USA - The Covid-19 pandemic is set to get “worse and worse” if countries do not stick to strict healthcare guidelines, the World Health Organization (WHO) has warned. The disease has already killed more than half-a-million globally. Speaking on Monday during a press briefing from the agency’s headquarters in Geneva via videolink, WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus gave an alarming prognosis on the pandemic’s course. “Let me be blunt. Too many countries are headed in the wrong direction, the virus remains public enemy number one,” Tedros said. “If basics are not followed, the only way this pandemic is going to go: it is going to get worse and worse and worse.” The grim prognosis comes after the WHO registered a record daily increase in active coronavirus cases worldwide since the beginning of the pandemic. On Sunday, the global health watchdog registered some 230,370 new cases of the virus. The Covid-19 death rate remains steady, claiming around 5,000 lives on a daily basis.

USA - This is going to be a long, hot summer that none of us is likely to forget any time soon. Coming into this year, we knew that societal tensions would be running high because 2020 is an election year. Many are convinced that this is the most important election in modern American history, and I expect for there to be some extremely shocking surprises as we draw closer to November. Meanwhile, the number of confirmed cases of COVID-19 continues to surge to new heights, and the restrictions that authorities have instituted to fight this pandemic have created a huge backlash.

USA - Over the past several months, there has been a tremendous amount of debate about almost every aspect of the COVID-19 pandemic. People have been eager to debate about the severity of the virus, they have been eager to debate about the wisdom of the lockdowns, and they have been eager to debate about the effectiveness of wearing masks. But the one thing that everyone could pretty much agree on is that eventually this pandemic would end. Virtually all of us assumed that one way or another eventually most of the population would develop COVID-19 antibodies and that once we got to that point the pandemic would fizzle out. Unfortunately, it appears that was not a safe assumption to make.

USA - According to the IMF, global fiscal support in response to the crisis will be more than 9 trillion US dollars, approximately 12% of world GDP. This premature, clearly rushed, probably excessive, and often misguided chain of so-called stimulus plans will distort public finances in a way in which we have not seen since World War II. The enormous increase in public spending and the fall in output will lead to a global government debt figure close to 105% of GDP. If we add government and private debt, we are talking about 200 trillion US dollars of debt, a global increase of over 35% of GDP, well above the 20% seen after the 2008 crisis, and all in a single year.

USA - Nearly one-third of American families have been unable to make full housing payments for July, a new survey has revealed as the US economy struggles to bounce back from crushing coronavirus losses. The survey by Apartment List, an online rental platform, found that 32 percent of US households did not make their full July payments on time. It marked the fourth month in a row with a 'historically high' number of households that were unable to make the payments on time and in full - up from 30 percent in June and 24 percent in April. About 19 percent of survey respondents said they may make no payment at all during the first week of the month, and 13 percent paid only a portion of their rent or mortgage.

CANADA - Police in Vancouver tracked down a driver who left tire tracks on a crosswalk. On the face of it, not an unusual occurrence, but as this crosswalk is a rainbow-colored pride walk, they considered the incident a “gesture of hate.” Officers in the Canadian city heard a “loud and sustained tire squealing” outside their station on Tuesday afternoon, and went outside to discover the newly-installed “Pride crosswalk” had been “defaced” with tire tracks. Footage published by local reporter Sonia Aslam showed a Ford Mustang peeling away from the intersection at speed, and police shared still images of the car, saying they’d “like to speak with the driver.”

VATICAN - Pope Francis on Sunday expressed his dismay at Turkey’s decision to make Istanbul’s Hagia Sophia museum a mosque, joining a growing list of religious and political leaders to condemn the move. “My thoughts go to Istanbul. I think of Santa Sophia and I am very pained,” Reuters reports he said during his weekly blessing in St Peter’s Square. He spoke just hours after the interim secretary-general of the World Council of Churches wrote to Turkey’s president expressing his “grief and dismay” over Turkey’s decision to change the status of Istanbul’s historic landmark, as Breitbart News reported. The Pope joined others voicing sadness at the move. Greece swiftly condemned it as a provocation, France deplored it while the US also expressed disappointment as did various UN agencies.

CHINA - China has sent a terrifying warning to US President Donald Trump as a Beijing expert claimed the country will continue to rise and its growth cannot be stopped. Speaking to Channel 4 news, Victor Gao said: "China will continue to rise and eventually the US will need to come to terms with the reality of a China which may be larger and more impactful than the US in about 10 to 15 times. This is a mega-trend, no one can stop it, no one can reverse it." He added: "I do not know what will happen between now and November 3. I think the US will be cursed if Trump wins, it will be cursed if Trump loses and there will be great turmoil in the US between now and January 21.”

