VATICAN - Putin says he will not 'bluff' on using all means amid reversals. It is madness to think of using nuclear weapons, Pope Francis told his weekly general audience in the Vatican on Wednesday after Russian President Vkladuimir Putin said he would not bluff on using all means in Ukraine amid recent reversals.Recalling his recent visit to Kazakhstan, the pope said "we must recognize that Kazakhstan has made very positive choices, like saying No to nuclear weapons". "In this it was brave, at a time when this tragic war (in Ukraine) leads some people to think about nuclear weapons, that madness!" Pope Francis said he spoke yesterday to Cardinal Konrad Krajewski who was in Ukraine on his fourth humanitarian and pastoral mission to the nation.

RUSSIA - Vladimir Putin has threatened the West with nuclear weapons over Ukraine, telling leaders: 'I'm not bluffing'. Desperate despot also announced mobilisation of 300,000 reservists, first Russian mobilisation since WW2. Occupied Ukrainian territories will be annexed to Russia, he said, and 'all means' will be used to defend them. Ukraine dismissed the threat, saying it is 'predictable' and shows the war is not going as Putin had planned. He vowed to use 'all means' to defend the regions, saying: 'If the territorial integrity of our country is threatened, we will use all available means to protect Russia and our people - this is not a bluff... I shall stress - by all means available to us. Those trying to blackmail us with nuclear weapons should know that the tables can turn on them.' Putin's gambit comes after Ukraine routed a large part of the Russian army last week, leaving him backed into a corner of his own making and facing the possible collapse of his so-called 'special military operation'.

RUSSIA - The Russian president had earlier warned that Moscow is ready to defend its territory using all available means. Washington has slammed as “irresponsible” a recent warning by President Vladimir Putin that Russia is prepared to use any means necessary to protect its territorial integrity. Speaking to ABC News on Wednesday, White House spokesman John Kirby said “We always have to take this kind of rhetoric seriously,” but condemned Putin’s reference to the use of nuclear weapons, adding that “it’s irresponsible rhetoric for a nuclear power to talk that way.” Kirby said Washington was monitoring the situation “as best we can” but noted there has been no indication that Russia has shifted its strategic posture and that the US currently sees no need to adjust its own. In the event that Russia does decide to deploy nuclear weapons, Kirby warned that there would be “severe consequences” for Moscow, referring to a previous statement by US President Joe Biden, in which he urged Russia to avoid using nukes, saying it would “change the face of war unlike anything since WWII.”

NATO - The head of the US-led bloc didn’t elaborate on who would emerge victorious. NATO has told Moscow very clearly that Russia cannot win a nuclear war and has been amassing troops on its eastern border to “remove any room for miscalculation or misunderstanding,” the secretary general of the US-led bloc, Jens Stoltenberg, told Reuters on Wednesday. “This is dangerous and reckless nuclear rhetoric,” he told Reuters editor-in-chief Alessandra Galloni on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York. “He knows very well that a nuclear war should never be fought and cannot be won and it will have unprecedented consequences for Russia,” he added, referring to Russian President Vladimir Putin. Stoltenberg insisted that the Russian leader had “made a strategic mistake” with Ukraine and that the conflict there is not going according to his plan – as inferred by NATO, anyway. He also argued that Russian forces are ill-equipped and struggling with command, control and supplies, while Ukraine has the unified support of the collective West, which Russia “totally underestimated.”

UK - Is 2022 the driest year recorded? Europe and parts of China have experienced extreme temperatures this summer, dry conditions in Africa have put millions at risk of starvation, and the American West continues to see a persistent lack of rainfall. Scientists say warmer and drier seasons are likely to become the norm, but have these past few months been the driest on record? How dry is the earth? One measure of drought conditions used by scientists is based on the level of moisture in the soil as measured by satellite imagery. We have compared these dry conditions over the past three months to average conditions since the beginning of this century, to build up a picture of how extreme recent weather patterns have been.

USA - Just over the past few days, our planet has been hit over and over again by major natural disasters. So why is this happening? At this moment, we are reaching the end of a summer that many of us will remember for a long time to come. The western United States, Europe and China are all in the midst of the worst droughts that they have experienced in centuries, and meanwhile relentless flooding has absolutely devastated other areas. For example, unprecedented flooding resulted in a third of the entire nation of Pakistan being under water for an extended period of time. We could definitely use a break, but instead the past few days have brought us an extremely alarming series of historic disasters. For example, the western coast of Mexico was just hit by an extremely powerful magnitude 7.6 earthquake…

UK - Farewell to the US-UK trade deal. That's the news from Liz Truss's trip to the UN assembly in New York. The British prime minister has told journos on the flight over that the UK will not strike an agreement with America for many years to come. Truss, the UK's former international trade secretary, suggested that talks were unlikely to even start in the medium term: "There isn't currently any negotiation taking place with the US and I don't have an expectation that those are going to start in the short to medium term."

