USA - Zoophiles believe it’s acceptable to be intimate with an animal, and want the LGTBQ+ movement to add a Z to its name. RT spoke to one about their secret world, and with members of the ‘furry’ and ‘therian’ communities. Pride Month has just come to an end, following four weeks of global parades and celebrations featuring gay, bisexual, queer, trans, de-trans, asexual and other marginalised communities. But one group not welcome, for the most part, is the zoophile community. Will all these communities linked to animals ever be fully accepted as part of Pride? Or will they all remain stigmatised due to the perceived link to zoophilia? It’s a complex matter with no easy answers and understandably strong feelings on both sides of the debate. However, the fact that zoophiles have devised their own Zoo Pride flag and symbol suggests that even they appreciate their chances of inclusion in the Pride ‘mainstream’ are extremely unlikely.

TAIWAN - Taiwan’s Mainland Affairs Council (MAC), the office that handles relations with the Chinese Communist government in Beijing, pushed back Thursday against Chinese President Xi Jinping’s vow to regain control of Taiwan. Xi gave a boastful, at times belligerent, speech to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) founding on Thursday. Xi threatened violence against nations that try to “coerce and enslave” China by interfering with anything it deems an internal affair. One of those internal affairs is “resolving the Taiwan question.” Xi said “realizing China’s complete reunification is a historic mission and an unshakeable commitment” of the Communist Party and a “shared aspiration of all the sons and daughters of the Chinese nation.” Taiwan’s MAC responded to Xi’s speech with a call for “peace, equality, democracy, and dialogue.” The MAC called on the Communist Party to “abandon its coercive propositions and bullying actions, and truly become a responsible party committed to regional peace.”

USA - The preamble to the US Constitution contained 52 words – today’s US code is over 104 million words. Here is the Preamble:

“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

Some of the most powerful and well thought out and distilled words ever put on paper are contained in the Preamble. It takes just 2 minutes to read, and it distills what is to come in the Constitution’s body. Compare this to the current US Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) which is what our Government HAS BECOME - it is 104 MILLION words and would take about 6,000 hours to read it. Those who work with and through these documents after years often come across wording that even lawyers can’t understand. The entire CFR is a monument in and of itself mocking what the founders wanted for our way of government…

USA - In previous years, most Americans haven’t been too concerned when giant swarms of insects have devoured crops on the other side of the globe, but now this is actually happening right here in the good old United States of America on a massive scale. The hot, dry conditions in the western half of the nation have created ideal conditions for grasshoppers to flourish, and millions upon millions of them are now wreaking havoc wherever they go. In fact, the National Weather Service says that some of the grasshopper swarms are so large that they are showing up on radar… The grasshoppers are flying as high as 10,000 feet above the ground and are being picked up by the radar the NWS said. I have never heard of such a thing happening in this nation in my entire lifetime. Food prices have already been rising quite aggressively in recent months, and this certainly isn’t going to help matters.

ETHIOPIA - Fighting in the Tigray region, combined with the pandemic, drought, and an upsurge in locusts, is pushing hundreds of thousands into catastrophic hunger. People who have fled their homes in Tigray – like Bizunesh and her children – have told Oxfam harrowing stories of losing their property, cattle, and food stocks – and spending days hiding out in rough terrain without food, water, or shelter. Bizunesh also reported to Oxfam staff that locusts ate about half of her sorghum already, and fighting in her village destroyed the rest of the crop.

USA - In order to save the planet from catastrophic climate change, Americans will have to cut their energy use by more than 90 percent and families of four should live in housing no larger than 640 square feet. That's at least according to a team of European researchers led by University of Leeds sustainability researcher Jefim Vogel. In their new study, "Socio-economic conditions for satisfying human needs at low energy use," in Global Environmental Change, they calculate that public transportation should account for most travel. Travel should, in any case, be limited to between 3,000 to 10,000 miles per person annually. Vogel and his team argue that human needs are sufficiently satisfied when each person has access to the energy equivalent of 7,500 kilowatt-hours (kWh) of electricity per capita. That is about how much energy the average Bolivian uses. Currently, Americans use about 80,000 kWh annually per capita.

MADAGASCAR - The UN World Food Program says southern Madagascar is in the throes of back-to-back droughts that are pushing 400,000 people toward starvation, and have already caused deaths from severe hunger. Lola Castro, WFP’s regional director in southern Africa, told a news conference Friday that she witnessed “a very dramatic and desperate situation” during her recent visit with WFP chief David Beasley to the Indian Ocean island nation of 26 million people. Hundreds of adults and children were “wasted,” and hundreds of kids were skin and bones and receiving nutritional support, she said. In 28 years working for WFP on four continents, Castro said she had “never seen anything this bad” except in 1998 in Bahr el-Gazal in what is now South Sudan.

