USA - Officials say Northern California's Dixie Fire grew by 110 square miles (285 square kilometers) between Thursday night and Friday morning, making the blaze the largest wildfire currently raging in the country. The Dixie Fire has consumed 432,813 acres — an increase of 71,000 acres from the night before. The Bootleg Fire in Oregon had previously been the nation's largest active wildfire, at 413,765 acres. The Dixie Fire is only 35% contained and is expected to grow. It currently stands as California's third-largest wildfire in history. The Bootleg Fire, which sparked July 6, is 87% contained. Eva Gorman says the little California mountain town of Greenville was a place of community and strong character, where neighbors volunteered to move furniture, colorful baskets of flowers brightened Main Street, and writers, musicians, mechanics and chicken farmers mingled. Now, it's ashes. “It’s just completely devastating. We’ve lost our home, my business, our whole downtown area is gone,” said Gorman.

USA - Firefighters working the massive Dixie Fire burning in several Northern California counties are having to deal with another challenge: residents who refuse to evacuate and are brandishing guns at fire crews. Flames from the Dixie Fire advanced into the town of Greenville, burning an estimated 75% of homes and businesses in the historic Gold Rush-era town of about 1,000 residents. Fire crews have encountered property owners who were refusing to leave their homes as the flames approached and threatening firefighters with weapons. California Incident Management operations section chief Jake Cagle made the stunning revelation at the end of the Thursday morning news briefing. “We have firefighters getting guns pulled out on them because people don’t want to evacuate. Not trying to place the blame on the landowners. We understand, our hearts go out to them.”

USA - Crushed by a devastating drought and new water restrictions, Daniel Hartwig had no choice but to pull thousands of precious, fragrant almond trees from his California farm. "It breaks your heart," he sighed as he surveyed the once vibrant landscape before him — curled, yellowed leaves covering the shrunken husks that would have been this year's crop of almonds, had the water arrived. Their exposed roots are already starting to turn powdery with rot, and the temperature of almost 104 degrees Fahrenheit (40 degrees Celsius) on this summer morning speeds their decomposition. Moving among them are huge machines that will turn Hartwig's "beautiful prime almond trees" into large piles of woodchips. Hartwig is in charge of water management for the mega-property of Woolf Farms, an estate of over 20,000 acres (8,000 hectares) around the small market town of Huron. California produces 80 percent of the almonds consumed worldwide, a market that has doubled in 15 years driven by demand for substitutes for animal products, such as almond milk.

USA - Three remote Alaska volcanoes are in various states of eruption, one producing lava and the other two blowing steam and ash. So far, none of the small communities near the volcanoes have been affected, Chris Waythomas, a geologist with the Alaska Volcano Observatory, said Thursday. Webcams on Thursday clearly showed episodic low-level ash emissions from Pavlof Volcano, prompting the observatory to raise the volcano’s threat level from yellow, or exhibiting signs of unrest, to orange, indicating an eruption is underway with minor volcanic ash emissions. Pavlov is a snow- and ice-covered stratovolcano on the southwestern end of the Alaska Peninsula, nearly 600 miles (965.6 kilometers) southwest of Anchorage.

USA - China has long rivaled the United States as a top global economic power, but in a Wednesday Senate Intelligence hearing, Senator Marco Rubio (Republican for Florida) made an important point, saying that China has weaponized America’s own “corporate lust for profits” against the US, and the evidence is clear everywhere from the grocery store to Hollywood. Rubio urged other Senators at the meeting to “wake up” and recognize corporate America’s reliance on the Chinese Communist Party.

ISRAEL - Tehran will be able to break out to a nuclear weapon within 10 weeks, Defense Minister Benny Gantz told diplomats from UN Security Council member states on Wednesday as tensions ratcheted up between Iran and the international community over its maritime attacks. “Iran has violated all of the guidelines set in the JCPOA [nuclear agreement] and is only around 10 weeks away from acquiring weapons-grade materials necessary for a nuclear weapon,” Gantz warned.“Therefore,” he added, “it is time to act. The world must apply economic sanctions and take operative action against the Iran Revolutionary Guard Corps,” which has targeted shipping vessels. In recent weeks, top Israeli officials, including Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, Foreign Minister Yair Lapid and Gantz have expressed alarm to the US and others that Iran is taking advantage of a long pause in negotiations to return to the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action to dramatically advance its nuclear program.

