDSON!?

USA - Growing up in rural Michigan, Nina Job got familiar with peers and people in her community following a “traditional trajectory.” That meant “you go to college, you get married, you have 2.5 kids, you know — happy home, white picket fence type-thing,” she tells CNBC Make It. But moving to New York gave her a new perspective: “I remember being 20 and so surprised to meet single people much older than what I was used to ever seeing back home who were happy.” The varied domestic situations she encountered “opened my eyes to the possibility of so many different lifestyles, and just non-traditional family setups,” the now-36-year-old says.

USA - Gavin Newsom, the California governor, on Friday signed a bipartisan package of 10 bills that aims to crack down on smash-and-grab robberies and property crimes, making it easier to go after repeat shoplifters and auto thieves and increase penalties for those running professional reselling schemes. The move comes as Democratic leadership works to prove that they are tough enough on crime while trying to convince voters to reject a ballot measure that would bring even harsher sentences for repeat offenders of shoplifting and drug charges. While shoplifting has been a growing problem, large-scale, smash-and-grab thefts, in which groups of individuals brazenly rush into stores and take goods in plain sight, have become a crisis in California and elsewhere in recent years. Such crimes, often captured on video and posted on social media, have brought particular attention to the problem of retail theft in the state.

USA - Elites in the Democratic party are truly shameless. They'd already committed an egregious affront to democracy by covering up President Joe Biden's infirmity for months and then hand-picking his successor. It was even worse that Vice President Kamala Harris, their anointed nominee, had never won a single vote in a presidential primary contest. And it's an ongoing insult that Harris has yet to submit to a single interview or news conference in the 24 days that she's been her party's new standard-bearer. Almost 80 days out from the election (and only a month from the start of early voting in some states), Harris is yet to reveal an iota of what she actually wants to do as president.

GERMANY - German authorities have issued an arrest warrant for a Ukrainian man on suspicion of being part of a team that blew up the Nord Stream gas pipelines in the Baltic Sea, according to local media reports. The man, a diving instructor identified only as Volodymyr Z, is last believed to have lived in Poland, and is alleged to have dived 80 metres to the seabed at night to plant explosive devices on the pipelines, which ran from Russia to Germany, in September 2022. Despite evidence that Volodymyr Z may have had the backing of high-ranking military officials, there is no suggestion that the Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy was aware of the attack or that it was state-sanctioned. Russia and the west have blamed one another for being behind the destruction of the pipelines, which stood as an ugly reminder for many of German dependence on Russian gas. Everyone accused has so far denied involvement.

RUSSIA - The Middle East is currently engulfed in a state of profound uncertainty, exacerbated by the ongoing conflict in Gaza and the escalating tensions between Israel and Iran following the assassination of Hamas Political Bureau Chief Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran. In this volatile environment, some actors are compelled to seek clarity and reinforce their strategies. This is evident in the actions of President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian National Authority, who made a working visit to Moscow from August 12 to 14, his first since 2021.

USA - The US government does not believe that Israel can achieve any of its key goals in Gaza by continuing to fight Hamas, The New York Times reported on Wednesday, citing insider sources. The administration of US President Joe Biden is trying to convince Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to accept a ceasefire, which would be conditioned on the return of hostages captured by Palestinian militants during their incursion into the country last October. The Israeli leader is under pressure from extreme right-wing members of his cabinet to stonewall the proposed deal and keep fighting. The Jewish state declared the elimination of Hamas as its primary objective when it launched its operation in Gaza in response to the October raid.

GERMANY - The German Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) may soon be allowed to secretly enter and search homes, according to a draft reform proposal seen by Der Spiegel and RND. According to the document, police would also have the power to install spyware on suspects’ computers or smartphones, in addition to conducting covert searches of their homes. These powers would supposedly only be used in exceptional circumstances. The Interior Ministry has defended the initiative, claiming that the BKA plays a central role in countering international terrorism threats. A spokesperson refused to discuss details of the proposal, which is still at a very early stage, but told Der Spiegel on Wednesday that security agencies must have the necessary powers to effectively counter evolving threats.

USA - Google admitted that autocomplete search results regarding the assassination attempt against former President Trump last month were prohibited by design and part of the company’s policy for “hypothetical political violence against current figures.” FOX Business reported exclusively in July that Senator Roger Marshall, Republican for Kansas, was launching an investigation into Google after its autocomplete search results did not register the assassination attempt against Trump on July 13, which was dominating the news. He questioned the company in a letter over the search function, asking about its algorithm and what decisions were made in the aftermath of the attack on Trump.

USA - Most Americans don’t even realize that virtually all of their personal information has been stolen and posted online for free. The personal records of 2.9 billion people were stolen from a major data broker known as National Public Data earlier this year, and this month almost of the information that was stolen was posted online for anyone to freely take. We are talking about names, addresses, phone numbers, employment histories, birth dates and Social Security numbers. This is one of the most egregious privacy violations in the history of the world, but hardly anyone knows what has happened.

ISRAEL - An Israeli crowd led by hard-right politician Itamar Ben-Gvir stormed Jerusalem's most holy site today in a pilgrimage seen by Muslims as provocative. His visit to the Al-Aqsa Mosque launches a fresh challenge to rules covering one of the most sensitive sites in the Middle East - with tensions over the compound fuelling violence before. The Palestinian Foreign Ministry condemned the visit - which took place on a Jewish holiday- as a 'provocative intrusion' that endangered the fragile status quo regarding the Jerusalem compound.

UK - Ritchie Herron has been experiencing a living nightmare for six years. The 37-year-old civil servant, who in 2018 underwent radical gender surgery to complete his physical transformation to live as a woman, is one of a growing number of patients who have come to deeply regret undergoing medical interventions to change gender. Herron’s distress has been compounded by the NHS response to his desire to “detransition”, which has appeared clumsy and ill-suited to the situation in which he found himself. He claims that the inadequacy of the health service’s approach was highlighted by the fact that the main clinician assigned to oversee his care was a gynaecologist – a specialism which would clearly “not [offer] the right expertise” for someone seeking to overturn their transition to the female gender.

USA - Hundreds of girls aged 12 and under have had 'top surgery' to remove their breasts in the US since 2017, data suggests. And more than 6,000 girls aged 13 to 18 had the 'gender-affirming' surgeries in that time, according to an analysis seen by DailyMail.com. It comes after the Biden Administration came out against transgender surgeries for children in June for the first time, marking a major pivot from its earlier stance. High profile Democrats, including Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear, had previously claimed sex change surgeries 'don't happen' on children. Researchers at the conservative Manhattan Institute think-tank carried out what they call the biggest ever analysis of transgender care for minors, reviewing more than 4 billion insurance claims from 155 million people between 2017 and 2023.