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.

Israeli police said that the masked Palestinian youths had stockpiled rocks, wooden planks, fireworks and Molotov cocktails inside the Al Aqsa mosque – which is on the Temple Mount compound – to use later against Jews visiting the site on their holiday and worshipping at the adjacent Western Wall.

“In light of the severe confrontation and the escalating actions of the rioters and with the aim of preventing further injury to police … [the] force entered a number of meters inside and closed the doors to the mosque with the rioters inside, restoring order,” the police said in a statement quoted by the Times of Israel.

“Such acts of hatred cannot be tolerated and we will not allow any disturbances to prevent Jews from praying at this holy site,” Israeli President Reuven Rivlin said.

The Temple Institute has released a modern three-dimensional architectural rendition of the future Third Holy Temple, utilizing the latest building material and techniques.

Rabbi Chaim Richman, International Director of The Temple Institute noted that one of his organization's key aims is to educate Jews about the centrality of the Temple to Judaism, after nearly 2,000 years without it.

"One third of all Torah commandments pertain to the building of and service in the Holy Temple," Rabbi Richman noted. "Today, we not only mourn the destruction of the two Holy Temples, but also our inability to fulfill one third of the Torah. Over the last three decades, the Temple Institute has done everything in our power to research and prepare for the Third Temple."

"As world Jewry sits on the ground mourning the first two Temples, we have taken a huge leap towards the rebuilding, by releasing a 3D architectural rendition of the Third Temple." The Temple Institute is the center of research and preparation for the Holy Temple. In addition to educational activity focused on the centrality of the Temple Mount and Holy Temple, the Institute have also recreated over 70 sacred vessels for use in the Third Holy Temple, which can be seen at their Visitors Center in the Old City of Jerusalem.

In many parts of the Middle East, Africa and Asia, believers are being relentlessly attacked by extremists, churches are being destroyed, and laws are being passed to try to prevent the spread of the Christian faith. In some areas, the violence has become so extreme that Christians knowingly risk their own lives just to go to church services each week. Would you risk your life to go to church?

In North America and Europe, the persecution is often more subtle. Even though violent attacks are still fairly rare, Christian beliefs are being undermined by new laws, comedians and television shows regularly mock the Christian faith, and many employers will immediately mentally disqualify a potential candidate for a job if they discover that an individual is a Bible-believing Christian. Sadly, this is just the beginning.

In the years ahead, those that choose to be followers of Jesus Christ will face even greater persecution than we have seen already.

Officials from the city of Coeur d’Alene also acknowledged that ministers who refuse to perform same-sex weddings could be subject to jail time. The admission came in the case of Donald and Evelyn Knapp, a couple who runs The Hitching Post, a wedding chapel in the Idaho city. The couple claimed the ordinance violates their First Amendment right to freedom of religion.

The case has already gotten the attention of Idaho politicians. State Senator Steve Vick says he was so disturbed by the case he was considering getting the state government out of marriage, according to WND. “It’s very disappointing to me that they would require a Christian business owner to do something that violates their religious convictions, which I believe are protected by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution,” Vick said.

Major indexes suffered their largest one-day drop since 2007, shattering a period of relative calm in China's volatile stock markets since Beijing unleashed a barrage of support measures to arrest a slump that began in mid-June. While the falls followed lackluster data on profit at Chinese industrial firms on Monday and a disappointing private factory sector survey on Friday, there was little to explain the scale of the sell-off.

Some analysts said fears that China may hold off from further loosening of monetary policy had contributed to souring investor sentiment. In late June and early July, Chinese authorities cut interest rates, suspended initial public offerings, relaxed margin-lending and collateral rules and enlisted brokerages to buy stocks, backed by central bank cash, to support share prices.

The battery of stabilization measures followed a peak-to-trough slump of more than 30 percent in China's benchmark indexes, which had more than doubled over the preceding year. Chinese share markets had recovered around 15 percent since then, before Monday's renewed sell-off.

Flash-forward 30 years, as Culture Club embarks on a much-hyped reunion tour, and the world has drastically changed. As George points out, now “Sam Smith can say, 'I’m gay,’ and no one goes on about it,” and Caitlyn Jenner has been enthusiastically embraced by the media and public at large. George is humble, but acknowledges that he and Culture Club helped pave the way.

"And in a funny sort of way, it’s the world that I wanted to be in. It’s that world I was fighting for in 1984. That was what I wanted. I wanted people not to care about whether you were gay, straight, black, white, transgender, whatever it may be… That being said, there’s more work to be done… I still want to change the world, absolutely. And I feel like what we did back then was part of that.”

JPMorgan’s share price hit an all-time closing high of $70.08 yesterday. The scary thing is, JPMorgan’s stock had a run from $32 to $42 just one month before Lehman Brothers blew up in 2008, marking the beginning of the biggest financial crash since the Great Depression; and there had been a year of financial warnings prior to that. (So much for global bank share prices being a bellwether on global financial stability.) Once the 2008 crash was clearly underway, JPMorgan shareholders saw 70 percent of their share price evaporate in a six-month stretch ending in March 2009.

JPMorgan is not some folksy community bank in New England with no counterparty exposure to other global banks or debt-ridden corporations. JPMorgan Chase is a global bank with over $2 trillion in assets “serving corporations and individuals in over 100 countries,” according to its web site. In February, the US Treasury’s Office of Financial Research released a report showing staggering levels of interconnected risk among global banks. JPMorgan Chase had the highest overall score for systemic and interconnected risk.

SEC Commissioner Michael Piwowar on the issue of ETFs said:

“The growth of bond mutual funds and exchange-traded funds in recent years means that these funds now hold a much higher fraction of the available stock of relatively less liquid assets than they did before the financial crisis… their growth heightens the potential for a forced sale in the underlying markets if some event were to trigger large volumes of redemptions.”

We may be closer to that trigger than many investors realize. Bloomberg Business is reporting this morning that “SandRidge Energy Inc bonds have lost almost 30 percent since June, while notes of miner Cliffs Natural Resources Inc are down more than 27 percent.” The article also notes that bonds of distressed debt issuers “are on pace to lose more than 20 percent for the second straight year, the worst performance since 2008.”