CHINA - It is never possible to be sure that we aren’t about to face disaster. Some people seem to have made a living by foreseeing trouble ahead. The American stock market has “forecast” something like 10 of what turned out to be the past two recessions. And there is no reason why the Chinese stock market shouldn’t follow the same pattern.

USA - The unreal, unhealthy world kids can see online that parents may never have heard of. No wonder Steve Jobs was low tech at home.

USA - It didn’t take long. Within weeks of the US Supreme Court decision to legalise same-sex marriage, polygamous families have sued to have their own relationships recognised as marriages. Kody Brown and his four wives are the stars of Sister Wives, the reality TV show about the day-to-day life of a polygamous family. The Browns used to live in Utah, where the government prosecutes openly polygamous spouses, so they have moved over the border. Nevada has a more relaxed approach to these issues. The Browns are on a roll. In December 2013 they won a legal victory when a Federal district court overturned parts of a Utah statute banning polygamous marriages. But the Utah Attorney-General has appealed. He claims that women and children in polygamous relationships are often abused and that courts have consistently reprehended polygamy.

USA - As is typical of our time, over the past few months, many newscasters have used the words apocalypse or apocalyptic to evoke the negative implications of events as diverse as the threat of Grexit, music streaming wars, an asteroid threat, the American housing market, the migrant crisis, the continuing war in Syria and the negative state of the world more generally. Not to mention the flurry of posts which have appeared about upcoming instalments in the highly successful X-Men franchise, X Men: Apocalypse or our obsession with zombies.

UK - Women who walk around drunk and provocatively dressed should expect to be sexually assaulted, Chrissie Hynde, the lead singer of the Pretenders, has suggested. The former chart topper claimed in a Sunday newspaper interview that scantily clad women were likely to “entice a rapist” and that it is their “fault” if they are attacked. She discloses in a new memoir how she was abducted and sexually assaulted by a motorcycle gang in Ohio in the early 1970s – but concludes it was “all my doing” because of the way she was dressed and the fact that she was under the influence of drugs. “If I'm walking around and I'm very modestly dressed and I'm keeping to myself and someone attacks me, then I'd say that's his fault. But if I'm being very lairy and putting it about and being provocative, then you are enticing someone who's already unhinged — don't do that.”

UK - Britain's most beautiful beaches have been covered in thousands of tiny fish in a Bank Holiday mystery. Beachgoers at Branscombe and Sidmouth were swamped with thousands of tiny fish, believed to be whitebait. Families enjoying a day out were shocked to find piles of dead fish at the high water mark during the Bank Holiday weekend. Questions remain over how the fish ended up on the Devon beaches and why none of the hungry seagulls will touch them. The seabirds that have plagued Britain's holidaygoers this summer seemed to be refusing to take advantage of the free meal in front of them.

USA - This Sunday could be a distressing day for millions of churchgoers across the country. As many as 400 pastors, some of them leading megachurch congregations, may resign following the Ashley Madison leak.

EUROPE - Security on Europe's rail networks will be stepped up with cross-border armed patrols and increased spot checks on trains, European ministers said on Saturday. Tickets on international routes could also bear passengers' names, under a proposal to be considered by European states. In response to the foiled gun attack on a French train last weekend, Theresa May, the Home Secretary, and ministers from eight other European countries agreed at a meeting in Paris to step up cooperation between national police and security forces. The ministers stressed the need for “coordinated and simultaneous checks on targeted routes” and urged the European Commission to strengthen gun control.

RUSSIA - As Russia and China were staging their biggest joint maritime exercises in history, RT correspondent Daniel Bushell was aboard the Russian flagship to take the action in first hand. Chinese and Russian commanders coordinating the drills, which have been dubbed ‘Joint Sea 2015 II,’ described it as an “unprecedented show of military cooperation,” according to Bushell. A total of 22 ships, 20 aircraft, 40 armored vehicles, and 500 marines from the two countries, including the Varyag missile cruiser, flagship of the Russian Pacific fleet; and the Shenyang destroyer, the Chinese flagship, participated in the active phase of the exercises. The drills were held in Peter the Great Bay not far from the port-city of Vladivostok in Russia’s Far East, as the vessels conducted their training operations in both Russian territorial waters and neutral waters in the Sea of Japan.

EUROPE - Around 800 potential terrorists "prepared to do anything" have returned to Europe after fighting or training with Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil), Spanish security experts have warned. Those returning are believed to have been trained in terrorist camps in Syria and Iraq, Spanish anti-terrorism forces told their European colleagues following the attack on the Amsterdam-Paris train on Friday by Ayoub El-Khazzani. The potential terrorists “are not especially well trained”, but “they are prepared to do anything and once they have been indoctrinated, they receive minimal training in the use of weapons”, the radio station Cadena Ser quoted security experts saying.

ISRAEL - Disturbing footage has surfaced Friday, of a band of Muslims terrifying preschool-age Jewish children on the Temple Mount. Veiled and masked Muslim women are seen shouting so violently at the children that the Israel Police is forced to escort them along a wall - not the main path. Despite regular harassment, rioting, and even assaults of non-Muslims on the Temple Mount, arrests of violent Muslim extremists are relatively rare. In fact, Israeli authorities have submitted to the Jordanian Waqf's demands to ban all forms of non-Muslim worship on the Temple Mount - despite its status as the holiest site in Judaism - to the point of turning a blind eye to outright incitement.

ISRAEL - Chief Ashkenazic Rabbi says Sabbath is being violated in Ashdod and elsewhere in Israel. Rabbi David Lau, the Chief Ashkenazic Rabbi, said Monday that he was extremely upset by the fact that the Sabbath is being violated in public, in Jerusalem, Ashdod, and elsewhere in Israel. The rabbi's announcement opened a session of the Chief Rabbinate Council. He was referring to the opening of a new “Yes Planet” cinema house in Jerusalem, which will operate on Sabbaths, as well as the Big shopping complex in Ashdod and other shopping centers, which operate on Shabbat. "The Sabbath is important to all the Jewish people, and we are horrified to learn that it has been violated in many places in Israel,” he said. "We call upon all of the heads of the public to make a great effort for the honor of the Sabbath,” he added.

USA - About 13,000 people on public assistance tumble into homelessness every month in Los Angeles County, according to a new study that experts say provides the clearest picture yet of extreme poverty in the region. Although many quickly find work or rely on family to get off the streets, the number experiencing "continuous, unremitting, chronic homelessness" continues to grow, even after 10,000 people were housed over the last three years, according to the report being released Tuesday by the Economic Roundtable, a nonprofit research group in Los Angeles.

The report recommended that the welfare system intervene to help children and young adults who become homeless before their condition becomes chronic.

USA - Guess who wins when someone challenges the US Supreme Court’s rules concerning free speech on the plaza in front of its building? Yeah, it’s the Supreme Court. The ruling came from the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, which affirmed a ban on expressive activity such as handing out leaflets or carrying a sign on the US Supreme Court plaza, the publicly owned patio leading to the steps of the court.

JAPAN - Tens of thousands of people gathered outside the Japanese parliament building on Sunday to reject plans put forth by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe that would see an aggressive expansion of the nation’s armed forces despite a long-standing constitutional mandate for a “defense only” military posture. The enormous crowd — estimated by organizers as more than 120,000 people — is opposing a set of bills moving through the country’s legislature which would allow the country’s military to engage in overseas fighting and ratchet up spending on new weapons systems. Despite loud public protest against the plan, Abe has continued to defend the plan. Demonstrators carried banners reading “Peace Not War” and “Abe, Quit!”