USA - President Donald Trump on Wednesday is meeting with candidates to serve as 4-star generals ahead of the confirmation process. The nominees are part of Trump's backlog of candidates awaiting Senate confirmation. “President Trump wants to ensure our military is the greatest and most lethal fighting force in history, which is why he meets with four-star-general nominees directly to ensure they are war fighters first — not bureaucrats,” White House spokesperson Anna Kelly told reporters. Trump previously replaced the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff after taking office and has worked to root out "wokeness" at the Pentagon as part of his overhaul of military culture.

FRANCE - France’s prime minister François Bayrou was not going to spoil Bastille Day with a talk on debt doom. He waited 24 hours. Let the French have their military parade on the Champs Elysées and the magnificent fireworks in front of the Eiffel Tower; time would come soon enough to discuss the cost of it all. On July 15, from a lectern on which was written Le moment de vérité (“The moment of truth”), the French PM addressed ministers, lawmakers, civil servants and journalists. The tone was decidedly solemn. “Every second, France’s debt rises by €5,000. Every second. France is now the country with the highest public spending in the world. We must take responsibility; this is the last stop before the cliff.”

EUROPE - Emmanuel Macron has ripped into the European Union in an extraordinary rant. The French President fumed at Brussels for failing to agree a better trade tariffs deal with US President Donald Trump. He said Europe "does not see itself sufficiently" as a global power, saying in a cabinet meeting that negotiations with the US would continue as the agreement between the US and EU gets formalised. Mr Macron added: "To be free, you have to be feared. We have not been feared enough. There is a greater urgency than ever to accelerate the European agenda for sovereignty and competitiveness."

MIDDLE EAST - The push echoes calls from nations that already endorse statehood, such as Russia, and say a two-state solution is the only way to end the Gaza war. Fifteen countries have joined the growing push to recognize Palestinian statehood. Their calls echo the position of nations such as Russia that already recognize Palestine and view a two-state solution as the only way to end the Gaza war. In a joint statement issued late Tuesday following a conference in New York, the foreign ministers of Andorra, Australia, Canada, Finland, France, Iceland, Ireland, Luxembourg, Malta, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, San Marino, Slovenia, and Spain, urged global recognition of Palestine and an immediate ceasefire in Gaza.

MIDDLE EAST - Arab countries, including Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Egypt, have signed a statement calling for Hamas to disarm and end its rule of Gaza, in a bid to end the devastating war in the Palestinian territory. Seventeen countries, plus the European Union and Arab League, are throwing their weight behind a seven-page text — obtained by The Times of Israel — agreed at a United Nations conference on reviving the two-state solution for Israel and the Palestinians. “In the context of ending the war in Gaza, Hamas must end its rule in Gaza and hand over its weapons to the Palestinian Authority, with international engagement and support, in line with the objective of a sovereign and independent Palestinian State,” says the declaration. The text also condemns the deadly Hamas attacks against Israel on October 7, 2023, which launched the war. France, which is co-chairing the conference with Saudi Arabia, calls the declaration “both historic and unprecedented.”

USA - The New York Times amended its article that detailed starvation in Gaza on Tuesday to include that a child featured in the story and its front page, Mohammed Zakaria al-Mutawaq, had a preexisting medical condition that impacts his appearance. “We have since learned new information, including from the hospital that treated [Mutawaq] and his medical records, and have updated our story to add context about his pre-existing health problems.” “It’s unfortunate that the international media repeatedly falls for Hamas propaganda. First they publish, then they verify, if at all,” Israeli Consul General in New York Ofir Akunis stated. "BBC, CNN, Daily Express, and The New York Times spread a misleading story using a picture of a sick, disabled child to promote a narrative of mass starvation in Gaza, playing into the hands of Hamas's propaganda war," Israel accused. “Without proper disclosure. Without medical context. Without journalistic ethics,” the ministry wrote.

RUSSIA - A powerful magnitude 8.8 earthquake off Russia's Far Eastern Kamchatka Peninsula triggered tsunami waves of up to 5 metres (16 feet) and sparked evacuation orders in Hawaii and across the Pacific on Wednesday. The shallow earthquake damaged buildings and injured several people in the remote Russian region, while much of Japan's eastern seaboard - devastated by a 9.0 magnitude earthquake and tsunami in 2011 - was ordered to evacuate. In Hawaii, coastal residents were told to get to high ground or the fourth floor or above of buildings, and the US Coast Guard ordered ships out of harbours as the tsunami approached. "Take Action! Destructive tsunami waves expected," the Honolulu Department of Emergency Management said on X. Three tsunami waves had been recorded in Japan, the largest of 1.3 metres (4.3 feet), officials said. A tsunami watch was issued for the entire Washington coast...

USA - Netflix rebooting 'Captain Planet' to push pagan climate propaganda on new generation of kids. The original series was critical of energy, industry, and capitalism and instructed kids not to have large families. "Captain Planet and the Planeteers" was an animated television series produced by depopulationist billionaire Ted Turner, founder of the United Nations Foundation and CNN, and fellow climate alarmist Barbara Pyle, the co-founder of one of America's first legal abortion facilities. The show, which aired in over 100 countries from 1990 to 1996, was a brazen work of pagan liberal propaganda that impressed upon American children various radical notions beyond just demonizing affordable energy, mining, Western industry, and capitalism. It had a hand in shaping the minds of some of those climate alarmists now involved in demonstrations, public tantrums, ruinous leftist policies, and vandalism.

