USA - Wheat farmers across the country are facing lower yields as 98% of the country’s wheat crop is in areas experiencing drought. In the Northern Plains, the Department of Agriculture said Monday that farmers were projected to harvest their smallest crop of spring wheat — crops planted in the spring and harvested in the autumn — in 33 years. This week, the North Dakota Wheat Commission noted in its weekly update that some farmers saw rain and lowered temperatures following last week’s searing heat, but conditions are still worrisome. The region is hardly alone; the USDA also said this week that 68% of the Pacific Northwest’s spring wheat was in “poor or very poor” condition. At this time last year, only 6% of the region’s wheat crop was in this state. All told, the USDA found that 98% of the US wheat crop is growing in areas hit by drought. June is when the wheat planted in the spring flowers, and is “a critical period” for the crop, said Ariel Ortiz-Bobea, an associate professor of applied economics at Cornell. “It’s getting hit very hard right now, the conditions being reported are pretty bad.”

USA - New Research Shows We’re on Schedule. A 1972 MIT study predicted that rapid economic growth would lead to societal collapse in the mid 21st century. A new paper shows we’re unfortunately right on schedule. A remarkable new study by a director at one of the largest accounting firms in the world has found that a famous, decades-old warning from MIT about the risk of industrial civilization collapsing appears to be accurate based on new empirical data. In 1972, a team of MIT scientists got together to study the risks of civilizational collapse. Their system dynamics model published by the Club of Rome identified impending ‘limits to growth’ (LtG) that meant industrial civilization was on track to collapse sometime within the 21st century, due to overexploitation of planetary resources. The controversial MIT analysis generated heated debate, and was widely derided at the time by pundits who misrepresented its findings and methods. But the analysis has now received stunning vindication from a study written by a senior director at professional services giant KPMG, one of the 'Big Four' accounting firms as measured by global revenue.

GERMANY - The German military has announced the creation of a separate command dedicated to space, becoming the latest of a handful of nations prioritizing more resources and missions among the stars. The Ministry of Defence introduced the new space command in a July 13 ceremony at the German Space Situational Awareness Centre in Uedem, located in the country’s North Rhine-Westphalia region. Defence Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer provided a keynote speech for the event. The military is “responding to the increasing significance of space for our state’s ability to function, the prosperity of our population, and the increasing dependency of the armed forces on space-supported data, services and products,” the ministry said in a statement.

GERMANY - As Germany prepares for its federal elections in September, many are wondering what will come next. Under outgoing Chancellor Angela Merkel, Germany has become an “indispensable nation” in Europe and within the broader rules-based international order. The consensus is that she will be succeeded by someone offering more of the same. Her own anointed successor as leader of the Christian Democratic Union, Armin Laschet, is indeed running on a continuity platform.

USA - Wildfires are once again ravaging the Western United States of America. Currently there are over 70 burning in multiple states – including one that has already burned over 200,000 acres in Oregon. The fires are a consequence of a deadly heatwave engulfing much of the west coast and has set a succession of record breaking temperatures. Last week, the temperature in Death Valley, California, topped 54 degrees celsius.

USA - Amid political division and constant culture wars, two-thirds of Republicans in the southern United States and almost half of West Coast Democrats want to secede from the country and form their own nation, according to a new poll. A poll released on Wednesday by Bright Line Watch and YouGov reveals that a large portion of Americans from across the US want their regional area to secede from the union, with southern Republicans and West Coast Democrats apparently the most dissatisfied with the status quo. Bright Line Watch described the numbers as “distressingly high,” while data journalist Christopher Ingraham called it the “most disturbing datapoint I’ve seen in a while.” The most notable secession in US history took place in the 1860s, when the southern states of South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Texas, Alabama, Virginia, Louisiana, Georgia, Tennessee, Arkansas, and North Carolina broke off from the union and formed the Confederate States of America – sparking the American Civil War.

CANADA - Terrorists are attacking and burning down churches across Canada with impunity. It’s a reality most Canadians only thought possible for Middle Eastern countries like Syria, where ISIS has bombarded and razed dozens of Christian heritage sites in the name of Islam. Now, after nearly six years of Liberals calling Canadians racist and fanning the flames of hatred, hate crimes are becoming commonplace against Christians in Canada. Things have gotten so bad that even our American neighbours are beginning to worry. Rightly so. The Counter Signal has kept a close eye on these terrorist attacks, reporting on the scene just hours after a fire in a refugee church. Our information shows that since June, there have been 45 attacks on Christian and mainly Roman Catholic congregations. Of those, 17 of them have been scorched or burnt to a crisp in suspicious circumstances. The fires and vandalism span six provinces and the Northwest Territories, some of which have been in the heartland of First Nations’ territory. This unprecedented anti-Catholic assault began soon after the unveiling of a residential school burial site in Kamloops, BC which was then followed by more unmarked grave discoveries at a former residential school site in Saskatchewan and elsewhere.

