Trump views US wars of intervention and occupation around the world, all in countries that pose no threat to American citizens, a waste of taxpayer money. He is the only candidate in either party who will question the cost and legitimacy of our commitment to Cold War relics like NATO and continuing to station troops in South Korea; our country’s involvement in religious civil wars in the Middle East and overthrowing and killing secular dictators there it doesn’t like (Hussein and Kaddafi); and our threatening Russia by encouraging its neighboring states of Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Ukraine, and Georgia to join NATO and giving them weapons and military guarantees to defend them.

US exploits are leading America to the brink of war with Russia — and possibly, given its actions in the South China Sea, to war with China as well. Putin has said, “The US wants to subdue Russia, to solve US problems at Russia’s expense. No one in history ever managed to do this to Russia and no one ever will.” More ominously, in a speech delivered at the Valdai International Discussion Club in Sochi, he states, “Russia does not wish for chaos to spread, does not want war, and has no intention of starting one. However, today Russia sees the outbreak of war as almost inevitable, is prepared for it, and is continuing to prepare for it…” Is World War III inevitable?

“The preachers of hatred” was how the news weekly Der Spiegel characterized the new German right on its cover last month, emblazoned with a portrait of the petite Ms Petry. But this brisk, garrulous 40-year-old is more than Ms Merkel’s foil. She is a disruptive, new force on the German political scene.

She and her party, the Alternative for Germany, have ridden a wave of discontent over the chancellor’s embrace of more than one million refugees to their strongest poll ratings ever. They are now roiling Germany’s placid, consensus-driven politics and threatening to alter its political landscape as insurgent parties have done in less stable or prosperous countries around Europe.

Not unlike Donald J Trump in the United States, she is also breaking open a political dialogue and liberating a new and impolitic — critics say racist — language in the mainstream. “The power of the established parties is crumbling,” a jubilant Ms Petry told supporters after her party took 13.2 percent of the vote in normally sleepy local elections in the central state of Hesse last Sunday.

Under a USD-3-billion contract between the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and DynCorp, mercenaries from the company are to be deployed to Yemen, where UAE forces are fighting against the Yemeni army and Popular Committees on Saudi orders, Khabar News Agency quoted an official with Yemeni Defense Ministry as saying.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the first group of the mercenaries recently arrived in the port city of Aden to replace those of Blackwater, a notorious American group now renamed Academi.

He added that the new militants included special naval forces, who entered the port of Ras Omran southwest of Aden. DynCorp is a rival of Blackwater, which hires mercenaries and sends them to fight in foreign countries on paid missions.

At this point, Italian banking stocks have declined a whopping 28 percent since the beginning of 2016, and when you look at some of the biggest Italian banks the numbers become even more frightening. On Monday, shares of Monte dei Paschi were down 4.7 percent, and they have now plummeted 56 percent since the start of the year. Shares of Carige were down 8 percent, and they have now plunged a total of 58 percent since the start of the year. This is what a financial crisis looks like, and just like we are seeing in South America, the problems in Italy appear to be significantly accelerating.

So what makes Italy so important?

Well, we all saw how difficult it was for the rest of Europe to come up with a plan to rescue Greece. But Greece is relatively small – they only have the 44th largest economy in the world. The Italian economy is far larger. Italy has the 8th largest economy in the world, and their government debt to GDP ratio is currently sitting at about 132 percent. There is no way that Europe has the resources or the ability to handle a full meltdown of the Italian financial system. Unfortunately, that is precisely what is happening.

Now a team of scientists has demonstrated that a computer can outperform human judges in predicting who will commit a violent crime. In a paper published last month, they described how they built a system that started with people already arrested for domestic violence, then figured out which of them would be most likely to commit the same crime again.

The technology could potentially spare victims from being injured, or even killed. It could also keep the least dangerous offenders from going to jail unnecessarily. And yet, there’s something unnerving about using machines to decide what should happen to people. If targeted advertising misfires, nobody’s liberty is at stake.

Iran’s most recent ballistic missile test, which violates current UN Security Council resolutions, comes a day after the international community’s nuclear watchdog organization disclosed that it is prohibited by the nuclear agreement from publicly reporting on potential violations by Iran. Iranian leaders now say that they are poised to walk away from the deal if the United States and other global powers fail to advance the Islamic Republic’s “national interests.”

