USA - Doctor who was once an evolutionist explains why the complexities of the human body show that mankind is no accident. Dr Tommy Mitchell has gone through a spiritual evolution. The medical doctor, who once embraced theistic evolution, is now a young-Earth creationist who speaks and writes for Christian ministry Answers in Genesis.

USA - California was hit by a 7.1 magnitude earthquake on Saturday which caused multiple fires and damage to building foundations. The quake caused roads to crack, fires to break out, houses to collapse and shops to lose stock due to damage. According to new data by CalTech seismologist Doctor Egill Hauksson there is a chance there could be another quake next week, according to CNN. A state of emergency has been declared in Ridgecrest and San Bernardino.

INDONESIA - More than 200,000 terrified people have fled to higher ground fearing a major tsunami as Ternate city in Indonesia was hit by a massive 7.1 scale earthquake today. The 7.1 magnitude quake struck off the northeastern coast of Indonesia's Sulawesi island on Sunday, prompting authorities to issue a tsunami warning. Indonesia sits on the Ring of Fire where about 90 percent of the world’s earthquakes occur. The quake caused panic in the city of Ternate where people ran to higher ground. The earthquake struck out at sea at a depth of 10 kilometres, according to Indonesia's geophysics agency.

EUROPE - A German European federalist who supports the creation of an EU army is on the cusp of replacing Jean-Claude Juncker. Donald Tusk said the EU's new top team would insist on following Brussels' refusal to renegotiate the Brexit deal with Britain's next prime minister. He said: "I am absolutely sure that the new leaders of our institutions will be as consistent as we are today when it comes to the withdrawal agreement and our readiness to discuss our future relationship with the UK." Mr Tusk, the European Council President, ordered EU leaders back to Brussels for more talks in a bid to heal the deep divides left over from the all-night deadlock. After seven hours of talks, the chief eurocrat confirmed the deal was finally done. The plans can still be derailed by the European Parliament, who are yet to confirm the package on offer by EU leaders.

UK - The spectacle of the past few days has shown the EU’s big beasts at their unguarded worst. Thank you, Eurocrats, for being yourselves. The best cure for Europhilia is always to observe the EU’s big beasts at their unguarded worst, wheeling and dealing in their natural habitat, unencumbered by any attachment to democracy, accountability or even basic morality. The spectacle of the past few days made for compulsive watching: we witnessed rare footage of the secretive process that propels so many retreads and second-rate apparatchiks into positions of immense power in Brussels and Frankfurt, utterly disregarding public opinion.

EUROPE - The Brexit Party’s MEPs have been compared to Nazis because they turned their backs on the European Union’s ‘national anthem’ at the opening of the European Parliament in Strasbourg. “I’m just surprised that the Brexit party so shamelessly copied the Nazi party in turning its back in an elected assembly. At least we now know what we are up against.” This is just the kind of accusation you would expect from an ex-BBC journalist turned university chancellor: fatuous, woke — and utterly wrong-headed.

ISRAEL - Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday accused Iran of “lying this whole time” and taking a “significant step” toward producing a nuclear weapon after news that Tehran had violated the terms set under the 2015 nuclear deal and exceeded its enriched uranium limit. “When we exposed the secret Iranian nuclear archive [in April 2018], we proved that any nuclear agreement with Iran is built on one big lie. Now even Iran acknowledges this,” Netanyahu said at an event honoring Israeli reservists. “Soon will be revealed additional proofs that Iran has been lying this whole time.”

USA - Congress is weighing up a bipartisan bill to crack down on the sharing of child porn on Defense Department computers after a watchdog group found the Pentagon’s network ranked among the top US ISPs for sharing the vile content. “The notion that the Department of Defense’s network and Pentagon-issued computers may be used to view, create, or circulate such horrifying images is a shameful disgrace, and one we must fight head on,” Abigail Spanberger (Democrat for Virginia) said in a statement on Tuesday. The bill also integrates DCIS into a “multi-jurisdictional task force” with “federal, state, and local law enforcement,” social services, and child protection groups to help victims of child sexual exploitation – and to roll back the tide of filth engulfing Defense Department networks. Congress has known for at least a decade that child porn trading on Defense Department computers was a problem.

