USA - Lake Mead - the West's largest reservoir - is running dry again and is on track to fall below a critical threshold in 2020, according to a new forecast by the Bureau of Reclamation. In 2016, Lake Mead water levels dropped to new record lows (since it was filled in the 1930s) leaving Las Vegas facing existential threats unless something was done.

INDIA - Kerala is in the grip of a deadly monsoon season as the heaviest rains in the Indian region impact with full force. The latest figures reveal that rainfall is the worst in almost a century. India’s monsoon season has hit Kerala with enough force to trigger landslides and rushing waters so strong that people are being swept to their deaths.

ITALY - Italy has been struck by a 5.2 magnitude earthquake in the central region of Molise, a popular holiday hotspot on the eastern Italian coast, sparking fears from residents over a volcano in the southern city of Naples where the shock was also felt. The 5.2 magnitude earthquake hit Italy's central region of Molise. The quake's epicentre was in the eastern-coastal Italian city Montecilfone. The quake was also felt in the closest towns of Rieti and Alto Velino, still recovering from a powerful earthquake in 2016. The shock sparked fears over active volcano Vesuvius in the city of Naples.

INDONESIA - Indonesia has been savaged by another huge earthquake as Raba suffered a 6.6 magnitude tremor that could also be felt 416 miles away in Bali. Earthquake watchdog the US Geological Survey confirmed the mammoth quake hit the northwest Indonesian city that lies on the island of Sumbawa. The newest quake to hit the region at 11.15pm local time comes two weeks after the August 5 magnitude 7 quake that has so far claimed the lives of more than 460 people. More than 7,750 were injured as the quake - having struck six miles underground- laid some 70,000 homes to waste on the popular tourist island with hospitals, clinics, schools, bridges and office blocks also damaged. Some 400,000 people are still being sheltered in temporary accommodation.

JAPAN - Japan experienced a huge 6.4 magnitude earthquake overnight along with two smaller tremors following warnings of an active volcano just days earlier. A huge 6.4 magnitude earthquake struck along the Mariana Trench last night. Despite not being close enough to land to be felt, the earthquake comes at a time when seismic activity is high in Japan. A magnitude-6.0 earthquake also stuck in the same place a minute earlier, some 435 miles from Tokyo. Japan is on alert for seismic activity, after a warning was issued for Kuchinoerabu - or Kuchinoerabujima - island on August 14. The volcano warning was raised on the small island from level two to level four, despite an eruption not being detected. 

INDONESIA - A strong magnitude 6.3 earthquake has struck Indonesia's Lombok island. The quake's epicenter is located at a shallow depth of 7.9km. The island has been hit by a series of quakes recently, killing hundreds of people. The quake struck 64 km (40 miles) from the city of Mataram with a population of 400,000 people, the United States Geological Survey (USGS) reports. The tremor hit Lombok's northern shore, some 6km (four miles) from the Mount Rinjani volcano. Indonesia is located in a seismically active area and is frequently shaken by earthquakes. In 2004 it was hit by one of the deadliest quakes in recent history, a magnitude 9.1-9.3 event that triggered tsunami waves up to 30 meters tall. Over 220,000 people were killed or left missing then.

FIJI - A massive quake of magnitude 8.2 struck in the Pacific Ocean close to Fiji and Tonga on Sunday but it was so deep that it was not expected to cause any damage, the US Geological Survey (USGS) said. The US Tsunami Warning Center also said the quake was too deep to cause a tsunami. The quake was initially reported as a magnitude 8.0 and then upgraded to 8.2, a magnitude that could cause tremendous damage had it not been so deep.

USA - Anyone who tells you the recent escalation of censorship by US tech giants is merely a reflection of private companies making independent decisions is either lying or dangerously ignorant. In the case of Facebook, the road from pseudo-platform to willing and enthusiastic tool of establishment power players is fairly straightforward.

USA - During a closed-door and off-the-record meeting last week, top Facebook executive Campbell Brown reportedly warned news publishers that refusal to cooperate with the tech behemoth's efforts to "revitalize journalism" will leave media outlets dying "like in a hospice." Reported first by The Australian under a headline which read "Work With Facebook or Die: Zuckerberg," the social media giant has insisted the comments were taken out of context, even as five individuals who attended the four-hour meeting corroborated what Brown had stated.

USA - It’s longstanding practice. Corporate predators bribe organizations, scientists, academics, and other experts to lie about the safety of their products. When hazardous to human health, they need endorsements from experts, willing to sacrifice their integrity for a big payday. The Organic Authority reports “the truth behind America’s food supply and consumer products industries – pulling back the curtain on how America’s food is grown and processed.”

USA - “People just don’t do it,” Wharton School professor and forecasting expert J Scott Armstrong told Brietbart.com after making the shocking claim that less that one percent of papers published in scientific journals follow the scientific method. “I used to think that maybe 10 percent of papers in my field… were maybe useful. Now it looks like maybe, one tenth of one percent follow the scientific method.” In particular, Armstrong talked about the proactive “alarmism” some scientists encourage regarding man-made climate change. He argued that scientists are more politically motivated or perhaps too focused on their own career advancement to want to publish accurate data.

USA - What I had feared and expected finally happened. Minutes ago upon waking up this morning, I discovered that WordPress has unilaterally and without warning shut down Fellowship of the Minds for alleged violations of “Terms of Service”. The signs are now clear that the Left are silencing all conservative voices before the November mid-term elections where Democrats will steal the election with MASSIVE voter fraud.

USA - The security of the US election system just lost a vote of confidence. At the annual hacker conference DefCon, Emmett Brewer, an 11-year-old boy from Austin, Texas, was able to change the results on a mock Florida election website. It took him 10 minutes. Though the website in question was a mere replica of the Florida Secretary of State website, the hack points to the larger vulnerabilities of the election infrastructure in the US. On the heels of Russian meddling in the 2016 US election, Microsoft has already detected evidence of Russian interference in three races in the 2018 mid-terms. The hacking event was part of a hands-on workshop within the larger cybersecurity conference. “The site may be a replica but the vulnerabilities that these kids were exploiting were not replicas, they’re the real thing,” Nico Sell, the event organizer, told PBS.

USA - If you’re waiting for someone to save you from the tidal wave of corporate censorship, government authoritarianism and deranged left-wing violence, you’re following a mirage. No one is coming to save you. If you want to live as a free person in a free world, you’re going to have to demand it, fight for it and secure it. Tech giants, for example, absolutely will not stop their censorship unless they are forced to stop.

ISRAEL - The Israeli military uncovered a new effort by the Hamas terror group to trick soldiers into downloading spyware applications onto their phones by befriending them on Instagram with accounts purporting to belong to attractive women, the army said Wednesday. The Israel Defense Forces’ information security branch revealed a similar attempt last month by the Gaza-based Hamas that used the Facebook social media site to lure soldiers into installing software onto their phones that would allow the terror group to remotely control it, turning on the device’s cameras and audio recorders.