EUROPE - Britain has moved a step closer to leaving the European Union after David Cameron declared “war” on Brussels over the nomination of Jean-Claude Juncker. Keeping Britain in the EU “has got harder”, the Prime Minister said, after he was outvoted by 26 to two in his attempt to prevent Mr Juncker becoming the European Commission president. The result emboldened Eurosceptic MPs and Ukip supporters who want to leave the EU. However, Mr Cameron said he would wage a “long, tough fight” to reform Brussels before campaigning for Britain to remain in the EU in an in-out referendum he has promised to hold in 2017.

UK - Mutant “super rats” that have become immune to common poisons are spreading across Britain, scientists have warned. Researchers from the University of Huddersfield tested rats in 17 counties and found rodents resistant to over-the-counter poisons such as Bromadiolone and Difenacoum in every single one. In more than 50 towns across the UK - from Reading to Sheffield to Dumfries and Galloway – they found rats who were 100 per cent resistant to common poisons. Dr Dougie Clarke, who carried out the research, told ITV’s Tonight “people should be concerned”. “The fact we've tested 17 counties and every single one of them has got resistant rats was an amazing find to us. We didn't expect to have every single county having resistant rats.”

USA - The bee population situation has gotten so dire that the White House has created a bee task force. As the bee population dwindles, scientists and researchers look for an explanation and a solution. Thus far, scientists have determined that neonicotinoids, a class of pesticides, is a serious culprit in the bee problem.

FALKLAND ISLANDS - A UN committee has approved a new resolution calling on Britain and Argentina to negotiate a solution to their dispute over the Falkland Islands, essentially favoring Argentina's stance in the nearly 200-year-old feud. The 24-nation Decolonisation Committee passed the resolution by consensus despite passionate speeches from a pair of Falkland Islands representatives arguing that most islanders want to keep things as they are. The decision showed that the committee members have been largely unmoved by a referendum in the Falkland Islands last year in which more than 99 percent of voters favored remaining a British Overseas Territory. Britain has rebuffed Argentina's calls to negotiate the sovereignty of the wind-swept south Atlantic archipelago, saying it is up to the islands to decide.

BULGARIA - Now we have bank runs in Bulgaria. The entire fabric is coming undone and this is part of the fuel that sends everything into chaos and the risk of war as tensions rise and people blame someone else be it rich, foreigners, bankers, or corporations. This is the time where clear reasonable thinking and solutions become impossible. The IMF is now urging the ECB to start buying government bonds of the member states. They have no solutions but the same old bad box of tricks. There is nobody even capable of thinking out of the box in a position of power. We are plagued by lawyer-politicians in the total absence of anyone with experience in international money management – the void of experience and statesmanship.

USA - There are no genetically engineered animals sold for human consumption right now. The only candidate that's anywhere close, AquaBounty's fast-growing GM salmon, seems to have stalled in its approval process, in spite of positive scientific reviews finding AquaBounty fish safe to eat and safe for the environment.

USA - Many chemicals used in hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, can disrupt not only the human body’s reproductive hormones but also the glucocorticoid and thyroid hormone receptors, which are necessary to maintain good health, a new study finds. The results were presented Monday at the joint meeting of the International Society of Endocrinology and the Endocrine Society: ICE/ENDO 2014 in Chicago. “Among the chemicals that the fracking industry has reported using most often, all 24 that we have tested block the activity of one or more important hormone receptors,” said the study’s presenting author, Christopher Kassotis, a PhD student at the University of Missouri, Columbia. “The high levels of hormone disruption by endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDCs) that we measured, have been associated with many poor health outcomes, such as infertility, cancer and birth defects.”

EUROPE - Britain's slender hopes of securing Italian support in its campaign to stop Jean-Claude Juncker becoming European Commission president crumbled on Wednesday when Germany offered Rome a gentler interpretation of EU budget rules. Chancellor Angela Merkel acknowledged that a European Union pact that sets limits on government deficits should be applied flexibly to promote economic growth. This gesture to the wishes of Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi all but ensures he will back Juncker's nomination at a summit on Friday.

