GERMANY - Clients of Germany’s biggest bank who have invested in the exchange-traded commodity Xetra-Gold are facing problems when they want to obtain physical gold, according to German analytic website Godmode-Trader.de. Xetra-Gold is a bond on the Deutsche Börse commodities market, and Deutsche Bank is a designated sponsor. On the website, Xetra-Gold says its clients have the right for physical delivery of gold. However, despite claims that every virtual gram of gold is backed by the same amount of physical gold, clients have been refused the precious metal upon demand.

USA - A ‘Ring of Fire’ weather pattern is sweeping across the US and will bring with it a bombardment of extreme conditions, meteorologists have confirmed. The weather system is already in effect, with St Louis, Missouri, already being hit by seven inches of rainfall on Monday, August 12. Meteorological site Weather said: “The worst of the heat and humidity from the dome of high pressure will continue over the South into early this week. Excessive heat warnings have been issued from parts of eastern Oklahoma into the lower Mississippi Valley, where high heat indices could lead to heat-related illnesses such as heat stroke and heat exhaustion.” NBC News meteorologist Bill Karins said the south of the US could be effected by the weird weather pattern until Thursday, possibly even early Friday.

USA - Here’s a fun fact about the Amish: they don’t really get allergies. That’s right: While you city dwellers are making a lunch run for dairy-free, gluten-free, sugar-free, nut-free vegan kale wraps, most Amish can chow down on whatever. A 2012 study of Amish children in Indiana found that only 7 per cent had some kind of allergy sensitization, compared to 36 per cent of American children as a whole. This is an important fact because, if you haven’t noticed, the allergy rate in the Western World is getting kind of nuts.

AUSTRALIA - It’s no secret that regularly eating fast food probably isn’t the best dietary decision in the world. Now, a new study out of Australia shows a connection between the number of fast food restaurants in a town or city and the number of people who suffer from heart attacks. The findings, recently presented at the annual Scientific Meeting of the Cardiac Society of Australia and New Zealand (CSANZ), state that areas containing a higher number of fast food restaurants report higher rates of heart attacks. According to researchers, for each additional fast food restaurant opened in the New South Wales area, there were four more heart attacks reported per 1,000 people annually. "The results emphasize the importance of the food environment as a potential contributor towards health,” explains study author Tarunpreet Saluja in a release by the European Society of Cardiology.

USA - 'Orthorexia' vying for classification as mental disorder as more people become obsessed with 'clean eating'. Whether it’s a 'real' mental disease or an imaginary one, the behaviours and consequences are certainly real, according to a new study's author. Some doctors believe orthorexia — a seemingly growing obsession with “extreme dietary purity” or clean eating (no sugars, carbs, dairy, meat or animal products) — should have its own separate, standalone diagnosis in psychiatry’s official bible of mental disorders. Is an obsession with “clean eating” a bona fide mental disorder deserving of its own diagnosis in psychiatry’s official manual of mental illness? A flurry of new studies and reviews is breathing new life into so-called orthorexia nervosa, loosely defined as a pathological fixation on eating “pure” foods. At its extreme, adherents shun all sugar, all carbs, all dairy, all meat and animal products, gluten, starch, pesticides, herbicides — anything that isn’t natural, organic or “clean.”

UK - A clever movie plot is coming to life when the lunatic inmates take over the insane asylum, while throwing the legitimate staff into the padded cells. ‘Carbon-shaming’ is the new meme, and is patently anti-human and anti-civilization. Why? Because carbon is absolutely essential to human life on earth. [TN Editor]

Beef burgers have been banned by a university as part of efforts to tackle the climate emergency. Goldsmiths, University of London said it is to remove all beef products from sale from next month as the institution attempts to become carbon neutral by 2025. Students will also face a 10p levy on bottles of water and single-use plastic cups when the academic year starts to discourage use of the products. The college’s new Warden, Professor Frances Corner, said staff and students “care passionately about the future of our environment” and that “declaring a climate emergency cannot be empty words”.

VATICAN - Pope Francis said that citizens of European nations should put the good of Europe before that of their own countries in a remarkably frank interview Friday. “The thinking must be ‘Europe first, then each one of us,’” the pope said in a wide-ranging interview with the Italian daily La Stampa. “‘Each one of us’ is not secondary, it is important, but Europe counts more.”