“If our interests are not met under the nuclear deal, there will be no reason for us to continue,” Abbas Araqchi, Iran’s deputy foreign minister, warned during remarks delivered to a group of Iranian officials in Tehran. “If other parties decide, they could easily violate the deal,” Araqchi was quoted as saying by Iran’s state-controlled media. “However, they know this will come with costs.”

Araqchi appeared to allude to the United States possibly leveling new economic sanctions as a result of the missile test. The Obama administration moved forward with new sanctions earlier this year as a result of the country’s previous missile tests. Iran’s latest missile test drew outrage from longtime regime critics on Capitol Hill.

The new missile firings were the latest in a series of tests in recent days, aimed at demonstrating that Iran will push ahead with its ballistic program after scaling backing its nuclear program under the deal reached last year with the US and other world powers. Israel, long an opponent of Iran, offered no comment on the test, though Biden issued a strong warning over any possible violation of the nuclear deal.

"A nuclear-armed Iran is an absolutely unacceptable threat to Israel, to the region and the United States. And I want to reiterate which I know people still doubt here. If in fact they break the deal, we will act," he said. Biden's comments came after meeting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who strongly opposed the nuclear deal. The tests, however, don't violate the accord. The landmark deal, which led to Iran dramatically scaling back its nuclear program, does not include provisions against missile launches.

“This is one of several things we were very worried about,” South Miami Mayor Philip Stoddard, who is also a biological sciences professor at Florida International University, told the Miami New Times. “You would have to work hard to find a worse place to put a nuclear plant, right between two national parks and subject to hurricanes and storm surge.”

Turkey Point came online in the early 1970s; it supplies power to more than one million homes in South Florida. The new study blames the leaks on the reactor’s cooling canals, which were recently found to have caused a massive underground saltwater plume to migrate west, threatening a wellfield that supplies drinking water to the Florida Keys.

Turkey Point is not the sole leaky plant in America. Last month, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo acknowledged that the state’s Indian Point Nuclear facility was leaking tritium into groundwater. Meanwhile, The Vermont Department of Health has noted ongoing investigations into leaks at Vermont Yankee since 2010, while New York’s FitzPatrick Plant has been “plagued by water leaks” in 2014, Gizmodo notes.

By contrast some of the most profound writing in history has made use of much less. The Lord’s Prayer is 66 words, American President Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address in 1863 was encapsulated in 271 words while the Ten Commandments contain just 297.

Critics said the rambling ruling exposes how business is strangled by EU red tape and was another reason to vote to quit the bloc on June 23. UK Independence Party employment spokesman Jane Collins said she was not surprised a directive on cabbages was so long winded because the EU motto is “regulate everything then tax it”.

She said: “If the laws were short and to the point and on matters that actually needed legislation they wouldn’t have the excuse to employ so many people and occupy so many offices: there is probably a ‘green leafy vegetable’ department we’ve yet to uncover.”

Sir Jon Cunliffe, the Bank's deputy governor for financial stability, said the renegotiation of Britain's relationship with the EU was "very important", "significant" and "material", and secured "quite powerful" safeguards for the UK. But Mr Carney insisted the Bank would not take a position on whether Britain should stay in the 28-member bloc. Here's a quick look at what Mr Carney and Sir Jon had to say about Brexit.

On the economy: Mr Carney stressed that, in the long term, the Bank of England had the tools to deliver financial stability, whether Britain was in the EU or not. However, in the short term, the impact of a Brexit could "bring some challenges to financial stability". If Britain left the EU and policymakers could not secure the same business conditions for the City that it enjoys today, it would "without question" hit UK jobs and growth, Mr Carney said. This relationship would depend on the "degree of mutual recognition" that would be afforded to the UK.

Mr Carney was also asked what the probability was that the City would get a good deal. He said:"Mutual recognition arrangements are possible to achieve but in general they take a very long time and the challenge is the degree of freedom one retains in setting one's own path of rules and maintaining that mutual recognition." In other words, if the goal of a Brexit is to wrestle back sovereignty from Brussels, it's unlikely Britain could do this and enjoy the same deal as it does now.