USA - Nearly half of young women who received their first smartphone at age 5 or 6 now report having suicidal thoughts, compared to just over a quarter of those who waited until 13 to get their device. A sweeping new study tracking more than 100,000 young adults across the globe reveals a troubling pattern that should alarm every parent: the younger children are when they first own a smartphone, the worse their mental health becomes by early adulthood. The research, published this month in the Journal of Human Development and Capabilities, shows overall mental wellbeing scores plummet as smartphone ownership age drops. Researchers used a comprehensive mental health measure that tracks emotional, social and cognitive functioning. Scores fell from 30 points for 13-year-old first-time owners to just 1 point for 5-year-old recipients.

USA - Storms: The Most Deadly and Costly - Storms are the most damaging type of extreme weather, leading in deaths (264,000 fatalities globally) and economic losses ($2.3 trillion). Hurricane Katrina (2005) and Hurricane Harvey (2017) are two of the costliest storms in history, causing roughly $125 billion in damage each, based on estimates from the year each storm occurred.

Heat Waves Are Silent Killers - Despite affecting fewer people overall, heat waves resulted in 225,600 deaths — second only to storms. This reflects the deadly nature of heat, especially for vulnerable populations in cities without adequate cooling infrastructure. Economically, however, their impact was much smaller at just $32 billion. 2022 was a particularly deadly year for heatwaves, especially in Europe, where record-breaking summer temperatures killed over 60,000 people.

Floods and Droughts Affect Billions - Floods affected 2.91 billion people, the highest among all extreme weather types. Droughts were close behind, with 1.87 billion people affected. Both of these hazards can destroy homes and infrastructure, displacing large populations at once. They can also lead to waterborne diseases like typhoid, cholera, and leptospirosis.

CHINA - Heavy rain caused flooding and landslides that washed away cars, forced evacuations and knocked out power in regions around Beijing, killing at least 38 people. Rescue and relief efforts were ongoing across the Chinese capital, home to 22 million people, as weather authorities issued their second-highest rainstorm warning for the city. The neighbouring Hebei and Tianjin provinces, as well as ten other provinces in northern, eastern and southern China, were also severely affected, the Xinhua news agency said.

UK - A civilisation that cannot defend itself really should not expect to survive, and after the latest cybersecurity news, I wonder how it can. An official advisory was recently sent out to the US military, warning that all forces must now assume their networks have been breached. The enemy is inside the house. What it means is that no system connected to the internet can be defended. Our own national cybersecurity agency asked UK businesses to make this presumption in 2020. The reason this hasn’t been bigger news is that we’ve become fatalistic and weary, as one cybersecurity attack follows another. So when we discovered in early July that Chinese hackers had gained control of Microsoft servers at hundreds of US government agencies – including the US nuclear weapons agency – it was just another hacking story. What made this one noteworthy was that there wasn’t immediately a fix or a patch, Microsoft admitted last Tuesday.

USA - They are supposedly the world’s safest bet. US government-issued debt, known as Treasuries, are a bedrock of the global financial system, with $900 billion (£670 billion) of bonds changing hands every day across a market worth nearly $30 trillion. But with pockets of the market showing signs of stress, the Trump administration wants to make bond-buying great again. Regulators have proposed rewriting the post-financial crisis rulebook in what would be the biggest shake-up since 2008. The change would allow America’s banking titans on Wall Street to effectively exempt Treasuries from the calculations about how risky their balance sheets are, allowing them to buy more US debt because they are no longer penalised for owning it. Yet there were warnings that giving US banking forces an easier ride could unleash havoc again – SO WHAT COULD GO WRONG? And how far could any crisis spread?

HUNGARY - In an address to Hungary’s national assembly yesterday, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán argued that successive European crises from financial meltdowns to pandemics and now war have been leveraged by Brussels to accelerate the creation of a federal “United States of Europe.” The Hungarian Prime Minister framed the conflict in Ukraine not only as a tragedy but also as a political turning point. Orbán called on Hungarians to confront what he called the EU’s “crisis-driven power grab.” “Every crisis is an opportunity, a launch vehicle, a platform,” Orbán declared. “Whether financial, migration, virological, or now military, Brussels has consistently used these moments to strip powers from nation states and transfer them to the Commission.”

EUROPE - European leaders have rounded on their ‘badly negotiated’ US trade deal which has left the bloc with worse terms than Britain – saying Donald Trump ‘ate von der Leyen for breakfast’. It comes after the US president announced he had agreed ‘the biggest deal ever made’ between the US and the European Union following a meeting with European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen. The agreement will subject the EU to 15 per cent tariffs on most of its goods entering America. It is lower than a 30 per cent levy previously threatened by the US president - but worse than the UK’s deal - and was quickly lambasted by European leaders. Viktor Orban, the Hungarian PM, hit out: ‘This is what happened and we suspected this would happen as the US president is a heavyweight when it comes to negotiations while Madame President is featherweight.’