GERMANY - Germany seeks to enhance its military cooperation with northern European countries and is therefore engaging itself in the power struggle over the Arctic. Defense Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer has held comprehensive consultations with her counterparts in Finland, Sweden, Norway and Denmark in the run-up to Germany's EU Council Presidency, as reported by the Ministry of Defense. These four northern European countries are planning more extensive military activities in the High North, because the melting of the Arctic ice, due to climate change, will provide access to large deposits of raw materials and open up new maritime routes. Experts assume that the Arctic may have entirely ice-free late summers already by 2030. The rivalry for influence in the Arctic region is thus rapidly intensifying. While China is pursuing its "Polar Silk Road" project, the Pentagon and the US Air Force have published their Arctic strategies. Russia is also involved with its extensive northern coastline.

GUATEMALA - Volcanoes in Guatemala, Hawaii and Indonesia have killed 62 and cost the economy millions. Should We Expect More? The violent eruption Sunday of Guatemala’s Fuego volcano, killing at least 62 people, 13 of who have been identified so far, is the latest in a series of volcanic events that have made headlines around the world.

LEBANON - 2020 just keeps getting weirder. On Tuesday, an absolutely massive explosion caused a red mushroom cloud to rise high over the city of Beirut, Lebanon. It is being called “Beirut’s Hiroshima”, and the blast was heard as far away as Cyprus.

UNITED NATIONS - 24 million children will never return to school post-Covid, UN warns School closures 'could waste untold human potential, undermine decades of progress, and exacerbate inequalities'. The pandemic has unleashed a “generational catastrophe”, with more than one billion children in some 160 countries missing school this year, according to the United Nations.

USA - Tropical Storm Isaias is gaining speed as it barrels up the East Coast, causing rapid flooding, water rescues and the threat of New York's strongest winds since Superstorm Sandy in 2012. At least one person was killed after a tornado touched down in Windsor, North Carolina, Bertie County officials said. Now the storm is headed to major cities in the Northeast, knocking out power as the country simultaneously grapples with coronavirus.

USA - Scholars target ‘problematic’ common animal names: slavemaker ant, gypsy moth, rape bug and dozens more. These are just three common English names listed in a spreadsheet of 60 plants and animals that have been recently deemed by some academics to have “problematic” monikers.

USA - Shaun King, the controversial Black Lives Matter activist known for pushing false claims, called for the destruction of Jesus Christ statues and Christian churches for their depiction of the “white” holy family, which King argued are forms of “white supremacy” and “racist propaganda” that promote “oppression.”

GERMANY - People in Germany are largely in favor of US troops withdrawing from their country, a recent survey has revealed. The data showed that voters and politicians tend to disagree on the matter. Nearly half of people in Germany are in favor of a US plan to withdraw nearly 12,000 of its troops from the European country, according to a representative survey by the research institute YouGov shared Tuesday. Some 47% of survey respondents said they supported reducing the number of US soldiers in Germany.

USA - Americans' satisfaction with the way things are going in the US continues to tumble since it started trending downward at the beginning of the novel coronavirus pandemic. Currently, 13% of US adults are satisfied with the state of the nation, down seven percentage points in the past month and 32 points since reaching a 15-year high in February. Satisfaction has not been this low since November 2011. The nation also continues its reckoning with the issue of race relations after the late May death of George Floyd and ensuing nationwide protests about racial injustice. These events have greatly altered the national mood this year, from one that was brighter than it had been in over a decade to one of the dourest in the past 40 years. Satisfaction now sits just six points above the all-time low in October 2008 immediately following sharp drops in the US stock market during the global financial crisis.

USA - Gold prices rallied to a fresh intraday record late-morning Thursday, propelled by continued appetite for precious metals amid the COVID-19 pandemic. December gold GCZ20, 2.35% was up $27.50, or 1.3%, at $2,013.60 an ounce, at last check. Meanwhile, silver prices for September delivery SIU20, 7.02%, the most-active contract, were also buoyant, up 4.7% at $25.56 an ounce. The Tuesday jump for gold and silver - a steady climb for both commodities in recent weeks - comes amid a persistent concern about the economic implications of the pandemic that has created uncertainty about the landscape for global markets and economies, with governments and central banks forced to roll out a raft of fiscal and monetary stimulus to limit the damage to business activity.

LEBANON - Lebanese Prime Minister says Beirut explosions caused by an estimated 2,750 tons of ammonium nitrate left unsecured for 6 years in a warehouse
- at least 70 people killed, over 3,000 injured; death toll rising
- ten firefighters still missing
- sprawling port area utterly destroyed
- Lebanon's interior minister links blast to ammonium nitrate improperly stored in a warehouse at the port
- Shockwave and explosion so large that terrified residents thought they were under nuclear attack
- Countries sending international emergency aid
- Overwhelmed hospitals are treating patients in parking lots
- Beirut City Governor Marwan Aboud said: "Beirut is a disaster city and the scale of the damage is enormous" and called the blast a "national disaster akin to Hiroshima."

USA - In recent weeks there has been a tremendous amount of debate about whether police departments around the country should be “defunded” or not, but what most Americans don’t realize is that it is already happening on a massive scale. At a time when crime rates are absolutely soaring and civil unrest is raging in major cities across the nation, police budgets are being deeply cut and in some cities there is talk of eliminating police departments altogether. I knew that a few cities had already made moves in this direction, but I had no idea that it was happening on such a widespread basis.

IRAN - Iran’s supreme leader, in a tweet Wednesday that was not flagged, restricted, or blocked by Twitter, called the United States “Satan” and labeled Israel America’s “chained dog,” drawing fresh attention to questions about the platform’s content policies. “Today more than ever, the interest of the Islamic Nation lies in unity, the type of unity that creates power against enemies and shouts out loudly at the embodied Satan, the encroaching US, and its chained dog, the Zionist regime, and stands up against aggression,” Ayatollah Ali Khamenei tweeted on his English-language feed. The tweet was a paraphrased excerpt of a speech he gave marking the annual Hajj season.

AUSTRALIA - The premier of the Australian state of Victoria has declared a "state of disaster," introducing a nighttime curfew in the city of Melbourne. Australia's second-biggest city of Melbourne is under an overnight curfew, after a surge of infections in the state of which it is the capital, Victoria, caused authorities to declare a state of disaster. Under newly imposed restrictions, Melbourne residents will be allowed to shop and exercise only within 5 kilometers/3 miles of their homes, while students will return to learning at home.

Less strict restrictions are in force in other regions of the state, which currently has 6,322 cases of active infection. The measures are to stay in place until at least September 13. India has recorded its steepest spike of 57,118 new cases over the past day, taking its coronavirus caseload close to 1.7 million, with July alone accounting for nearly 1.1 million infections.

SWITZERLAND - The World Health Organization on Saturday warned the coronavirus pandemic was likely to be "lengthy" after its emergency committee met to evaluate the crisis six months after sounding the international alarm. The committee "highlighted the anticipated lengthy duration of this COVID-19 pandemic", the WHO said in a statement, and warned of the risk of "response fatigue" given the socio-economic pressures on countries. The novel coronavirus has killed at least 680,000 people and infected at least 17.6 million since the outbreak emerged in China last December, according to a tally from official sources compiled by AFP.