USA - The Fort Hood shooting is an extreme and shocking example of what has become a chronic concern for the military: soldiers with mental-health problems taking their own lives. And it's not just the active-duty military who face what has become an increasingly daunting problem. At least 22 veterans commit suicide each day, according to the Veterans Affairs Department. This adds up to more than 2,000 veterans killing themselves so far this year alone, and the military community is facing what advocates refer to as a suicide epidemic. Fifty-one percent of Iraq or Afghanistan War veterans know someone who has attempted or committed suicide, according to a Washington Post/Kaiser Family Foundation survey released this week.

RUSSIA - Russia expected NATO to explain how the bloc's recent military build-up corresponded with existing bilateral agreements, the government said Thursday. "We expect not just an answer, but an answer that will fully correspond with the agreed rules," Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told reporters following his talks with visiting Kazakhstan counterpart Yerlan Idrisov.

IRAN/ RUSSIA - Spot what is missing in the just blasted headline from Bloomberg: IRAN, RUSSIA SAID TO SEAL $20B OIL-FOR-GOODS DEAL: REUTERS

If you saw the complete absence of US Dollars anywhere in the funds flow, you are correct. Which is precisely what we have been warning would happen the more the West and/or JPMorgan pushed Russia into a USD-free corner.

EUROPE - Mario Draghi said the European Central Bank is ready to move deeper into uncharted territory in the fight against deflation, with policy makers debating what form of quantitative easing they might need to use. “There was a discussion about QE, it wasn’t neglected,” the ECB president said at a press conference in Frankfurt today after keeping the benchmark interest rate unchanged at a record-low 0.25 percent. “There are obviously different preferences about which QE would be more effective. We will continue working on that in the coming weeks.” Bundesbank President Jens Weidmann, who has led the resistance to bond purchases in the past, gave tacit backing to asset purchases last week and Draghi said the Governing Council was able to have a “very rich” discussion today. He said policy makers were unanimous in their commitment to use unconventional policy.

UK - The government has signed a deal with Microsoft to provide Windows XP support and security updates across the whole UK public sector for 12 months after commercial support for the operating system ends on 8 April 2014. The agreement is worth £5.548 million, and covers 'critical' and 'important' security updates for Windows XP, as well as Office 2003 and Exchange 2003, which also go out of support next Tuesday. Microsoft first announced the end-of-support date for Windows XP in 2007, so the government has had around seven years to prepare for the deadline. The company’s list price for one year’s custom Windows XP support is $200 per desktop, suggesting that there are over 200,000 computers in the public sector still running Windows XP. Currently, 85 per cent of NHS computers run on Windows XP, as well as 95 per cent of the world's ATM machines.

USA - Investors marveling at the striking similarities of the bull market today to the one that ended in 1987 are hoping history doesn’t repeat itself. If it does, the market could be in some serious trouble in 37 trading days. In 37 trading days, the ongoing bull market would be 1,311 trading days old, says Jim Paulsen of Wells Capital Management. That is a scary date because it was on the 1,311 trading day after the start of the 1982 bull market that the Standard & Poor’s 500 suffered its biggest one-day crash in history on October 19, 1987. That crash snuffed out what had been a powerful market rally starting in 1982. Normally these kinds of things are just market oddities. But investors are taking this one seriously since there are such strong similarities with the 1982 bull market and the one the market is currently in.

RUSSIA - Russia’s foreign ministry has threatened to impede the operations of American diplomatic missions in the country, after US bank JPMorgan Chase on Tuesday blocked a remittance from the Russian embassy in Kazakhstan to an insurance agency. The Russian embassy had been due to transfer less than $5,000 to the Sogaz Insurance Group for regular services rendered, according to the Financial Times, but JPMorgan halted the transaction as Sogaz was part-owned by Bank Rossiya, one of the targets of US sanctions announced on March 20. Interfering with the transaction was an “absolutely unacceptable, illegal and absurd decision,” Alexander Lukashevich, a foreign ministry spokesman, said in a statement.

