Bad news: It's really worse, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel told James Fallows at the Washington Ideas Festival Wednesday. "I think we are living through one of these historic, defining times," Hagel said. "We are seeing a new world order — post-World War II, post-Soviet Union implosion — being built. There are many questions, foremost among the American people: What's the role of America in this new world that is evolving? Should we have a role? What is appropriate?"

And Hagel didn't seem especially sanguine that it would end anytime soon. In other words: Get used to endless war.

"What we’re seeing in the Middle East with ISIL is going to require a steady, long-term effort. It's going to require coalitions of common interest," Hagel said. Even if a new era of comity arrived in Washington, however, Hagel forecast that the US would continue to grapple with overseas threat for the foreseeable future. "Tyranny, terrorism, the challenges and threats to our country… are going to be with us," he said. "It’s a reality. I see these things continuing to stay out there."

The other day I was talking to a senior Obama administration official about the foreign leader who seems to frustrate the White House and the State Department the most. “The thing about Bibi is, he’s a chickenshit,” this official said, referring to the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, by his nickname.

This comment is representative of the gloves-off manner in which American and Israeli officials now talk about each other behind closed doors, and is yet another sign that relations between the Obama and Netanyahu governments have moved toward a full-blown crisis. The relationship between these two administrations — dual guarantors of the putatively “unbreakable” bond between the US and Israel — is now the worst it's ever been, and it stands to get significantly worse after the November midterm elections.

By next year, the Obama administration may actually withdraw diplomatic cover for Israel at the United Nations, but even before that, both sides are expecting a showdown over Iran, should an agreement be reached about the future of its nuclear program.

The 53-year-old Alabama native and self-described "son of the South", who has spoken out against discrimination of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people, declared his sexual orientation in a magazine editorial, confirming a fact widely known in the close-knit Silicon Valley tech community but rarely discussed.

Cook's announcement comes as gay marriage is becoming widespread, but the nation remains divided over gay rights. Same-sex marriage is legal in thirty-two US states and in polls a majority support same-sex marriage, with a clear generational divide between younger Americans who are more likely to support it and older ones who are less likely.

"I'm proud to be gay, and I consider being gay among the greatest gifts God has given me," Cook said in an article he wrote in Bloomberg Businessweek.

This has all come out in a four-page memo acquired by the Washington Times. "The State Department has quietly made plans to bring Ebola-infected doctors and medical aides to the US for treatment," the Times reports. The memo even details the expected price per patient, with transportation costs at $200,000 and treatment at $300,000.

The US State Dept is the same government entity that recently posted an acquisition contract for 160,000 Ebola hazmat suits, which many now believe are being stockpiled in the United States to deal with the Ebola outbreak that's widely anticipated by the government.

So far in the battle against Ebola, the US federal government and White House seem to be working in favor of the deadly virus instead of against it. At every turn, the CDC has deliberately misinformed the public about the ease of Ebola transmission, lied about its incubation period, lied about the spread distance of aerosolized body fluids, prevented the implementation of travel restrictions and even actively dismantled quarantine policies in New Jersey and New York.

Referencing LIBOR riggers’ behavior as unacceptable, she suggested fines for such fraudulent activity were inadequate and signified “salt rubbed into the wounds to public confidence in financial markets.” LIBOR (London Interbank Offered Rate) currently determines the cost of up to $350 trillion worth of global financial products. While the 21st century has been littered with financial scandals, Libor rigging by leading global banks has been dubbed the most flagrant in modern history.

Approximately £4 billion worth of fines have been issued for the manipulation of core benchmark rates to date, and the City is expecting further fines for the rigging of currency markets to be publicly announced in November. Speaking at the London School of Economics (LSE) on Monday, Shafik warned Britain’s financial system is rigged and characterized by disproportionate rewards.

“When people read of malpractice in financial markets, of trading profits being claimed through manipulation, collusion or dishonesty, they naturally wonder if they are one of the people who have been wronged,” she said.

