USA - Conventional wisdom holds that the past decade-plus of combat has forged a group of Army leaders as good as any our country has ever produced. Former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates went further in 2010, calling today’s Army “the most professional, the best educated, the most capable force this country has ever sent into battle.” Can this be true? Or is it hubris? In fact, the military conditions under which we’ve operated for the past two decades have been historically atypical. They have allowed too many in uniform to believe the hype. What happens when men whose whole professional life has known only success meet real challenges and the threat of defeat?

UK - A flood-hit village in Berkshire is pleading for help from the Army after looters began targeting homes of residents evacuated from the rising waters. Colin Rayner, 56, a Conservative councillor for Horton and Wraysbury, said the village had experienced looting and urged the police and Army to help. The farmer said he was told by the Environment Agency on Sunday that the flooding in Wraysbury was going to be worse than in 2003, and that he was to tell the residents of the village that anybody who was in a house that was flooded in 2003 was to evacuate. He said those houses would have no gas, electricity, sewerage or water for seven days.

SYRIA - British Muslims have carried out acts of torture and possibly executions in Syria, according to new video footage posted on social network sites. Evidence of atrocities committed by British fighters with extreme Islamist groups emerged as another round of peace talks between the regime and the mainstream opposition opened in Geneva on Monday. The two sides spent the day arguing about the agenda, and no progress has been made. The United Nations hopes to broker another ceasefire in the city of Homs to allow the delivery of aid and the evacuation of civilians from areas besieged by government forces.

PUERTO RICO - Moody’s Investors Service on Friday became the second rating agency this week to cut Puerto Rico’s credit rating to junk, citing concern about Puerto Rico’s weak economy and its deteriorating ability to borrow. Moody’s said it now rates the commonwealth’s general obligation bonds at Ba2, two notches below investment grade and one step deeper into junk territory than Standard & Poor’s. PR [Puerto Rico] has some $70 billion of debt outstanding - nearly four times the $18 billion owed by bankrupt Detroit. If markets push rates too high on PR debt, making it prohibitive for PR to raise money in the markets, the US territory will have to either be bailed out by the US or restructure its debt, that is, go in bankruptcy.

CANADA - Vancouver is the home to Canada's first-ever crackpipe vending machines, which were installed in the city’s troubled Downtown Eastside in a bid to curb the spread of disease among drug users. Portland Hotel Society's Drug Users Resource Centre operates two of the machines. They dispense Pyrex crackpipes for just 25 cents. "For us, this was about increasing access to safer inhalation supplies in the Downtown Eastside,” Kailin See, director of the DURC, told CTV Vancouver. She said the pipes are very durable and less likely to chip and cut drug users' mouths, which helps stop the spread communicable diseases including HIV and hepatitis C.

USA - The federal government pays for a $15 million 'wool trust fund,' runs a $170 million program to protect catfish growers from overseas competition, sets aside $3 million to promote Christmas trees, funds another $2 million to help farmers sell more sheep, and plunks down $100 million researching how to get Americans to buy more maple syrup. And that spending is just three one-hundredths of one per cent of the Farm Bill that President Barack Obama signed Friday in Michigan. Liberal and conservative watchdogs alike are hopping mad at what they say are pork-barrel projects included in the five-year agriculture spending law as home-state perks to lawmakers that are unneeded or redundant.

USA - Lawmakers have urged the imposition of federal security standards on grid operators in order to protect the US national electric grid from attack. The new push follows stories, first reported in the Wall Street Journal last Wednesday, about a 16 April 2013 sniper attack which disabled seventeen transformers in a San Jose, California substation for twenty-seven days, causing about $16 million in damage. Federal cybersecurity standards for protecting the grid are in place and mandated, but rules for protecting physical sites such as transformers and substations are voluntary.

EUROPE - After the European Central Bank unveiled its celebrated outright monetary transactions program to shore up weaker euro-bloc members’ debt in the fall of 2012, I recalled 18th century French philosopher Voltaire’s quip that the Holy Roman Empire was “neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire”. My view was that future historians might say that the OMT [Outright Monetary Transactions] was nether outright, nor monetary nor a transaction.

GERMANY - Last week’s ‘thunderbolt’ ruling on eurozone rescue policies by Germany’s top court marks a serious escalation of Europe’s governance crisis and may ultimately force Germany to withdraw from the euro, the country’s most influential magazine has warned.

SWITZERLAND - Take a look at a map of the European Union and you’ll see a Switzerland-shaped hole at its heart. The Swiss are not members of the EU, but it surrounds them on every side. They have had to learn to live with their powerful neighbour, but in a vote on Sunday they took a step back from an ever‑closer relationship. Suddenly the hole looks a bit bigger and deeper than it did before.

EUROPE - Switzerland's surprise decision in favor of curbing EU immigration, was greeted by UKIP's Nigel Farage as "wonderful news for national sovereignty and freedom lovers throughout Europe." With 50.3% of Swiss voters backing the "Stop Mass Immigration" bill proposed by right-wing populists, AFP reports that Farage (who has been outspoken over immigration and sovereignty problems in Europe) added "a wise and strong Switzerland has stood up to the bullying and threats of the unelected bureaucrats of Brussels." As we noted previously, with the EU elections rapidly approaching non-centrist status quo parties are quickly gaining attention as 'the protest vote' gains traction.

EUROPE - Britons are too ignorant about Europe to vote in a referendum on the subject, a top Brussels official claimed last night. Viviane Reding, vice-president of the European Commission, said the British debate about Europe was so ‘distorted’ that people could not make an ‘informed decision’ about whether or not to stay in the EU. Mrs Reding - who boasted that 70 per cent of the UK’s laws are now made in Brussels - also rubbished David Cameron’s bid to curb immigration from Europe, saying it was incompatible with membership of the EU.

USA - Washington’s re-engagement with the Asia Pacific, or “Asia pivot,” is not as new as the US media and some political commentators have made it out to be. It has long been US policy to prevent the emergence of a single power dominating the Asia Pacific region, and US planners have carefully maintained a regional balance of power since the days of the Cold War. The result is a longstanding US military, diplomatic, and economic presence throughout the region, much of which predates any mention of a “pivot.” The Arab Spring and its aftermath have not distracted Washington from the importance of playing a leading role in the Asia-Pacific region. The belief that US military engagement in Afghanistan and subsequently Iraq involved a substantive shift away from Asia is simply erroneous.

TAIWAN - China and Taiwan have held their first high-level talks since the end of the Chinese civil war in 1949. Wang Yu-chi and Zhang Zhijun, the top cross-strait officials from each side, attended the four-day talks in Nanjing. No official agenda was released for the talks, which are widely seen as a confidence-building exercise. China regards Taiwan as part of its territory. Taiwan still calls itself the Republic of China and nominally claims the same territory as the Communist government in Beijing, although it does not press these claims. The US is committed to defending Taipei, despite not formally recognising Taiwan as an independent country. The situation has created a decades-long military stand-off between Beijing and Washington.

USA - President Obama "quipped" today during a visit to Monticello with the French President, "That's the good thing about being president, I can do whatever I want." President Obama and President Hollande walked out from a portico and strolled in front of a pool with Leslie Bowman, president of the Monticello Foundation. Looking at a terrace she said that Jefferson loved to admire the landscape from there. President Obama said that he'd like to take a look and seemed delighted to "break the protocol". "That's the good thing as a President, I can do whatever I want" he quipped, walking to the terrace with his guest and Ms Bowman. The comment came around the time the White House announced it would be delaying the Obamacare mandate for some businesses unilaterally.