The annual survey, which was conducted by Gallup-Healthways, found that the US - which did not make the top 10 either - took somewhat of a dip in the compilation of world happiness rankings. The list included 145 nations around the world and the subjects were more than 146,000 adults.

The participants answered questions about their feelings of well-being. There were five categories they were asked to consider: their sense of purpose, relationships with others, financial circumstances, connection to community, and physical health. Their responses were then assessed as "thriving," "struggling," or "suffering" in each of these five areas. The US, which was ranked at #12 in the 2013 survey, fell to #23 in 2014, indicating a lower overall level of satisfaction among residents.

The Shanghai Composite index fell 8.5 percent despite emergency measures to shore up the market, with a roster of the biggest blue-chip companies down by the maximum daily limit of 10 percent. The mood was further soured by news that corporated profits in China are now contracting in absolute terms, falling 0.3 percent over the past year. The violence of the moves unnerved investors worldwide, stirring fears that the Communist Party may be losing control after stoking a series of epic bubbles in property, corporate investment and equities to keep up the blistering pace of economic growth.

Mark Williams, chief Asia strategist at Capital Economics, said the Chinese authorities appear to have been testing the waters to see what would happen if they stopped intervening. The market verdict was swift and brutal. “They have got themselves into a very difficult situation. They have put a lot of credibility on the line to shore up prices and this credibility has been badly damaged,” he said.

Western banks say they are coming under heavy pressure from Chinese officials to refrain from negative comments. They are effectively gagged if they wish to do business in China. “Large parts of the market are closed, and those stocks that are still trading are selling off regardless of support measures. Clearly something very serious is happening,” said one economist. The long-standing assumption that the Chinese authorities know what they are doing has been shattered.

“Assuming the (agreement) goes through the US government and the UN Security Council, it’s hard to see what the Israelis can do to protect themselves other than attack the Iranian facilities,” said Middle East Forum president Daniel Pipes in an interview with G2.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been outspoken in his opposition to the agreement. Pipes, a historian, writer and political commentator, said that he sees such an attack as “the next stage” and suggests Israel could receive the assistance of Saudi Arabia. “The now-open relationship between Riyadh and Jerusalem makes the prospect of Saudi assistance less far-fetched than it once was,” Pipes said.

He added that “leaks of Saudi documents shows how preoccupied the leadership is with the Iranian threat.” “So, yes, Saudi assistance to Israel could happen,” he said. Pipes said he “didn’t doubt” that Israel would launch some kind of an attack, and “under consideration” among various options is a high-altitude electromagnetic pulse, or EMP, attack on Iranian facilities.

The new policy, which takes effect immediately, comes three years after the organization removed its prohibition on gay youth, but local Boy Scout units chartered by religious organizations will still be permitted to exclude gay adults from volunteering as den leaders, scoutmasters or camp counselors.

The latest move was widely seen as being aimed at quelling a backlash against the Boy Scouts amid declining membership and the threat of litigation, while addressing concerns of religious institutions that account for about 70 percent of the 100,000-plus Boy Scout units nationwide. The rest are chartered to civic groups and educational organizations.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the largest of all Boy Scout sponsors, said in a statement it was "deeply troubled" by the move and said the Mormons' "century-long association with Scouting will need to be examined." The resolution implementing the change was backed by 79 percent of the National Executive Board members voting and present on Monday, the Boy Scouts said. The organization's executive committee had unanimously recommended adoption of the new policy on July 13, citing a "sea change in the law with respect to gay rights."

He repeated that assertion on Monday, saying efforts to keep the old policy intact would lead to "simultaneous legal battles in multiple jurisdictions and at staggering cost." John Stemberger, chairman of the Christian youth outdoor program Trail Life USA, said on Friday that lifting the ban would be an affront to Christian morals and will make it “even more challenging for a church to integrate a (Boy Scouts) unit as part of a church’s ministry offerings.”

Responsibility for the rush-to-vote ultimately lies with the Senate Majority leader, Mitch McConnell (Republican for Kentucky). McConnell reportedly had just reached a deal with Senator Barbara Boxer (Democrat for California) on six years of federal spending and wanted to ram it through with little debate and no amendments. The schedule made it so that effectively no one aside from the authors would know for sure what was buried in the massive bill.

It goes without saying that if the Senators themselves don’t have a chance to read a bill, then neither does the voting public have a chance to analyze it and give feedback to their representatives. The very idea of voting on bills without debate is undemocratic and incompatible with a free society.

When Americans correctly understand the level of corruption in the legislature, there can be no wondering about the source of the bad laws and injustices we lament so frequently on this website. The only remedy is more exposure and political pressure, but the vast majority of voters are too wrapped up with sports and Reality TV to be bothered with political activism.

The institution's management was "working on initiation of operations," Xinhua quoted bank president KV Kamath, formerly a private banker in India, as saying, including "making business policy" and "developing project preparations." Operations would begin late this year or early in 2016, he added.

The opening — announced in a short report — comes two weeks after a BRICS summit hosted by Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The late Bob Chapman predicted it. So does Paul Craig Roberts. It could “destroy Western civilization,” he believes. Financial deregulation turned Wall Street into a casino with no rules except unrestrained making money. Catastrophic failure awaits. It’s just a matter of time. Ellen Brown calls the “derivatives casino …a last-ditch attempt to prop up a private pyramid scheme” – slowly crumbling under its own weight. For years, Warren Buffett called derivatives “financial time bombs” – for economies and ordinary people.

