HAWAII - Damage from the deadliest wildfire in modern US history, which killed over 100 people and destroyed countless homes and businesses in Hawaii, could range from $4 billion to $6 billion, according to estimates by Moody’s RMS. The global catastrophe risk modeling and solutions company said on Tuesday the estimate reflects direct and indirect losses from damage to physical assets. It does not take into account the blaze’s effect on Hawaii’s gross domestic product, government spending on the response to the catastrophe, or the social cost of the fires.

INDIA - The lander module from India’s Chandrayaan-3 mission successfully touched down on the surface of the Moon on Wednesday. The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) and Indians across the globe celebrated the achievement, which makes India the fourth nation to successfully land a spacecraft on the Moon, after the Soviet Union, the US, and China. The event was live streamed by the ISRO on its YouTube channel. Prime Minister Narendra Modi watched the landing from South Africa, where he is attending the BRICS summit. “We have seen history being made, and this makes our life worth it. This is the beginning of a developed and ‘New India,’” he told ISRO scientists. Uniquely, the Chandrayaan-3 mission is the first in history to land near the lunar south pole.

USA - Anthony Fauci has reemerged from retirement and urged the Biden administration to implement a “strict lockdown” this winter for all unvaccinated Americans. The disgraced government bureaucrat appeared at a university virtual event recently titled, “Pandemic Lessons and Role of Faculty in Pandemic Preparedness with Dr Anthony Fauci.” During the appearance Fauci made it clear that he supports locking down and punishing those in society who are not yet vaccinated. Fauci falsely claimed that New York City was overrun and had “cooler trucks outside because they had no places to put the bodies.”

JAPAN - Fishermen from the Japanese prefecture of Fukushima will continue opposing Japan’s decision to dump radioactive water from the crippled Fukushima 1 nuclear power plant into the ocean, starting on August 24, the head of an industry association told Japanese Economy, Trade and Industry Minister Yasutoshi Nishimura at a meeting in Iwaki. "Although you approved the [water] discharge decision at a Cabinet meeting, we will continue protesting against this process," NHK quoted Tetsu Nozaki as saying. In response, Nishimura emphasized that Japanese officials could no longer postpone releasing the water as he called on Fukushima fishermen to understand. Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said earlier that the discharge of water that was used to cool the reactors at the plant would begin on August 24, barring any obstacles in terms of the weather or sea conditions. According to Kyodo, in the 2023 fiscal year (ending on March 31, 2024) as much as 31.2 metric tons of wastewater will be released into the ocean. The overall concentration of tritium in it would be about 5 trillion becquerels.

USA - Tucker Carlson, of Fox News fame, recently met with Serbia’s President Aleksandar Vucic in Budapest, Hungary. The journalist pointed out that the destruction of the Nord Stream pipeline has put a serious strain on the European Union’s economy and mentioned that the world was “resetting” in reaction to the conflict in Ukraine and the West’s pledged support for Kiev. Carlson raises some good issues, and an important one to expand upon is the fact that the EU economy is lagging significantly since the outbreak of the war last year. A June piece by the Financial Times titled ‘Europe has fallen behind America and the gap is growing’ details how the EU is now considerably dependent on the US for its technological, security, and economic needs.

EUROPE - Austrian Foreign Minister Alexander Schallenberg has argued that Western politicians need to be more realistic in their attempts to isolate Russia, as the country will always be the European Union's neighbour and a key international player. Speaking on Monday at a panel discussion in Spain, Schallenberg cited the 20th Century German diplomat Egon Bahr, the architect of Ostpolitik – the policy of normalising relations with the East during the Cold War – who said: “America is irreplaceable, but Russia is unmovable”

SOUTH AFRICA - BRICS will become economically more powerful than the G7, the Russian president said in an address to the Johannesburg summit. The US dollar is losing its global role in an “objective and irreversible” process, the Russian president told participants at the BRICS Summit in South Africa on Tuesday. Vladimir Putin spoke via videolink, after choosing not to attend the event in person. De-dollarization is “gaining momentum” Putin declared, adding that members of the group of major emerging economies are seeking to reduce their reliance on the greenback in mutual transactions.