AFGHANISTAN - Opium poppy cultivation in Afghanistan rose 36 per cent in 2013, a record high, according to the 2013 Afghanistan Opium Survey released today in Kabul by the Ministry of Counter Narcotics and UNODC. Meanwhile, opium production amounted to 5,500 tons, up by almost a half since 2012. Calling the news “sobering”, Yury Fedotov, Executive Director of UNODC, stressed that this situation poses a threat to health, stability and development in Afghanistan and beyond: “What is needed is an integrated, comprehensive response to the drug problem. Counter-narcotics efforts must be an integral part of the security, development and institution-building agenda”.

USA - Parents of a healthy newborn infant were told to consent to injecting him with drugs or lose him to the state. This successful blackmail scheme was made possible by the state’s horrifying ability to seize children without due process.

USA - The ability to link human brains to machines, create new life forms and build Star Trek-style disease detectors will be the focus of a new Defense Department office soon. The new office, named the Biological Technology Office, or BTO, will serve as a clearinghouse for Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, programs into brain research, synthetic biology and epidemiology.

EUROPE - European Union Force RCA, led by the French Major-General Philippe Ponties, will comprise up to 1,000 troops. They are to provide “temporary support in achieving a safe and secure environment in the area, with a view to handing over to a UN peacekeeping operation or to African partners.” The HQ and the troops will be located in Bangui, the capital of the Central African Republic and its largest city. The operational center will be located in Larissa, Greece. The troops are to be deployed rapidly to ensure "the immediate effect" of the operation. The mission is tasked with “protecting the populations most at risk and to the creation of the conditions for providing humanitarian aid.”

TEMPLE MOUNT, JERUSALEM, ISRAEL - Two Jews have petitioned Jerusalem police in the name of dozens of others for permission to carry out the mitzvah of the Passover sacrifice on the Temple Mount this year, for the first time in nearly 2,000 years. The petitioners claim that police authorization is the only obstacle to ascending the Temple Mount, praying and offering their sacrifice of a lamb, as commanded in the Torah.

TEMPLE MOUNT, JERUSALEM, ISRAEL - It has recently been reported that a group of prominent Israeli rabbis and other public figures, among them some who are considered to be moderates, not extremists, has written a letter to the prime minister urging that he “establish a place of prayer for Jews on the Temple Mount,” which seems to mean to permit the building of a synagogue there. One supporter of this project even wrote in this newspaper that building a synagogue there “will not heighten the Arab-Jewish conflict, it will lessen it.”

VATICAN - The Queen has met Pope Francis for the first time during a five hour visit to Rome, receiving a gift for Prince George from the pontiff. After lunch with President Giorgio Napolitano in the Quirinale palace, the Queen crossed the Tiber for a private audience with the Pope, who gave her a blue orb decorated with a silver cross for her eight-month-old grandson. It is the Queen's first visit to Rome in 14 years. She was welcomed by an honour guard of Sardinian grenadiers, Carabinieri cavalry, navy and air force, and given a bouquet of flowers by an eight-year-old girl. The visit was agreed amid assurances that the Holy See would remain neutral on the contentious issue of the Falkland Islands.

CHILE - A powerful 7.6 magnitude earthquake has rocked northern Chile, just over 24 hours after an 8.2 tremor killed six people, destroyed 2,600 houses and led to mass evacuations. A tsunami alert in Chile and Peru was again issued, but was later lifted after waves of 2.4ft (0.7 meters) hit coastal areas. Chilean President Michelle Bachelet was among those evacuated on Thursday. The quake is the strongest of several aftershocks following Tuesday's tremor. The aftershock caused buildings to wobble and people to run into the streets in the port of Iquique, which was one of the cities hit by Tuesday night's quake. Fires destroyed some businesses in the area and fishermen found their boats sunken and damaged in Iquique harbour.