USA - President Joe Biden cancelled the deployment of two US warships from the Black Sea despite warning Vladimir Putin there would be 'repercussions' for the troop build-up in Ukraine. Last week, Turkey said Washington was sending two warships to the Black Sea, in a decision Russia called an unfriendly provocation.

RUSSIA - Vladimir Putin will be gloating as key Moscow figures argue the strongman has the upper hand over the US following Joe Biden's invitation. During a call yesterday with the Russian President, Mr Biden offered to hold the summit on neutral ground amid growing tensions between Moscow and Washington over border conflicts with Ukraine. Increasing numbers of Russian troops on the border with Ukraine sparked widespread alarm and warnings from NATO. But during his call with Mr Putin, the US President reaffirmed Washington's support for Kiev's pro-Western government. He urged Russia to "de-escalate tensions" but also offered to hold his first face-to-face talk with Mr Putin on "the full range of issues facing the US and Russia". But key figures in Moscow - including Kremlin opponents – have seen the move as a win for Mr Putin. He said: "It was Biden who asked for yesterday's phone call, Biden called and Biden wanted to talk about a summit."

AFGHANISTAN -The United States has been fighting a war in Afghanistan for over 18 years. More than 2,300 US military personnel have lost their lives there; more than 20,000 others have been wounded. At least half a million Afghans — government forces, Taliban fighters, and civilians — have been killed or wounded. Washington has spent close to $1 trillion on the war. Although the al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden is dead and no major attack on the US homeland has been carried out by a terrorist group based in Afghanistan since 9/11, the United States has been unable to end the violence or hand off the war to the Afghan authorities, and the Afghan government cannot survive without US military backing.

AUSTRALIA - ‘Bluey’, an animated series popular with preschoolers, has become the latest culture war victim after a columnist provocatively argued that the Australian show needed a more diverse range of cartoon dogs. Produced by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation in tandem with the BBC, the series follows a family of canines living in Brisbane. Although native to Australia, the show is available internationally on Disney+ and has become popular with youngsters around the world.

CHINA - It quickly became obvious in Anchorage, Alaska, last month that Chinese President Xi Jinping’s diplomatic envoys hadn’t come carrying olive branches. Instead they brought a new world view. As Biden administration officials expected in their first meeting with Chinese counterparts, Yang Jiechi, Mr Xi’s top foreign-policy aide, and Foreign Minister Wang Yiasked them to roll back Trump-era policies targeting China. Beijing wanted to restore the kind of recurring “dialogue” Washington sees as a waste of time, say US and Chinese officials briefed on the Alaska meeting.

TAIWAN - A former US senator and two former US deputy secretaries of state have arrived in Taiwan, leading the first unofficial delegation dispatched by President Biden, amid heightened tensions with Beijing over the future of the self-ruling island. Christopher J Dodd, a former Democratic senator from Connecticut, and former senior State Department officials Richard Armitage and James Steinberg touched down in Taipei on Wednesday afternoon local time, Taiwan’s Foreign Ministry said.

USA - The US government’s budget deficit surged to an all-time high of $1.7 trillion for the first six months of this budget year, nearly double the previous record, as another round of economic-support checks added billions of dollars to spending last month. In its monthly budget report, the Treasury Department said Monday that the deficit for the first half of the budget year — from October through March — was up from a shortfall of $743.5 billion in the same period a year ago. The deficit has been driven higher by trillions of dollars in support Congress has passed in successive economic rescue packages since the pandemic struck in early March 2020. The latest round came in a $1.9 trillion measure that President Joe Biden pushed through Congress last month. The Treasury report Monday showed that through the first six months of the current budget year, interest payments on the debt total $229 billion...