The expert noted the US is its worst enemy. It comes as China said on Friday it would take "reciprocal measures" against the US after Washington imposed sanctions on senior Chinese officials over alleged human rights abuses against the Uighur Muslim minority. Washington imposed sanctions on the autonomous region of Xinjiang's Communist Party Secretary Chen Quanguo, a member of China's powerful Politburo, and three other officials.

USA - Communist Seattle City Council member Kshama Sawant (Socialist Alternative) gave a victory speech Tuesday night after passage by the city council of the so-called Amazon Tax in which she vowed to overthrow the United States, replacing the government and society with a “socialist world”. Sawant, 46, immigrated from India as an adult with a BSc in computer science from the University of Mumbai received in 1994. Once in the US, Sawant earned a PhD in economics from North Carolina State University and became a US citizen in 2010. Sawant has served on the Seattle City Council since 2014.

USA - The last four months have been an unending nightmare for the US economy. Businesses are shutting down at a pace that we have never seen before in American history, the “retail apocalypse” has reached an entirely new level that none of the experts were anticipating prior to this pandemic, and we are in the midst of the greatest spike in unemployment that the United States has ever experienced.

EUROPE - “How Europe fares in this crisis compared to other regions of the world will determine both the future of European prosperity and Europe’s role in the world,” Chancellor Merkel told the Bundestag, Germany’s parliament, as she assumed the EU presidency. Those who know Merkel best say that what drives the uncharacteristic urgency and decisiveness of Merkel’s messages is a fear that the EU could become irrelevant or even unravel from the force of Covid-19 and its economic, social and political after effects. She understands the challenges for the EU are of a more existential nature than those facing China, the United States or any other single country, coming even as the United Kingdom exits the Union.

AUSTRALIA - Five million people in Australia's second-biggest city began a new lockdown Thursday, returning to tough restrictions just weeks after they ended as Melbourne grapples with a resurgence of coronavirus cases. Residents have been told to stay at home for six weeks after other measures to contain a spike in COVID-19 failed to prevent the virus spreading. The state of Victoria has been effectively sealed off in an effort to preserve the rest of Australia's success in curbing the virus. In Melbourne, there are concerns over the economic and mental health impacts of the second lockdown, which officials estimate will cost the economy Aus$6 billion ($4.2 billion). Australia has recorded just under 9,000 cases of COVID-19 among a population of 25 million, with 106 deaths.

USA - While critics of US President Donald Trump gloated over the Supreme Court ruling in the matter of his taxes, another verdict returning much of Oklahoma to the Creek Nation has far bigger implications for the country down the line. “On the far end of the Trail of Tears was a promise,” Justice Neil Gorsuch – a Trump appointee presumed to be a conservative textualist – declared at the start of the majority opinion in McGirt v Oklahoma, referring to the removal of Native Americans that began in 1831.

USA - The Satanic Temple plans to sue the state of Mississippi if its new flag includes a reference to God but not to Satan. In a letter to Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch, Marc J Randazza, attorney for the Satanic Temple, wrote the plan for the new state flag to replace the image of the Confederate flag with the phrase, “In God We Trust,” would be the equivalent of “removing one divisive symbol of exclusion only to replace it with a divisive phrase of exclusion.” Such a plan, the letter read, “does not eliminate exclusion, but rather moves it from one group to a collection of others.” The Satanic Temple, Randazza continued, “would like to suggest that if Mississippi is going to place a religious phrase on its flag, it should include reference to Satan.” The attorney goes on to list the “seven tenets of the Satanic Temple,” suggesting they are “more consistent with Mississippi values than even the Ten Commandments.”

TURKEY - Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced Friday that the Hagia Sophia, one of the architectural wonders of the world, would be reopened for Muslim worship as a mosque, sparking fury in the Christian community and neighbouring Greece. His declaration came after a top Turkish court revoked the sixth-century Byzantine monument's status as a museum, clearing the way for it to be turned back into a mosque. In an address to the nation, Erdogan said the first Muslim prayers at the Hagia Sophia would be performed on July 24. The UNESCO World Heritage site in historic Istanbul, a magnet for tourists worldwide, was first constructed as a cathedral in the Christian Byzantine Empire but was converted into a mosque after the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople in 1453. Last year, 3.8 million tourists visited the monument.