GERMANY - Germany has recorded its largest local Covid-19 outbreak since it started reopening its economy in early May, with more than 600 employees of a slaughterhouse testing positive for coronavirus this week, authorities said on Wednesday. The announcement highlighted the risk of a new spike in infections even as the pace of the coronavirus pandemic is slowing across Europe.

USA - Boats are being told to steer clear of the Roosevelt Bridge in Stuart, Florida, after the US Coast Guard (USCG) warned it could collapse at any moment. Concerned locals posted photos of a crack at the south end of the structure. The USCG and the state’s department of transport are among the agencies working to secure the safe closure of the bridge while maintenance is carried out on the affected area. The bridge spans the St Lucie River and is an important route for both land vehicles and maritime traffic within the state. Some concrete fell from the bridge overnight, according to local authorities, leaving a distinct pockmark in the structure’s facade. Photos taken by concerned Floridians and local news outlets show an alarming crack emanating from the gap.

USA - Urban communities all over the US are now facing the possibility of a mass exodus of businesses, and many local leaders are freaking out because they realize what such a mass exodus will mean for their cities. In the aftermath of George Floyd’s death, peaceful protests were held in more than 300 cities all across America, and a recent CNN poll found that 84 percent of all Americans supported those peaceful protests.

Unfortunately, rioting, looting and violence also erupted in major cities from coast to coast, and very little was done to suppress that violence. As a result, the core areas of many of our largest cities now resemble war zones, and in the months ahead there will be a constant threat that the violence could flare up again at any time. Needless to say, many businesses that have been torched or looted are going to be extremely hesitant to rebuild and start over in the same location when the same thing could easily happen again.

EGYPT - On Wednesday, the United States was hosting talks between the countries and their fellow Nile-user Sudan to try to restart stalled talks over the hydropower project. US President Donald Trump said he met with officials from Egypt, Ethiopia and Sudan to discuss the issues involved. “The meeting went well and discussions will continue during the day!” Trump said in a Twitter post. But even if Washington succeeds where years of trilateral negotiations have failed, Egypt will still have broader water problems that have left it struggling to sustain food production. The stakes are high. Talk of physical conflict between the countries along the Nile has receded, but Egypt sees the dam as an existential threat that could decimate farming and damage power supplies. More than 80% of its water is used for agriculture, but scarcity means Cairo already imports about half its food and is the world’s largest wheat importer.

GERMANY - Disasters aren’t necessarily devastating to financial markets. That’s worth bearing in mind when considering a new report from Deutsche Bank that looked at the next massive tail risk for markets. Analysts, led by Henry Allen, say there is at least a one-in-three chance that at least one of four major tail risks will occur within the next decade: a major influenza pandemic killing more than two million people; a globally catastrophic volcanic eruption; a major solar flare; or a global war. (The current COVID-19 pandemic has killed 443,765 globally already.) If the time frame is two decades, then there is a 56% chance of one of these disasters occurring, the analysts say, based on various studies and risk assessments. Earthquakes were omitted from the numbers on the grounds that they are more local events.

ZIMBABWE - In a country grappling not just with coronavirus but with a string of deepening economic and political crises - including rumours and denials of a coup plot - the extraordinary and deeply controversial case of opposition activists Cecilia Chimbiri, Netsai Marova and Joana Mamombe seems to point to something grim and fundamental about Zimbabwe's current struggles: an overwhelming loss of public trust in its key institutions. "We see a very jittery state that is at war with its citizens," said Fadzayi Mahere, a spokeswoman for the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC). Zimbabwe: Key facts: 15.6 million size of population; 63% live below poverty line; 23% of children have stunted growth; 785.5% official annual inflation rate in May...

UK - Scientists using highly sensitive vibration detectors have decoded honeybee queens' "tooting and quacking" duets in the hive. Worker bees make new queens by sealing eggs inside special cells with wax and feeding them royal jelly. The queens quack when ready to emerge - but if two are free at the same time, they will fight to the death. So when one hatches, its quacks turn to toots, telling the workers to keep the others - still quacking - captive. Dr Martin Bencsik, from Nottingham Trent University, who led this study, described the tooting and quacking of these "wonderful animals" as "extraordinary".

USA - President Donald Trump said Monday he is planning to withdraw a little more than half of the US troops now stationed in Germany, despite concerns that such a move would reduce American influence throughout Europe. Claiming Germany is not paying enough toward the NATO military alliance, Trump said the total deployment of American troops in Germany would drop to 25,000. The president estimated around 52,000 military personnel are stationed in Germany, but that number may include Defense Department civilian employees.

"Germany's delinquent, they've been delinquent for years," Trump told reporters at the White House. “They owe NATO billions of dollars and they have to pay it.” Under NATO rules, countries have committed to spend at least 2 percent of their annual defense budgets on the alliance. Germany has not yet reached that goal. The country did spend 1.36 percent of its gross domestic product on the NATO alliance in 2019, though, because of its size, the country spends more on its military than its European neighbors.

