USA - Last week, a Denver man was arrested and charged with multiple felonies, but not for stealing, committing fraud, or engaging in violent crime. He was targeted for attempting to educate jurors about their rights in the courtroom. Mark Ianicelli, 56, set up a table outside of Lindsay-Flanigan Courthouse in Denver in order to educate jurors about jury nullification. Jury nullification is the process by which members of juries can nullify unjust laws by finding defendants charged with them not guilty.
USA - Did you know that Planned Parenthood gets more than half a billion dollars from the federal government every single year? Did you know that the Obama administration gives an additional 35 million dollars each year to the United Nations Population Fund to promote abortion and sterilization around the globe?
USA - Medical researchers are growing human organs in mice by implanting dead human baby organs into rodents, a practice that stands to gain greater scrutiny in light of undercover videos exposing what appears to be Planned Parenthood affiliates selling aborted baby parts to medical procurement companies like StemExpress.
SAUDI ARABIA - Saudi Arabia is returning to the bond market with a plan to raise $27 billion by the end of the year, in the starkest sign yet of the strain lower oil prices are putting on the finances of the world’s largest oil exporter. Bankers say the kingdom’s central bank has been sounding out demand for an issuance of about SR20 billion ($5.3 billion) a month in bonds — in tranches of five, seven and 10 years — for the rest of the year. Fahad al-Mubarak, the governor of the Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency, said in July that Riyadh had already issued its first $4 billion in local bonds, the first sovereign issuance since 2007. But the latest plans represent a major expansion of that programme, which bankers believe could even extend into 2016, given the outlook for the oil price.
USA - Has the US Supreme Court placed America on a collision course with the Almighty with its 5-4 decision to legitimize same-sex marriages, putting it on equal footing with traditional marriage in all 50 states? This is a question over which biblical scholars are engaged in a fierce debate.
UK - A crackdown on 'extremist' ideology threatens to criminalise previously orthodox views such as opposition to gay marriage. There is a disturbing tendency to introduce laws for one purpose and apply them for another. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the field of counter-terrorism.
USA - Another Planned Parenthood executive has been caught on video discussing the prices for the bodies of unborn babies, noting that “it’s all just a matter of line items” for “intact fetal cadavers” or dissections from them. It’s the fifth video in a series being released by the Center for Medical Progress, which set up a fake company and sent investigators undercover into Planned Parenthood abortion businesses to investigate whether body parts were being sold.
UK - Britain’s generous welfare system is behind pupils’ lack of ambition and ill-discipline, a group of Chinese teachers has said after spending four weeks in a comprehensive school in Hampshire. The five teachers, who are part of a TV series in which they take over the education of a class of 50 teenagers, have said British pupils’ unruly behaviour is directly linked to welfare handouts that has produced adolescents with rude behaviour.
UK - An “extremist agenda” is being taught to children as young as three, it has been claimed, with the National Union of Teachers accused of “spreading political propaganda” in classrooms by promoting Palestinian “resistance”. The NUT has designed and promoted a teaching resources pack, under a partnership with Edukid, a children’s education charity, which asks teachers to explore themes of Palestinian “occupation, freedom and resistance”.
PUERTO RICO - America's home-grown "Greece" is trapped in a vicious circle as a shrinking economy and an exodus of workers pushes the debt ratio through the roof. Puerto Rico has triggered the biggest municipal default in US history, risking years of bitter legal warfare with creditors and an austerity "death spiral" with echoes of Greece. The island Commonwealth finally ran out of money on Monday after a desperate effort to stay afloat, and missed a final deadline for a $58 million payment - handing over just $628,000. It implies a sweeping default on much of its $72 billion debt burden, equal to 100 percent of Puerto Rico’s gross national product (GNP) and more than five times the debt ratio of California or Texas.
EUROPE - It is not out of the question now that the final figure for a third Greek bail-out might exceed €100 billion. In mid-July, following marathon negotiations which included serious discussion of whether Greece should now leave the eurozone, it was agreed that negotiations should be opened about giving Greece a third bail-out. That bail-out was expected to be about €85 billion (£59.6 billion). That figure was based upon two important assumptions that have since been, rather dramatically, overturned.
USA - Iran intends to develop intercontinental ballistic missiles to ultimately strike the United States and not Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned during a live webcast addressing the US Jewish community Tuesday. “Iran’s terrorist regime continues to develop intercontinental ballistic missiles,” Netanyahu told Jewish supporters opposed to the Iranian nuclear deal. That agreement, intended by Western powers to rein in Iran’s nuclear weapons development program, will give Iran open access to world markets, billions of dollars in funds and more. Meanwhile, Iranian leaders have claimed it does not even require them to dismantle their facilities. “I want to make it clear to you,” Netanyahu continued. “Iran is not building these ICBMs to hit Israel. They already have missiles that can hit Israel everywhere. They are building these ICBMs to hit you. To hit the United States.”
GERMANY - The Greek government does not exclude the eventuality of indictments of German companies on charges of corruption, according to recent reports, on a contingency plan Athens has prepared for the event that Berlin forces it into state bankruptcy ("Grexit").
USA - President Barack Obama has in good faith negotiated an agreement with Iran that would end a broad range of economic sanctions on Iran, in return for Iran’s promise to scale back its efforts to build a nuclear bomb. I believe that Congress’s support of the agreement would be a very serious mistake.
ISRAEL - Writer, lawyer, actor, comedian and commentator Ben Stein wrote Monday that the deal the Obama administration has reached with Iran is “so bad that it could not be an accident, even for a President as inexperienced and foolish as Mr Obama or a Secretary of State so filled with anger as Mr Kerry.”