UK - Rishi Sunak has vowed to work "day in day out" to tackle the UK's "profound challenges" after he was today named Britain's 57th Prime Minister. Mr Sunak won the support of an overwhelming majority of Conservative MPs, enabling him to claim the keys to No10. On the day of Diwali - the Hindu festival of lights - Mr Sunak learnt he will become Britain's first PM of Indian heritage.

UK - A British man is the first to get microchipped with his bank card. 40-year-old Arnie Szoke paid £350 to get his bank card surgically implanted in his hand by London-based company Walletmor. In Sweden, more than 4,000 people have their bank cards linked to microchip implants. Szoke’s microchipped bank card will have to be replaced after it expires. Walletmor is rolling out a microchip that can be implanted in the hand and will work with a digital wallet for contactless payments. The tech company said the microchip will work with the “Purewrist” app and the implant procedure takes only 4 minutes.

KOREA - North and South Korea exchanged warning shots on Monday, accusing each other of crossing their disputed maritime border amid heightened tensions in the region, according to both nations’ militaries. The South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) said that at around 3:42am local time, a North Korean merchant vessel breached the Northern Limit Line (NLL) in the Yellow Sea, which serves as the de facto maritime boundary between the two states. This prompted the South Korean military to issue warnings, and after the boat failed to change course, it unleashed two bursts of machine gun fire. In recent weeks, North Korea has carried out a series of weapon tests, and the nation’s nuclear forces have said they successfully completed a test simulating the loading of tactical warheads into a hidden silo. According to state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), the latest North Korean test was part of drills meant to ensure that it could “wipe out” potential South Korean and US targets.

USA - Democrats have just dealt a huge blow to Joe Biden by publicly calling for a change of course on the Ukraine invasion and demanding the Democrat president engage in direct negotiations with Russia. The move is a major loss for Biden as Democrats turn against his Ukraine policy just days away from the midterm elections. Republicans have hinted they may change Biden’s policy for him, should they take the House, by warning there will be no more “blank checks” for Ukraine. So losing support from his own party puts Biden in a tight spot. “We should have no illusions about the challenge ahead of us but my colleagues and I are urging the administration to engage in a proactive diplomatic push in an effort to seek a realistic framework for a cease-fire.”

USA - Author and investigative journalist Lee Smith explained the dangerous development inside our national media. According to Lee Smith, and what appears to be quite evident, the American mainstream media is now part of the intelligence community. This was proven time and time again during the Trump years. The purpose of today’s mainstream press is not to inform, but to move the masses in the direction designated by the intelligence community.

UNITED NATIONS - A group of world elites met this week to discuss the implementation of digital currencies run by central banks that will allow the world elites to control your behavior. Using this technology these elites, who believe they are so much more important and clever than you are, will decide what you can eat, say and do. Included in the group were: Her Majesty Queen Máxima of the Netherlands, who’s also the UN Secretary-General’s Special Advocate for Inclusive Finance for Development. Kristalina Georgieva, Managing Director, IMF, and Bo Li, Deputy Managing Director, and Cecilia Skingsley the BIS Innovation Hub Director. Unlike cryptocurrencies, which are private, Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) will be issued and controlled by the central banks themselves. In many ways, it’s the same as banknotes, but it’s likely that every single transaction will be monitored for compliance… This is the Brave New World we were warned about.

JAPAN - Amid fear of what China might do in the coming years, Japan is reaching out to turn a former enemy into an ally while increasing its military spending. On Saturday, World War II foes Australia and Japan signed a security agreement to share intelligence and assist each other. The deal was inked by Prime Ministers Fumio Kishida and Anthony Albanese in the western Australian city of Perth, according to the Voice of America. “This landmark declaration sends a strong signal to the region of our strategic alignment,” Albanese said, according to VOA. Meanwhile, according to Reuters, Japan is rebuilding its military in a way not seen since before World War II to prepare for what some policymakers fear is an inevitable showdown with China. Japanese officials fear any invasion of Taiwan will touch Japanese islands near Taiwan, much as Chinese missiles came within 100 miles of those Japanese-held islands when China was erupting in protest over the visit of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to Taiwan.

USA - Oil prices and President Joe Biden’s continued draining of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) have dominated the headlines over the past few weeks, but analysts say a more impactful and serious crisis on the energy front looms: a diesel fuel shortage. Diesel doesn’t get as much of the limelight as oil and gas, but it should because diesel fuel is the industrial lifeblood of the United States, and the price of diesel alone probably has a more significant impact on inflation and the prices you’re paying at the grocery store over any other factor. Without ample amounts of diesel, semi-trucks don’t move, farms are shut down, and critical manufacturing sectors are crippled.

