USA - A research article published last month in the Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association called whiteness “a malignant, parasitic-like condition.” That description, along with other language in the article, has caused public anger, and the backlash against the author was evident on social media.

ETHIOPIA - Ethiopia’s troubled Tigray region is now in a state of famine, the UN’s humanitarian chief Mark Lowcock has said, as reports suggest that hundreds of thousands of people are at risk of disaster. “There is now famine in Tigray,” the official told representatives of UN, EU and US organizations on Thursday, warning the situation may be the worst since the 2011 famine in neighboring Somalia, which killed around 260,000 people. Millions more people in the region also need “urgent food and agriculture/livelihoods support to avert further slides towards famine,” the report apparently said. The new details come after Lowcock warned last week of imminent famine conditions in Tigray, saying UN officials are “hearing of starvation-related deaths already.” This week, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres also said several areas of the region are “on the brink of famine.”

UK - Who needs a totalitarian state when zealous, woke workers ensure that books with ‘invalid opinions’ never get an airing? The publishing industry is encouraging grass roots censorship and increasingly giving in to employees who demand that certain views should never be able to be expressed – especially those involving trans issues. It looks like publishing is fast becoming a career choice for ambitious would-be censors. The most aspiring and aggressive wing of the grass-roots censorship movement is the lobby policing publications dealing with trans-related issues.

USA - The Wall Street Journal reports that banks are telling their corporate customers to stop making deposits. Yes, you’re reading that correctly: Banks don’t want more deposits. The basic idea of banking is to take in money from deposits and lend it out at interest to borrowers. But with interest rates near zero, banks hardly make any money doing that, so taking in more money from deposits doesn’t do much for them.

GERMANY - Germany may be on the cusp of a nationalist turn. The external building blocks of its outward-looking economy and foreign policy are under assault. As China and America increasingly use the global economy to compete with each other, the return of great power competition threatens to unravel globalisation. Washington is recalibrating the American security guarantee for Europe in the light of a new race for pre-eminence in the Pacific. The European Union is becoming more divided. And there are increasingly strong arguments in Europe about whether to socialise debt and public spending, which raise uncomfortable questions for Germany.

ISRAEL - If lawmakers approve a fragile new coalition government, Israel will be led by someone other than Benjamin Netanyahu for the first time in 12 years. Lawmakers in Israel will hold a vote of confidence on Sunday on a new coalition government, potentially ending the 12-year tenure of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. It would clear the way for his potential replacement, Naftali Bennett, a former entrepreneur and settler leader who opposes a Palestinian state and says he believes Israel should annex much of the occupied West Bank. He would lead an ideologically varied alliance that ranges from the far left to the hard right and includes an independent Arab party. But the alliance’s fragility and its wafer-thin majority — if no one drops out, it will command 61 of Parliament’s 120 seats — have left many wondering whether the coalition will last until the vote, let alone through its full four-year term. Analysis: Although it appears that a peaceful democratic transition will take place in Israel, nothing is certain — especially as Netanyahu accuses his rival of a “deep state” conspiracy.

EUROPE - The EU should significantly extend its foreign and military policy activities in the Asia Pacific region, EU Foreign Affairs Commissioner Josep Borrell demanded on his return from a visit of several days to Indonesia. In Jakarta, Borrell discussed prospects for intensifying cooperation with the country and with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and announced: "We are exploring options to enhance EU’s maritime presence in the vast Indo-Pacific space." This is necessary because, through China's rise, the world's center of gravity is increasingly shifting away from the Atlantic to the Pacific. ”The history of mankind of the 21st century will be written in the Indo-Pacific area.” Just a few days earlier, German Defense Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer became the first member of a German government to ever visit the Pacific Island of Guam, where the German frigate Bayern will dock during its Asia tour in the fall. Guam hosts major US military bases and is seen as a possible battlefield in a war between the USA and China.

USA - A popular form of the iconic rainbow flag, the Progress Pride version, has been updated and now features colours or symbols to represent nine different groups. In trying to include everyone, it’s actually benefiting no one. The traditional rainbow flag, introduced in 1977, is known across the world. Its eight stripes became the global symbol championing the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer people’s equality. Since then it’s gone through various iterations and there’s now a version used around the world known as the Progress Pride flag.

