USA - US cotton prices continued to surge above the boom days of 2010-11 after a massive crop estimate cut by the USDA, shocking Wall Street analysts and traders, due primarily to a megadrought scorching farmland of Texas, according to Bloomberg. Futures in New York for December delivery were up 4.5% to $1.1359 a pound and up more than 21% this month. "I don't think you can put a top on prices right now," Louis Barbera, the managing partner for VLM Commodities, told Bloomberg. "I have been going to Texas for more than ten years, and this is by far the absolute worst I have ever seen, said Barbera. Last Friday, the USDA's bigger-than-expected cut to domestic cotton crop stunned many on Wall Street. Crop output plunged to 12.57 million bales, the lowest in a decade. The cut also pushed down the US from the world's third-largest producer to the world's fourth. Barbera said the western Texas region (around Lubbock and Lamesa), the epicenter of America's cotton-growing belt, has "literally nothing" in fields that are just desert sand. He said fields that had drip irrigation were harvestable, but ones that weren't weren't salvageable.

USA - Joe Biden has signed a $430 billion bill into law in what is considered the biggest climate package in US history. The bill is designed to cut domestic greenhouse gas emissions as well as lowering prescription drug prices and higher inflation. At a White House event to celebrate the signing of the bill, the 46th US President was joined by Democratic leaders whose support was crucial in passing the Inflation Reduction Act. The legislation will allow the federal health insurance programme Medicare to negotiate lower drug prices for the elderly. It will also ensure that corporations and the wealthy will pay the taxes that they owe. Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell criticised the bill arguing that it would make inflation worse. "The partisan bill President Biden signed into law today means higher taxes, higher energy bills, and aggressive IRS audits."

UK - Furious farmers have hit out at crops going to waste on UK farms as a labour shortage continues throughout the UK. The National Farmers’ Union has said crop losses have occurred thanks to a lack of workers due to high employment levels across the UK, with workers being able to access higher pay and better job security elsewhere. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has also disrupted worker flow, as Ukraine usually provides a large proportion of the UK’s harvest workers. Tom Bradshaw, the union’s deputy president, said: “It’s nothing short of a travesty that quality, nutritious food is being wasted at a time when families across the country are already struggling to make ends meet because of soaring living costs."

UK - A farmer is giving away more than 140,000 onions after the summer heatwave has stopped them from being sold in supermarkets. Tim Young has invited anyone to help themselves to some of the 40 tonnes worth of onions in order to stop his crop from going to waste, which was damaged by soaring temperatures and downy mildew. This comes as Brits are being encouraged to 'pull together' and buy 'wonky' vegetables due to the ongoing drought damaging farmer's produce and destroying harvests. Mr Young said: 'It seemed such a waste to plough them back into the field, especially when there is the cost of living crisis at the moment. The National Famers' Union has said shoppers must be willing to buy vegetables which has not met the high standards of supermarkets, such as not being the shape and size."

USA - Instagram and Facebook apps track what people do when browsing third-party websites without their consent, privacy researcher Felix Krause has warned. Krause, a former Google engineer, wrote on a blogpost on Wednesday that the iOS app injects codes into every website shown and uses “a custom in-app browser” instead of the built-in Safari to monitor users’ activity. The app does so “without the consent from the user, nor the website provider,” Krause wrote. The researcher said that he could not determine the exact data Instagram is tracking but stressed that such in-app browsers allow everything a user does on a website to be tracked, including “every tap” and “scrolling behavior.” He added that such browsers could be exploited to steal sensitive data, such as home addresses. In a statement to The Guardian on Thursday, Instagram’s parent company Meta said that injecting a tracking code was in accordance with users’ preferences on whether or not they allowed apps to follow them.

GERMANY - The German Air Force, known as the Luftwaffe, is heading Down Under for the first time and will join Exercise Pitch Black 2022 across the skies of northern Australia in coming days. The Luftwaffe will send more than 200 personnel, six Eurofighter Typhoons, three A330 Multi-Role Tanker Transports and an A400M transport aircraft. The assignment is part of a German government plan to lift engagement in the increasingly troubled Indo-Pacific region. Chief of the German Air Force Lieutenant General Ingo Gerhartz said German and Australian air forces have never trained together before, according to the Australian Defence Force (ADF). “The Indo-Pacific is of great importance to Germany. We share the same values with many partners in this region,” Lieutenant General Gerhartz said. “Defending those values in case of a war emergency and being able to support our partners is something that needs to be practised.”

USA - The Fed is doing something it’s never been allowed to do in its 109 years of operation. And, it’s doing it without any pushback from Congress. The Fed draws its statutory authority from the Federal Reserve Act of 1913 which created the Fed’s “discount window” for making loans to Fed member banks which are engaged in making loans for “agricultural, industrial or commercial purposes….” The Federal Reserve Act strictly prohibited the Fed from making loans “for the purpose of carrying or trading in stocks, bonds, or other investment securities….”