USA - In 2013, police in Grants Pass, Oregon, got a tip that a man named Curtis W Croft had been illegally growing marijuana in his backyard. So they checked Google Earth. Indeed, the four-month-old satellite image showed neat rows of plants growing on Croft’s property. The cops raided his place and seized 94 plants. In 2018, Brazilian police in the state of Amapá used real-time satellite imagery to detect a spot where trees had been ripped out of the ground. When they showed up, they discovered that the site was being used to illegally produce charcoal, and arrested eight people in connection with the scheme.

USA - A new trend where people tamper with food, licking it or half consuming it before putting it back in the container, is going viral. Yes, really. Last week, a woman in the city of Lufkin, eastern Texas, was filmed in a branch of Walmart opening an ice cream tub, licking it and then placing it back in the freezer. Police said they had identified the woman via surveillance camera footage and she now faces a second-degree felony charge of tampering with a consumer product, with a punishment of up to 20 years in jail.

GERMANY - Yesterday, following fierce power struggles, the EU heads of states and governments nominated Germany's Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen to become the next President of the EU Commission. The most influential position in Brussels' bureaucracy would thus be going to a German politician. Prior to this nomination, also high-ranking politicians from other EU countries had remarked that it is "difficult to explain" that a German should head the Commission, "given the power" Germany exercises in the EU. In fact, not only is EU policy increasingly being shaped by Berlin, but Germans also preside in a growing number of leadership positions within EU administrations, particularly those in the field of finance, but also in the EU-parliament - especially where legislative work is coordinated - and in the field of foreign policy. According to a renowned French EU expert, Germany remains "European" oriented, "because it has created a 'German Europe' solely serving German interests."

GERMANY - At first glance, the affable 60-year-old minister with a camera-ready smile looks to be a perfect fit, with the requisite experience, political pedigree and personality to handle the EU’s toughest job. And yet a nagging question remains: Is she too good to be true? In the German capital, the answer is clear. “Von der Leyen is our weakest minister. That’s apparently enough to become Commission president,” former European Parliament President Martin Schulz seethed in a tweet Tuesday evening. Though Schulz is a Social Democrat, his analysis of the minister’s record is shared by many of von der Leyen’s fellow Christian Democrats, though most are reluctant to criticize her publicly. Instead, they point to the state of the German military. “The Bundeswehr’s condition is catastrophic," Rupert Scholz, who served as defense minister under Helmut Kohl, wrote last week before von der Leyen was nominated to the EU’s top post.

EUROPE - European Union chiefs could soon find themselves in hot water as parliamentary opposition grows against their plans to replace Jean-Claude Juncker. Much of the criticism centred around the abandonment of the so-called lead candidate (spitzenkandidat) process, which is designed to give a democratic mandate to the Commission presidency. Instead, leaders held a series of closed-door meetings across three days as they frantically scrambled to fill Mr Juncker’s role before he is scheduled to step down at the end of October. MEPs are expected to vote on Ms von der Leyen’s appointment in two weeks time, which could prove a tricky process for the German. She requires an absolute majority, according to the Parliament's rules, and if she fails EU leaders must propose another candidate "within a month's time".

EUROPE - Europe’s political old guard is unwilling to accept the changing mood across the continent and has found itself splintered and weakened as a result, insiders have warned. Angela Merkel’s centre-right European People’s Party (EPP) and its centre-left counterpart, the Party of European Socialists — both longterm mainstays of the EU political system — lost 70 seats between them in the elections while the liberals, Greens and populists gained a combined 99 seats. But many conservatives will not accept the changes in the ever more fragmented bloc even though the centre-right and centre-left are no longer in a position to call the shots and are still trying to balance political affiliations and the varying interests of different regions.

EUROPE - Anti-establishment forces had major gains in the EU elections because voters are tired of parties refusing to challenge Brussels, analysts told RT, saying the results also show that migration is still a top issue. Euroskeptic parties made considerable gains in the European Parliament elections, leaving the bloc’s establishment parties badly battered and searching for answers. Ultimately, analysts told RT, it illustrates how Europeans have run out of patience for politics as usual. In the past, whenever the EU found itself in trouble, Brussels would always remedy the crisis by calling for more European integration, Dr Werner Patzelt, a political science professor at the Technical University of Dresden, noted. And until now, Brussels always got its way. “This time it was different,” Patzelt told RT. Across the bloc, many people “have a feeling that there is too much integration in Europe, that there is too much government by Brussels.”