USA - California Shoplifting Spree Sparks Backlash to Decriminalization of Petty Theft. Viral video of people brazenly hauling out merchandize from a TJ Maxx store in Los Angeles in broad daylight is part of an ongoing shoplifting spree in California that some say is the consequence of a referendum put in place in 2014 to make stealing items priced at $950 or less a misdemeanor. No arrests have been announced in connection with the crime. A Los Angeles Police Department spokesperson said the agency was aware of the incident and that a report was taken. The theft occurred days before Governor Gavin Newsom signed a law aimed at curbing organized retail theft, which has been costing California businesses millions of dollars annually. The revived law allows California Highway Patrol officers to help local law enforcement fight retail theft. CHP Commissioner Amanda Ray said at the press conference that the largest retail-theft bust in three years netted $8.1 million in stolen merchandise.

USA - There aren’t many companies that can say they’ve poured hundreds of millions into journalism in the last few years. Facebook has — $600 million over since 2018 — and it is promising another $1 billion in the next three years. Yet when surveying those around the journalism and media world, the jury is still out on whether and how much Facebook’s funding is helping its stakeholders — or merely buying good PR. A Wrap inquiry into the details of the $600 million found that many of those dollars are hard to track, except in the most general terms. When broken down into the main categories mostly based in the US, TheWrap could only specifically verify the expenditure of roughly $122 million — barely one-quarter of the pledged sum — begging the question: Where is the money going? In addition to donating heavily to nonprofits and paying small grants to local newspapers, Facebook pays rich licensing fees to a handful of premium publishers, like The New York Times, The Washington Post, News Corp, Bloomberg and BuzzFeed.

Torrents of murky brown water gushed past the train window, flowing fast through the subway tunnel. Inside, passengers stood on top of seats, clutching their phones overhead as the muddy tide rose past their chests. Some gasped for air. Others sent desperate last messages to family members, telling them their bank card passcodes and saying goodbye. “The water outside has already come this high,” one frightened woman said, reaching out to the subway car door in a video that spread quickly online. “My phone is almost dead. I don’t know if this is my last WeChat message.”

CANADA - A Coptic Orthodox church in the city of Surrey, British Columbia, was burned to the ground on Monday morning in a suspicious fire and is just the latest suspected church arson in Canada since the start of June. The St George Coptic Orthodox Church in Surrey, BC, was destroyed after a fire, which could allegedly be seen for miles, broke out at the church at around 3:30 am on Monday, leaving just one wall standing. The Surrey detachment of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) says that the fire is regarded as suspicious and released information that another alleged arson incident had taken place less than a week before Monday’s incident, City News 1130 reports. Since the alleged finding of 215 unmarked graves in Kamloops in May, at least 47 churches across Canada have been attacked, vandalised, or burnt to the ground.

USA - Reports circulating Tuesday reveal that the Pentagon is working with a contractor to track web searches that it describes as indicators of “white supremacy,” citing the phrase “the truth about black lives matter” as one example. Reports from Defense One and Fox News state that the Pentagon is working with a UK-based company called Moonshot CVE (Countering Violent Extremism) to uncover networks of domestic extremists within the military. Moonshot regularly works with the notorious ADL, and has ties to former President Obama, as well as the SPLC and George Soros’ Open Foundation, according to the reports. Moonshot suggests that searching for the “truth about BLM” indicates a belief “that the BLM movement has nefarious motives,” which “is a disinformation narrative perpetuated by White supremacist groups to weaponize anti-BLM sentiment.” “It’s completely out of control,” Coglianese said, noting “Asking questions, now extremism. Free inquiry, now extremism. It’s getting worse.”

USA - Thanks to Prop 47 thefts under $950 will not be prosecuted, so cops will not bother showing up. Just a reminder that you get what you voted for, California! So why would anybody pay for anything? Serious question. Why pay if you don’t have to without repercussions?

DUBAI - As mother nature hasn't helped till now, Dubai has come up with its very own way to create rain as it grapples with a 50C heatwave. The city in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) has come up with drone technology that "shocks" clouds into producing rain. It is part of multi-million efforts to tackle the blistering weather and bring up the meagre average of just four inches of rainfall a year in the Middle Eastern country. The country - one of the most arid on Earth - is currently grappling with a heatwave that regularly sees residents roast in temperatures of 50C. Its National Center of Meteorology has as a result started trialing using the drone technology, which unleashes electrical charges into clouds.

USA - Fascism has arrived in America, that insidious and pernicious combination of privately-owned companies operating in conjunction with and at the direction of a government that has no interest in free elections, only in the means of gaining and expanding its power over every aspect of our daily lives, while making these companies rich as they help enslave us to the deep state. Jen Psaki [White House press secretary] …admitted the lie that tech tyrants like Facebook, Google, and Twitter are private companies that can do what they want, protected from liability lawsuits by Section 230, confessing that they are state actors directed by the Biden administration to suppress free expression and any opinion deemed hurtful to Team Biden to influence, manipulate and steal elections. Psaki said all social media platforms should ban you if you spread misinformation on one outlet... Who determines what “trusted content” is? Someone at the Ministry of Truth. Someone should tell Biden, Psaki and their unindicted co-conspirators at Facebook, Google, and Twitter that Orwell’s “1984” was a warning not an instruction manual.

