USA - The ten largest multinational corporations own almost everything people buy in supermarkets around the world. These corporations create a chain of smaller brands that specialize in different products, but at the end of the day customers' money still goes to the top ten corporations. When activists decided to boycott Nestle over the company's unethical business practices, did they also choose not to wear clothes from Ralph Lauren, Armani or Diesel and avoided using products from Biotherm, Vichy and Garnier? All this makes it hard to boycott anything. The companies will still get their share of money one way or another.

CHINA - The world's two most powerful countries are involved in an escalating dispute over territory in the South China Sea. China has nearly finished developing artificial islands in an area the US-allied Philippines has also claimed. It is feared the new islands will be used as military and naval bases to intimidate other countries and dominate the oil-rich region — which also happens to be one of the world's most important commercial waterways. China says it has sovereignty over the Spratly Islands, and has no hostile intent. Vietnam, Malaysia, Taiwan and Brunei also have claims in the South China Sea.

UNITED NATIONS - Saudi involvement in influential human rights panel leaves watchdog fuming. 'This is like making a pyromaniac into the town fire chief.' Saudi Arabia's envoy to the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) will head an influential panel on human rights, a watchdog group revealed Sunday - despite Riyadh's own poor track record for human rights issues. Saudi envoy Faisal Trad will chair the 5-member Consultative Group, a UNHRC panel which chooses representatives to report and address human rights violations in 77 countries abroad, UN Watch noted Sunday. "It's scandalous that the UN chose a country that has beheaded more people this year than ISIS to be head of a key human rights panel,” UN Watch executive director Hillel Neuer stated. “Petro-dollars and politics have trumped human rights.”

CUBA - Pope Francis visits Cuba this weekend after hosting secret talks at the Vatican between US and Cuban officials. Pope Francis will land in Cuba on Saturday with his credentials already polished – not just as one of the most popular pontiffs of modern times, but as the man who played a key role in forging the historic detente between Havana and Washington.

USA - Vice President Biden offered a glimpse earlier this week into how the White House, deeply frustrated by the gridlocked and bitter state of American politics, has come to view Pope Francis’s visit to the United States.

TEMPLE MOUNT, ISRAEL - Israel is under fire for the upsurge in Muslim violence on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem's Old City, but Israel says it's not making trouble. The most recent flare-up on the Temple Mount started on the eve of the Jewish holidays. Rioters prepared in advance and attacked police four days in a row.

ISRAEL - Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke with UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and said that Israel is acting against the violence on the Temple Mount, "and contrary to Palestinian incitement, Israel meticulously maintains the status quo." Netanyahu made it clear that Israel will act firmly against those throwing stones and Molotov cocktails which have caused the deaths of innocent Israelis.

USA - The Federal Reserve held interest rates near zero on Thursday, raising questions over how it will ever manage to lift them off the floor and how effectively it will communicate plans to do so. Only just over half economists polled have predicted such an outcome, a rare occurrence, and a sign of just how hard it has become to read the Fed these days.

Prior to the rate decision, Fed Chair Janet Yellen had not spoken in almost two months. Two of her closest allies had spoken late last month but delivered seemingly contradictory messages just days apart. After the decision, Yellen said while it was an "unfortunate state of affairs" that every comment by a Fed official is parsed for hints about the Fed's next move, "uncertainty in financial markets" is natural when a policy shift is near, as it is today.

CHILE - Chile's government has declared a state of emergency in a central region struck by a powerful earthquake. One million people had to leave their homes and at least 11 people died when the 8.3-magnitude quake hit on Wednesday night. In the coastal town of Coquimbo, waves of 4.7m (15ft) hit the shore. Small tsunami waves hit as far away as Alaska. The quake - the strongest in the world this year - lasted for more than three minutes and there were dozens of aftershocks.

USA - For two days straight, with barely time for sleep, Ron Earls and his team of firefighters battled a monster blaze this week that spread out of control in a small California town. The so-called Valley Fire, one of the worst wildfires in California history, destroyed more than 500 homes and displaced thousands after it began on Saturday, stunning even seasoned firefighters as it spread at lightning speed, whipped by high winds. Similar wildfires have waged a relentless campaign in the drought-stricken western United States this year, mobilizing some 30,000 firefighters, National Guard units and rescuers from across the country.

Beyond the millions of acres consumed by the flames that have killed three residents in California, firefighters in the region have paid a steep price with several killed in the line of duty.

SWITZERLAND - Global debt levels are dangerously high and central banks cannot keep the game going indefinitely, warns the high priest of orthodoxy. The Bank for International Settlements said the wild market ructions of recent weeks and capital outflows from China are warning signs that the massive build-up in credit is coming back to haunt. The venerable BIS - the so-called 'bank of central bankers' - was the only global body to warn repeatedly and loudly before the Lehman crisis that the system was becoming dangerously unstable.

USA - Financial luminaries such as Ray Dalio, Bill Gross, Kyle Bass, BCA Research, Ken (“Excel”) Rogoff, John Mauldin and Martin Armstrong think that we’re at the end of a debt supercycle.

Former director of the Office of Management and Budget said we’re facing a “debt supernova”.

Former Fed chief Alan Greenspan said recently debt, deficits and entitlement programs are all coming to a head in a few months, all over the world.

The European chief executive of Goldman Sachs Asset Management warns: There is too much debt and this represents a risk to economies.

The world’s most prestigious financial institution, the Bank of International Settlements (BIS) – known as the “Central Banks’ Central Bank” – writes:

“We are not seeing isolated tremors, but the release of pressure that has gradually accumulated over the years along major fault lines …”

USA - President Obama will apparently test just how far Pope Francis’ notorious tolerance will go by inviting a rogue’s gallery of people opposed to Catholic teaching to greet the pontiff at the White House during his visit next week. In a stunning show of political indecorum, Obama has invited a series of individuals who publicly flout Catholic teaching, including a pro-abortion religious sister, a transgender woman and the first openly gay Episcopal bishop, along with at least two Catholic gay activists. The White House was illuminated in gay pride colors on June 26, 2015, after the Supreme Court legalized gay same-sex marriage. Earlier this month, the Vatican officially prohibited transgender persons from being baptismal godparents posing as the opposite sex from which they were born.

UNITED NATIONS - International leaders have called on Israel to continue a ban on Jewish worship on the Temple Mount, Judaism's holiest site, in order to maintain calm and placate Muslim extremists who have been rioting for three days straight in Jerusalem. UN coordinator Nickolay Mladenov warned during a Security Council meeting Tuesday that clashes between Palestinian rioters and Israeli security forces could provoke violence by Muslims elsewhere in the Middle East. The United Nations is holding a meeting of the Middle East Quartet seeking a diplomatic solution to the conflict on September 30, on the sidelines of the General Assembly session… Meanwhile, United States on Monday condemned "all acts of violence" on the Temple Mount - and urged the Israeli government not to lift restrictions on Jewish visits.

ISRAEL - Starting this past Sunday morning, Israel seized a cache of pipe bombs at the Temple Mount that Muslims were going to use as they rioted over the Jewish New Year. Since then there have been clashes between Muslims and the Israeli police every day at the Temple Mount as Israel has tried to make it safe for Jews to enter. Muslims have been throwing rocks at the only gate used by non-Muslims to prevent them from entering. Of course, we now have Hamas threatening war over Israel’s actions on the Temple Mount. The Obama administration has once again refused to take the side of Israel, giving another mealy-mouthed statement yesterday that all sides should show restraint… Pathetic. But then what do we expect from a president who hates Israel?