UK - Joe Biden could be put on the backfoot under a Liz Truss leadership, according to a former aide to Margaret Thatcher, who suggested it was time for the Brexit-bashing White House to "back off". Liz Truss has been urged to stand up to Joe Biden following his "awful" treatment of Britain over its decision to leave the EU. Nile Gardiner, a former aide to Margaret Thatcher, told GB News that "it was time for Biden to back off" as Brexit Britain begins to take shape. This comes as a huge number of American businesses and entrepreneurs ditch President Biden's America for Brexit Britain. Huge companies such as Meta, which has 4,000 employees in the UK, are bringing operations to the UK. Adam Mosseri, the head of Instagram, which is also a part of Meta, is heading across to London.

UK - The UK is hurtling towards a "cataclysmic collapse" which could be "worse than 2008", a think tank has warned. The Bow Group, the world’s oldest conservative think tank, has now warned a crash worse than that suffered in the early 2000s could be around the corner. Chairman Ben Harris-Quinney said the Government cannot escape blame for this and, instead, lies at the centre of the problem. He told Express.co.uk: “The Bow Group has long warned that the Government has been ignoring a very simple economic truth – that you cannot bring, borrow and spend to excess without eventually facing dire economic consequences. “Since the Conservatives came in in 2010 they have tripled the national debt, their policies have been the opposite of fiscal conservatism and responsible economic management. “The cost of merely paying the interest on the debt is now one of the largest areas of government expenditure.”

USA - The growing rental crisis in the US has shown no signs of stopping. That was the topic of a new Bloomberg report this week that highlighted the stories of numerous Americans struggling to meet their rental obligations. The cost of rent in the US is moving higher at the highest pace in three decades, the report notes, blowing past a median of $2,000 per month for the first time ever. Rents are now above where they were prior to the pandemic in most major cities. Areas just outside cities, which saw a large influx of new renters during the pandemic, have seen their rents rise disproportionately higher. People returning to large cities, post-pandemic, have also not helped prices cool off. Additionally, rising interest rates have now deterred some would-be buyers, who are now becoming renters. Tight inventory continues to lead to bidding wars, even in the rental market, the report says.

UK - Welcome to modern Britain where nothing works, everything is expensive and we’re all too busy arguing about the causes of our woes to figure out any solutions. One of the starkest images of dysfunctionality in recent days has been water companies imposing hosepipe bans while burst mains flood the streets of North London. Simultaneously, we are being told cold weather over the winter combined with gas shortages could result in several days of blackouts under the Government’s own “reasonable worst case scenario”.

UK - Although the future of our species may yet be long, it may instead be fleeting. Of the many developments that have occurred since this magazine’s first issue a century ago, the most profound is humanity’s ability to end itself. From climate change to nuclear war, engineered pandemics, uncontrolled artificial intelligence (AI), and other destructive technologies not yet foreseen, a worrying number of risks conspire to threaten the end of humanity.

USA - About 18% of Americans now own a video doorbell. That means a significant and growing slice of American neighborhoods are under a form of intermittent surveillance. If the surveillance video and associated data were the exclusive property of individual homeowners, it might not be of much concern. However, that's not the case. For example, Ring, the company behind the top-selling brand, maintains a vast database on its users and their cameras. Ring is an Amazon subsidiary, thanks to the tech giant's 2018 purchase of the company for over $1 billion. Ring says it doesn't sell its customers data, but sometimes it gives it away for free - to the police. In the first half of 2022 alone, Ring fielded more than 3,500 requests from law enforcement agencies.

USA - Thursday, during an interview with FBN host Maria Bartiromo, Representative Michael Waltz (Republican for Florida) warned if China were to successfully gain control of the waters around Taiwan, they would control the shipping routes for Japan, South Korea and partially Australia, which he estimated to be about 50% of the globe’s gross domestic product. “And what they’re betting on is if they have to use military force to take Taiwan, yes, they are developing the military capability to take out our planes and ships and the United States’ ability to intervene, but they also are betting that if they turn off our pharmaceuticals, our food supply, the solar panels, and the wind turbines, that the left are demanding that we buy, if they turn that off from Americans, then they’ll demand that we don’t get in the way. And they’ll essentially do what Sun Tzu, the famous military — Chinese military philosopher, always said, which is, subdue your enemy without firing a shot. So this is about an economic war way before it becomes any type of military conflict."

