TAIWAN - China has threatened to make a legitimate response amid reports of US moving forward with new sales of advanced weaponry to Taiwan. The Foreign Ministry in Beijing said on Tuesday that a “legitimate and necessary” response will follow further US arms sales to Taiwan. The United States should immediately halt all weapons sales to Taiwan, ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian told reporters. China resolutely opposes the US plan to sell three weapons systems to the island, Zhao said. The response will depend on how the situation develops, the spokesperson added. Taiwan’s president, Tsai Ing-wen, said on the weekend that the island will continue modernizing its defensive combat capabilities “to deal with military expansion and provocation from the other side of the Taiwan Strait.” She warned that “as we procure military hardware, we still remain dedicated to promoting our national self-defense capabilities.”

USA - Joe Biden is set to dash the hopes of a post-Brexit trade deal between the UK and US if he becomes President, Brexiteers fear. The Democrat nominee is the front-runner to win the US election next month and leading MPs, officials and experts believe the former vice-president will not be favourable towards Britain. During the presidential race, the 77-year-old has already spoken out against Boris Johnson’s plans for Northern Ireland and warned there would be no trade deal if the Good Friday Agreement is compromised. Mr Biden, who served as vice-President under Barack Obama between 2008-2016, previously admitted he would not have voted for Brexit if he had been British. The Tory MP said: “Recent pronouncements by Biden make clear he is unable or unwilling to understand the UK position on Brexit. His stance is unsympathetic to the UK’s people’s wish to recover their independence.”

GERMANY - "For the ruling circles in Germany, it was Franz Josef Strauss (a right-wing politician) who formulated the position as early as the 1970s that Germany has its own military-political interests and, if necessary, should be able to conduct operations even if they do not correspond to the interests of the United States. This does not mean a war against the United States, but a war against the interests of the United States. For this scenario, Germany needs its own armed forces. At the current moment, there are still historical and legal obstacles to a strong, internationally active and independent Bundeswehr. Hence, a broader alliance would be beneficial. Thus, Germany is seeking this alliance within Europe through building an EU army. A European Army has been a demand for 15 or 20 years now". European imperialism is on the march and preparing for war. Anti-imperialist struggle needs to stop the creeping arms build-up in the European region.

GERMANY - European imperialism is on the march and preparing for war. Journalist Jörg Kronauer explains the various military initiatives in the European Union and the German interests in such mobilizations. At a conference, “Contradictions within imperialist countries and the danger of war,” journalist Jörg Kronauer gave a presentation on German imperialism and its military ambitions. This is an excerpt of the presentation. In this excerpt, we bring you his views on how German imperialism operates within the NATO alliance and within Europe.

EUROPE - The EU and China intend to reach an accord on a bilateral investment agreement before the end of the year. This is the main result of yesterday's video conference between the European Union's leaders and China's President Xi Jinping. The bilateral negotiations, therefore, have been making significant progress and their conclusion before the end of the year seems realistic. German enterprises, in particular, are very interested in the treaty. Unlike media reports to the contrary, the majority of these enterprises are not leaving the People's Republic of China due to current political tensions, but in many cases are even "strengthening" their presence, as the European Chamber of Commerce in China notes. Whereas EU Foreign Affairs Commissioner Josep Borrell warns against "Chinese expansionism" and demands that the EU close ranks against Beijing, the Minister of State in the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Niels Annen, pleads for "maintaining dialog" with China: independence from the USA should be preserved in the conflict with Beijing.

AUSTRALIA - Warning Victoria’s strict Covid-19 lockdowns are “disproportionate and unscientific,” 500 doctors in Australia have penned a letter urging the government to reconsider - joining opposition to policies even the WHO backtracked on. The Australian state’s coronavirus control measures - some of the strictest seen outside of Wuhan, China, at the start of the pandemic - are causing “a massive collateral damage in health and mental health,” Dr Eamonn Mathieson, one of the doctors who signed last week’s open letter, warned Australia's 7NEWS on Sunday.