ISRAEL - Israel’s defense minister has said the country’s armed forces are ready to strike Iran should it become necessary, as tensions rise further after an Iran-linked attack on an Israeli tanker killed two people. On Thursday, Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz was asked by Ynet news whether Israel was ready to strike Iran. Gantz answered simply with one word – “Yes”. The minister went on to say that Tel Aviv sees it as important to mobilize the international community to counter Iran’s influence and growing assertiveness. “We can’t tag Iran as solely an Israeli problem and absolve the rest of the world from this issue.”

USA - The elimination of baby girls through sex-selective abortions will lead to an increase in the gender gap by 4.7 million over the next nine years, according to a report Wednesday in MedicalNewsToday. The current widening of the gender gap at the expense of girls is added to the estimated 45 million “missing” female births between 1970 and 2017 as a consequence of sex-selective abortions, the report stated. “Skewed levels of the sex ratio at birth (SRB) due to sex-selective abortions have been observed in several countries since the 1970s,” declares an August 4 study published in BMJ Global Health. “They will lead to long-term sex imbalances in more than one-third of the world’s population with yet unknown social and economic impacts on affected countries.” “Sex-selective abortion is the ultimate violence against females,” said Reggie Littlejohn, President of Women’s Rights Without Frontiers. “Aborting a baby just because she is a girl is the ultimate act of gender discrimination.”

UK - The BBC’s Woman’s Hour programme has seemingly attempted to normalise the question of providing pornography to children, asking the public whether they believe “age-appropriate pornography” should be made for them. On Monday, the social media account for Woman’s Hour posited the questions: “What’s the best way to inform teenagers about porn? Should there be age-appropriate porn as has been suggested so they can learn about consent and what’s respectful and what’s not? What do you think?” “Email us your opinions,” the publicly-funded programme went on to urge.

VATICAN - Pope Francis made his first public appearance Wednesday since being hospitalized for colon surgery on July 4, telling crowds the gospel of Jesus Christ must be accepted exactly as it is. “With the truth of the Gospel, one cannot negotiate,” the pontiff told pilgrims gathered in the Vatican’s Paul VI Hall. “Either you receive the Gospel as it is, as it was announced, or you receive any other thing.”

USA - Thousands of Marines and sailors are taking part in the US Navy's largest war games in 40 years as Washington "prepares" for a future world war amid rising tensions with Russia and China. Fleets began the Large Scale Exercise on Tuesday and the drills across 17 time zones will continue until August 16. Forces will participate in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans and the exercises are designed to show the US' "readiness" for a potential global conflict.

ISRAEL - Military action may be needed to stop further attacks by Iran, Israel's Defense Minister Benny Gantz said, days after a deadly drone strike on an Israeli-managed tanker off the coast of Oman. “Now is the time for deeds - words are not enough,” Gantz said on Wednesday. “It is time for diplomatic, economic and even military deeds. Otherwise the attacks will continue.” Iran denies involvement in the assault. Gantz spoke in a meeting with ambassadors from United Nations Security Council countries. The US, Israel and the UK have all vowed to respond to the drone attack, with Israel saying it maintains its right to act independently. The fatal strike has raised tensions in the Persian Gulf at a delicate time. Iran has just inaugurated an ultraconservative new president, and talks with world powers over the 2015 nuclear deal have stalled.

USA - If you make a conscious choice to ignore all long-term consequences, managing your personal finances can be a lot of fun. For example, instead of rationally evaluating what sort of mortgage payment you can actually afford, why not take a plunge and buy a $600,000 house? You only live once, right? And instead of making your current dumpy vehicle last another year or two, why not take out a huge loan on a brand new $60,000 SUV? You know you deserve it. While you are at it, why don’t you go on another huge spending spree and max out all of your credit cards again. Paying off those credit cards will be very painful in the long run, but nobody thinks much about long-term consequences these days. Just look at the federal government. They are 28 trillion dollars in debt and yet our politicians continue to throw money around like a bunch of drunken sailors.

UK - The Government and most businesses want us all to go out and spend again. In May, consumers borrowed more money than they paid off for the first time since August 2020, according to the Bank of England. Consumer confidence is on the up - but is that confidence misplaced? The anecdotal inflation that many of us are observing at the weekly shop, or the interval drink at the theatre bar or the B&B booking, is already coming through in official figures.

USA - Bayer will stop selling Glyphosate. Bayer (Monsanto), the maker of the deadly herbicide glyphosate/Roundup, after hinting in May that it would end the weed killer’s residential uses in the US, made it official last week. With its announcement to shareholders, Bayer puts an end to residential uses beginning in 2023 and allocates $4.5 billion to cover “the company’s potential long-term exposure” from lawsuits by those harmed by the chemical.