WALES, UK - Sab Samuel remembers looking in the mirror as a child and saying to himself: "Please don't be gay." The 27-year-old tours the UK as the role model he wished he had when he was growing up. His Drag Queen Story Hour events see him perform as Aida H Dee, reading stories to children in libraries. These events bring warmth and laughter — but recently many have been hijacked by small groups of demonstrators gathering outside the libraries and shouting homophobic slurs. The reading at Cardiff Central Library on Friday morning is no exception. Around a dozen people yell offensive words about drag queens, but they are dwarfed by a 50-strong counter-protest on the other side of a line of police officers. The counter-protesters wear colourful outfits, hold Pride flags and chant: "Say it loud, say it clear, drag queens are welcome here." As a child Sab was rarely shown gay role models, which meant he looked up to the strong women in his life. "The school nurse was someone I related to. Some of my nice English teachers were women I related to because I felt safe around them. Drag is also about celebrating these strong female roles."

SWITZERLAND - Yuval Noah Harari, historian, futurist, and World Economic Forum (WEF) adviser, said, “We just don’t need the vast majority of the population” in the early 21st century given modern technologies’ rendering human labor economically and militarily “redundant.” Harari’s remarks were made in an interview with Chris Anderson, the head of TED, published on Tuesday. He assessed widespread contemporary disillusionment among “common people” as being rooted in a fear of being “left behind” in a future run by “smart people.”

NETHERLANDS - If you have followed my reporting you probably know about the protests happening in the Netherlands. Tens of thousands of farmers have taken to the streets to protest against new climate goals which will force farmers to shut down their farms. They have set hay bales on fire on motorways and dumped manure and even blocked supermarket distribution centers. According to calculations done by the Finance ministry, a whopping 11,200 livestock farmers will be forced to shut down by the government to reduce nitrogen emissions in order to meet European environmental rules. Another 17,600 farmers would need to reduce the amount of animals they keep to meet these climate goals.

USA - Banks [Republican representative for Indiana], the chairman of the Republican Study Committee (RSC), released a memo detailing that, although the Inflation Reduction Act pales in comparison to the size of the $1.9 trillion Build Back Better Act, it remains a “transformative” bill that is “just as radical and destructive” as the Build Back Better bill.

GERMANY - It is unsurprising that German efforts to reverse its foreign policy are a slow process. This is a huge undertaking — but it is happening. Just days after Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz proclaimed that a new era, or Zeitenwende – had begun for Germany. With it, one sacred cow after another of German foreign policy – on defense spending, arms deliveries, and more – were slaughtered. Yet such a reading ignores the sheer enormity of the task Germany faces and the difficulty with which it handles rapid change. After all, more than 30 years have passed since East and West Germany were reunified in 1990, and yet the economic, political, and personal scars remain. While the possibility of reunification was at least foreseen — Germany’s constitution, adopted in 1949, was originally meant to be temporary pending the ratification of an all-German constitution — the invasion that led to Scholz’s Zeitenwende speech was a surprise (at least for the German elite) that completely upended Germany’s view of the world.

USA - Fresh off her tour of Asia, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (Democrat for California) touted China as “one of the freest societies in the world.” While speaking with NBC “Today” host Savannah Guthrie, Pelosi emphasized the importance of her bipartisan trip to Taiwan, that was met with threats from the Chinese Communist Party. The speaker also described China as a “strong democracy.” “You know what? Why don’t we just show China that we support Taiwan? It is part of the US — the Taiwan Relations Act,” Pelosi stated. “We didn’t go there to change our policy. We still support the One China Policy. We go there to acknowledge the status quo is what our policy is. There was nothing disruptive about that. It was only about saying China is one of the freest societies in the world. Don’t take it from me. That’s from Freedom House.” “It’s a strong democracy; courageous people,” she continued. “I don’t know why it is — except there’s some commercial interests who would like to diminish the relationship."

UK - by Archbishop Cranmer: As the Lambeth Conference drew to a close, the Archbishop of Canterbury waded into ecumenism, declaring he believed that most Anglicans in England now recognise the Pope as “the father of the Church in the West”. If most Anglicans believe the Pope (of Rome) to be “‘the father of the Church in the West”, what’s the point of Anglicanism? If most members of the Church of England believe the Pope (or Rome) to be “the father of the Church in the West”, what’s the point of Anglo-Catholicism? Honestly, if Pope Francis is “the father of the Church in the West”, why is the Church of England faffing around with sisters, cousins and aunts? Why not just abandon all Anglican doctrine, formularies and liturgy and crawl back to the father in sackcloth and ashes so he can rejoice and kill the fatted calf?

INDIA - An Indian army post in the disputed Kashmir region was the site of a militant attack, with New Delhi's only Muslim majority area seeing three soldiers killed while two attackers died in the shootout. The incident on Thursday came just days after the third anniversary of the revocation of constitutional autonomy of Indian-administered Kashmir by New Delhi and shortly before India is set to celebrate the 75th anniversary of independence from British colonial rule. India has struggled for decades to dampen secessionist sentiments in what had been its only Muslim-majority state. Many Kashmiris saw the loss of special autonomy in 2019 as another step in the erosion of the rights of Muslims by India's Hindu-nationalist government.