JAPAN - Japan on Tuesday proposed holding a naval drill with Germany when a German frigate visits Asia later this year, the Japanese government said, as Tokyo aims to bolster security ties with other democracies in the face of China’s maritime expansion. The proposal was made during the first security dialogue between the foreign and defence ministers of Japan and Germany, and the two sides agreed to look into the matter further, a Japanese government statement said. Japanese Foreign Minister Toshimitsu Motegi and Defence Minister Nobuo Kishi held the talks with German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas and Defence Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer via video conferencing.

USA - A Black Lives Matter co-founder and self-professed 'trained Marxist' has raised eyebrows by purchasing a $1.4 million Los Angeles home, in a largely white district. Patrisse Cullors, a 37-year-old 'artist, organizer, and freedom fighter', has bought a three bedroom, three bathroom house in Topanga Canyon, complete with a separate guest house and expansive back yard. The realtors write that the large back yard is 'ideal for entertaining or quietly contemplating cross-canyon vistas framed by mature trees'. The AP reported that Black Lives Matter took in $90 million in donations last year. It's not clear if or how Cullors is paid by the organization, as its finances are opaque. In her new zip code, 88 per cent of residents are white and 1.8 per cent black, according to the census. Some critics argued that living in a million-dollar home was at odds with her social justice mission.

USA - A new bill in Texas seeks to protect children from getting sex change procedures that they may regret later in life by criminalizing parents who do so. Obtaining these treatments for children would be considered child abuse under the legislation. The Texas Senate Committee on State Affairs held a hearing over the bill on Monday. “Children are unable to give informed consent. This bill gives children a chance to get to adulthood with intact bodies,” Republican Executive Committee Member Jill Glover testified.

AUSTRALIA - Schools in Melbourne, Australia, have been called upon to abandon using words such as ‘mum’ and ‘dad’ in favour of more so-called gender-inclusive language. As a part of the North Western Melbourne Primary Health Network’s #SpeakingUpSpeaksVolumes campaign, which aims to support ‘LGBTQI+’ children in schools, the advocacy group has suggested that schools in Melbourne fly rainbow flags, scrap single-sex bathrooms, and introduce non-gendered sports teams. The campaign has also called for teachers, as well as pupils, to refrain from using words such as ‘boyfriend’, which they say should be replaced with “partner”. The group said that parental pronouns such as mum and dad should also be abandoned for the more inclusive “parent”, the Daily Mail reported. The CEO of the North Western Melbourne Primary Health Network, Chris Carter, said that the #SpeakingUpSpeaksVolumes campaign aims to increase support for LGBTQI+ children.

CHINA - A hard-hitting report by a Chinese group has slammed the US for its history of “humanitarian disasters” under the guise of human rights. The accusation fuels an escalating war of words between Beijing and Washington. A Chinese organization has published a report slamming the United States as responsible for a “History of Humanitarian Disasters” citing what it described as “American aggression” and highlighting the destructive consequences of US-led wars, most often under the guise of “humanitarian interventions” or “human rights.”

USA - Warmongers are now firmly in control in Washington, and they are pushing us toward war a little bit more each day. A military conflict with Russia, China or Iran would be a nightmare scenario, but there is also a possibility that we could end up fighting all three of them simultaneously. Such an outcome would have been unthinkable under the Trump administration, but times have changed.

USA - "We need to close the book on a 20-year war," is how a US official put it when he broke the news on Tuesday that the last US troops would be out of Afghanistan by 11 September. Two decades on, what does this "book" say about the country that some 10,000 US-led NATO forces will soon leave behind? It's a dramatically different country than the shattered land and pariah state of the Taliban toppled in the US-led invasion of 2001 after the 9/11 attacks.

CHINA - America is China’s top supplier of corn so far in 2021, Chinese media noted Sunday, with corn prices in China at record highs. Corn is used in China for feeding pigs — pork is the nation’s most popular meat — making it an indispensable crop. Increased demand for corn follows not just a devastating African swine flu outbreak that sent pork prices soaring, but torrential floods that destroyed much of China’s 2020 crop yield and raised concerns of food shortages in the world’s most populous nation.