UK - The charity is supposed to help vulnerable children, which is why it rightly opposes FGM [Female genital mutilation]. So why is it promoting the idea that it’s OK for girls as young as seven to go down a path that leads to gender reassignment surgery? Save the Children has been captured by transgender ideology – the idea that men and women are defined not by their sex but by some soul-like gender identity. With reckless abandon, they extend this idea to children.

USA - What would you do if the water coming out of your faucets tasted like dirt? I know how crazy that sounds, but this is actually happening in the capital city of California right now. Conditions are incredibly dry because of the endless megadrought in the region, and water levels have dropped to very low levels. As a result, there is a much higher concentration of something called “geosmin” in the water than usual. For those that are not familiar with “geosmin”, it is one of the organic compounds that makes soil smell the way that it does. So at this moment, millions of California residents have water coming out of their taps that smells and tastes like dirt.

USA - In the dim light just after dawn, Bill Blubaugh parks his Des Moines Water Works pickup truck, grabs a dipper and a couple of plastic bottles and walks down a boat ramp to the Raccoon River, where he scoops up samples from a waterway that cuts through some of the nation’s most intensely farmed land. Each day the utility analyzes what’s in those samples and others from the nearby Des Moines River as it works to deliver drinking water to more than 500,000 people in Iowa’s capital city and its suburbs.

USA - As farmland goes fallow, Native American tribes along the 257-mile (407-kilometer) long river that flows from the lake to the Pacific Ocean watch helplessly as fish that are inextricable from their diet and culture die in droves or fail to spawn in shallow water. Just a few weeks into summer, a historic drought and its on-the-ground consequences are tearing communities apart in this diverse basin filled with flat vistas of sprawling alfalfa and potato fields, teeming wetlands and steep canyons of old-growth forests. Competition over the water from the river has always been intense. But this summer there is simply not enough, and the farmers, tribes and wildlife refuges that have long competed for every drop now face a bleak and uncertain future together.

UK - For 40 years, research into early human development has been guided by the principle that after 14 days, an embryo should not be used for research and must be destroyed. This rule has been part of the law of more than 12 countries. But new guidelines released by the International Society for Stem Cell Research have removed this rule. This makes it possible to conduct research on human embryos that are at more advanced stages of development. Now, countries must revise their laws, policies and guidelines to reflect this change. But first, public debate is crucial to determine the limits of what sort of research should be allowed. Over the decades human embryo research has allowed us to understand normal and abnormal human development, as well as early genetic diseases and disorders. Studying human embryos, as the earliest forms of human life, can give us insight into why miscarriages occur, and how our complex body systems develop. Human embryos are also important for stem cell research, where researchers try and create cell-based therapies to treat human diseases.

EUROPE - The European Union approved this Wednesday the creation of a military training mission to help the Mozambican Armed Forces in the fight against the growing threat of jihadist terrorist groups. The agreement must be ratified by the EU foreign ministers at a meeting scheduled for July 12. Violence in the northeast of the country has killed 2,800 people and forced nearly 800,000 to be displaced since 2017, according to the UN. Of these, at least 364,000 are children and, as a result of the conflict, suffer mental health problems, as Save The Children has warned this Wednesday, reports Efe. France, Spain, Italy and Luxembourg have shown themselves willing to respond to Portugal’s request and to participate in this European mission, according to diplomatic sources cited by France Presse (AFP).

CHINA - China and India have sent tens of thousands of soldiers and advanced military equipment to their disputed border, as troop deployments in the region reach the highest level in decades. China’s People’s Liberation Army has gradually increased its troop presence, mostly over the past few months, to at least 50,000, up from about 15,000 at this time last year, according to Indian intelligence and military officials. Those moves have been matched by India, which has sent tens of thousands of its own troops and advanced artillery to the region, the officials said. Both countries have built up infrastructure at the border in recent months, including insulated cabins and huts to keep troops stationed there through the frigid Himalayan winters.

