USA - High-frequency trading — the practice of making thousands of algorithmic stock trades per minute — is about to get a big boost in the USA. Anova, a company that specializes in deploying low-latency networks for stock trading, is completing an ultra-high-speed laser network between the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) and the NASDAQ. The link will be just a few nanoseconds faster than the current microwave and fiber-optic links — but in the world of high-frequency trading (HFT), those nanoseconds could result in millions of dollars in profits for the trading companies. Such is the insanity of the stock markets; such is the unbelievable capacity of HFT to create money out of almost nothing.

GERMANY - Many see German policy in the European Union as a forceful advancement of Germany's interests at the expense of other countries - EU members. There are even suspicions that the crisis in the EU is a project of Germany designed to secure the economic recovery (the European Commission even started an investigation). Berlin is not going to stop in its plans.

USA - Call it the loophole that destroyed the world. It's 1999, the tail end of the Clinton years. While the rest of America obsesses over Monica Lewinsky, Columbine and Mark McGwire's biceps, Congress is feverishly crafting what could yet prove to be one of the most transformative laws in the history of our economy – a law that would make possible a broader concentration of financial and industrial power than we've seen in more than a century. Most observers on the Hill thought the Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999 – also known as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act – was just the latest and boldest in a long line of deregulatory handouts to Wall Street that had begun in the Reagan years.

ARGENTINA - Argentina is a country re-entering crisis territory it knows too well. The country has defaulted on its sovereign debt three times in the past 32 years and looks poised to do so again soon. Its currency, the peso, devalued by more than 20% in January alone. Inflation is currently running at 25%. Argentina’s budget deficit is exploding, and, based on credit default swap rates, the market is placing an 85% chance of a sovereign default within the next five years. Want to know what it’s like living through a currency collapse? Argentina is providing us with a real-time window.

USA - The debt of the US government has increased by $2.678 trillion in the 2.5 years since House Speaker John Boehner (Republican for Ohio) completed his first deal to put legislation increasing the debt limit through a Republican-controlled House of Representatives. On August 2, 2011, President Barack Obama signed legislation, approved by the Boehner-led House, permitting the Treasury to increase the debt by $900 billion. Since then, the debt limit has been repeatedly suspended by legislation that needed to pass through the Republican-controlled House. Yesterday, the House once again passed legislation to suspend the debt limit — this time through March 15, 2015, which is after November’s mid-term congressional elections.

MIDDLE EAST - President Obama wants an agreement with Iran to prevent a Middle Eastern nuclear arms race, but it’s pushing Saudi Arabia toward its own nuke program. Last month, America’s top Iran negotiator Wendy Sherman had some bad news for ambassadors from America’s Arab allies. In a meeting with envoys from Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and other Gulf states, Sherman said that any bargain with Iran would likely leave Tehran, the Gulf States long-time enemy, with the capacity to enrich uranium, according to US officials briefed on the encounter. Riyadh has a long-standing interest in nuclear power. But Western and Israeli intelligence services are starting to see signs that this interest is growing more serious, and extends into nuclear enrichment.

USA - They call it the holy grail of ready-to-eat meals for soldiers — a pizza that can stay on the shelf for up to three years and still remain good to eat. Soldiers have been asking for pizza since lightweight individual field rations — known as meal ready to eat, or MREs — replaced canned food in 1981 for soldiers in combat zones or areas where field kitchens cannot be set up. Researchers at a US military lab in Massachusetts are closing in on a recipe that doesn't require any refrigeration or freezing. "You can basically take the pizza, leave it on the counter, packaged, for three years and it'd still be edible," said Michelle Richardson, a food scientist at the US Army Natick Soldier Research, Development and Engineering Center.

NORTHEN IRELAND - Fears of a return of Irish dissident terrorism to the UK mainland have been raised after Downing Street said a wave of crude bombs sent to Armed Forces’ recruiting offices were “Northern Ireland related”. One of the “basic, but viable” devices sent to seven different military careers centres bore a Republic of Ireland postmark. Counter terrorism police said all the packages were linked and "crude" in design but "could have caused injury to others". No group immediately claimed responsibility for the parcels, but they raised the prospect of the first mainland bombing attacks for more than a decade by dissident Republicans opposed to the peace process.

UK - One of the Met Office’s most senior experts yesterday made a dramatic intervention in the climate change debate by insisting there is no link between the storms that have battered Britain and global warming. Mat Collins, a Professor in climate systems at Exeter University, said the storms have been driven by the jet stream – the high-speed current of air that girdles the globe – which has been ‘stuck’ further south than usual. Professor Collins told The Mail on Sunday: ‘There is no evidence that global warming can cause the jet stream to get stuck in the way it has this winter. If this is due to climate change, it is outside our knowledge.’ His statement carries particular significance because he is an internationally acknowledged expert on climate computer models and forecasts, and his university post is jointly funded by the Met Office.

USA - Over a quarter of Americans do not know the Earth circles the Sun, according to a new survey. One in four Americans is completely unfamiliar with Nicolaus Copernicus's 1543 theory that the Earth circles the Sun, according to a study by the National Science Foundation. The survey, released on Friday at an annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, asked 2,200 people nine factual questions about physical and biological science, with the average score being just 5.8 correct answers. A total of 42 per cent of Americans said that astrology is either "very scientific" or "sort of scientific".

MIDDLE EAST - Palestinian Authority (PA) Chairman Mahmoud Abbas’s suggestion that NATO forces be deployed in the future Palestinian state is not well-received by his rivals, the Hamas rulers of Gaza. A spokesman for Hamas said Friday that the faction would regard any international military presence within a future Palestinian state as "occupation" forces, reported the Ma’an news agency. During a rally in southern Gaza, spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said that any international forces stationed in “Palestine” as a result of a peace agreement with Israel would be treated the same as “the Israeli occupation.”

EUROPE - The EU’s ruling elites in Brussels are going all out for the May European Parliament elections, attempting to expand their powers throughout the continent and beat back a growing rebellion against centralization. Viviane Reding, the controversial and voluble European justice commissioner, was in London on February 10 for a public debate on “The Future of Europe,” part of a “Citizens’ Dialogue” series launched by the commission in 2013 as a key element of a year-long propaganda blitz. That blitz is aimed at influencing the vote for the 751 members of the European Parliament in elections that will take place in every member state from May 22-25.

UK - An acutely embarrassing Bible reading, scheduled for the day the Church of England Synod voted to fast-track women bishops, should remind people not to take the 'Good Book' literally, argues chaplain Jemima Thackray.

USA - A "catastrophic" ice storm wreaking havoc in the American South is now poised to pummel the eastern seaboard, say forecasters. More than 350,000 people are reportedly without power and 3,300 US flights have been cancelled due to ice and strong winds. Nearly empty roadways were reported as many heeded warnings to stay indoors. North Carolina and Virginia are bracing for up to 1ft (30cm) of snow as the storm rolls north. The National Weather Service said it was an event of "historical proportions", drawing comparisons with similar weather systems that struck the Atlanta area in 2000 and 1973.

UK - Another 1,000 homes are likely to flood as fresh storms hit Britain this weekend, the Environment Agency admitted on Thursday. With a month’s worth of rain falling on Friday and Saturday, towns on the Thames, Severn and in the South West will be exposed to the flooding that has already forced 6,000 families to evacuate their homes. The battle to contain the damage from the floods now involves 70 per cent of the country’s Fire and Rescue Services – their biggest deployment since the Second World War. David Cameron declared that “we cannot let this situation happen again” as he announced a review of funding rules governing flood defences for rural communities.