UK - Ministers' plans for new 'Online Safety' laws could threaten freedom of speech by making Facebook and Google the 'arbiters of truth', peers warned today. An influential cross-party committee cautioned that 'legitimate debate' is at risk of being 'stifled' by the way major platforms filter out 'misinformation'. The government's proposals set out that tech companies will be expected to state in their rules the types of content they consider legal but 'harmful', and enforce those policies. But the Lords’ Communications and Digital Committee branded that idea flawed because Facebook and Google had 'monopolised' the online public space. 'The benefits of freedom of expression online mustn't be curtailed by companies such as Facebook and Google, too often guided by their commercial and political interests than the rights and wellbeing of their users,' said chairman Lord Gilbert. The report said: ‘We are concerned that platforms’ approaches to misinformation have stifled legitimate debate, including between experts. Platforms should not seek to be arbiters of truth. Posts should only be removed in exceptional circumstances.’

UK - New pictures today showed supermarket aisles already empty of cheese, meat and fresh vegetables as an expert warned food chains were 'starting to fail' due to staff shortages exacerbated by the 'pingdemic' [the UK Track and Trace system for informing people they must isolate after coming into contact with someone testing positive for Covid] - and one police force struggled to answer 999 calls. Sainsbury's, Tesco, Lidl and Morrisons stores in Manchester, Bristol, Edinburgh and Southampton were seen with significant gaps on the shelves in sections including frozen fish, pizzas, bottled water, ice creams and packaged salads. Today at Prime Minister's Questions, Mr Johnson apologised to businesses for the disruption they had experienced, but urged people to stick with the rules until they change because 'isolation is a vital tool of our defence'. The latest figures show more than 500,000 people in England and Wales were asked to isolate by the NHS app in the week up to July 1. The recent days have seen delays on the Tube, trains and the cancellation of bin collections.

ISRAEL - Former US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley said Sunday: "Iran is the sugar daddy of Hamas. The 11-day war that Israel just fought wasn't just with Hamas. Israel was fighting against Iranian weapons, Iranian money and Iranian-trained terrorists, and everyone knows it. We all want a better life for Palestinians. It's the leaders of Hamas who want Palestinians to suffer because it strengthens their grip on power. So let me be clear, Israel isn't responsible for Palestinian suffering. Hamas is responsible for Palestinian suffering."

USA - The White House is publicly blaming China for an attack on Microsoft's Exchange email server software that compromised tens of thousands of computers worldwide, allowing hackers to gain access to troves of sensitive data. Separately, the Department of Justice announced Monday that a federal grand jury in May had indicted Chinese nationals accused of working with official sanction from Beijing to break into computer systems belonging to US companies, universities and governments. The cyberattack on Microsoft, which is believed to have begun in January, reportedly injected computers with malware that secretly monitored systems belonging to small businesses, local and state governments and some military contractors. As part of the attack, an unidentified American company was also hit with a high-dollar ransom demand, according to a senior Biden administration official.

ISRAEL - Last April, six Water Authority facilities were targeted in the cyberattack in which hackers attempted to increase the amount of chlorine in the water supply to dangerously high levels. The attacks were countered before any damage could be caused. However, the incident raised major concerns about the ability of the Water Authority to protect itself from future cyberattacks… “Water utilities are at the forefront of global cyberattacks. But utilities have minimal tolerance for a downtime in service, and no utility would agree to a hacker deciding whether its infrastructure will operate or not,” Amir Samoiloff, co-founder and CEO of SIGA, said in a statement… “Israel is under constant threat in the cyber dimension, and attacks are sometimes carried out against it. We are able to deal with most of the threats through advanced defense capabilities,” Major General Tamir Hayman said at a conference at Tel Aviv University. “Those who attack Israel by air, sea, land, or cyber need to understand the risk they are taking,”

USA - Ever wondered where World War III might break out? A clear and troubling consensus has emerged in the American national security community that the Taiwan Strait is the most likely place for a major war to erupt between the United States and China; that it might start soon, and that such a conflict might quickly escalate into a nuclear confrontation. In March, the leading foreign policy organization in the United States, the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, issued a report concluding that Taiwan has become “the most dangerous flashpoint in the world.” There, a unique and troubling set of geopolitical developments have conspired to make a shooting war between the People’s Republic of China and the United States more likely than ever before. Recently the newly appointed commander of US forces in the Indo-Pacific Region, Admiral John Aquilino, remarked that a possible invasion of Taiwan by the People’s Republic of China (PRC) “is much closer than we think.”

USA - Washington and Berlin have struck a deal that would see the US drop opposition to the almost-complete Nord Stream 2 pipeline for Russian gas, in exchange for Germany promising investments in Ukraine. US President Joe Biden administration officials confirmed the existence of the agreement on Wednesday, details of which had been leaked to the press earlier. Under the four-point plan, Germany and the US would invest in energy security and green energy in Ukraine and Europe and back the “Three Seas Initiative” spearheaded by Poland and Croatia. Berlin also pledged to push Russia into extending the current gas arrangement with Ukraine, which provides Kiev with $3 billion in annual transit fees, through 2034 – and promised to back sanctions against Moscow if it commits “aggression” against Ukraine.