At this point, the economic paradigm that the Federal Reserve has constructed only works if interest rates remain super low. If they rise, everything falls apart. Much higher interest rates would mean crippling interest payments on the national debt, much higher borrowing costs for state and local governments, trillions of dollars of losses for bond investors, another devastating real estate crash and the possibility of a multi-trillion dollar derivatives meltdown.

Everything depends on interest rates staying low. Unfortunately for the Fed, it only has a certain amount of control over long-term interest rates, and that control appears to be slipping. The yield on 10-year US Treasuries has soared in recent weeks. So have mortgage rates.

If interest rates rise, the US government could be looking at some very hairy interest payments very rapidly. For example, if the average rate of interest on US government debt just gets back to 6 percent (and it has been far higher than that in the past), the federal government will be shelling out a trillion dollars a year just in interest on the national debt.

But while current prices and technical charts may leave some with the feeling that gold’s Bull Run is over and the bubble has popped, others are scooping up as much yellow and silver metal as they can find, and in some cases they’re doing it by the tens of thousands of ounces.

According to recent data from the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, private investors are rapidly exchanging their paper holdings and turning them into deliverable physical assets, an indication that the purported ‘free market’ price for gold on global exchanges is grossly undervalued.

If we are to believe that investors are losing interest in precious metals, then how is it possible that major gold retailers like JM Bullion were reporting weeks-long delivery delays citing “astounding volume” from the retail sector? Even the US Mint has seen such high demand (118% increase year-over-year) that they have actually suspended the sale of some of their gold American Eagles because they are unable to source the gold blanks required to strike the coins.

Obviously what mainstream analysts are reporting and what is happening in the real world are two different things, as evidenced by the large-scale physical deliveries being reported around the globe.

It opens the way for the first legally recognised same-sex weddings to take place in England and Wales by next summer and brings the centuries-old understanding of marriage as being solely between a man and a woman to an end.

Peers gave their assent to the third reading of the Government’s same-sex marriage bill without a formal vote after a short debate in the Lords, also backing plans for a review of pension arrangements for gay couples. Unless MPs object to the bill at the eleventh hour during a short Commons debate set to take place on Tuesday, it is expected to receive royal assent within days.

Baroness Stowell, the Government spokesman who steered the bill through the Lords, told a chamber packed with peers wearing pink carnations, that it was an “historic” achievement.

The “public debt subject to limit” - as the Treasury calls the portion of the federal debt that is legally limited by Congress - first hit $16,699,396,000,000.00 at the close of business on May 17. Up to that point in fiscal year 2013, according to the Daily Treasury Statement, the Treasury had already redeemed approximately $4,776,995,000,000.00 in US debt instruments (bills, notes and bonds) that had matured. At the same time, the Treasury had issued $5,354,508,000,000.00 in new debt instruments. That means that, on net, as of May 17, the part of the federal government’s debt publicly circulated in instruments like bills, notes and bonds had increased $577,513,000,000 for the fiscal year.

Thus, over the past 56 days, the net value of US Treasury Securities circulating in the public has increased by $51.586 billion ($629,099,000,000 minus $577,513,000,000). How could the value of extant US Treasury Securities increase by $51.586 billion during a 56-day period when the federal government’s debt subject to the legal limit set by Congress has remained constant at $16,699,396,000,000.00 - just $25 million below the legal limit?

On May 18, the day after the debt began its long stay at $16,699,396,000,000.00, Treasury Secretary Lew sent a letter to House Speaker John Boehner. In the letter, Lew said the Treasury would begin implementing what he called “the standard set of extraordinary measures” that allows the Treasury to continue to borrow and spend money even after it has hit the legal debt limit. How many days did Lew think he could keep the debt just under the debt limit while the Treasury continued to borrow money?

Many on Wall Street probably assumed that the Fed had an unlimited ability to pull the wool over the eyes of the American public. Yet the reaction with interest rates concludes an interesting chapter in American central banking policy. The Fed can no longer preach for a lower interest rate. After the brutal reaction, the Fed has softened its rhetoric on the “taper” of quantitative easing even though there is really no evidence showing the Fed is tapering anything at all.

The quick reversal in interest rates signifies a strong reaction by the market. It is fascinating to see how much outside money is now flowing back into the US to purchase stocks, real estate, and other real tangible goods. In other words, global investors are now demanding payment for all that cheap credit lent out. The era of cheap debt is now reversing and the piper is demanding to be paid.

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.