From Wilder: ...[Xia] said Beijing needs to stop using bland rhetoric about "stabilizing the economy" and focus on tackling a debt burden whose interest payments alone tally nearly CNY6 trillion a year. Although monetary printing presses have kept the worst of the crisis at bay, the central government needs to face up to China's debt problem and brace the market for a deep and painful adjustment, he told a forum here at the weekend.

"We need to find ways to let the bubble burst and write off the losses we already have as soon as possible to avoid an even bigger crisis," Xia said. Wilder notes interest payments now total nearly CNY6 trillion a year.

A broad agreement for the "economic corridor" was among eight pacts signed following a meeting in Beijing between Chinese Premier Li Keqiang and Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif. The transport link was described as a "long-term plan" to connect the Chinese city of Kashgar to the port of Gwadar, more than 2,000 kilometers (1,240 miles) away across the towering Karakoram mountains and Pakistan's lawless Baluchistan province.

Another agreement will see a fiber optic cable laid from the Chinese border to the Pakistani city of Rawalpindi that will boost Pakistan's access to international communications networks. China is to provide 85 percent of the financing for the three-year project's $44 million budget, with Pakistan covering the rest.

Last week, in the Syrian port city of Latakia, several pre-dawn explosions were reported to have destroyed Russian missiles that had recently arrived and were being temporarily stored at the port. A spokesman for the opposition Free Syrian Army, describing the July 5 attack, said Tuesday that “It was not the FSA that targeted this. It is not an attack that was carried out by rebels.”

The FSA spokesman, Qassem Saadeddine, went on to say “This attack was either by air raid or long-range missiles fired from boats in the Mediterranean.” The suggestion is that Israel was behind the attack. The Russian-made Yakhont anti-ship missiles, it is speculated, could have been considered a threat to Israel’s naval forces.

Israel has not commented on the attack. In May, Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon commented that Israel “will know what to do” in the event that Russian missiles were delivered to Syria. Israel has carried out previous airstrikes in Syria, including an attack upon vehicles carrying weapons towards the Lebanese border. This massive military alert is seen as a response to the disclosure Friday to CNN, by unnamed US officials, that the destruction of the Russian missiles in Syria was a result of Israeli airstrikes.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is beginning to prepare the public in Israel and around the world for a military option. This is why he appeared on CBSs ‘Face The Nation’ on Sunday.

The PM called the Iranian a messianic, apocalyptic regime bent on genocide, a reference to the Shia eschatology Khamenei holds that Iran must annihilate Israel and the US to usher in the reign of the Twelfth Imam. Netanyahu also called the incoming Iranian president, Hassan Rouhani, a wolf in sheep’s clothing who has bragged in the past about negotiating with the West while secretly advancing nuclear enrichment. What’s more, Netanyahu vowed not to wait too long to stop Iran.

Here’s the key: Israeli intelligence now believes Iran will likely have a nuclear device in as soon as four to six months, and an operational nuclear bomb or warhead within a year. But top Israeli political and military leaders - up to an including the Prime Minister - do not believe they can afford to wait that long. Therefore, they are making final preparations for war; a war that they increasingly believe may have to be launched before this year is over.

GPs and NHS doctors are prescribing the fish oil on prescription, despite it being available without prescription. The newspaper reported that the capsules were supplied by a small pharmaceutical company called Ennogen, in Kent. It sells cod-liver oil under the brand name Elive. Elive extra strength capsules of cod liver oil – 1.05g capsules - cost the NHS £89.50.

The comparable product from Seven Seas costs £3.50 – almost thirty times less. In November it was revealed that hospitals are squandering £500 million a year paying too much for blankets, syringes and other basic equipment. An investigation found that some are being charged twice as much as others for the same items.

Researchers looked at ten NHS trusts and found some hospitals were paying £120 for a box of electric blankets while other paid only £47. Others were charged £23 for a box of forceps which cost others just £13. Some trusts were paying £1,109 for knee implants while others were paying £787. The study by Ernst and Young calculated the annual total wasted as £500 million.

The Coalition is planning to opt back in to 35 EU justice schemes, including the controversial European Arrest Warrant, after talks with other European countries. But ministers bowed to pressure from eurosceptic MPs for a wider review of the plan after criticism that the government was forcing through its reforms in a "mad rush".

MPs will now be free to consider more radical options and will no longer be confined to commenting on the government's preferred list of 35 European schemes when they make recommendations in the autumn. Under European Union rules, Britain must decide next year whether to opt out of all 130 EU justice and home affairs measures, before beginning a process of negotiation over which individual schemes to sign back up to.

Eurosceptic MPs believe that schemes such as the Europe-wide arrest warrant will concentrate too much power in the hands of European judges at the expense of national sovereignty. Theresa May, the Home Secretary, said that the arrest warrant must contain added protections to stop British citizens being extradited to face trial for trivial offences.

