The island had 256 plague cases and 60 deaths last year, the world's highest recorded number. The number of cases rises each October as hot humid weather attracts fleas, which transmit the disease from rats and other animals to humans.

The final results from the 2011 census from across the UK show that more than a third of the population - around 17.8 million people - now class themselves as single. This means the number of British singletons has increased by a quarter - while the number of divorcees has risen by a fifth to 4.5 million people.

Same-sex civil partnerships, which did not even exist a decade earlier, accounted for around 113,000 people in the 2011 census.

But experts worry that the real fascist concern in Spain is not from small extremist groups, but rather from growing public displays of fascist sympathies by a small part of the conservative government's constituency – and even among elected officials.

“Spain has not been ‘de-Francoized,’ as Germany has been de-Hitlerized,” explains Félix Ortega, a sociology professor and expert in public opinion in the Universidad Complutense de Madrid. “There are still Franco symbols even in my university!”

The PP-controlled parliament last month voted down proposals from opposition parties that would have penalized pro-Franco propaganda and banned pro-Franco political parties. “It’s true that this is not Greece or France, where the extreme right has become a political power,” Ortega says. “But you never know, especially if it seems that the PP tolerates it.”

Amid the financial crisis of 2008, the US went into what economists call a "debt deleveraging cycle" — akin to a credit hangover, where the party has ended and everyone there decides to quit drinking cold turkey. Somebody has clearly turned the lights back on, though, and corporate and individual buying is soaring.

Consumer credit, for instance, surged past the $3 trillion mark in the second quarter of 2013 and continues on an upward trajectory, according to the most recent numbers from the Federal Reserve. At $3.04 trillion, the total is up 22 percent over the past three years. Student loans are up a whopping 61 percent.

Total household debt, according to the Fed's flow of funds report, is at $13 trillion, nearly back to its pre-crisis level in 2007 and a shade below government debt of $15 trillion. "We have not solved anything when it comes to the deleveraging myth," said Michael Pento, president of Pento Portfolio Strategies. "We have learned nothing."

A reader in England, who works in the National Health Service, informs me that mental health authorities over there are subtly trying to have religious belief declared a mental disorder — because they think it is.

Whenever there’s abuse or violence, says my informant, the authorities make a point of publicly identifying the perpetrators as religious believers. Most of this, I’m told, is going on under the table: it’s not something they want to be seen doing. But I think a story that surfaced in the British media early this year hints that they have already taken the first baby-steps toward formally and officially marginalizing religion — by which, of course, we mean the Christian religion only.

Then there’s the British “entertainment” media. Like ours in America, they always portray Christianity and Christians, especially clergy and church officials, in the worst possible light. I recently saw on youtube an episode of “Midsomer Murders,” one of the most popular TV shows in the world, which, when it comes to spewing anti-Christian bile, takes the cake. Calling the religion that preaches eternal life through faith in Jesus Christ a “death cult,” the episode depicted every single Christian in it as either a pervert, a hypocrite, a fool, or a criminal, or some miserable combination thereof.

They went so far as to have one of the characters, an adulterous and mean-spirited churchwarden, say, when asked if she objected to a pair of unrepentant sodomites serving as the vicar and the curate of her church, that “homophobia” is a “sin” that God will judge harshly. She must have found that in a Bible no one else has ever seen. Another character, a cop, said, “Why don’t they just burn everyone? That’s what they do in the Bible.”

Hate and ignorance: perfect together.

If, as John Donne said, “no man is an island,” then it’s surely true that no nation is an island, either (even if, geographically, Britain really is an island). As the culture rots from within the Mother Country, the rot may well spread into the former colonies. Think of it: England, the birthplace of St Patrick, cradle of saints, home of King Arthur, has become the hotbed of a war against the Christian faith.

“Saturday is a big day of action against Monsanto. We took our lights out to a local cornfield. Monsanto is bad for our food and bad for our planet,” the March against Monsanto’s movement posted on its Facebook page.

The rallies, which come four days ahead of World Food Day on October 16, will call on millions of activists to boycott “Monsanto’s predatory business,” genetically modified organisms (GMOs) and other harmful pesticides, which threaten “health, fertility and longevity.”

On October 5, Movement against Monsanto launched a global 'Twitter storm' asking people to tweet and post certain hashtags as frequently as possible.

Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras has also recently called for a new round of debt relief for his country. "What is important to me is not to procrastinate too much for a solution," he said. But the German government in particular rejects a writedown of Greek government debt. At most, it wants to discuss lower interest rates and longer loan maturities - measures that many economists do not regard as being sufficient to solve the problems.

On the other hand, French insistence on war reparation payments after World War I led to the rise of Adolf Hitler and the Nazis: "The Golden Dawn in Greece is a similar development." If German Chancellor Angela Merkel does not change her policies towards Europe, Soros said, then her victory in last month's election would be a mere "Pyrrhic victory".

He added: "The situation that emerged from the crisis is neither tolerable nor stable... The current situation is not the result of an evil German plot. But Germany cannot escape the responsibilities and liabilities that go with that role. Germany must learn to act as a benign hegemon. Doing so would earn Germany the lasting gratitude of the other countries that are currently subordinated to it, just as the United States earned the lasting alliance of Europe with the Marshall Plan." Failure to do so, he warned, would lead to the disintegration and eventual breakdown of the European Union.

As Jürgen Todenhöfer (CDU), a former member of the Bundestag, explains, he conveyed Teheran's negotiating proposal for solving the nuclear dispute to Washington already in the spring of 2010. At the time, the Iranian government had proposed that the German Finance Minister, Wolfgang Schäuble, serve as mediator.