Unless collateralized or guaranteed, their worth depends on the creditworthiness of counter-parties. Earnings on derivatives are “wildly overstated,” Buffett explains – because they’re “based on estimates whose inaccuracy may not be exposed for many years.” When corporate bosses ask financial executives how profits look in any quarter, they, in turn, “ask how much do you want”, then manipulate things to oblige when told.

Since 2008, too-big-to-fail banks consolidated to much greater size than ever. They’re financial and political powerhouses controlling world economies to their own advantage. Civilization’s only hope is smashing them – dismantling them into small, impotent pieces, or ideally putting money back in public hands where it belongs. A casino culture of anything goes persists. When counter-parties don’t have funds to pay on demand, bubbles begin deflating. It’s just a matter of time before current market mania ends.

There has been talk of political and fiscal union since the crisis erupted five years ago. It was one of two options for resolving the Euro crisis that the German Government seriously considered, before ultimately rejecting it in favour of the inter-state negotiations that produced the treaties creating the European Fiscal Compact and the Single Supervisory Mechanism, or banking union.

But the Greek debacle has demonstrated the limits of the inter-governmental approach. In the final resort, enforcing Eurozone rules requires a form of political control over member-states. Germany is also in a better position to dictate the kind of federalism the Eurozone might adopt. Though German taxpayers have become more exposed to other Eurozone members' debts, Berlin has put that money to good effect, using it to extend its reach over afflicted countries' fiscal affairs.

In Hollande's formula, the emphasis lies on 'democratic control' of the 'common budget'. For Germany, however, the aim would not be to create a European 'demos', but to gain control of (wayward) members’ fiscal policies.

Thus, German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble – Germany's most popular politician – called a year ago for 'a European budget commissioner with powers to reject national budgets if they do not correspond to the rules … jointly agreed' and 'a 'Eurozone parliament' comprising the MEPs of Eurozone countries to strengthen the democratic legitimacy of decisions affecting the single currency bloc.

For Berlin, then, the ideal form of European political and fiscal union would offer indirect, but reliable, control over the fiscal policies of other Eurozone members to ensure their 'competitiveness' and the euro's long-term stability, but the retention of national control over those issues that underpin Germany's position as Europe's paramount power.

It is not one that bolsters the UK's global influence in any way, shape or form. Indeed, it greatly diminishes our ability to deal with countries such as America in our own way, on our own terms. The very idea that America has a stronger friend in a UK inside the EU is utter nonsense. The EU now represents Britain on the World Trade Organisation, wants our UN Security Council seat and wants an EU army which would weaken the influence of NATO.

In so many ways EU membership is restricting the ability of our country to act independently. Luckily, polling I've seen shows that the influence of foreign premiers is minimal and holds no great sway over the opinion of the British public on this issue. While we have always been friendly with the Americans, sharing a common language and so on, the Iraq War also shows us that when the US says 'jump' we shouldn't ask 'how high?'.

We should remember the Vietnam War where we refused to be bullied into getting involved militarily. Sometimes America's leaders get it wrong and when it comes to President Obama and Britain's EU membership, we have a classic example of that.

The Prime Minister said that technical talks to hammer out a new deal for Britain with EU officials are going “quite well” – after his renegotiation plans were initially met with howls of protest from France and Poland. It comes amid suggestions the Government is pushing for an early deal with Europe, with a package agreed by the European leaders' summit in December.

After the general election Mr Cameron undertook a lightning tour of European capitals to set out his plan for a renegotiation with each of his 27 counterparts, setting out the broad outline of his renegotiation strategy. Those meetings were followed by detailed talks between British and EU officials examining the legal avenues that could secure a UK deal.

He is now preparing to set out a far more detailed set of demands in a second wave of meetings that are likely to include Francois Hollande, the French President, Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, and the heads of the EU institutions in late September.

A former Polish prime minister and a politician not prone to hyperbole, Tusk’s comments revealed Brussels’ fears of a bubbling rebellion across the continent. “When impatience becomes not an individual but a social experience of feeling, this is the introduction for revolutions” said Tusk. “I am really afraid of this ideological or political contagion.” His unease reflects a widespread conviction that Europe’s elites had no choice but to make an example out of Greece.

Alexis Tsipras was forced to submit to a deal that punished his government’s insolence, so the argument goes, and destroy the fantasy that a “new eurozone” could be forged for the economies of the southern Mediterranean. Having emerged from the talks, Tusk declared victory, dismissing the “radical leftist illusion that you can build some alternative to this traditional European vision of the economy.”

But the shadow of 1968 - a year when Europe was gripped by mass discontent, student rebellions, and labour strikes - looms over Europe’s institutions. Over the course of the next 10 months, the entire complexion of the European south could be transformed. General elections in Portugal, Spain and Ireland are poised to bring anti-austerity, Left leaning parties to power.

It is the wildfire of political contagion that spooks Europe’s federalists. Greece's humiliation, rather than cowing the revolutionary Left, is set to embolden the southern calls for mass debt relief and cease the enforcement of the euro's contractionary dogma.

Most of the soldiers were only required to acknowledge the call, but thousands will have to don their uniforms and show up at enlistment points, to rehearse emergency scenarios. A senior officer said that the Air Force will be rehearsing for the neutralization of various attacks and that the Navy will train for protecting national infrastructures, among other things.

The officer added that this will be the first time in which the IDF rehearses cyber-defense on such a large scale. The exercise will continue until Wednesday, and an unusually high volume of security vehicle traffic will be noticeable on Israel's roads. Also on Monday, the Home Front Command will be holding rescue drills at sites simulating wartime destruction in Holon and Neurim.