GERMANY - Germany's auto industry is on the brink and at risk of putting the European Union's economic recovery plan in jeopardy. A global supply crunch is threatening to derail Germany's economic recovery with the country's auto industry suffering the biggest downfall. Companies from BMW, Siemens AG and Volkswagen are all reporting a lack of supply of materials from the most basic wooden pallets to memory chips. Thomas Nuernberger, managing director of sales at Mulfingen, Germany-based EBM Papst, a maker of industrial fans, told Bloomberg: “In my career we haven’t had a situation with so many commodities being scarce at the same time, and I’ve been dealing with the same materials since 1996. This is the most difficult situation in the global supply chain I’ve witnessed.” He added: “I count on growth being delayed until 2023, because even in 2022 we will still have problems with semiconductors and the container shipping turmoil will also last well into 2022." Clemens Fuest, president of the Munich-based Ifo institute said: “Things are actually getting worse rather than better."

CHINA – China has been shamed after a study showed the 25 megacities that are responsible for producing 52% of all urban greenhouse gas emissions globally. The results were published in the journal Frontiers in Sustainable Cities and it’s the first global balance sheet of greenhouse gases (GHGs) emitted by major cities around the world. Researchers achieved this by taking sector-level GHG emission inventories from 167 cities – including metropolitan areas like Durban in South Africa to cities such as Milan in Italy. The cities are from 53 countries (in North and South America, Europe, Asia, Africa, and Oceania) and were chosen based on representativeness in urban sizes and regional distribution. Only two cities outside of China are in the top 25 list – Tokyo and Moscow. There are now less than three months to go before COP26 in Glasgow, Scotland a key climate summit where many hope new measures will be introduced.

AFGHANISTAN - Taliban hold mock ‘funeral’ for NATO, take Black Hawk helicopter for joyrides, and show off loot at Kabul airport after US retreat. After nearly 20 years of fighting against the US in Afghanistan, the victorious Taliban posed with captured American gear at the Kabul airport, held a mock funeral for NATO in Khost, and flew a Black Hawk helicopter over Kandahar. The last US troops left the Hamid Karzai International Airport on Monday, just before the clock struck midnight local time. On Tuesday morning, Taliban fighters strolled through the airport they now controlled, littered with debris, posing for photos with the captured vehicles, aircraft and equipment. Taliban leaders reviewed a “special forces” unit, equipped with weapons and gear captured from the US-trained Afghan army, on the Kabul runway. “It is a historical day and a historical moment… we liberated our country from a great power,” said Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid, adding that the past two decades should serve as “a big lesson for other invaders, a lesson for the world.”

MIDDLE EAST - Iran and Russia have big plans. They both want to work more closely with China. In the wake of the US withdrawal from Afghanistan the United States is now charting a new course in which it will refrain from military interventions and “nation building”, US President Joe Biden has said. A recent report by a Russian military expert in Iranian media compared the US ending military operations in Afghanistan with the withdrawal of the military forces of the United States from Vietnam. The United States now has ‘Afghanistan Syndrome’. …The most important feature is the loss of American faith in military power and the impact of its actions. Of course, this time, the loss of confidence in US military action is not limited to the United States and is seen around the world. It means that Iran and Russia [and China] think they will be able to do as they please for the next few years as the US will not want to use its military.

USA - The New York City metropolitan area was struck by sudden disaster on Wednesday night as the remnants of Hurricane Ida flooded subways, roads, and homes across the city and beyond. Intense flooding inundated many areas of the city, Long Island, and across the Hudson in New Jersey. Governor Kathy Hochul has declared a state of emergency and has asked for federal help for what appears to be the worst natural disaster to strike the city since 2012’s Superstorm Sandy. Six trains were stuck in floodwaters and their passengers had to be evacuated, according to New York Post reporter David Meyer, citing the MTA. The Metro-North and Long Island Railroad are “totally offline.” Hochul, in only her eighth day in office, appeared on CNN shortly before midnight, saying that Ida’s path through New York was devastating “far more than anyone expected.” Shortly after the appearance, she declared a state of emergency, urging New Yorkers to “stay off the roads and avoid all unnecessary travel.” The storm is continuing to cause damage as it travels away from New York…

EUROPE - Europhiles have used the calamitous withdrawal from Afghanistan to add weight to their burning desire to create an EU army. In a recent meeting, German politician Manfred Weber insisted that “the hour for Europe is only now striking” in international events after America withdrew from the war-torn country last month. Mr Weber, the leader of the European People's Party in the EU Parliament, warned that if the EU withdraws from conflicts across the planet China and Russia “will fill the vacant spaces”. He added: “Europe generally needs military capabilities. Take the cyberwar. In Lithuania or Latvia and beyond, Russia is waging a hybrid war. The Irish health system was recently paralysed. The attacks on public infrastructure are getting closer. We need a European task force with drones and a cyber brigade defending the online infrastructure. If we withdraw from conflict, tomorrow we will wake up in a world that is not ours and confronted with problems of a completely different dimension.”

AUSTRALIA - Australia's Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, has signalled an end to the country's zero-Covid policy, saying that it is "not a sustainable way to live." During a press conference on August 23, Prime Minister Morrison said that the country's goal is to "live with this virus, not to live in fear of it". He said that Australia had been "cautious" during the pandemic, and that this approach had "saved lives, and saved livelihoods." Since the start of the pandemic, Australia has used a 'zero-Covid' strategy. It has enforced strict lockdowns when there have been tiny numbers of cases and has kept tens of thousands of Australians waiting overseas to return home through limits on how many can return each month. However Mr Morrison has how said that cases will be allowed to rise as long as hospitals can cope with a plan to drop most restrictions once 80% of adults are vaccinated. He said: "Once you get to 70% of your eligible population being vaccinated, and 80%, the plan sets out we have to move forward. We cannot hold back. Our task between that day and now is to ready ourselves for that next phase."

