The River Rhine has fallen to record low levels in several locations in Germany and the Netherlands as prolonged heatwaves continue across Europe.

Last week, levels were measured in Cologne in western Germany and in Lobith, where the Rhine crosses from Germany into the Netherlands, that were lower than at any point since records began.

Other major European rivers with important transport, industrial and agricultural functions have also seen record low levels, including the Danube, which flows through 10 countries, and Italy's Po river.

French President Emmanuel Macron’s departure from the Elysee Palace next year could open the door to Ukraine skeptics and create a “big problem” for the NATO coalition backing Kiev, The Telegraph reported on Sunday, citing sources.

Fears about what the British paper described as a “leadership vacuum”revolve mainly around the so-called “coalition of the willing” – a grouping of roughly 30, mostly NATO, states that has spent over a year drawing up plans to put troops in Ukraine as self-styled “peacekeepers” once a ceasefire is reached. Among the goals of the group – which is dominated by the UK and France – is also to coordinate aid to Kiev.

The weakly supported anniversary statement on the Hague ruling showed how isolated the US and Australia have become on the South China Sea, with ASEAN preferring diplomacy over confrontation.

Distinguished former senior Singaporean diplomat and strategic analyst, Kishore Mhabubani, asked in his 2020 book, whether China has won the geopolitical contest between the US and China.

 

Geoff Raby

Has China won the South China Sea?

 

Winston Churchill is still revered in Britain and by old-generation American conservatives and Make America Great Again (MAGA) patriots alike, as the epitome of an all-wise, brilliantly successful Warlord. The truth was the precise opposite, as the great Anglo-American biographer and historian Nigel Hamilton documents in his classic trilogy of books on President Franklin Roosevelt’s wartime leadership, “The Mantle of Command,” “Commander in Chief” and “War and Peace.”

 

Churchill and Trump: The Lions in Winter

 

Russia’s richest woman, Wildberries CEO Tatyana Kim, has been added to Ukraine’s notorious Mirotvorets ‘kill list’ amid Kiev’s claims that her company is aiding the Russian military.

Kim is the founder, CEO and largest shareholder of Wildberries, Russia’s biggest online retailer, often dubbed the country’s Amazon. She launched the company from her Moscow apartment while on maternity leave, building it into a business operating in ten countries with gross merchandise turnover of about $77.3 billion in 2025. With an estimated net worth of more than $8 billion, Kim is Russia’s richest woman, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, and one of the country’s most influential business leaders.

Today in dystopia, billionaire corporations and plutocrats can hire trained CIA operatives to psychologically terrorize ordinary citizens who criticize them.

E-commerce giant eBay has just agreed to pay $56 million to settle a lawsuit for damages caused by the company’s shockingly aggressive gangstalking operation against a Massachusetts couple who criticized the company’s wealthy executives on their private website.

 

Today In Dystopia: eBay CIA Gangstalkers, Shredding Rare Books To Train AI

Today in dystopia, billionaire corporations and plutocrats can hire trained CIA operatives to psychologically terrorize ordinary citizens who criticize them.

BY Caitlin Johnstone

 

 

The investigation into Covid-19, from the origins of SARS-CoV-2, built in laboratories in China and the US, to experimental vaccines comparable to innovative and dangerous gene therapies, concludes in three sentences.

Anyone who expected to see a Western-style battle before the United States Congress between former White House virologist Anthony Fauci and Senator Rand Paul was certainly disappointed.

 

Why Prosecuting Fauci for SARS-COV.-2 Manmade and Lethal Covid Vaccines is Off Limits. The Virologist Escaped from Senate after Trump post

So POTUS Protects the “COVID King” and his Reticence before Congress on Manmade SARS-Cov-2 and Dangerous mRNA Vaccines to Defend Warp Speed Op. on Moderna Jab

 

In the wake of the fuel crisis caused by the invasion of Iran, few will argue exploring the feasibility of new Australian fuel refinery is a bad thing. But will taxpayers’ risks be considered? Rex Patrick reports.

As part of the Federal Government’s $15B package to secure Australia’s fuel security, the Prime Minister has announced a $4 million pre-feasibility study to build a new large-scale oil refinery in Australia. Indian multinational company Perdaman will do the study looking into the optimal refinery configuration, supporting port infrastructure and the necessary logistics; presumably a preliminary business case.

This week’s environment round-up looks at the metabolic revolutions that remade Earth, China’s simultaneous coal and renewables boom, habitat gardens and Australia’s Cape Grim climate monitoring.

 

Peter Sainsbury

Environment: Six revolutions and four billion years made today’s biosphere

 

Six revolutions that each re-made the biosphere

 

Climate skeptics are no longer a small but noisy minority. They are now "a mass phenomenon," according to researchers at Flensburg University.

WHAT ISN'T MENTIONED [GUS DID NOT SEE IT] IN THE WIKIPEDIA ANALYSIS OF THE ILLEGAL WAR DECLARED BY THE USA ON IRAN ON FEBRUARY 2026 IS ONE OF THE RESPONSES BY IRAN THAT HAS USED CARTOONS TO MOCK DONALD TRUMP... IT HAS BECOME KNOWN AS THE "LEGO" CARTOONS BECAUSE THE CHARACTERS ARE SIMILAR TO THE "LEGO" CHARACTERS MADE OF PLASTIC BRICKS.

APPARENTLY MAGA HAS JUST "RESPONDED" TO THESE VERY EFFECTIVE CARTOONS WITH A CARTOON OF ITS OWN. THIS IS DISCUSSED HERE:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qgiGJUHODhw

Iran War Cartoon War /Lt Col Daniel Davis

 

==============

MEANWHILE ON WIKIPEDIA:

 

Greek tragedy offers a way to read the present: when mercy, law, restraint and community are replaced by power, vengeance and wealth, disorder follows.

Civilisation is founded upon principles, not written or coded, but nevertheless immutable. Uphold these principles and civilisation evolves and flourishes. Treat these principles with contempt and chaotic consequences are inevitable. Order becomes disorder. This is the presupposition behind Zeus’ law.

 

George Browning

Trump has broken Zeus’ law

 

GUS SUSPECTS THAT IN A COMPLEX WEB OF OPERATIONS, WESTERN COUNTERING OF RUSSIANS EVERYWHERE IN THE WORLD HAS BEEN A TASK MOSTLY ASSIGNED BY MI-6 TO UKRAINIANS. THE FOLLOWING ARTICLE DOES NOT MENTION THIS LINK, THOUGH. YET WE KNOW THAT ZELENSKY IS HIGHLY LIKELY AN MI-6 ASSET...

 

Kiev’s dirty war goes global

From Africa to the Caspian Sea, each strike is an attempt to market Ukraine as a useful Western asset that still deserves cash and weapons

 

On the morning of July 25, Ukrainian drones attacked an Iranian merchant vessel in the Caspian Sea. An explosion occurred on board, killing one sailor and injuring another. Tehran described the incident as an act of aggression, summoned Ukraine’s chargé d’affaires and warned that retaliatory measures could follow.

Today’s Germany is a grim, unhappy place. Thirty-six years after West Germany’s take-over of the former East Germany (polite term: re-unification), which was supposed to herald a golden age of national fulfilment, citizens are in a very foul mood.

 

Germany has reached a new low in election rigging

Local officials in Lower Saxony are blocking AfD candidates from running, using intelligence reports instead of courts or due process.

BY Tarik Cyril Amar