USA - The endgame is total control of the slaves with a cash-free system. Those at the top will fully control a central bank digital currency or CBDC, and once they roll it out, it’s game over for the slave class. Executive Order 14067 signed by Joe Biden gives the ruling class the power to create CBDCs, distribute them at will, take them from you when they want, and just shut it off if you do something they don’t like. Famous Author of the book Rich Dad, Poor Dad, Robert Kiyosaki has called this executive order “communism in its purest form,” encouraging Americans to “stay awake.” But this is beyond communism. This is permanent and overt slavery. They are no longer hiding it. We are not free and they intend to make it permanent. It would behoove everyone to listen up and stand together to oppose this and refuse to participate. Choosing the CBDC is literally choosing to be slaves. Before, we were lied to and propaganda was used to make sure we thought we were free. This is overt, and in our faces now.

GERMANY - Price explosions: German supermarkets attach anti-theft devices to staple foods. Food items have been secured with anti-theft devices based on the Anglo-Saxon multicultural model as the first German citizens seem to be driven to acts of desperation in view of the price explosions. This does not affect high-priced items such as champagne, but staple foods. Are these now becoming luxuries? Inflation is causing food prices to skyrocket, and further price increases are forecast for the next three months. This was the result of a survey by the ifo Institute, as reported by ARD. More and more people can no longer afford these horrendous prices and are driven to desperate acts with the number of thefts increasing. Supermarkets have been taking countermeasures – with anti-theft devices. A supermarket in Berlin-Weißensee has now attached security markings to some types of meat – yellow stickers with the inscription “Secured article”. How could things have gotten so bad in Germany, which is said to be so rich, that people are forced to steal the food they need because they can no longer pay for it?

UK - Households should pack 'grab bags' containing mobile phones, insurance documents and emergency cash the Met Office has said, as an 'incredible deluge' will see three million homes at risk of flooding this week. Britain was hammered by heavy rain and storms yesterday – bringing a turbulent end to one of the driest heatwaves on record. Families braced themselves for traffic chaos and power cuts as forecasters warned of dangerous flash floods. And local authorities told people to prepare an emergency bag of vital belongings in case their homes are damaged by deluges. However experts warned that the drought is far from over as the country needs weeks of rainfall to replenish supplies. It comes after the country's driest July on record and the driest first half of the year since 1976.

USA - Two people are dead after heavy rain poured into Las Vegas casinos and flooded streets Thursday night in the wettest monsoon season in a decade, according to Clark County officials. Officers with the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department and Clark County Fire Department firefighters located and then removed a man in a flood channel on Thursday night. He was taken in an ambulance to the University Medical Center of Southern Nevada where he later died, according to Clark County Deputy Fire Chief Billy Samuels. In Nevada, the "exceptional drought" area dropped to 4% from nearly 30% over the prior week - its lowest point in nearly two years, the report said. Conditions worsened in California's Central Valley but improved some in the eastern deserts after the notable rains brought flooding last week to Death Valley.

USA - Multiple mainstream media outlets have been caught reading from the same script and advancing an identical propaganda narrative following the FBI raid on former President Donald Trump’s home at Mar-a-Lago. Numerous media outlets read from the exact same script, repeating a similar talking point following the raid, saying “sources say there’s been a strong reaction to the raid on extremist and Q-Anon-related forums.”

USA - In an era of hacks, leaks, whistle-blowers, and media organizations that appear to have become information launderers for Russian intelligence agencies, it is important to understand what a state secret really is. It is equally important to recognize that this definition transcends political affiliation. One’s concern about classified data should remain consistent whether that information is stored on a private server or shared with an adversarial foreign power in the confines of the Oval Office. Secret is an objective term, and US code helpfully defines the various levels of classification as follows:

CHINA - As with all of China’s military, the submarine force is undergoing rapid expansion and upgrade. But Beijing is putting particular emphasis on smaller, diesel-electric designs most suited to operating in the shallower waters of the East and South China Seas. According to a recent Brookings Institution think-tank report, that fits with one possible future conflict scenario – a blockade of Taiwan’s ports. Beijing may hope to starve the independent island democracy into submission, and force it to accept Communist Party rule. China has the world’s largest fleet of diesel-electric submarines. Many are fitted with air-independent chemical packages that allow the diesel engines to run for a time while still deep under water. Whether the new 79-metre-long submarine utilises these bulky systems or relies on the much-improved capacity of modern lithium-ion batteries (or both) remains unknown.

CHINA - Chinese Premier Xi Jinping is facing a fresh crisis as an entire region in China has been forced to shut down over a power supply shortage. Due to tight power supplies and high demand, all industrial users in the Sichuan region in China have been forced to shutdown for a week. The factories producing metals, chemicals and other industrial goods in the country's southwestern province were asked to shut down or curb their output in a bid to ration power consumption and prevent blackouts among residential populations. According to a notice issued by the Department of Economy and Information Technology of Sichuan, industrial users across 19 out of 21 cities in the province have been ordered to suspend production from August 15 until August 21, in order to prioritise residential power supply. The entire province spans 485,000 square kilometres, which is nearly twice as big as the UK.