USA - A man who thinks he is a female just struck gold in a statewide beauty pageant. If this isn’t offputting to you, the West’s morally bankrupt elites have succeeded in training you to reject truth. Kataluna Enriquez, a 27-year-old male who has been competing in transgender pageants since 2016, was awarded first place in the female Miss Nevada USA beauty pageant. Enriquez’s victory comes after success in other contests, including being crowned Miss Silver State USA as a preliminary event to the statewide one. Only since 2020 has Enriquez begun competing in non-trans pageants.

USA - Here in the middle of 2021, Americans are generally feeling pretty good about things. The COVID pandemic appears to be subsiding, our sports stadiums are full of fans again, the stock market has been soaring, and all over the country people are in the mood to party. In fact, July 4th celebrations across the nation are likely to be quite boisterous this year. But in China the mood is quite different, and the same thing is true in Russia.

GERMANY - The second longest and bloodiest military mission of the Federal Republic of Germany has come to an end. After nearly twenty years of war, the last soldiers of the Bundeswehr, who left Afghanistan the night before, landed yesterday, Wednesday, at the Wunstorf Airbase near Hanover. According to the "Costs of War Project" at the Ivy League Brown University in the USA, around a quarter of a million people lost their lives in combat at the Hindu Kush, and an unknown number of victims lost their lives due to the direct consequences of the war. Nearly seven million Afghans have fled their homes; the countless numbers are wounded or maimed, including tens of thousands of children. US expenditure alone for that slaughter amount to more that US $2.2 trillion; the German government puts its expenditures for the Bundeswehr mission at €12.2 billion. As the western troops withdraw, the Taliban is taking control of ever larger portions of that country. Soon the balance of power that had existed just before the war began in September 2001, will be re-established.

USA - Tread cautiously: the fiction of George Orwell (June 25, 1903-January 21, 1950) has become an operation manual for the omnipresent, modern-day surveillance state. It’s been more than 70 years since Orwell — dying, beset by fever and bloody coughing fits and driven to warn against the rise of a society in which rampant abuse of power and mass manipulation is the norm — depicted the ominous rise of ubiquitous technology, fascism, and totalitarianism in ‘1984’. Who could have predicted that so many years after Orwell typed the final words to his dystopian novel, “He loved Big Brother,” we would come to love Big Brother?

GERMANY - German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier responded to questions submitted by Ha'aretz in advance of his visit to Israel which began Wednesday: "Germany lives with the historical legacy of the monstrous abuses of political power perpetrated by the Nazi regime… Israel has repeatedly experienced discrimination and pressure in its dealings with the United Nations and associated organizations… It has much greater confidence in itself than in international organizations." "Regarding the opening of investigations [of Israel]: the German government's position is that the International Criminal Court has no jurisdiction in this matter due to the absence of Palestinian statehood. A Palestinian state and the determination of territorial borders can only be achieved through direct negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians."

UNITED NATIONS - President says Israelis and Palestinians 'destined to live together' in speech to UN ambassadors. Israeli President Reuven Rivlin on Tuesday appealed to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. "We are not condemned to live together, we are destined to live together," Rivlin said before various United Nations ambassadors at UN headquarters in New York... "Our Middle East region needs to build trust among peoples. Peace between Israel and the Palestinians will never be achieved through anti-Israel decisions or commissions of inquiry," he said, according to a statement from his office. "The bias against Israel in the UN institutions must end," Rivlin emphasized.

CANADA - Protesters have pulled down and desecrated a statue of Queen Elizabeth II in Canada in a spark of fury against the monarch. Protesters tied a rope around the statue before toppling it on the grounds of the Manitoba Legislative building on Thursday. The protest took place on Canada Day where footage showed groups who gathered to remove the statue of Her Majesty. In a separate incident, a statue of Queen Victoria was covered in red and orange paint before also being trampled on by protesters.

GERMANY - Perhaps the most absurd thing ever said about Angela Merkel is that she was the de facto leader of the western world. She has certainly been one of Europe’s most successful politicians, if you define success as political survival. But as she comes to the end of her 16 years in office, her luck is deserting her and the mess she has created is becoming horribly apparent. She leaves behind a split EU that is not just unled but might now be unleadable.