On trade: Sir Jon poured cold water on the prospect of swift trade deals with Britain's most important partners. He described trade negotiations as "slow moving" and said they often took a "number of years" to complete. He used the example of the EU's agreement with Canada, which is currently in its eighth year.

On the law: There has been some discussion about whether David Cameron's deal with Brussels is legal. The agreement was reached on an intergovernmental basis. This means it was done outside the EU treaty framework. Sir Jon said he believed the agreement was "binding". He told MPs: "I don't think the European Court of Justice (ECJ) can or would ignore this international law decision."

On why policymakers are ready to inject cash into the market: The Bank of England announced this week that it was ready to pump billions of pounds of extra cash into the financial system if markets seized up in the weeks around the EU referendum in June. Sir Jon said the decision to announce the move well ahead of the vote was taken to limit the downside risks. Such a move too close to the referendum risked triggering volatility in itself, he said.

Seven or eight months ago, Germany was a different country than it is today. There were no controversial political issues demanding immediate action and Chancellor Angela Merkel's leadership was uncontested. It was quiet and comfortable. But then the refugees began streaming into Europe and the country's sleepy tranquility came to a sudden end.

Since then, disgusting eruptions of xenophobia have come in quick succession, a right-wing populist party is on its way to holding seats in several state parliaments, Merkel has gained approval from the center-left Social Democrats and from the Greens, some conservatives want to throw her out and the state is overwhelmed. Does anyone know what is happening? What is wrong with this country?

The United States these days is putting another possible outcome of the crisis of representation on display. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump is dependent neither on his party's establishment nor on the established media. He is creating his own electorate with the help of the Internet. That is the path of extremely direct democracy.

It isn't difficult to see the black dystopia that may result: Anger, fear, unchallenged claims to truth and conspiracy theories create a mood that elevates those politicians who are best able to manipulate that mood, in part because he or she helped create it. Identity replaces representation, just like in a dictatorship. All checks and balances - including the party system and the media - fall away. Democracy falls prey to emotion.

Germany is still far away from such a fate. But the first steps have been taken.

Confirmed by the Navy Times, the stand-off has been heating up on both sides. After news in February that the Chinese deployed an advanced surface-to-air missile battery to the Paracel Islands, US Pacific Command head Admiral Harry Harris told lawmakers that China was militarizing the South China Sea. “In my opinion, China is clearly militarizing the South China Sea,” Harris testified on February 24. “You’d have to believe in a flat Earth to believe otherwise.”

However, China is not the nation sending warships halfway across the globe in a clear attempt to provoke a fight. While China is no saint, they are not the country with nearly 700 military bases in dozens of countries across the globe who’ve been responsible for the total destruction of multiple nation-states in just the past decade

As the global economy teeters on the edge of collapse, the US has ramped up its saber rattling, not only with China but with the Russians as well. While America spends more on war than anyone else in the world, the idea that they can take on China and Russia simultaneously is deadly insane.

I had previously reported that France was ready to introduce a similar UN Security Council resolution back in September, but at that time the French backed off because they did not have full support from the Obama administration. But now that Obama is approaching the end of his term, he suddenly seems more willing to make a bold move. Remember, this is not just some Internet rumor. This comes directly from an article that was just published in the Wall Street Journal that claims to have top White House officials as the source of this information.

According to those anonymous officials, the Obama administration is now ready to potentially move forward with the kind of UN Security Council resolution that I mentioned above… “The strongest element on the list of options under consideration would be US support for a Security Council resolution calling on both sides to compromise on key issues, something Israel had opposed and Washington has repeatedly vetoed in the past.”

The article goes on to say that the parameters of an agreement for a two state solution would be based on the 1949 armistice line but would allow for land swaps so that many Jewish settlements that have been built since 1967 would not be swallowed up by the new Palestinian state. The Palestinians would be required to recognize Israel as a Jewish state, and East Jerusalem would receive full UN Security Council recognition as the capital of a new Palestinian state. This is something that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has promised that he would never agree to.

For a long time, Barack Obama has expressed a desire to see the establishment of a Palestinian state before he leaves office. Netanyahu has always been his nemesis in this regard, but now Obama seems determined to try to make something happen at the United Nations while he still has the power to do so. Let us pray that he is not successful.