USA - How does it feel to live in a country with double-digit inflation? On Tuesday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics told us that the consumer price index has risen 5.4 percent over the past 12 months, and such a high number shocked a lot of people. But in order to make a fair comparison to the past, we have to account for the fact that the way inflation is calculated has been changed literally dozens of times over the past several decades. According to John Williams of shadowstats.com, if inflation was still calculated the way that it was back in 1990, the official rate of inflation over the past 12 months would be about 9 percent. And if inflation was still calculated the way that it was back in 1980, the official rate of inflation over the past 12 months would be well into double-digits.

USA - The Air Force has announced that running and pushups will be removed from mandatory training, as women continue to fail to live up to the standards that have been required for men. Airmen will now have the option of walking instead of running during a “choose your own adventure” testing, which may as well have been a Babylon Bee parody story from three years ago but is now our actual reality under President Joe Biden. “Say you’re not a long-distance runner but you wanted to run fast back and forth, we have a shuttle run back and forth about 25 meters apart,” Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force JoAnne Bass said. They will also allow airmen to avoid doing real push-ups and opt for easier modified push-ups instead. The “woke” military, which now cares more about promoting feminism, transgenderism and hatred of whites than winning wars, is lowering the bar because women can’t keep up.

USA - Another dry year has left the watershed that supplies 40 million people in the Southwest parched. A prolonged 21-year warming and drying trend is pushing the nation's two largest reservoirs to record lows. For the first time, a shortage is expected to be declared by the federal government, this summer. The 1,450-mile-long waterway acts as a drinking water supply, a hydroelectric power generator and an irrigator of desert crop fields across seven Western US states and two in Mexico. Scientists are increasingly certain that the only way forward is to rein in demands on the river's water. Water managers, farmers and city leaders clearly see the coming challenges but haven't yet been forced to drastically change their uses. Extremely dry conditions like the region is experiencing in 2021 make clear that the Colorado River is unable to meet all the demands communities in the Western US have placed on it, and it's up to its biggest users to decide who has to rely on it less.

EUROPE - At least 80 people have died and hundreds more are unaccounted for in Germany after some of the worst flooding in decades. Record rainfall in western Europe caused rivers to burst their banks, devastating the region. Belgium has also reported at least 12 dead after the extreme weather, which political leaders have blamed on climate change. The Netherlands is also badly affected, with further flooding in Luxembourg and Switzerland.

RUSSIA - After weeks of sweltering in unusual warmth, on Thursday Moscow saw strong winds and a deluge of rain that has caused disruption across the city, with the weather delaying flights and damaging property in the Russian capital. A number of flights were delayed leaving the city’s main international airport, Sheremetyevo, while video emerged online showing lightning strike the concourse. Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport saw flights delayed, as its tarmac was flooded due to heavy rain. Until now, the Russian capital has been experiencing a record-breaking heatwave, with the mercury soaring to levels not seen since 1951.

CHINA - China is bracing for a heavy flood season with 71 rivers already exceeding warning levels, the official Xinhua news agency reported on Tuesday, as meteorological authorities warned that global warming is fuelling more extreme weather. Rain in some parts of central and southern China has hit record highs in recent weeks even though overall precipitation is about 10% lower this year compared with last year, according to the Ministry of Water Resources. Water levels on the Yangtze and its tributaries were expected to rise further over the next week, the ministry said, and it warned of major floods throughout the country from June to August.

Here’s some of what happened while the world was distracted by the coronavirus: Hungary banned the public depiction of homosexuality. China shut Hong Kong’s last pro-democracy newspaper. Brazil’s government extolled dictatorship. And Belarus hijacked a passenger plane to arrest a journalist.

GERMANY - Angela Merkel and Joe Biden are set for showdown talks over the controversial Nord Stream 2 pipeline. The German Chancellor and US President have both stressed they want to reset ties between Berlin and Washington after the presidency of Donald Trump. But the Russian gas pipeline is expected to blight their relationship for years to come. Mrs Merkel has so far snubbed opposition from the United States and eastern Europe, who have called for the project to be halted amid fears it could isolate Ukraine. The pipeline is set to carry vast amounts of natural gas between Russia and Germany when it is completed. Most nations are worried that it will hand too much influence over Europe to Russia. Veteran leader Mrs Merkel has also spent 16 years working to forge closer economic ties between Germany and China. Mr Biden is opposed to the plans and sees Beijing as a global threat to western democracy.