CHINA - China is about to do to the global supply chains for grains, livestock and food products what it has already done to the world’s energy and transport systems. The country is pursuing what amounts to world dominance in the mass manufacture of protein, launching a breakneck plan to end its strategic dependence on food imports and insure its people against the long-term famine risks of climate change.The Politburo’s 15th five-year plan is marshalling all levers of finance and state power to overcome land and water limits, placing food security on a par with defence as an existential imperative for national survival.

UK - As the drought continues to wreak havoc with this year’s grain harvest across Europe, the continent faces a potential food crisis. As Tom Tugendhat wrote on these pages on Monday, the impact of the Ukraine-Russia war on two of the world’s largest producers is worsening. Wheat prices are up 30 per cent this year, feeding into costs everywhere. British crop yields are expected to be down because of the heatwave and there is no sign of the drought relenting. The low water levels of the Danube have pushed up the cost of moving grain from central and eastern Europe to the Black Sea, just as the escalating war further disrupts shipping throughout the region.

UK - The number of foreigners claiming benefits hit a fresh high just days after Reform promised to ban claims by overseas nationals. Almost 1.3 million migrants were claiming Universal Credit (UC) in May 2026, according to figures published by the Department for Work and Pensions, roughly 20,000 higher than a year ago. Citizens from the EU accounted for the biggest proportion of the total, with about half of the foreigners claiming Britain’s main unemployment benefit coming from the Continent. Those with indefinite leave to remain, who have usually lived and worked in the UK for at least five years, accounted for 233,000 of the total.

UK - Britain faces a dual threat of flash flooding and the lingering risk of wildfires this week as rain returns at last to parched ground, a leading fire official has warned. Wisley in Surrey has gone 61 days without rain, while drought still grips the whole of Wales and most of England. Although cooler weather is arriving, the country’s top wildfire adviser warned that brief downpours would do little to dampen the threat of further blazes. “We’re not out of the woods yet,” said Dave Swallow of the National Fire Chiefs Council. “The forecast is for showers and they may be heavy in places. But it takes only a few hours of dry weather for conditions to become ripe for a wildfire just about anywhere.”

USA - The two largest reservoirs in the United States have fallen to record lows as a severe drought grips the country's West, according to data released over the weekend. The new records highlight the difficulties facing the Colorado River, a crucial resource for 40 million people. The river feeds both Lake Powell and Lake Mead, two reservoirs created by massive dams built to distribute water year-round and generate electricity. Their water levels are now just above the threshold at which electricity production would be affected. The seven states that depend on the Colorado River have been arguing for years about how to share the river's water without being able to reach an agreement.

MIDDLE EAST - The Hamas leadership never disguised that its fighters were being trained for a massacre. “We will come to you, God willing, in a roaring flood,” announced the terror chief Yahya Sinwar nine months before his marauding legion attacked and slaughtered Israelis in October 2023. Now the knottiest of Middle East problems approaches: how to persuade Hamas to abandon armed resistance, its very essence? That has been at the heart of the accelerating diplomacy of the past few months. Hamas, according to leaks from President Trump’s Board of Peace, has agreed to a plan that would see a decommissioning of its heavy weapons in Gaza, stepping down from governing Gaza and accepting the deployment of an international stabilisation force. The group is making it conditional on Israel halting airstrikes, removing its troops from Gaza and allowing for the reconstruction of the territory.

USA - On Monday, the homepage of the BBC had two important headlines that reflect changing US policy and the effect it is having on the world order. “Trump threatens to bomb US ally Oman, if it ‘gets in the way’ over Iran deal” was the first headline. “Trump says to reduce military drills with South Korea after it stayed out of Iran war,” was the second. The two headlines reflect a US policy that is now having a kind of butterfly effect around the world. The US and Israel chose to bomb Iran in late February 2026. Now the US is reducing its role in the Pacific and Asia and pivoting to the Middle East. After a decade and a half where the US has sought to bolster its focus on China and Asia, the US strategy is now deeply focused on the Strait of Hormuz, and US ties around the world are changing. The US has slammed European allies and allies such as South Korea. Threats to Oman show that the White House is willing to threaten partners and friends of the US.

