RUSSIA - The Vostok 2018 military exercise in eastern Russia was already billed as Russia’s largest war game since 1981. China’s Defense Ministry announced on Thursday it will send 3,200 troops from the People’s Liberation Army to join over 100,000 Russians in exercises from September 11 to 15. The Chinese troops will bring at least 900 tanks and 30 aircraft with them. If Russia’s boast of the biggest exercise since the Cold War is accurate, over 1,500 Russian tanks and 120 aircraft will be involved. A small force from Mongolia has also been invited to participate, mirroring the way Russia’s huge Cold War exercises included partners from Warsaw Pact countries. Most of the actual former members of the Warsaw Pact will be eyeing Vostok 2018 with some trepidation. This week marked the 50th anniversary of the Pact’s invasion of Czechoslovakia.

SWEDEN - Sweden’s public broadcaster, SVT, has come under fire for revealing “inflammatory” statistics proving foreign-born men commit around 85 per cent of stranger rapes ahead of the country’s general election next month. Broadcast on investigative journalism show Mission Review on Wednesday, analysis of 843 district court cases over the past five years found that 58 per cent of men convicted of rapes and attempted rapes in the period were born overseas. Looking at just assault rape cases, in which the perpetrator and victim were not previously acquainted, the proportion of foreign-born grew to more than eight in ten, almost half of whom had been living in Sweden less than a year when they launched their attack.

USA - Harvard Law School Professor Emeritus Alan Dershowitz said Michael Cohen, President Donald Trump’s former attorney, is “pleading guilty to a crime that doesn’t exist” to further Democrats’ plans to impeach the president. He offered his analysis during a Wednesday interview with Breitbart Senior Editors-at-Large Rebecca Mansour and Joel Pollak on SiriusXM’s Breitbart News Tonight.

USA - A group of local pastors in Mobile, Alabama, are speaking out against a public library for hosting a Drag Queen Story Hour, and are voicing their concerns with the city to stop the event. The pastors throughout Mobile are hoping to get the city to cancel a September 8 event at Mobile’s Ben May Main Library where an adult drag queen is expected to read to a group of children between the ages of three and eight years old, AL.com reported. The pastors are scheduled to voice their concerns about the event at next Monday’s Mobile County Commission meeting, in the hopes the city can put a stop to it. “This is far, far from the moral values and the morality of Mobile, Alabama,” Pastor Fred Wolfe told WALA.

USA - It’s the ultimate annual destination for top Silicon Valley techies to practice hedonistic pleasure, drugs, eastern spirituality and social engineering. This year could see as many as 100,000 people create a pop-up city in a northern Nevada desert. The Utopia-like Technocrat culture is ‘other-worldly’. TN Editor

SOUTH AFRICA - South African Cardinal Wilfrid Napier has decried media spins on the current clerical sex abuse crisis, declaring that the scandal is rooted in same-sex activity by predatory priests. The cardinal was tweeting in response to a newspaper headline in The Mercury, which proclaimed that “Churches may have to allow same sex unions” as a result of the most recent revelations of sexual abuse and impropriety by bishops, priests, and cardinals. Allowing same-sex unions won’t solve the problem, Napier stated, since it is precisely homosexual activity that “is the scandal rocking the Catholic Church to its roots!” “Deviation from God’s law always brings grief,” he added.

IRAN - Hundreds of people have been injured and at least two have died after a powerful 6.1 earthquake struck western Iran, near the border with Iraq. The quake struck some 31 kilometers from Javanrud, Kermanshah province, at a depth of 10 kilometers, USGS reports. There were no immediate reports of major damage, but the powerful jolt was reportedly felt as far as the Iraqi capital Baghdad.

GERMANY - It is high time to re-evaluate our partnership — not to leave it behind, but to renew and preserve it. Sharing responsibility as a blueprint, we have the idea of a balanced partnership, in which we take our balanced part of the responsibility. In which we counterbalance where the US crosses red lines. In which we bring in our weight, where America withdraws. And in which we start a new conversation. Single-handedly, we will fail in this task. The outstanding goal of our foreign policy is therefore to build a sovereign, strong Europe.

EUROPE - The European Union agreed 18 million euros ($20.6 million) in aid for Iran on Thursday, including for the private sector, to help offset the impact of United States sanctions and salvage a 2015 deal that saw Tehran limit its nuclear ambitions. The announcement is part of the bloc's high-profile efforts to support the nuclear accord that President Donald Trump abandoned in May. It is part of a wider package of 50 million euros earmarked for Iran in the EU budget. The EU is working to maintain trade with Iran, which has threatened to stop complying with the nuclear agreement if it fails to see the economic benefits of relief from sanctions. The bloc's foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini said in a statement the bloc was committed to cooperation with Iran.

USA - The entire media-political-government-power complex camped along the Potomac River in this fetid August heat officially lost its collective mind this week. In an orgy of political drama playing out in courtrooms up and down the Acela corridor, President Trump’s lawyer and his one-time campaign manager stand convicted of various crimes. In this fever worse than Joe McCarthy’s Red Scare, President Trump — therefore — has been officially declared guilty by association!

USA - Michael Cohen’s testimony on Monday, that he broke campaign finance laws at Donald Trump’s direction, has renewed calls for Trump’s impeachment or even his removal – but is that likely, and what would actually happen if it did? Without doubt, Cohen’s testimony increases the chances that Trump will face impeachment – but it is not quite as simple as that. Cohen’s testimony is not the only factor which will determine how the coming drama will play out. In essence, much rests on what happens on November 8th – the midterm congressional elections. That day could quite possibly determine Trump’s fate as president.

USA - Americans would revolt if President Donald Trump is eventually impeached under some phony ‘political’ reason by the newly-elected and potentially hostile presidential Congress, Rudy Giuliani has claimed. “You could only impeach [Trump] for political reasons and the American people would revolt against that,” Giuliani told Sky News while on a trip to Scotland. Earlier Trump himself warned that the stock market will crash if the lawmakers decide to remove him from office. “If I ever got impeached, I think the market would crash. I think everybody would be very poor,” the president said in an interview with Fox News.

USA - CIA whistleblower Kevin Shipp says that the mainstream media is laser-focused on the recent Cohen plea and the Manafort conviction, both of which have nothing to do with “Russian collusion.”  He says this is because the mainstream media are conspirators and have nothing to do with real news. “We know the mainstream media (MSM) is not interested in the news,” said Kevin Shipp to USA Watchdog‘s Greg Hunter.

USA - Donald Trump has asked the question which the renewables industry would rather not answer: “What happens when the wind doesn’t blow?” He was speaking at a fundraiser for the outstanding GOP Congresswoman Claudia Tenney in Utica, NY, last week. His remarks on coal and the wind industry, especially, are causing liberal heads to explode. Wind turbines are ugly, expensive, environmentally damaging and inefficient; they blight views, reduce property values, cause health problems to both humans and animals, disturb the peace with shadow flicker and low frequency noise, despoil the landscape, artificially drive up energy prices, and enrich cynical, grasping, crony-capitalist spivs at the expense of ordinary energy users. Only a scumbag of the first water would ever wish to profit from this vile industry. Only a complete ignoramus could be in favor of it.

USA - President Donald Trump criticized Democrats on Tuesday for blocking his efforts for tough immigration enforcement. “The Democrats want to turn America into one big fat sanctuary city for criminal aliens,” Trump said during a rally in West Virginia with a group of supporters. The crowd booed the Democrats loudly as Trump continued. “Honestly, they are more protective of the criminal aliens than they are of the people,” he said. Trump said he was committed to deporting criminal illegal immigrants, but that Democrats wanted to do the opposite.