EUROPE - The European Union database of suspected drug reaction reports is EudraVigilance, and they are now reporting 20,595 fatalities, and 1,960,607 injuries, following COVID-19 injections. A Health Impact News subscriber from Europe reminded us that this database maintained at EudraVigilance is only for countries in Europe who are part of the European Union (EU), which comprises 27 countries. The total number of countries in Europe is much higher, almost twice as many, numbering around 50. (There are some differences of opinion as to which countries are technically part of Europe.) So as high as these numbers are, they do NOT reflect all of Europe. The actual number in Europe who are reported dead or injured due to COVID-19 shots would be much higher than what we are reporting here.

SAUDI ARABIA - Saudi Arabia and Russia have signed a military cooperation agreement at an arms expo outside Moscow. Saudi Deputy Defense Minister Khalid bin Salman announced on Twitter on August 24 that he signed the agreement with Russian Deputy Defense Minister Alexander Fomin “aimed at developing joint military cooperation between the two countries.” Salman also met with Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu during his visit outside Moscow to the arms expo International Military-Technical Forum Army-2021. The deputy defense minister said the meeting explored ways to "strengthen military and defense cooperation between our two countries." He noted that Russia had many new weapons systems that have “proven themselves well in Syria," where Russia's military intervened to support President Bashar al-Assad in that country’s civil war.

POLAND - The Polish government has formally requested President Andrzej Duda to declare an emergency in two eastern regions amid concerns Belarus’ dictator Alexander Lukashenko is deliberately pushing migrants into the European Union. Polish PM Mateusz Morawiecki said: “Lukashenko’s regime decided to push these people onto Polish, Lithuanian and Latvian territory in an effort to destabilise.” Belarus has been accused of conducting a “hybrid war” against Brussels after the country’s relations with the EU worsening since President Lukashenko claimed victory in an election his critics claim was fraudulent. Mr Morawiecki has accused President Lukashenko of flying migrants into Belarus, from Iraq and Turkey, before “shoving” them into the EU. “The situation on the border with Belarus is a crisis,” he added.

ISRAEL - Prime Minister Naftali Bennett met with US President Joe Biden at the White House on Friday and said: "We cannot lose sight for even one moment that we're in the toughest neighborhood in the world. We've got ISIS on our southern border. Hizbullah on our northern border, Islamic Jihad, Hamas, Iranian militias that surround us." "All of them want to kill us, kill Israelis. They all want to annihilate the Jewish state. And that's why Israel always has to be overwhelmingly stronger than any of our enemies, and indeed, of all our enemies combined."

ISRAEL - Bennett wanted to create a positive, unmediated connection between himself and US President Joe Biden. That was probably the easiest one. Both sides wanted, at the very least, to show that the US-Israel relationship is on track and doing well in the post-Netanyahu, post-Trump era. They held a 50-minute, one-on-one meeting – which, unusually, took place over tea in Biden’s private dining room off of the Oval Office. The prime minister said after the meeting that the atmosphere was “excellent,” he felt Biden and his top brass were open to listening to what he had to say, and that he can now call Biden directly. During his visit to the White House on Friday, Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett's biggest goal was to get the US and Israel aligned on Iran. "We are going to discuss the threat from Iran and our commitment to ensure Iran never develops a nuclear weapon," Biden said. “We’re putting diplomacy first and seeing where that takes us. But if diplomacy fails, we’re ready to turn to other options.”

JORDAN - Veteran Israeli analyst Ehud Yaari wrote Sunday on the N12 website that Iran is steadily entrenching itself in the Syrian Golan region along the border with Israel. In southern Syria, the Syrian army along with Hizbullah and Iran-backed militias are besieging the city of Daraa, one of the last redoubts of the anti-Assad rebellion. Jordan’s King Abdullah is attempting a delicate balancing act, argues Yaari, noting that the king has expressed a willingness to renew ties with Assad and help do the same with the rest of the Arab world, but does not want a Hezbollah-Iranian presence on his border. This is particularly the case because divisions of the Syrian regular army in the region are now essentially controlled by Iran and Hezbollah, of which Abdullah is well aware.

AFGHANISTAN - As we watch the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan in real time, it’s pretty sickening to know that the new regime will be aided by the veritable war chest left behind by the US military. The roughly 40 aircraft and 2,000 armored vehicles are a boon for the Taliban’s ragtag forces — and the situation is panning out quite nicely for Afghanistan’s neighbor Iran as well.

NORTH KOREA - A nuclear reactor in North Korea that closed for a short period of time during former President Donald Trump’s negotiations with the country appears to have been reactivated. According to the Wall Street Journal (WSJ), the UN atomic agency said that a plutonium-producing reactor in Yongbyon, North Korea, appears to have resumed operations in violation of the United Nations Security Council resolutions. “Since early July, there have been indications, including the discharge of cooling water, consistent with the operation of the reactor,” said the International Atomic Energy Agency in its annual report. “While North Korea already has a significant stockpile of nuclear weapons, this suggests it is moving to expand its current arsenal.” News of North Korea’s resumed nuclear reactor comes on the heels of the Biden administration’s botched withdrawal from Afghanistan.