USA - Imagine you lost your job tomorrow. How long would you be able to sustain your current lifestyle? A week? A month? A year? As we await Friday's labor market update, Finder has just published the results of a recent survey attempting to gauge the financial stability of the average American in the post-pandemic era. More than 2,000 adults to were interviewed to try and ascertain how long they could survive without income. It turns out that approximately 72.4 million employed Americans - 28.4% of the population - believe they wouldn't be able to last for more than a month without a payday. Another 24% said they expected to be able to live comfortably between two months and six months. That means an estimated 133.6 million working Americans (52.3% of the population) can live off their savings for six months or less before going broke.

UK - The charity is supposed to help vulnerable children, which is why it rightly opposes FGM [Female genital mutilation]. So why is it promoting the idea that it’s OK for girls as young as seven to go down a path that leads to gender reassignment surgery? Save the Children has been captured by transgender ideology – the idea that men and women are defined not by their sex but by some soul-like gender identity. With reckless abandon, they extend this idea to children.

USA - What would you do if the water coming out of your faucets tasted like dirt? I know how crazy that sounds, but this is actually happening in the capital city of California right now. Conditions are incredibly dry because of the endless megadrought in the region, and water levels have dropped to very low levels. As a result, there is a much higher concentration of something called “geosmin” in the water than usual. For those that are not familiar with “geosmin”, it is one of the organic compounds that makes soil smell the way that it does. So at this moment, millions of California residents have water coming out of their taps that smells and tastes like dirt.

USA - In the dim light just after dawn, Bill Blubaugh parks his Des Moines Water Works pickup truck, grabs a dipper and a couple of plastic bottles and walks down a boat ramp to the Raccoon River, where he scoops up samples from a waterway that cuts through some of the nation’s most intensely farmed land. Each day the utility analyzes what’s in those samples and others from the nearby Des Moines River as it works to deliver drinking water to more than 500,000 people in Iowa’s capital city and its suburbs.

USA - As farmland goes fallow, Native American tribes along the 257-mile (407-kilometer) long river that flows from the lake to the Pacific Ocean watch helplessly as fish that are inextricable from their diet and culture die in droves or fail to spawn in shallow water. Just a few weeks into summer, a historic drought and its on-the-ground consequences are tearing communities apart in this diverse basin filled with flat vistas of sprawling alfalfa and potato fields, teeming wetlands and steep canyons of old-growth forests. Competition over the water from the river has always been intense. But this summer there is simply not enough, and the farmers, tribes and wildlife refuges that have long competed for every drop now face a bleak and uncertain future together.

UK - For 40 years, research into early human development has been guided by the principle that after 14 days, an embryo should not be used for research and must be destroyed. This rule has been part of the law of more than 12 countries. But new guidelines released by the International Society for Stem Cell Research have removed this rule. This makes it possible to conduct research on human embryos that are at more advanced stages of development. Now, countries must revise their laws, policies and guidelines to reflect this change. But first, public debate is crucial to determine the limits of what sort of research should be allowed. Over the decades human embryo research has allowed us to understand normal and abnormal human development, as well as early genetic diseases and disorders. Studying human embryos, as the earliest forms of human life, can give us insight into why miscarriages occur, and how our complex body systems develop. Human embryos are also important for stem cell research, where researchers try and create cell-based therapies to treat human diseases.

EUROPE - The European Union approved this Wednesday the creation of a military training mission to help the Mozambican Armed Forces in the fight against the growing threat of jihadist terrorist groups. The agreement must be ratified by the EU foreign ministers at a meeting scheduled for July 12. Violence in the northeast of the country has killed 2,800 people and forced nearly 800,000 to be displaced since 2017, according to the UN. Of these, at least 364,000 are children and, as a result of the conflict, suffer mental health problems, as Save The Children has warned this Wednesday, reports Efe. France, Spain, Italy and Luxembourg have shown themselves willing to respond to Portugal’s request and to participate in this European mission, according to diplomatic sources cited by France Presse (AFP).

CHINA - China and India have sent tens of thousands of soldiers and advanced military equipment to their disputed border, as troop deployments in the region reach the highest level in decades. China’s People’s Liberation Army has gradually increased its troop presence, mostly over the past few months, to at least 50,000, up from about 15,000 at this time last year, according to Indian intelligence and military officials. Those moves have been matched by India, which has sent tens of thousands of its own troops and advanced artillery to the region, the officials said. Both countries have built up infrastructure at the border in recent months, including insulated cabins and huts to keep troops stationed there through the frigid Himalayan winters.