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.

TURKEY - Turkish policy in recent months in the Balkans and the Middle East will force the United States to withdraw its B-61 nuclear bombs from the Turkish base of Incirlik, according to an Israeli report from the Israeli Institute for Strategy and Security, learned Bulgarian Military.com citing several Greek and Israeli media. According to the Israeli report, Erdogan and his policy in the region are seriously threatening and hindering Tel Aviv’s interests, which will cause the United States to rethink the importance of the Turkish base in the coming months and launch a procedure to withdraw its nuclear weapons there. The Israeli report also envisions a serious political crisis in Turkey, which will separate public opinion from that of the Turkish leadership, which has so far been seen as an “alter ego” of the Muslim Brotherhood.

USA - The head of the UN World Food Program repeatedly warned us that we would soon be facing “famines of biblical proportions”, and his predictions are now starting to become a reality. We have already seen food riots in some parts of Africa, and it isn’t too much of a surprise that certain portions of Asia are really hurting right now. But I have to admit that I was kind of shocked when I came across an article about the “hunger crisis” that has erupted in Latin America. According to Bloomberg, “a resurgence of poverty is bringing a vicious wave of hunger in a region that was supposed to have mostly eradicated that kind of malnutrition decades ago”. We are being told that food shortages are becoming acute from Mexico City all the way down to the southern tip of South America, and those that are the poorest are being hit the hardest.

USA - SpaceX and Tesla founder Elon Musk has said that neither he nor his family will likely take future coronavirus vaccines even when they are readily available, saying the pandemic has “diminished [his] faith in humanity.” “This is a no-win situation. It has diminished my faith in humanity, this whole thing… The irrationality of people in general,” Musk said. He also decried lockdowns across the globe and in the US in particular, having previously referred to them as “unethical” and “de facto house arrest.” Musk said widespread lockdowns were a mistake and only at-risk people should quarantine “until the storm passes.” When pressed about the risk to his own employees and their families, with Swisher asking what if someone dies, Musk pithily responded: “Everybody dies.”

UNITED NATIONS - A host of world leaders at this week’s UN General Assembly lined up to warn of a panoply of ills besetting the world, cautioning if coronavirus doesn’t kill us all then climate change surely will. They said stricter measures of global governance are the only way to spare humanity from the end of the world as we know it.

USA - Another series of wildfires stormed California’s wine country overnight as flames destroyed numerous homes and other buildings in Napa and Sonoma counties and forced thousands to flee. A number of homes began to burn early Monday in the suburban eastern neighborhoods of Santa Rosa.

CHINA - China has announced an emergency after a three-year-old boy contracted the bubonic plague in the south-west of the country. The young boy was infected with the disease in a rural village in Menghai county, Yunnan. The case of the deadly disease was reported in China last week before being confirmed on Sunday. Following the confirmed case, Chinese officials in the region declared a level IV emergency response to avoid another pandemic spreading after the devastating coronavirus outbreak. Three dead plague-ridden rats were previously found in the village in Yunnan triggering a national screening programme. A rat infestation has been announced in the village of Xiding in Menghai, according to the state-run Global Times.

USA - The Fed's balance sheet is ballooning out of control. Nearly $7 Trillion in Securities, $2 Trillion Mortgages. As of August 26, 2020 the Fed's Balance Sheet is nearly $7 trillion total of which $3.7 trillion are notes or bonds, and nearly $2 trillion in mortgages (Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, or Ginnie Mae). No End in Sight to Fed's Mortgage Buying Spree.

Questions of the Day

- Does the Fed have everything under control?

- Is the Fed totally out of control?