TURKEY - Turkey’s mutual defense pact with Saudi Arabia and Pakistan is a step toward the ultimate ambition of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan: to make Ankara a powerhouse across the entire territory of the old Ottoman Empire. The Mecca Joint Defence Agreement, signed in Mecca on August 7 by Erdogan, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, and Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, commits the three countries to a NATO-type alliance among Sunni states that would treat an attack on any one of them as an attack on all. The agreement gives Turkey access to assets it could not easily replicate on its own: Pakistan’s implicit nuclear deterrent and military capabilities, Saudi Arabia’s vast financial resources and influence across the Arab and Muslim worlds. For Erdogan, the objective is not necessarily to recreate the Ottoman Empire on a map, but to restore the power and influence it once exercised — putting Turkey at the center of the Middle East and increasingly independent of the West.

USA - We are facing a global energy crisis, a global debt crisis and a global inflation crisis all at the same time. In all my years, I have never seen anything like this. Two of China’s largest shipping companies just decided to stop sending their oil tankers through the Strait of Hormuz and the Bab el-Mandeb Strait. Meanwhile, diesel prices are heading into the stratosphere with no end in sight. Supplies of diesel fuel are going to get so tight during the months ahead. At the same time, bond yields are surging as the global debt crisis escalates. The US national debt is about to hit 40 trillion dollars and the debt to GDP ratio in Japan is nearing 250 percent. We are caught in a global debt spiral that is out of control, and inflation has become a major issue all over the planet. Anyone that thinks that there is an easy answer to all of these problems is just being delusional.

USA - Usually when numbers shoot higher on Wall Street, it is a reason for celebration. That is not how Jonas Goltermann, the chief markets economist at Capital Economics, feels when he looks at one of the most feared charts on the stock market: the Shiller price-to-earnings (PE) ratio. “That’s obviously a bit worrying,” he says after seeing the metric on track to end the month at its highest level since August 2000.

UKRAINE - Ukrainian drones knocked out three of Russia’s largest grain terminals last week. One of them, Novorossiysk, handled up to a third of Russia’s grain exports, or at least it did until missiles and drones put some five million tonnes off the global market, a third of the port’s yearly output. The Kremlin claims that Kyiv is trying to provoke chaos. Extraordinary. From the nation that invaded Ukraine and continues to murder their farmers and sailors, it’s a bit rich to blame others for the consequences.

USA - The short-range ballistic missiles scream through the atmosphere at a mile a second, bearing their explosive payloads towards Kyiv or Gulf states. As a missile streaks towards impact, air defences have just minutes to spot it, track it and destroy it with an interceptor, akin to hitting a bullet with a bullet. It is a technical challenge that means ballistic missile defences are precious high-end military kit with a hefty price tag. The US has for decades led the way in developing these defences and selling them to allies.

USA - Donald Trump threatened to bomb Oman if it “gets in the way” of US negotiations with Iran. The president said he would “bomb the s--- out of” the US ally after Iran said it was working to finalise an agreement with the Gulf country to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. As he spoke on Monday, the 60-day deadline for Washington and Tehran to negotiate a broader peace deal was due to expire, with no signs of a diplomatic breakthrough. There has been no word of an extension from either side, and their positions over the strait and the Islamic Republic’s nuclear programme remain far apart. On Monday, Iran said it had agreed on a plan with Oman to manage the transit of ships through the critical waterway that runs between the countries. Reopening the waterway has been a sticking point in peace talks to end the conflict in the Middle East, with strikes and blockades halting traffic and hampering global oil markets.

IRAN - Iran pushed to continue the war with the United States in order to force a ceasefire on its own terms, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said during a conference with Iranian educators on Tuesday. "We were the ones who refused the ceasefire and continued the war until we reached a point where they [the US] agreed to a ceasefire and negotiations on Iran's terms," Araghchi said. "We fought with strength and negotiated with strength, and we won the war, and we won the diplomacy." According to Araghchi, "The Iranian people stood against what was supposedly the largest military in the world, which was supported and assisted by most Western countries and by several other countries in the region and beyond." Regarding US munitions used against Iran, Trump said that what has been used so far against Iran "is peanuts."

EUROPE - The fires in France and Spain have had devastating impacts. More than 220,000 people fled the flames west of Bordeaux. Outside Madrid, fires scorched an area twice the size of the capital and drove nearly 90,000 people from their homes. Those who lost homes and livelihoods deserve sympathy – and far better fire policy. What they do not need is the climate sermon that now follows every plume of smoke. Spain’s prime minister Pedro Sánchez called the fires a “painful expression” of climate change. The UK and Spanish governments rushed out a joint statement declaring that “climate change was now a national security emergency” threatening our way of life. The verdict was in even while houses burned: only ending the use of fossil fuels can put out the flames.