UKRAINE - Senior US officials now admit that the Malaysian airlines passenger plane was likely accidentally shot down. The Russian government claims Ukrainian fighter jets were flying very close to Malaysian Flight 17 when it was shot down. Others claim that Ukrainian fighter jets were escorting the Malaysian plane through Ukrainian airspace.

IRAQ - Remember when the extremist Al Qaeda spinoff ISIS (or, now known as Islamic State following the formation of its own caliphate in the middle of Iraq and Syria) was still a "thing" two weeks ago? In this case out of sight does not mean out of mind, and while the world has found a new story line to follow in the middle east with the war between Israel and Gaza, now in its 14th day - whenever it is not busy responding to emotional appeals about the MH17 crash - ISIS has continued to expand and as Al Arabiya reports it "is now in control of 35 percent of the Syrian territory following a string of victories, the London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Friday."

ISRAEL - Israel won a partial reprieve from the economic pain of its Gaza war on Thursday with the lifting of a US ban on commercial flights to Tel Aviv, as fighting pushed the Palestinian death toll over 700. A truce remained elusive despite intensive mediation bids. Palestinians said residents of two southern villages were trapped by tank shelling, preventing evacuation of casualties. Israel says it needs more time to eradicate cross-border tunnels used by Hamas for attacks, while the Palestinian Islamists demand the blockade on the Gaza Strip be lifted. Gaza has been rocked by regular bouts of violence since Israel unilaterally pulled out of the territory in 2005. Hamas, which rejects Israel's right to exist, balked at Egypt's proposal for an unconditional truce, saying its conditions had to be met in full before any end to the conflict. Israel briefly held fire last week at Cairo's behest.

NIGERIA - At least 82 people were killed on Wednesday in two suicide bombings in the north Nigerian city of Kaduna, one aimed at opposition leader and ex-president Muhammadu Buhari and another at a moderate Muslim cleric about to lead a crowd in prayer. The attacks bore the hallmarks of Islamist militant group Boko Haram, which considers all those who do not share its views to be enemies. But it may also have been linked to politics before the 2015 elections. In the deadliest attack, a bomber in a car full of explosives hurtled towards Buhari's convoy at the crowded Kawo market, his son told Reuters on the scene and police said later. A Red Cross official said at least 50 people were killed there.

CHINA - The China-US sorpasso is looming. I do not mean the much-exaggerated moment when China’s GDP will overtake America's GDP – which may not happen in the lifetime of anybody reading this blog post – as China slows to more pedestrian growth rates (an objective of premier Li Keqiang.) The sorpasso may instead be the ominous moment when China’s debt ratios overtake the arch-debtor itself. I had presumed that this inflection point was still a very long way off, but a new report from Stephen Green at Standard Chartered argues that China’s aggregate debt level has reached 251 per cent of GDP, as of June. This is up 20 percentage points of GDP since late 2013. The total is much higher than normal estimates, though it tallies with what I have heard privately from officials at the IMF and the BIS.

UK - Global stock markets are at risk from a spike in oil prices which could derail the fragile economic recovery and lead to a major correction in share prices, warns Steen Jakobsen, chief economist at Saxo Bank. Geopolitical risk has increased sharply following the events of last week, a point that has been largely ignored by the ever panglossian global equity markets that march on upward.

UK - There is a black hole at the heart of Britain’s public finances — and it is getting bigger, not smaller. This is happening even though the Great British public is being fleeced by the taxman at every turn, and Chancellor George Osborne is desperately seeking to rein in state spending. By now, the budget deficit ought to be shrinking at an accelerating rate: after all, the central economic mission of the coalition government in 2010 was to stave off a fiscal crisis and eventually to eliminate the gap between revenues and expenditure. Instead, the deficit for the first three months of the fiscal year stood at £36.1 billion, 7.3 percent more than the £33.7 billion racked up during the same time last year. The national debt is continuing to surge, reaching £1.305 trillion in June, equivalent to 77.3 percent of gross domestic product (GDP).

UK - Interest rates will rise but at a more "gradual and limited" rate than in the past, the Governor of the Bank of England has said. The increase to more “normal” levels will be welcomed by many savers who have faced record low rates for more than six years, but is likely to plunge many borrowers into financial difficulty. Mr Carney said that the rise in interest rates is likely to be lower than in the past because of the "headwinds" still facing the economy.

UK - David Cameron didn't even come close to winning the fight. The British prime minister put his all into opposing Jean-Claude Juncker's appointment as the European Commission's new president, fearing that Juncker, Luxembourg's former prime minister and a stalwart of European politics, would only increase the power of the EU's institutions in Brussels - the opposite of what Cameron, his party, and British voters seem to want.

USA - The Air Force is about to put a new advanced satellite into space to spy on other countries’ satellites. On Wednesday, a Delta IV rocket will launch from Cape Canaveral Air Station, Florida, and place two Geosynchronous Space Situational Awareness Program satellites into orbit. They will be the first GSSAP satellites ever launched. “This neighborhood watch twosome … will be on the lookout for nefarious capability other nations might try to place in that critical orbital regime,” General William Shelton, the head of Air Force Space Command, told reporters at the Pentagon.

USA - The price of beef and bacon hit its all-time high in the United States in June, according to data released Tuesday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). In January 1980, when BLS started tracking the price of these commodities, ground chuck cost $1.82 per pound and bacon cost $1.45 per pound. By this June 2014, ground chuck cost $3.91 per pound and bacon cost $6.11 per pound. A decade ago, in June 2004, a pound of ground chuck cost $2.49, which means that the commodity has increased by 57 percent since then. Bacon has increased by 78.7 percent from the $3.42 it cost in June 2004 to the $6.11 it costs now.

USA - Asian jumping lice and a bacteria called C. liberibacter which the lice carry have been devastating Florida’s Orange crops since 2005, but scientists have found a solution! But do we really want to consume orange juice that contains genetically modified DNA, via pig genes? That’s an actual question consumers will need to ask themselves in light of a recent article in the New York Times piece, “A Race to Save the Orange by Altering its DNA”.

USA - The groundwater level in the San Bernardino Basin area is at its lowest point in recorded history, officials say. Measured in volume, the groundwater level for the basin is now about 500,000 acre-feet below full, according to Douglas Headrick, general manager for the San Bernardino Valley Municipal Water District. That would put it below the previous low recorded in 1964, a period that followed a 20-year drought, officials said. “This isn’t just an issue for San Bernardino, but many other cities depend on this basin for much of their water supply, including Redlands, Highland, Loma Linda, Rialto, Colton and Riverside,” the district's water resource manager, Bob Tincher, said.

MIDDLE EAST - Every year, al-Quds rallies are held worldwide on the last Friday of Ramadan. They are important because they remind the Muslims as well as non-Muslims that the first qibla of Muslims remains under alien occupation. Its liberation is the responsibility of every Muslim. The annual Quds Day rallies have become a global phenomenon. Since the last Friday of Ramadan was first declared by Imam Khomeini in 1979 as the Day of Quds, millions of people — Muslims and non-Muslims — have participated in such rallies each year to draw attention to the continued occupation of Masjid al-Aqsa, the first qibla of Muslims, as well as the Zionist oppression of Palestinians [Al-Quds is the Arabic name for the city of Jerusalem].

SWITZERLAND - The Swiss National Bank and the People's Bank of China reached a currency swap agreement on Monday, allowing the two central banks to buy and sell their currencies up to a limit of 150 billion renminbi, or 21 billion Swiss francs ($23.4 billion). The deal will also allow the Swiss central bank to invest some of its huge accumulation of foreign exchange reserves in the Chinese bond market, the SNB said in a statement Monday.