UK - Every now and then, August belies its reputation as a sleepy month when nothing happens and throws up an event that shakes financial markets. The Latin American debt crisis began in August 1982; oil prices soared after Iraq invaded Kuwait in August 1990; the Asian debt crisis had its genesis in the same month in Thailand seven years later. Then there are the crises that simmer away in August and finally come to the boil in September: the buildup to Black Wednesday in 1990; the weeks leading up to the collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008.

HONG KONG - Hong Kong's airport halted flights on Monday, blaming demonstrators for the disruption, while China said the anti-government protests that have swept the city over the past two months had begun to show "sprouts of terrorism". The airport authority said it was working with airlines to resume flights from 6 am on Tuesday, but the developments raised the stakes sharply after a weekend of skirmishes during which both activists and police toughened their stances.

UK - Britain is in the grip of a cauliflower crisis, with supermarket shelves emptying after heavy rain destroyed this year’s crop in Lincolnshire, while alternative European supplies are drying up after the continental heatwave. Tesco only has organic cauliflowers left for sale on its online site, telling buyers that standard single cauliflowers and large cauliflowers are not available. Wholesale prices rise by 400% as restaurants are advised to take cauliflower-related meals off menus.

UK - Boris Johnson is preparing for a parliamentary battle against MPs trying to block a no-deal Brexit in the second week of September, as his cross-party opponents continue to be divided about the best way to stop the UK crashing out on 31 October. A senior government source said Downing Street believed the first legislative showdown over no deal would be on 9 September, when parliament is due to debate a progress report on power-sharing in Northern Ireland. The expectation is that a cross-party group of MPs will try to use this to carve out time to legislate against a no-deal Brexit by requesting an extension to article 50. The prime minister could face a confidence motion brought by Jeremy Corbyn aimed at collapsing his government as early as 3 September, when MPs return from their summer break.

USA - “The undeniable truth is that neither slavery nor Jim Crow nor the harshest racism has decimated the black family the way the welfare state has,” said George Mason professor Walter Williams. There is little evidence to support the idea that slavery, racial discrimination and poverty caused the problems of today’s black Americans, the economics professor wrote.

USA - The most recent FBI crime stats show that more people were killed in 2017 with hammers and clubs than were killed with rifles of any kind. Breitbart News reported the most recent numbers – those for 2017 – on September 26, 2018. Those figures showed that 467 people were killed with “blunt objects (hammers, clubs, etc),” while 403 were killed with rifles. And it must be noted that the category of “rifles” used by the FBI includes bolt action, pump action, single shot, and semi-automatic, as well as those the left describes as “assault weapons.” This means only a percentage of the 403 deaths attributed to “rifles” would have been carried out with an “assault weapon.” Breitbart News also reported that the 2017 crime figures showed 1,591 people were killed with “knives or cutting instruments” while 403 were killed with “rifles.” This means nearly four times as many people were stabbed to death as were killed with any kind of rifle.

UK - The sugar-rich Western diet is fueling a superbug which has evolved to thrive in hospitals, scientists have warned. The gut-infecting bacterium Clostridium difficile (C.diff) is evolving into two separate species, with one group increasingly adapting to live in the guts of people with poor diets, while growing ever better at avoiding the harsh disinfectants used to clean wards. More than 13,000 NHS patients each year are infected with C.diff, which can cause debilitating diarrhea and leave sick people dangerously dehydrated. Bacteria are also becoming increasingly resistant to antibiotics, and if not treated quickly enough an infection can be fatal. Nearly 2,000 people die from the bacterium…

UK - National Grid had experienced three blackout “near-misses” in as many months before Friday’s major outage left almost a million homes in the dark and forced trains to a standstill around the UK. The system operator, already under investigation by the energy watchdog, faces criticism from within the industry that it has not done enough to guard against the risk of blackouts. National Grid blamed the “incredibly rare” nationwide power cut on a severe slump in the grid’s frequency – a measure of energy intensity – following the unexpected shutdown of two power generators.