USA - As if we didn’t have enough already going on in 2020, now we are facing the possibility that several regional wars may erupt. China and India had both been pouring troops into a disputed border region, and now there has been an incident where they were actually killing each other. On the Korean peninsula, North Korea just blew up “a joint liaison office” that it had used for talks with the South Korean government. And in the Middle East, Turkey is warning of grave consequences if Israel goes ahead with a plan to annex portions of Judea and Samaria. If a major regional war erupts at even one of these flashpoints, it will be another devastating blow for a global economy that is already imploding, and there is a very strong probability that the US and other major western powers could be drawn into the conflict.

INDIA - At least 20 Indian Army soldiers have died in clashes with the Chinese forces over Galwan Valley, a disputed region north of Kashmir claimed by both Beijing and New Delhi. Beijing has not confirmed any reports of its casualties. The Indian Army initially confirmed the death of one officer and two soldiers, but issued an official statement on Tuesday evening adding that the seventeen soldiers who had been critically injured were “exposed to sub-zero temperatures in the high altitude terrain” and succumbed to their wounds. Indian media have reported claims that as many as 43 members of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) have been killed or injured in the clashes, which took place on Monday and Tuesday. The region contains several strategic mountain passes, and a highway connecting Xinjiang and Tibet runs through one of them. India attempted to challenge China’s de-facto control of the area in 1962, but the month-long war ended in a decisive Chinese victory.

USA - The stronger dollar era may be on borrowed time. Stephen Roach, one of the world’s leading authorities on Asia, is worried a changing global landscape paired with a massive US budget deficit will spark a dollar crash. “The US economy has been afflicted with some significant macro imbalances for a long time, namely a very low domestic savings rate and a chronic current account deficit,” the former Morgan Stanley Asia chairman told CNBC’s “Trading Nation” on Monday. “The dollar is going to fall very, very sharply.” His forecast calls for a 35% drop against other major currencies.

SYRIA - It has become commonplace to declare Assad the victor of the civil war in Syria. He has managed to survive nearly a decade of rebellion by brutally suppressing dissent and exploiting the support of Russia and Iran to keep his grip on a burning country. Assad may have crushed the opposition to his rule in 60% of the country, but in 2020, every single root cause of the 2011 uprising has worsened. In recent months, Syria's economy has collapsed, resulting in hyperinflation, mass business closures, widespread food shortages and increasing unemployment. An average monthly salary in Syria now buys roughly one watermelon. Beyond the economic sphere, the Assad regime's failure to stabilize former opposition areas and its continued brutal and corrupt practices are driving intensifying instability.

GERMANY - An entire regional chapter of Germany’s far-right AfD party has been placed under police surveillance because of its extremist tendencies, local authorities said Monday, increasing pressure on the anti-migrant group. The Brandenburg chapter of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party is now “a suspicious case and an object of surveillance,” said a spokesman for the region’s interior ministry.

There were “enough important factual indications” to show that the AfD in Brandenburg was “striving against the free democratic order,” said Joerg Mueller, the head of the state’s office for the protection of the constitution. The move comes three months after the party’s most radical fringe, known as the “Wing,” was also placed under police surveillance due to its association with known neo-Nazis. The Wing, which has about 7,000 members nationwide, was co-founded by firebrand AfD lawmaker Bjoern Hoecke, who has sparked outrage with attacks on Germany’s culture of remembrance for Nazi crimes.

UK - Brexit leader Nigel Farage has spoken to Breitbart about the “Marxist, Anarchic” threat to free speech and free thought in the United Kingdom, saying that fear is “dominating absolutely everything”. “It seems that the real threat we face now is a genuine threat to free speech. I have never known a time when, in the United Kingdom — which is famed for its huge breadth of media commentary and views — I have never seen so many people so scared to write and say and speak and broadcast what they think. It really is very disturbing.”

CHINA - The Chinese Army is preparing to deploy small, new, tracked war-robots armed with machine guns, night vision, missile loaders and camera sensors to conduct attacks while leaving manned systems at safer stand-off distances. Citing a China Central Television segment on the robots, People’s Online Daily reports that the “thigh-high robot looks like a small assault vehicle. Target practice results showed the robot has acceptable accuracy.” While the report stresses that the robot will be controlled or operated by human decision-makers, it is not clear if the robot is merely remote-controlled or if it operates with some measure of autonomy.

As a small tracked vehicle, the robot is built to traverse rugged or uneven terrain and operate as a forward-positioned weapons “node” for ground attacks. In short, the arrival of armed Chinese war-robots introduces the potential of some kind of robot-to-robot warfare, a scenario likely to be capturing Pentagon attention at the moment.