Since September 2012, the S&P 500 has risen more than 40 percent. But as a global sell-off earlier this month has already shown, fears of a meltdown are never far away. The bleak outlook for global growth means a number of stock market "corrections" could still be on the horizon, especially if investors fear the punch-bowl is being taken away from the party too soon.

For all the reasonable economic data coming out of the US, concerns about the global economy mean another round of Fed bond-buying could still be on the cards. Stagnant growth in the eurozone, which has begun to experiment with its own form of "QE-lite", is one of the biggest threats to global demand.

Earlier this month, the head of the St Louis Fed, James Bullard, hinted that the Federal Reserve could extend its bond-purchasing programme. Bullard cited things like political instability, falling oil prices, and weak inflation as downside risks to global growth. So with another round of QE coming to an end, the challenges facing the global economy are very different from those that confronted Ben Bernanke in 2012. But the response could yet be the same from Janet Yellen.

According to Reuters, German defense experts headed by Henning Otte (CDU) and Rainer Arnold (SPD) have complained that, in light of the “current security situation,” the Bundeswehr has an insufficient number of tanks. They call for a significant increase and modernization of the army’s current stock of 190 “Boxer” armoured vehicles and 225 Leopard combat tanks.

Their plans also include the development of a new, third generation of Leopard tanks. They argue that equipping troops with the latest technology as part of the government’s “Soldier of the Future” program should no longer be limited to foreign deployments, but should be introduced across the board. They insist on the development of a new generation of MEADS air defense systems to replace the army’s existing stock of US Patriot missiles. The Defense Department had postponed a decision for next year. According to Reuters, citing an unnamed government official, the green light for the program is to be given next year after a few technical and legal issues have been resolved.

The ostensible rationale for the new MEADS system is the need to replace antiquated equipment. However, comments by Bavarian Prime Minister Horst Seehofer (Christian Social Union) indicate that other strategic considerations are involved in the development and financing of new air defense technology. According to Bundeswehr Journal, during a visit to the German armaments company MBDA two weeks ago, Seehofer said the army needed German-made weaponry with “systems capabilities.” With its high-tech development programs such as MEADS, Seehofer continued, MBDA demonstrated what was possible and what was necessary for the “sustainable equipping of our army.”

The Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) warned that the Government would need to slash public spending by a quarter in order to get Britain's debt mountain down to sustainable levels. In a set of radical proposals, the IEA called on the Government to end "unhelpful" policies such as the "triple lock guarantee" that ensures the state pension increases by the higher of inflation, average earnings or a minimum of 2.5 percent every year. It also said charging for some NHS services would help to reduce demand.

The IEA calculated that Government spending cuts equivalent to 9.6 percent of GDP - or £168 billion per year in today's money - were needed to reduce Britain's debt-to-GDP ratio to 20 percent by 2063. This is equivalent to cutting the health, welfare and pensions budgets in half, or overall spending by a quarter.

"Politicians must wake up to the size of the debt time bomb in the UK. Older generations have voted themselves benefits that will indebt future generations, meaning crippling tax hikes for our children and grandchildren," said Philip Booth, editorial director at the IEA.

“Everything involves a computer. You know that your Kindle tracks how fast you read, right? Everything you do online, everything you do on your phone, everything you do that involves any kind of payment system. In general, assume your movements are being watched. It’s a fact already made glaringly obvious in London, when the local transport authority’s public bicycle data was unwittingly made public.”

“If the government said you have to have a tracking device, for certain you would rebel,” notes Schneier. “But the government doesn’t have to say that because you do it willingly and they just get a copy of the data.” And so might anyone else. The same vulnerabilities exploited by intelligence agencies could be similarly exploited by corporations, insurance firms, health providers, or even malicious hackers, criminals or terrorists – the very people surveillance is supposed to target.

“We need to choose between security and surveillance,” Schneier told the summit audience. It’s just not possible to build electronic devices that keep data secret from everybody except, say, government officials trying to track the movements of terrorists. “Everybody gets to spy or nobody gets to spy.”