Unless an agreement is made around half of the free standalone cash points which make up LINK, the UK's network of ATMs, could disappear. Millions of people living in rural areas could lose the ability to access bank notes and coins on a day-to-day basis, making them more reliant on "cashless" payments like bank cards, smartphones and online transactions.

Ron Delnevo, director of the ATM Industry Association in Europe, said: "Some organisations want to drive people away from cash because it suits their agenda, so they would be well suited by LINK disappearing." He also warned of a "domino effect", saying that if one big bank pulled out of the arrangement "the whole thing will just melt".

As you will see, there has been a very close correlation between the national debt and the Dow Jones Industrial Average for a very long time. For example, when Ronald Reagan took office in 1991, the US national debt had just hit 994 billion dollars and the Dow was sitting at 951. 

The cold hard truth is that we have been living way above our means for decades.  Our “prosperity” has been fueled by the greatest debt binge in the history of the world, and we are greatly fooling ourselves if we think otherwise. We would never have gotten to 20,000 on the Dow if Barack Obama and Congress had not gotten us into an extra 9.3 trillion dollars of debt over the past eight years.

Unfortunately, most people do not understand this, and the mainstream media is treating “Dow 20,000″ as if it is some sort of great historical achievement… Hopefully the good times will continue to roll for as long as possible. But there is no possible way that they can keep going indefinitely.

For decades, our debt has been growing much faster than our GDP has.  By definition, this is an unsustainable situation.  At some point we will have accumulated so much debt that our financial system will no longer be able to hold up under the strain. Many were convinced that we would reach that point before the US national debt hit 20 trillion dollars, and yet here we are. So how much higher can we go before the bubble bursts?

Meanwhile in Mexico, the Colima volcano erupted violently again at 15:47 with plumes of ash and gas rising to more than 3,000 meters above the summit. The Ebeko volcano in the Kuril Islands erupted on January 23, 2017.

At Sabancaya in Peru, earthquakes associated with magmatic movements (LP, tremor and hybrids) were elevated with 2 VT earthquakes (M3.5 and M3.7) hitting just several kilometers north of the crater. This week, there were 76 daily explosions on average. The eruptive plumes reached 2,500 meters above the crater, spreading over more than 40 km.

“The people at the top of our system, whether they’re politicians or officials or journalists or think tankers like me, we’re all totally focused on Brexit,” said Charles Grant, who heads the London-based Center for European Reform. “We haven’t thought about Trump as much as we should have.”

It is possible that Prime Minister Theresa May, by throwing in her lot with Mr Trump, could ride out any changes to the international order. But if that approach does not succeed, it could have severe consequences both for her nation and for the world that Britain plays a role in keeping together. Ms May has sought to win over Mr Trump, whom she will visit this week, just as her European counterparts are exploring more fundamental questions about American reliability.

“The British debate on Trump is over very trivial stuff, like who Trump spoke to before May, and the German debate is over the future of the liberal order in the West,” said Mark Leonard, the director of the London-based European Council on Foreign Relations.

Frank-Walter Steinmeier, the German foreign minister, wrote in a column this week for the German newspaper Bild that, with Mr Trump’s election, “the old world of the 20th century is gone” and that Germany could confront drastic changes.

Where Americans go wrong is in failing to recognize that there’s always a catch to such devil’s bargains purportedly carried out for the good of all society.

You want free education for your children? The government can take care of it. In exchange for free public schools, however, your children will be molded and indoctrinated into compliant, obedient citizens who reflect the government’s values rather than your own.

You want free health care? The government can take care of that, too. In exchange, your medical decisions — how you live and die — will ultimately be determined by corporations to whom you are little more than a line item impacting their profit and loss margins.

You want to be insulated from all things that might cause offense? That’s not a problem for the government. Its thought police will use hate crime laws to criminalize speech, thought and actions that may be politically incorrect.

You want a guarantee of safety? Sure, but your local police will also have to be militarized and trained in battlefield tactics, your communities and communications will be subjected to round-the-clock surveillance, and you — the citizenry — will be treated as suspects and enemy combatants.

You want to root out domestic extremism and terrorism? That’s just fine. But in the process of identifying and targeting terrorists, the government will have the power to label anyone who disagrees with its policies as an extremist/terrorist and subject them to indefinite detentions.

Are you starting to get the picture?

This is the terrible price — the loss of our freedoms and the enslavement of future generations — that must eventually be paid for the goods and services rendered by a government whose priorities are the acquisition of ever-more power, control and money. As the old adage warns: “A government big enough to give you everything you want is a government big enough to take away everything that you have.”

US President Donald Trump, in a break with previous administrations, has vowed to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and move the American embassy there.

“Transferring the US embassy to Jerusalem would be a public and more explicit than ever declaration of war against Islam,” said the Shiite cleric, leader of the powerful Mahdi Army militia responsible for attacks against US troops in Iraq a decade ago, according to Middle East Eye.

Sadr called for the “formation of a special division to liberate Jerusalem were the decision to be implemented” and urged the Cairo-based Arab League, as well as the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, the world’s leading pan-Islamic body, to either take decisive action on the issue or disband themselves.

“Here is a case where the United States, for years, has let Beijing tell us who we could talk to in Taiwan. Just think about that for a minute. And now we have other governments telling us where we can put our embassy in Israel. Can they tell us where to put our embassy in Canada?” he asked sarcastically. “I’m not talking about relations with Canada or Israel. I’m talking about Germany saying, ‘Well, you can’t put your embassy in Canada there.’”

“Obviously the Middle East is a sensitive area,” he conceded. “You want to be prudent, you want to be careful. But you ought to do what the United States needs to have done. The qualms that others may have are things you need to alleviate, you need to deal with, you need to be reasonable about it, but they’re not qualms that stop you from acting in your own interest.”

“President Donald Trump raised concerns during the campaign by asserting that some allies are not pulling their weight and by suggesting that he might not object to Japan or South Korea developing their own nuclear weapons if they do not pay more for US military support,” Stars & Stripes noted in reporting Mattis’ travel agenda.

A defense official told CNN that “folks in Japan are very happy about the visit.” Japan has been looking to improve its military capabilities to deal with potential threats from China and North Korea.

The metaphorical clock assesses the danger of apocalypse based on the threats such as nuclear Armageddon, bioterrorism, climate change and other catastrophes. The group of experts behind the clock, known as the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, reset the time every year according to the threat level. Atomic scientists created the Doomsday Clock in 1947 as a response to the growing nuclear threats facing the world. 

It was the brainchild of the nuclear scientists who were involved in the Manhattan project - the scheme that created the first nuclear weapons. The physicists unveiled the Doomsday Clock after the atomic bombs they had helped to create decimated Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of World War Two.

Co-founder Eugene Rabinowitch said: “The Bulletin's clock is not a gauge to register the ups and downs of the international power struggle; it is intended to reflect basic changes in the level of continuous danger in which mankind lives in the nuclear age.” Just two days after Donald Trump's inauguration, the bulletin warned: "Terrorism involving nuclear or radiological materials remains one of the gravest threats to humanity and to global stability."

The Doomsday Clock came the closest it has ever been to midnight in 1953 during the Cold War. This was the year that the US created the hydrogen bomb. At the time, the Bulletin warned: "Only a few more swings of the pendulum, and, from Moscow to Chicago, atomic explosions will strike midnight for Western civilisation.”

In 1953, the clock was TWO MINUTES TO MIDNIGHT.