USA - China is entirely capable of imposing a naval blockade on Taiwan, commander of the US Seventh Fleet, Vice Admiral Karl Thomas, acknowledged in an interview with The Wall Street Journal published on Monday. “They have a very large navy, and if they want to bully and put ships around Taiwan, they very much can do that,” the admiral said. China has already created a large and modern navy, Thomas stated, with the number of military vessels at Beijing’s disposal continuing to grow rapidly. The admiral said that he did not, however, know whether China is seeking to take any actual action against Taiwan, which Beijing regards as an integral part of its territory, whether through an all-out invasion or a naval blockade.

USA - What bothers Baker and many others in the power-generation business is switching off older coal and nuclear plants, like this one in southwest Michigan, that closed earlier this year. They say it’s leaving a power gap that renewables can’t yet fill. Eric Baker: I think more and more wind and solar is a good idea. Where it’s challenging is when it gets to the margin of the assets that we need to keep the lights on. Because we don’t have a technology that can store energy today, and I don’t think we will in a decade, and I don’t know that we will in two decades, have a meaningful storage technology that can collect power today and discharge that over several days in the future. The risk is only going to increase over the next few years if we don’t fix that core problem of increasing the amount of new electric-generating resources on the system in order to meet the growing demand for electricity. As millions of Americans working from home put added strains on the system, and others consume more too, keeping everything from phones to laptops to electric cars in a constant state of charge.

MEXICO - A major earthquake rocked a city in Mexico’s southwest prompting a slew of evacuations and tsunami warnings. The 7.5 earthquake rattled residents in the populace state of Michoacán on Monday. The city lies on the country’s pacific coast. Reports say one person has been killed so far. They passed away after a wall in a shopping mall collapsed on them. The earthquake was felt all throughout Mexico. This comes on the anniversary of two other devastating earthquakes. Those earthquakes both occurred on September 19th but in the years 1985 and 2017.

NATO - Most NATO member states have significantly depleted their own weapons stockpiles by supplying arms to Ukraine, the military bloc’s secretary general has acknowledged. Jens Stoltenberg urged the defense industry to help replenish the thinned-out armories. In an interview with CNN on Thursday, the official lauded the “unprecedented unity in the support to Ukraine” on the part of member states. However, this kind of defense aid for Kiev has until now been “taken from our existing stocks, so they are now running low,” Stoltenberg warned. He added that one of the alliance’s priorities was to “replenish those stocks.” “Therefore, one of the main focuses in NATO is to work with the defense industry to ramp up production,” the organization’s chief explained.

USA - Following the Plymouth Colonies’ example, large waves of migrants from Europe began coming to the colonies in search of religious freedom. In 1630, about 1,000 men traveled with a man named John Winthrop to America aboard the Arabella. During the voyage, Winthrop writes that if he and the colonizers could follow God’s ways and instill Biblical truths and values into the new world, it could become a beacon of light for others. “We shall be as a city upon a hill, the eyes of all people are upon us.” Although the phrase “city on a hill” is derived from a Bible verse, it is often used as a reference to the example of freedom and human rights displayed by America to the rest of the world. For Winthrop and the other colonizers at the time, religious liberty was key to living how they wanted without interference from the government, and also to instilling principles and values that would aid in a prosperous and thriving society. This idea spread to surrounding colonies.

UKRAINE - An influx of cheap Ukrainian grain and poultry is making it difficult for farmers in the European Union to break even, according to a report published by the Wall Street Journal on Friday. Meanwhile, the grain-starved countries that were supposed to benefit from a UN-brokered arrangement to ensure safe passage of cereals and sunflower oil out of Ukraine’s Black Sea ports are not getting the food they desperately need. “I am all for helping Ukraine, but I believe the EU opened Pandora’s box,” Jan Bieniasz, managing director of a farmers cooperative in the Polish village of Laka, told the outlet. He was referring to the European Commission’s decision to remove tariffs and quotas to allow Kiev to export its grains over land and from European ports amid the conflict with Russia. The move has seen European Union countries flooded with cheaper agricultural goods – while EU wheat and corn generally retail for $324 and $307 a ton, respectively, Ukraine’s wheat and corn sell for around $272 and $251, the WSJ writes.

RUSSIA - Reducing dependence on Russian natural gas supply is impossible for the European Union in the coming year without a massive production halt, RBK business daily reported on Monday, citing a study by McKinsey’s former Russian division, consulting company Yakov & Partners. Their research showed that, despite reports that EU stores are full, the bloc has not yet overcome its reliance on Russian energy and will not be able to get through the coming winter and next year “without maintaining gas supplies from Russia or [effecting] a significant reduction” in consumption. Yakov & Partners indicated that 70% of nitrogen fertilizer production capacities in the EU have already been stopped, aluminum production has been reduced by 25%, and steel production by 5%. The authors of the study suggested that the decline in production is likely to continue “even in the event of a mild winter.”

USA - The Pentagon has ordered a sweeping audit of how it conducts clandestine information warfare after major social media companies identified and took offline fake accounts suspected of being run by the US military in violation of the platforms’ rules. Colin Kahl, the undersecretary of defense for policy, last week instructed the military commands that engage in psychological operations online to provide a full accounting of their activities by next month after the White House and some federal agencies expressed mounting concerns over the Defense Department’s attempted manipulation of audiences overseas, according to several defense and administration officials familiar with the matter.