CHINA - In what’s been described as the biggest online outage in history, China’s Internet went completely down Tuesday afternoon. Theories have abounded since as to what caused it, and whether the crash was intentional on the part of the Chinese government to block citizens from seeing a controversial news story on the nation’s leadership and their offshore bank accounts. The historic outage, which affected about 500 million Chinese, began at 3:30 pm local time on January 21, according to GreatFire.org, a group that monitors China’s efforts to censor Internet information.

USA - The effectiveness of the Fed’s aggressive monetary policy can best be gauged by the stock market which has been soaring for five years, though it has gotten a little wobbly recently, up there at its dizzying heights. The hope is that it won’t lose balance altogether and topple, but that it might sit down a while and catch its breath before climbing into what mountaineers call the “death zone,” where oxygen is so sparse that human life, or hardly any life, can be sustained for longer than a brief period. It’s where hopes go to die.

CHINA/JAPAN - The FT's Gideon Rachman notes, "this is not a situation that is getting better; it is getting worse." We have two countries, each building up their militaries while insisting they must do so to counter the threat of their regional rival. China and Japan’s war of words reveals a larger struggle for regional influence akin to a mini Cold War. Each country insists it loves peace, and uses scare tactics to try to paint its opponent as a hawkish boogeyman. Sound familiar to anyone else?

USA - A growing number of farmers are abandoning genetically modified seeds, but it’s not because they are ideologically opposed to the industry. Simply put, they say non-GMO crops are more productive and profitable. Modern Farmer magazine discovered that there is a movement among farmers abandoning genetically modified organisms (GMO) because of simple economics. “We get the same or better yields, and we save money up front,” crop consultant and farmer Aaron Bloom said of non-GMO seeds. Bloom has been experimenting with non-GMO seeds for five years and he has discovered that non-GMO is more profitable.

EUROPE - Fears after scientists link two plagues that occurred 800 years apart. A strain of plague which has killed up to 100 million people could strike again, scientists warn. They have linked the Black Death, which killed 50 million Europeans in the 1300s, and The Plague of Justinian, which struck 800 years earlier, suggesting they were caused by ‘distinct’ strains of the same pathogen. Dave Wagner, professor in the Center for Microbial Genetics and Genomics at Northern Arizona University warned that it could return in the future.

USA - Data related to food stamp rolls is one way to gain real insight into the true state of the US economy. In an excellent article from the Associate Press, we learn several things. For the first time ever, working-age people now make up the majority in US households that rely on food stamps. Food stamp participation since 1980 has grown the fastest among workers with some college training. By education, about 28 percent of food stamp households are headed by a person with at least some college training, up from 8 percent in 1980.

UK - Royal Bank of Scotland is on course for its largest loss since the crash because of blunders under former boss Fred ‘the Shred’ Goodwin. It is having to set aside £3 billion to cover expected costs for legal actions and compensation for mis-selling thousands of policies. The massive black hole illustrates the long-lasting damage done by Goodwin’s leadership before the bank was bailed out with £45 billion of taxpayers’ money in 2008. RBS is now on course to lose around £8 billion this year, its biggest deficit since its record £24 billion loss more than five years ago.

USA - Have you been paying attention to what has been happening in Argentina, Venezuela, Brazil, Ukraine, Turkey and China? If you are like most Americans, you have not been. Most Americans don’t seem to really care too much about what is happening in the rest of the world, but they should. In major cities all over the globe right now, there is looting, violence, shortages of basic supplies, and runs on the banks. We are not at a “global crisis” stage yet, but things are getting worse with each passing day.

SWITZERLAND - Many speakers compare 2014 to 1914 when WWI broke out & no one expected it. A black swan in the form of a war between China & Japan? Both Abe [Japanese Prime Minister] and an influential Chinese analyst don’t rule out a military confrontation between China and Japan. Memories of 1914? We believe that war is an inevitable consequence of the current global economic situation...

UK - Following the quiet update that HSBC had decided to withhold large cash withdrawals from some of its clients - demanding to know the purpose of the withdrawal before handing over the customers' money - it appears the anger among the over 60 thousand readers who found out about HSBC's implied capital shortfall just on this website, has forced HSBC's hands.

SWITZERLAND - Anybody who thinks China's dispute with Japan is subject to rational calculation should have heard the astonishing outburst a few minutes ago by China's foreign minister, Wang Yi. "We will never allow past aggressors to overturn the verdict of history," he began. It went downhill from there...

ARGENTINA - Thirteen years after [economic] collapse, President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner is running out of time to avert another crisis. Inflation soared to 28 percent last year, according to opposition lawmaker Patricia Bullrich. The selloff is the worst since the devaluation that followed the default. Currencies from only two countries in the world have fallen more: war-torn Syria and Iran.

UK - The prospect of genetically modified purple tomatoes reaching the shelves has come a step closer. Their dark pigment is intended to give tomatoes the same potential health benefits as fruit such as blueberries. The purple pigment is the result of the transfer of a gene from a snapdragon plant - the modification triggers a process within the tomato plant allowing the anthocyanin to develop.

USA - The United States’ habit of arresting criminals has not only resulted in the world’s largest prison population, but also this: more than 40% of all men in the country are arrested by their early twenties. This eye-opening statistic includes not just blacks and Hispanics, two groups that have endured well-documented high arrest rates, but whites as well.

UK - London’s leaderboard was all about partying like it was 1999 at the start of the week, with the index testing records set back in those heady days. But the celebrations ended on Friday as the blue-chip index swung to its lowest point in a month. The City woke up with a hangover after Argentina’s central bank abandoned its fiscal support of the peso, causing the currency to suffer its sharpest-one day fall since 2002.