USA - Should taxpayer dollars be used to buy sushi and lobster for a young man whose future plans consist entirely of surfing and partying as much as he possibly can?
NEW ZEALAND - Two powerful earthquakes have rocked the New Zealand capital, Wellington, but there were no immediate reports of major damage. The first quake, with a magnitude of 6.5, struck close to the South Island town of Seddon at 14:31 (02:31 GMT) and was followed by a 5.7 aftershock.
USA - America is the Odd Man Out. On July 29, 2013, the Supreme Court of Israel ruled that Israel must stop adding fluoride into public water supplies in one year, following a decision on fluoride’s potential toxicity to humans by the Israeli health minister.
USA - A shift among people of faith is moving public opinion - and changing gay Americans' lives in profound ways. For most gay Americans in the 20th century, the church was a place of pain. It cast them out and called them evil. It cleaved them from their families. It condemned their love and denied their souls.
UK - The Independent has a piece asking if the Bible is to be dropped from Radio 4's Desert Island Discs. The article quotes the National Secular Society's Terry Sanderson, arguing that not everyone wants 'to live in a theocracy where the Bible is mandatory'.
UK - Stock markets across the world slumped and government borrowing costs soared after strong economic data from the US and the UK renewed fears that central banks would soon start withdrawing stimulus and move towards interest rate rises.
USA - That police state you were warned of has already arrived. America’s illusions of freedom are becoming more and more transparent, with the federal government’s now standard practice of deploying armed agents to actively roam public venues and conducting “suspicionless searches” on anyone they want.
USA - The federal government has been low-balling the public for years on how much debt it actually has, a University of California, San Diego economics professor, James Hamilton says, adding that the real amount is $70 trillion – not $16.9 trillion, according to FOX News.
GIBRALTAR - Gibraltar's chief minister yesterday accused Spain’s prime minister of behaving like Argentine dictator General Galtieri as Spanish officials again blocked the border.
GERMANY - Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, has raised Conservative hopes for David Cameron’s European policy by saying that the European Union should discuss returning powers from Brussels to national governments.
USA - Christian churches are being warned that if they continue to sponsor Boy Scout troops, they are opening themselves to multiple legal challenges that could affect whether they can “freely preach the Gospel.”
USA - The Treasury Department's Financial Management Service (FMS), which publishes both the federal government's official Daily Treasury Statement and its official Monthly Treasury Statement, is reporting that in July the federal government ran a deficit of $98 billion but that the federal government's debt remained exactly $16,699,396,000,000 for the entire month.
USA - Are we heading for a major stock market decline? Warnings about a crash of the financial markets are quite common these days, and usually they don't materialize. But this time may be different.
USA - As we noted last night, the current cluster of Hindenburg Omens is the most concentrated on record and today just made it worse. Critically, the Hindenburg Omen's underlying construction is indicative of a market in deep confusion with momentum, advancers, decliners, new highs, and new lows all in divergence. For the 6th day in the last 8, the market has flashed another warning that all is not well in this 'most levered ever' equity market. The equity market internals suggest great confusion...
USA - It sounds like the plot of a Hollywood disaster movie: scientists tinker with a flu virus to make it more deadly, only for the mutant strain to escape and trigger a pandemic.