The US has vowed to take measures to protect its security and that of its regional allies in case sanctions fail, even if it means using force against the North Korean regime. “If you see this for what it is, which is North Korea showing its muscle, then you need to stand strong and vote with the international community to strengthen sanctions on North Korea. And if you chose not to, we will go our own path,” Haley said, addressing China and Russia.

Taking the floor at the emergency UNSC session in New York, Vladimir Safronkov, Russia’s deputy envoy to the United Nations, spoke out against new sanctions, calling on member states to follow a joint Russian-China initiative agreed Tuesday, during the Moscow meeting between Russian president Vladimir Putin and his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping.

“Any attempts to justify a military solution are inadmissible and will lead to unpredictable consequences for the region. In the same manner, attempts to economically strangle North Korea are equally unacceptable, as millions of North Koreans remain in need of humanitarian aid,” Safronkov stressed.

China’s UN ambassador, Liu Jieyi called the joint proposal a “realistic route” in calming Korean tensions, noting that China has always been “strongly opposed to chaos and conflict on the Peninsula.”

“In their telephone talks, Abe and Trump affirmed they will hold a trilateral meeting with Moon on the sidelines of the G-20 summit starting Friday in Germany, to discuss how the three countries should cooperate to tackle the threat from the North,” Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Koichi Hagiuda said, according to the Japanese Kyodo News Plus.

According to Hagiuda, Trump’s Japanese counterpart praised the US for imposing fresh sanctions last week on a Chinese bank and individuals accused of laundering money for North Korea, the news outlet reported.

“All eyes will be on Trump, who stunned the world by pulling out of the 2015 Paris climate pact, questioned long-standing NATO allegiances and dismissed free-trade principles in favor of an ‘America First’ stance,” AP reported.

The military options are more grim than ever. Even the most limited strike risks staggering casualties, because North Korea could retaliate with the thousands of artillery pieces it has positioned along its border with the South. Though the arsenal is of limited range and could be destroyed in days, the United States defense secretary, Jim Mattis, recently warned that if North Korea used it, it “would be probably the worst kind of fighting in most people’s lifetimes.”

North and South Korea, separated by the world’s most heavily armed border, have had more than half a century to prepare for a resumption of the war that was suspended in 1953. While the North’s weaponry is less advanced, the South suffers a distinct geographical disadvantage: Nearly half its population lives within 50 miles of the Demilitarized Zone, including the 10 million people in Seoul, its capital.

“You have this massive agglomeration of everything that is important in South Korea — government, business and the huge population — and all of it is in this gigantic megalopolis that starts 30 miles from the border and ends 70 miles from the border,” said Robert E Kelly, a professor of political science at Pusan National University in South Korea. “In terms of national security, it’s just nuts.”

The Chinese response to the latest North Korea missile launch is not to threaten North Korea but to warn the US against military action whilst ruling out across-the-board sanctions and regime change.  Moreover China – contrary to its previous practice and its probable wishes – has been driven to state this clearly and in public, and has enlisted Russia’s support.

Kim Jong-un will no doubt go through the motions of rejecting China’s proposal.  He can do so in the confident knowledge that there will be no penalty since the US will reject it also.  In the meantime he has pocketed assurances from China and Russia that they will not impose across-the-board economic sanctions on his country. Privately he must be delighted with the way things are turning out.

The only other time indicators were at this level was before the dot com crash at the turn of the millennium. Experts are now worried that history is about to repeat itself. It comes after stock markets in both the US and Britain have continually topped their highest ever levels in recent months.

American's top stock indices the Dow Jones and S&P 500 are up a staggering 20 per cent and 16 per cent respectively over the past 12 months, while Britain's FTSE 100 has surged as much as 15 per cent over the past 12 months.

If companies are in good health and profits are growing, soaring share prices may be justified. But one method of assessing share values, the Shiller PE (Price to Earnings) ratio on average inflation-adjusted earnings from the previous 10 years, suggests that stocks are very expensive… this level is at its highest since the Dot Com bubble burst in 2000 and stock markets crashed.

Summoning over 900 politicians from both houses of the French parliament to a rare Congress at the palace of Louis XIV – the ‘Sun King’ – in Versailles, he threatened to overrule lawmakers with a referendum if they try to frustrate the “reforms” he wishes to impose on the legislature. Such assemblies are usually reserved for times of national crisis.

Reuters reports him as saying he desires to reign as a “Jupiterian” president – “a remote, dignified figure, like the Roman god of gods, who weighs his rare pronouncements carefully”.

This bizarre statement of intent comes just days after Macron scrapped the president’s traditional Bastille Day press conference, with an Elysée Palace official claiming the 39-year-old’s thoughts are “too complex” for journalists. Macron’s “complex thought process lends itself badly to the game of question-and-answer with journalists”, the spokesman explained – prompting much mockery in the French press.

Later this month, Mr Trump will also make a presidential visit to France. The Polish government is trying to become less energy-dependent on Russia and last month the first ever US liquefied natural gas shipment arrived.

For dealmaker Donald Trump, this is another win-win. Poland and other eastern European countries have a strategic imperative to diversify their energy sources, and the White House wants to sell more US gas overseas. He will be bringing that message to leaders at the Three Seas Summit.

In Federalist No. 2, John Jay writes of them as “one united people … descended from the same ancestors, speaking the same language, professing the same religion, attached to the same principles of government, very similar in their manners and customs. …” If such are the elements of nationhood and peoplehood, can we still speak of Americans as one nation and one people?

We no longer have the same ancestors. They are of every color and from every country. We do not speak one language, but rather English, Spanish and a host of others. We long ago ceased to profess the same religion. We are evangelical Christians, mainstream Protestants, Catholics, Jews, Mormons, Muslims, Hindus and Buddhists, agnostics and atheists. Federalist No. 2 celebrated our unity. Today’s elites proclaim that our diversity is our strength. But is this true, or a tenet of trendy ideology?

After the attempted massacre of Republican congressmen at that ball field in Alexandria, Fareed Zakaria wrote: “The political polarization that is ripping this country apart” is about “identity … gender, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation (and) social class.” He might have added – religion, morality, culture and history.

Zakaria seems to be tracing the disintegration of our society to that very diversity that its elites proclaim to be its greatest attribute: “If the core issues are about identity, culture and religion … then compromise seems immoral. American politics is becoming more like Middle Eastern politics, where there is no middle ground between being Sunni or Shiite.”

The two industrial powerhouses of Asia and Europe are being nudged into an informal alliance to pick up the leadership baton that the US is accused of having dropped since President Donald Trump’s inauguration earlier this year, according to diplomats and officials from several Group of 20 members.

The situation has crystallized ahead of this year’s annual G-20 meeting, which will be held in Germany’s busiest commercial port. That’s in part because, for the first time since the group’s founding, the US will be represented by a president who embraces protectionism, abandoning decades of American cheer-leading for free trade.