BRUSSELS - The European Commission on Tuesday (24 June) laid out plans on how to boost the EU’s military and defence industries. It wants to create a single market on defence, make it more profitable, and intensify and merge research with the civil sector. Antonio Tajani, the EU industry commissioner, said greater defence collaboration is needed between member states to enable the EU to "adequately face its security challenges". Tajani described the plan in terms of helping the EU pull itself out of the economic crisis. "It is vital that the European defence industry remains a world-leading centre for manufacturing and innovation, creating highly qualified jobs and growth," he said in a statement. "While defence and security remain primarily a matter of national responsibility, more can be done to promote European co-operation," said the EU's internal market commissioner Michael Barnier.

EUROPE - At its summit, starting today, the EU is pushing ahead to integrate non-member countries into its global foreign and military policies. With the Association Agreements due to be signed at the summit, Georgia, Moldavia and Ukraine will have to gradually adapt themselves to the EU's foreign and military policy. The association aims at enhancing the three countries' participation "in EU-led civilian and military crisis management operations as well as relevant exercises and training activities."

USA - Shares in Barclays have fallen 6.52% after the New York attorney general filed a fraud lawsuit against the bank. The lawsuit alleges the bank falsified documents and misrepresented benefits it was offering to big institutional clients, including pension funds. It relates to the bank's "dark pool" trading operations, which allow clients to trade large blocks of shares while keeping prices private. Barclays has begun an internal probe into the allegations. New York attorney general Eric Schneiderman said: "The facts alleged in our complaint show that Barclays demonstrated a disturbing disregard for its investors in a systematic pattern of fraud and deceit." The complaint details "a flagrant pattern of fraud, deception and dishonesty with Barclays clients and the investing public," he added.

USA - How in the world does the government expect us to trust the economic numbers that they give us anymore? For a long time, many have suspected that they were being manipulated, and as you will see below we now have stone cold proof that this is indeed the case. But first, let's talk about the revised GDP number for the first quarter of 2014 that was just released. Initially, they told us that the US economy only shrank by 0.1 percent in Q1. Then that was revised down to a 1.0 percent contraction, and now we are being informed that the economy actually contracted by a whopping 2.9 percent during the first quarter. So what are we actually supposed to believe?

RUSSIA - The text of a 19-page, international trade agreement being drafted in secret was published by WikiLeaks on Thursday as the transparency group’s editor commemorated his two-year anniversary confined to the Ecuadorian Embassy in London. Fifty countries around the globe have already signed on to the Trade in Service Agreement, or TISA, including the United States, Australia and the European Union. Despite vast international ties, however, details about the deal have been negotiated behind closed-doors and largely ignored by the press. In a statement published by the group alongside the leaked draft this week, WikiLeaks said “proponents of TISA aim to further deregulate global financial services markets,” and have participated in “a significant anti-transparency manoeuvre” by working secretly on a deal that covers more than 68 percent of world trade in services, according to the Swiss National Center for Competence in Research.

USA - Former Vice President Dick Cheney on Tuesday predicted there would be an attack on the United States within the next decade that is "far deadlier" than the September 11, 2001, attacks. "I doubt it," Cheney told conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt, when asked if he thinks the US would "get through this decade" without another "massive attack on the homeland." "I think there will be another attack. And the next time, I think it's going to be far deadlier than the last one. Imagine what would happen if somebody could smuggle a nuclear device, put it in a shipping container, and drive it down the beltway outside Washington DC."

USA - The Baltic Dry Index - so admired when it is soaring and supportive of all things great and good about credit creation and rehypothecation - has collapsed over 60% year-to-date. At $867, the index is at one-year lows and hovering near post-crisis lows as the hope-strewn surge of last year now lies torn asunder by the reality of China commodity ponzi probes and a 'real' slowing global economy.