CHINA - In 1300 or so Marco Polo, a Venetian merchant, introduced Europeans to a monetary marvel witnessed in China. The emperor, he wrote, “causes the bark of trees, made into something like paper, to pass for money all over his country”. Eventually the West also adopted paper money, some six centuries after China invented it. More recent foreign travellers to China have come back agog at the next big step for money: the total disappearance of paper, replaced by pixels on phone screens.

UK - The UK’s envoy to the World Health Organisation (WHO) has condemned mass coronavirus lockdowns, slamming the “ghastly global catastrophe” caused by crashing the world economy. Dr David Nabarro from the WHO appealed to world leaders on Saturday, telling them to stop “using lockdowns as your primary control method” of the coronavirus. He claimed that the only thing lockdowns achieved was poverty – with no mention of the potential lives saved.

USA - Extreme global poverty is expected to rise in 2020 for the first time in over 20 years due to the disruption caused by the “extraordinary” coronavirus crisis, the World Bank has warned. According to a new report, the Covid-19 pandemic is expected to push an additional 88 million to 115 million people into extreme poverty this year, with the total rising to as many as 150 million by 2021, depending on the severity of the economic contraction. Extreme poverty, defined as living on less than $1.90 a day, is likely to affect between 9.1 percent and 9.4 percent of the world’s population this year, it said. That would represent a regression to the rate of 9.2 percent in 2017. Had the pandemic not convulsed the globe, the poverty rate was expected to drop to 7.9 percent in 2020.

USA - President Donald Trump has reportedly expressed his fury over what appear to be sophisticated new missiles unveiled by North Korean leader Kim Jong Un at a military parade on Saturday. 'Trump is really angry about [North Korea's] missile parade' and is 'really disappointed' in Kim after fruitless peace talks, an unnamed source told Vox national security reporter Alex Ward. Among the new military hardware displayed at a parade in Pyongyang marking the Communist regime's 75th anniversary were what appeared to be a massive new Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) and new submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM). Visual analysis of the new ICBM shows it is larger than the Hwasong-15, which was previously North Korea's most advanced ICBM and is capable of striking anywhere in the continental US.

UK - The UK Prime Minister’s remote speech to his party conference saw him dismiss the idea of returning to normality. Is he using Covid-19 to follow the World Economic Forum’s ‘Great Reset’ agenda, as many have warned? ‘It’s not really about public health or a virus. They have another agenda.’ That’s what the so-called ‘conspiracy theorists’ have been saying since March, when the first British lockdowns were imposed and our lives were turned upside down.

UNITED NATIONS - In his address to the United Nations on Tuesday, Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu exposed a secret arms depot belonging to the Iranian-backed Hezbollah in a residential area near Beirut’s International Airport, warning of another devastating explosion and calling on the Lebanese people to protest against the terror group.

RUSSIA - Russia has been observing with growing disquiet that Germany is in another historical transition that holds disturbing parallel with the transition from Otto von Bismarck in the pre-World War I European setting and subsequently from the Weimar Republic to Nazi Germany, which led to two world wars and caused horrific destruction to mankind.

USA - The president’s two August Executive Orders banning the mobile app TikTok and the mobile app WeChat, along with the State Department’s major foreign policy initiative for a “clean” internet within the United States are only the most recent signs that the once open, global internet is slowly being replaced by 200, nationally-controlled, separate internets. And, while these separate American, Chinese, Russian, Australian, European, British, and other “internets” may decide to have some things in common with each other, the laws of political gravity will slowly pull them further apart as interest groups in each country lobby for their own concerns within their own country. Moreover, we will probably see the emergence of a global alternate internet before long.

USA - Prolonged closures at Disney’s California-based theme parks and limited attendance at its open parks has forced the company to lay off 28,000 employees across its parks, experiences and consumer products division, the company said. In a memo sent to employees on Tuesday, Josh D’Amaro, head of parks at Disney, detailed several “difficult decisions” the company has had to make in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, including ending its furlough of thousands of employees. Shares of the company fell less than 2% after the closing bell on Tuesday. Around 67% of the 28,000 laid off workers were part-time employees, according to a statement by D’Amaro on Tuesday.