Catherine Ashton, EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy and her German deputy, Helga Schmid, are playing key roles in the current talks on Iran's nuclear program. Prior to her EU position in Brussels, Schmid had made a career in the German Foreign Ministry as chief of staff for Foreign Minister Joseph Fischer. Iran's President Hassan Rohani, in return, is promoting Germany's prominent role in his country's EU policy.

Berlin welcomes the new rapprochement between the West and Iran. German Middle East experts point out that, if this rapprochement should be successful, it would also lead to far-reaching geo-strategic shifts, initially affecting Syria.

But now that political dysfunction in Washington is accelerating, the downsizing of the world’s only remaining superpower, all you hear is whining. “The American self-blockade is shocking,” Karl-Georg Wellmann, a foreign-policy expert for German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic party, complained to the business daily Handelsblatt. “The position as the West’s leading power will be affected.”

Europeans are particularly unhappy that the government shutdown in Washington has led to a postponement of talks on a new trade agreement with the European Union due to take place this week.

Asians also were unhappy that President Barack Obama canceled his appearance this week at two summits in that region, leaving a Pacific trade agreement twisting in the wind and giving China an opportunity to win friends and influence people.

German editorialist Hubert Wetzel bewailed the “self-destruction of one of the world’s oldest democracies.” This newspaper editor goes on: “No one knows whether the country will still be solvent in three weeks. The bitter truth is: America is already politically bankrupt.”

So sad. The end of the American gravy train really is in sight. That mighty hegemon Europeans love to hate is growing smaller before our very eyes. Europeans might have to finally start shouldering their fair share of maintaining security in the world.

Earlier today, the Israeli Defense Forces (who have been quite active on Twitter) put out a tweet commemorating the famed Yom Kippur war of 1973, in which Israel bombed Syria: Oct. 10 #YomKippur73: Israel Air Force bombards airports in Syria to prevent Soviet weapons reaching the Syrian Army http://t.co/tKnMzYjgFF— IDF (@IDFSpokesperson) October 10, 2013

The tweet may have been somewhat ill-timed, and poorly thought-out, given the current "heightened tensions" with Syria. Either way, apparently some oil traders either skipped over or didn't understand the hashtag reference to "YomKippur73" (and the reference to the Soviet Union - a country that hasn't existed in decades) and interpreted the tweet to mean that Israel was bombing Syria today. And, in response they started bidding up the price of oil. Because twitchy commodities dealers apparently do their pricing based on tweets.

Of course, the article notes that traders eventually realized their mistake... but the price of oil stayed up, rising over a dollar from $110.40 a barrel to $111.50 a barrel, and then continuing to rise a bit (though more slowly) after the mistake was understood. Isn't it great that key pieces of the global economy can change based on some people totally misreading a tweet? Makes me feel so comfortable about the state of the world today.

In the five years before the 2008 crash, only 10 banks failed in the United States. Let me repeat that: ten banks went belly up in the entire period between January 2003 through December 2007.

Since January 2008 through today, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation shows 487 banks have failed, with 22 failures just so far this year. With an average of two bank failures per year in the five years before the crash, that means banks are still failing at 10 times the pre-crash rate. But the numbers get worse from there.

While the FDIC shows 487 banks have failed, other data at the FDIC show that a total of 1,306 banks have disappeared since March 31, 2009, along with $1.5 trillion in deposits. The difference is that 819 banks or savings associations have merged, typically to survive.

Complete and utter incompetence on the part of the government drones in California. So these idiots have been under-reporting for a month? None of the government furloughs are included in these numbers. The MSM won’t tell you that the economy is in recession and companies have begun to lay off people due to poor sales and the Obamacare debacle. Retail and restaurant sales are collapsing.

The average American is barely getting by on their low wage part time jobs. Now Obamacare has arrived to crush whatever momentum the economy had. Claims will be headed higher as the recession deepens.

Republicans will meet Mr Obama, who is a Democrat, later on Thursday. Officials have warned the US risks default on 17 October if the nation's borrowing limit is not increased.

Mr Boehner told reporters on Thursday: "What we want to do is to offer the president today the ability to move a temporary increase in the debt ceiling in agreement to go to conference on the budget for his willingness to sit down and discuss with us a way forward to reopen the government."

"It's time for leadership," the Ohio Republican said. "It's time for these negotiations and this conversation to begin."

Ms Yellen said if confirmed by the Senate she would do her utmost "to promote maximum employment, stable prices and a stable financial system". She said more needed to be done to strengthen the US economy although progress had been made recently. The president praised Ms Yellen's ability to build consensus and listen to competing views.

He added that she was "committed to increasing employment and understands the human costs when Americans can't find a job". If the nomination is confirmed by the US Senate, Ms Yellen, 67, would replace Ben Bernanke, who has held the post for eight years. She has been his deputy for the past two years, and would become the first woman to head the Federal Reserve.

The Fed will be looser for longer. The FOMC will continue to print money until the US economy creates enough jobs to reignite wage pressures and inflation, regardless of asset bubbles, or collateral damage along the way. No Fed chief in history has been better qualified. She is a glaring contrast to Alan Greenspan, a political speech writer for Richard Nixon, who never earned a real PhD (it was honorary) or penned an economic paper of depth.

She has pedigree. Her husband is Nobel laureate George Akerlof, the scourge of efficient markets theory. She co-authored "Market for Lemons", the paper that won the prize.

So there we have it. The next chairman of the Fed is going to track the labour participation rate. Money will stay loose. Markets have been spared again. The Brics can breathe easier. This leaves me deeply uneasy. We are surely past the point where we can keep using QE to pump up asset prices.