The violence comes in the wake of a murder case that polarized the nation along racial lines through the death of Trayvon Martin. Defense lawyers argued that Martin, 17, attacked George Zimmerman, who responded by shooting and killing the teen in apparent self-defense. The prosecution attempted to portray the actions of Zimmerman, 29, who is Hispanic, as racially motivated as he “stalked” and targeted Martin because he was black, they said.

The secretive, all-male club, founded over a hundred years ago in 1872, has historically claimed some of the worlds most powerful men as members including Henry Kissinger, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, Ronald Reagan, Richard Nixon, Donald Rumsfeld, Karl Rove and Dick Cheney.

Besides an ‘off the record’ meeting between some of the world’s most powerful men, one of the most controversial aspects of the two-week gathering revolves around the ‘Cremation of Care’ ceremony that depicts a mock child sacrifice performed in front of a forty-foot stone owl called Moloch, which many believe is Satanic.

The Afghanistan death toll was 44, of whom 40 died in action. The British government, unlike its American counterpart, does not record the suicide rate among ex-soldiers. But Panorama has independently established that at least 29 veterans took their own lives in 2012.

The four countries said this incident violated international law. As a result of Obama's "neo-colonial" practices in Europe, as Uruguay's foreign minister Luis Almagro denounces Europe's servile compliance with pax AmericaNSA, the Mercosur ambassadors in Spain, France, Italy and Portugal will be pulled back for consultations.

The US military is likely to stay in Afghanistan far beyond the 2014 alleged deadline for withdrawal, James Dobbins — the State Department's special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan — told the Senate earlier this week.

The statement came after an article published Monday in the New York Times suggested that Obama plans to move more quickly on troop withdrawal from Afghanistan. The US diplomat made it clear that, to the contrary, the US intends to extend its open-ended occupation. "The Afghans actually need us to stay," Dobbins alleged, according to Reuters. "Most Afghans want us to stay. And we have promised to stay."

Concerning the results of the poll, Gallup reported, “Americans are most dissatisfied with areas of government performance related to the economy and economic issues - some of which affect the average American's household budget in the form of jobs, healthcare, and education.

The still somewhat sluggish economy and ballooning federal debt are likely reasons Americans are mostly dissatisfied with the government's handling of the nation's finances and its efforts on job creation and economic growth, and labor and employment issues.”

Of course, this move was quickly followed by capital controls, which are still in place today. Yet based on this summer’s financial euphoria, it’s as if none of this ever happened. It’s the same thing in Greece, where I just spent a few days checking out distressed asset deals (ie the entire country).

It wasn’t even a few weeks ago that the terminally insolvent Greek government was about to go bust yet again, and begging for another bailout like some repugnant doggy treat. And it was only about six months ago that United States breached its debt ceiling in an extraordinarily humiliating public squabble.

Never mind that the US government is about to breach its debt ceiling once again in less than two months. Or that Greece will soon be out of cash again. Or that Cyprus is still broke and has never lifted its capital controls (as we learned trying to send a wire today).

These issues aren’t going away. They get shuffled under the rug for a few months, but the problems are only escalating despite all the market excitement. Financial minions who operate within the system never seem to miss an opportunity to demonstrate their total failure to learn important lessons from the recent past.

It sounds absolutely ridiculous, and it is. Unfortunately, we are witnessing something just as ridiculous in the real world right now. In the United States, the mainstream media is breathlessly proclaiming that the US economy is in great shape because job growth is “accelerating” (even though we actually lost 240,000 full-time jobs last month) and because the US stock market set new all-time highs this week.

The mainstream media seems to be absolutely oblivious to all of the financial storm clouds that are gathering on the horizon. The conditions for a “perfect storm” are rapidly developing, and by the time this is all over we may be wishing that flying sharks were all that we had to deal with.

The meeting was convened, as always, by the American Medical Association. Since 1992, the AMA has summoned this same committee three times a year. It’s called the Specialty Society Relative Value Scale Update Committee (or RUC, pronounced “ruck”), and it’s probably one of the most powerful committees in America that you’ve never heard of.

The purpose of each of these triannual RUC meetings is always the same: it’s the committee members’ job to decide what Medicare should pay them and their colleagues for the medical procedures they perform. How much should radiologists get for administering an MRI? How much should cardiologists be paid for inserting a heart stent?

While these doctors always discuss the “value” of each procedure in terms of the amount of time, work, and overhead required of them to perform it, the implication of that “value” is not lost on anyone in the room: they are, essentially, haggling over what their own salaries should be. “No one ever says the word ‘price’,” a doctor on the committee told me after the April meeting. “But yeah, everyone knows we’re talking about money.”