USA - Texas Representative Louie Gohmert asked whether the US Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management could alter either the moon’s or Earth’s orbits in order to affect the world’s climate. Gohmert’s question was posed during a Tuesday hearing before the House Subcommittee on National Parks, Forests, and Public Lands as members considered four bills to amend recreation permitting and other laws affecting the Interior and Agriculture departments.

UK - When 10 woke students feel bold enough to cancel the Queen for ‘colonialism’, Britain faces a battle for its soul. The removal of a portrait of the Queen from a common room by Oxford University students has upset many in the UK. The lack of respect for a reigning monarch shows nothing is sacred in the ongoing march of woke ideology. It only took 10 student members of Oxford University’s Magdalen College Middle Common Room to vote for the removal of a portrait of the Queen, and the Head of State of the United Kingdom had been cancelled. Granted, 10 silly, spoiled students are not exactly a threat to the British way of life. But at a time when the culture war against Britishness is in full swing, it is understandable that this petty gesture provoked an angry response. In normal times, the students’ politics of gesture would not be newsworthy. But at a time when attacking symbols of Britishness and heaping scorn on the country’s past achievements has become a national sport, it is no surprise that for many, many people, the removal of the Queen’s portrait is seen as a threat to their way of life.

UK - The perpetually offended woke are increasingly comfortable using mental health to justify their campaigning – causing a university in London to issue a risible apology for the ‘crime’ of emailing a picture of Prince Philip. There is something totally distasteful about King’s College London apologising to its staff for sending out a picture of Prince Philip after the duke’s death back in April. The picture was accompanied by a seemingly innocuous text, which stated, “As the nation marks the death of HRH Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh, we thought you might like to see this photo of the Duke at the official opening of the Maughan Library in 2002, which some colleagues will remember.” For any normal human being, the picture of the duke opening the library looks entirely unexceptional. Many of the recipients would have known that it was sent out in memory of an individual who had a long association with King’s College. However, normal human beings have become conspicuously silent or rare in higher education. It is time that the wokish parody of ‘harm’ was ignored and its practitioners encouraged to grow up and stop relying on psychobabble to argue their cause.

GERMANY - The world is entering a new era of warfare, with artificial intelligence taking center stage. AI is making militaries faster, smarter and more efficient. But if left unchecked, it threatens to destabilize the world. An AI arms race is already underway. That's the blunt warning from Germany's foreign minister, Heiko Maas. "We're right in the middle of it. That's the reality we have to deal with," Maas told DW, speaking in a new DW documentary, "Future Wars — and How to Prevent Them." It's a reality at the heart of the struggle for supremacy between the world's greatest powers.

USA - The United States' energy grid is vulnerable to an enemy attack, Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said on Sunday. CNN's Jake Tapper asked Granholm point blank on 'State of the Union' if the nation's adversaries have the capability of shutting the energy grid down. 'Yeah, they do,' she said in ghastly warning to the country. 'There are thousands of attacks on all aspects of the energy sector and the private sector generally. It's happening all the time. This is why the private sector and the public sector have to work together.' Granholm's statement comes at a time when cyberattacks are on the rise. Late last week, the US Department of Justice elevated the priority of ransomware attack investigations to a similar priority as terrorism in the wake of the Colonial Pipeline hack, a senior department official told Reuters.

USA - Nevada bans grass to battle drought, outlaws 31% of Las Vegas turf as ‘non-functional’. The governor of Nevada has signed legislation banning “non-functional” grass in a bid to conserve water as an extreme drought hits more than two-thirds of the state, drying up its major H2O supply. Signed by Governor Steve Sisolak late last week, the legislation focuses on Nevada’s more populated southern region, giving the state the odd distinction of the first to pass a permanent ban on any type of grass. Other localities have enacted similar prohibitions, but none indefinitely. “It’s incumbent upon us for the next generation to be more conscious of conservation and our natural resources – water being particularly important,” the governor said, adding that a visible “bathtub ring” around Lake Mead, revealing its diminishing water level, only underscores the need to save on the wet stuff.

USA - Dozens of websites went down briefly around the globe Tuesday, including CNN, The New York Times and Britain’s government home page, after an outage at the cloud computing service Fastly, illustrating how vital a small number of behind-the-scenes companies have become to running the internet.