USA - Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, also known by his initials AMLO, recently announced that US Secretary of State Tony Blinken proposed opening all borders between the US, Mexico, and Canada. President Obrador: “I think that Mr Blinken spoke about consolidating the region of North America. And we agree on that.” The plan would open up our borders permanently to the drug cartels running Mexico today. It is the latest insanity proposed by the Biden regime to permanently destroy the United States.

USA - A near-record number of US chickens and turkeys have died in this year's outbreak of avian flu, as a different form of the virus than farmers battled before has infected more wild birds that then transmit the disease, officials said. More than 47 million birds have died due to infections and cullings. This has spurred export bans, lowered egg and turkey production, and contributed to record prices of the staples ahead of the US holiday season. The outbreak exacerbates economic pain for consumers grappling with soaring inflation. In 2015, 50.5 million birds died in the deadliest US outbreak, the nation's worst animal-health event to date. Indiana turkey farmer Greg Gunthorp said grocers, online retailers and other buyers have called searching for whole turkeys and breasts. Antibiotic-free turkey breasts are selling for $7-$9 per pound wholesale, compared to about $3 before the COVID-19 pandemic, he said.

USA - Photos and satellite imagery from the central United States show how the region’s worst drought in at least a decade has pushed the Mississippi River and its tributaries to drop to record lows this month. Across the river basin, dozens of gauges have fallen below their low-water threshold. The Mississippi River was at historically low levels from Illinois to Louisiana this week, and many of these gauges will continue to see decreasing water levels as the forecast remains stubbornly dry. Drone video of the Mississippi River near Memphis shows how far the mighty river has contracted away from its banks. The river dropped to minus-10.75 feet there earlier this week, according to data from the National Weather Service, which was the lowest level ever recorded in Memphis.

USA - It has to get really bad soon in order to get really good later. If you have an addiction, then the way to deal with it is to fully explore the negative consequences, and not be in denial of them at the moment of (poor) choice. We live in a society addicted to technological convenience, careless consumption, and idolatry (not least of the self). Underpinning all this are compromised and captured systems of finance, religion, education, media, law, etc — which will all have to collapse and be reformed in time. No more putting off the consequences of the poor choices of the past! That means we need a financial, economic, political, cultural, and social implosion the likes of which has not happened in living memory. And that’s great! Because it is the fastest and least painful way through this mess. It is easy to focus on how the geopolitical world is damaged, but less comfortable to face up to how we degrade ourselves. An apocalypse is merely the revealing of what is, and the stripping away of pretence and illusion. We may not like that it has to get superficially worse in order to become fundamentally better, but that is how the world works — paradoxically.

USA - It’s been revealed by sources within the US Department of Justice that direct messages sent through Facebook by American users, along with public postings, have been rigorously monitored, and reported to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) if they express anti-government, anti-authority views, or if they question the legitimacy of the November 2020 presidential election’s outcome.

EUROPE - Josep Borrell, the European Union’s top diplomat, has been in the news lately. In response to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s increasingly belligerent rhetoric, Borrell announced that a Russian nuclear strike against Ukraine would provoke “such a powerful answer” from the West that the Russian army would be “annihilated.” Borrell’s off-the-cuff remarks do not constitute official EU policy, but his words may reflect an important transformation underway within the EU. Once, the EU sought to rise above the fray of great power struggles, claiming it offered a peaceful alternative to violence and coercion. Now, key European leaders seem to be trying to remake the DNA of the European Union. Despite some searing criticism of Borrell’s choice of words and skepticism among pundits about the entire idea, the EU looks as if it is refashioning its identity into something that looks much more like a traditional power player — albeit one that is not a country itself.

GERMANY - German Chancellor Olaf Scholz on Saturday called for an expanded European Union, telling a gathering of European social democrats that it would then be able to better pull its weight in global affairs. Since assuming office, Scholz has made European Union expansion to include the Balkans and other nations a major plank of his foreign policy. It has taken on more urgency since Russia's invasion of Ukraine, which became a candidate for EU membership early this summer. "An EU with 27, 30, 36 states, with then more than 500 million free and equal citizens, can bring its weight to bear even more strongly in the world," Scholz said at the congress. The EU currently has 27 members. "I am committed to the enlargement of the EU. That the EU continues to grow eastward is a win-win for all of us," he said.