UK - Britain's high streets are enduring a scourge of shoplifting targeted by county lines-style gangs stealing items to order as thefts rise by more than a quarter in a year. Chain retailers and independent businesses are suffering from a crime epidemic fuelled by people struggling with food bills amid high inflation, experts say.Small gangs are 'hitting' stores in what the British Independent Retailers Association described as 'stealing to order' and compared to the county lines issue for drugs. More businesses are investing in CCTV but many smaller retailers cannot afford security guards and face all of their profits being wiped out by a successful theft. Reported retail thefts have now risen by 27 per cent across ten of the UK's largest cities - and were up by 68 per cent in some, the British Retail Consortium (BRC) said.

USA - There are reports circulating that colleges and offices are beginning to reinstate COVID mask mandates and contact tracing despite no new cases of the virus being reported. The Atlanta Journal 'Constitution' reported Monday that Morris Brown College, a black private liberal arts college has reinstated the measures as part of a “precautionary step.” The report notes that students and staff will all be asked to mask up while on campus, only one week after classes began.

USA - Amid all the talk of an imminent planetary catastrophe caused by emissions of carbon dioxide, another fact is often ignored: global greening is happening faster than climate change. The amount of vegetation growing on the earth has been increasing every year for at least 30 years. The evidence comes from the growth rate of plants and from satellite data. In 2016 a paper was published by 32 authors from 24 institutions in eight countries that analysed satellite data and concluded that there had been a roughly 14% increase in green vegetation over 30 years. The study attributed 70% of this increase to the extra carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. The lead author on the study, Zaichun Zhu of Beijing University, says this is equivalent to adding a new continent of green vegetation twice the size of the mainland United States.

GREECE - Firefighters made a horrifying discovery after battling a raging wildfire that has gripped northeastern Greece for four days. Eighteen bodies were found in the Avanta area of Alexandroupolis. Authorities are now probing whether these victims were migrants who might have entered the country via Turkey's nearby border. This shocking find comes as hundreds of firefighters battle numerous wildfires fuelled by strong winds across Greece. In the last 24 hours, two people lost their lives, and two firefighters were injured in separate incidents.

CANADA - Around 19,000 people have fled the area after fires broke out . Officials in Canada have declared a state of emergency as the "worst wildfire season ever" forced thousands of people to flee their homes. David Eby, the Premier of British Columbia, says the state of emergency means chiefs can impose travel restrictions. It comes as he pleads for people to avoid the central Interior and south-eastern parts of BC. Eby says access to emergency accommodation in Interior is "becoming increasingly tight" as more and more people are forced out of their homes.

CANARY ISLANDS - Spain heads the list of EU countries affected by wildfires so far this year, with 185,00 acres burned, according to the European Forest Fire Information System - with Spaniards warned to brace themselves for further searing temperatures. A wildfire raging on the popular UK tourist destination of Tenerife was started on purpose, police have confirmed, with 12,000 people evacuated since the blaze erupted on Tuesday. Speaking today, Canary Islands regional President Fernando Clavijo announced police have opened three lines of investigation - although he did not say whether there had been any arrests.

SOUTH AFRICA - From August 22nd to 24th, Johannesburg, South Africa, will become the center of the multipolar world, as the most relevant emerging economies of the planet – Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa – gather to hold its 15th summit. The BRICS group arrive at this new high-level meeting flexing its political and economic muscle, fielding dozens of applications from hopeful countries, and developing its economic structures to attempt a de-dollarization of the world’s economy.

SOUTH AFRICA - China plans to push for the BRICS bloc to become a full-fledged rival of the G7 during its upcoming summit in South Africa, the Financial Times reported on Sunday. The newspaper noted that there’s no agreement between Beijing and New Delhi on whether BRICS — which currently comprises Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa — should be a non-aligned economic club or a political force that openly challenges the West. In early August, Kremlin Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov said Russia believes that “in one form or another, the expansion of BRICS will contribute to the further development and strengthening of this organization.”