USA - One of the fastest ways to ruin anything is to get lawyers involved, and lawyers are running amok in America today.  Several decades ago, Supreme Court Chief Justice Warren Burger warned that our nation would become “a society overrun by hordes of lawyers, hungry as locusts”, and that is precisely what has happened.  There are more than 1.3 million lawyers in the United States today, and it is estimated that those lawyers produce more than 40 million lawsuits each year. 

VATICAN - “They call me a heretic.” Not the words you’d expect to hear from the head of the Roman Catholic Church. But that’s what Pope Francis told a group of fellow Jesuits in Chile earlier this year, acknowledging the fierce pushback from arch-conservatives in the Vatican.

USA - Arizona is preparing for an influx of evacuees after the next major earthquake.  We all know it’s coming but how ready are we and where would we go as disaster strikes?  As CBSLA’s Elsa Ramon reports, Arizona is holding practice runs just outside of Phoenix, preparing for 400,000 evacuees from California.  Deputy Director for FEMA Wendy Smith-Reeve says the training will last three-and-a-half days on the softball field at the National Guard base near Phoenix.  Smith-Reeve says the goal is to make sure all agencies can work together and to spot any potential problem areas.

USA - Facebook used its apps to gather information about users and their friends, including some who had not signed up to the social network, reading their text messages, tracking their locations and accessing photos on their phones, a court case in California alleges. The claims of what would amount to mass surveillance are part of a lawsuit brought against the company by the former startup Six4Three, listed in legal documents filed at the superior court in San Mateo as part of a court case that has been ongoing for more than two years. A Facebook spokesperson said that Six4Three’s “claims have no merit, and we will continue to defend ourselves vigorously”.

IRELAND - ‘Yes’ voters jubilant as anti-abortion campaign concedes defeat in Ireland. As final votes counted, polls show almost 70% say yes to repealing amendment which has made termination of pregnancy illegal except in cases where it endangers mother's life. A leading anti-abortion group said Saturday that Ireland’s historic abortion referendum has resulted in a “tragedy of historic proportions” in a statement that all but admitted defeat, as two exit polls predicted an overwhelming victory for those seeking to overturn the country’s strict ban on terminations.

UK - Bishops in the diocese of Lichfield have issued new guidance to parishioners and clergy reminding them that LGBT people "can be called to roles of leadership and service in the local church".  The guidance, titled "welcoming and honouring LGBT+ people", warns that the church's reputation as being unwelcoming towards gay and transgender people is stopping young people attending. "We very much hope that they, like everyone else, feel encouraged to serve on PCCs, or as churchwardens and worship leaders, for instance, and are supported in exploring vocations to licensed lay and ordained ministries," the guidance says.  "Nobody should be told that their sexual or gender identity in itself makes them an unsuitable candidate for leadership in the Church." 

ITALY - In 1972, a time of great stress in the White House and in the Italian economy, President Richard Nixon asked to reflect on the fate of Italy’s currency, famously snapped: “I don’t give a '****' about the lira!” His line, recorded amid his Watergate travails, points to Italy being of peripheral concern to the world’s great ones.

GERMANY - Germany has had enough of American foreign policy. Angela Merkel’s visits to Russia and China are a testament to that.

On May 10, 2018, German Chancellor Angela Merkel openly said that Europe can no longer count on the United States to protect it, hinting that the European continent would begin to “take destiny into its own hands.” The comments were, of course, a direct reference to US President Donald Trump’s ludicrous but anticipated decision to completely nuke the Iranian nuclear accord, also known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). “It is no longer such that the United States simply protects us, but Europe must take its destiny in its own hands. That's the task of the future," Merkel reportedly said during a speech honoring French President Emmanuel Macron.

USA - Today, America is nearly 70 trillion dollars in debt, and that debt is shooting higher at an exponential rate.  Usually most of the focus is on the national debt, which is now 21 trillion dollars and rising, but when you total all forms of debt in our society together it comes to a grand total just short of 70 trillion dollars.  Many people seem to believe that the debt imbalances that existed prior to the great financial crisis of 2008 have been solved, but that is not the case at all.  We are living in the terminal phase of the greatest debt bubble in history, and with each passing day that mountain of debt just keeps on getting bigger and bigger. 

USA - It was supposed to be a joyous occasion, marking the commencement of a new and better phase in the life of nearly 1000 graduates. Instead, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis told the 984 new lieutenants who are graduating from the US Air Force Academy to prepare for the worst: war. To be sure, this is not the first time time Mattis urged those around him to prepare for war. And while not as intense, the warning is similar to that issued by a US Marine Corps general who last December, warned troops stationed in Norway to be prepared for a coming war. “I hope I’m wrong, but there’s a war coming,” General Robert Neller told them. The warnings came a day before Defense Secretary Jim Mattis told troops at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, that "storm clouds are gathering" over the Korean Peninsula.

USA - Is being a snowflake a disability? This is apparently the case at (pseudo) elite US colleges, where up to one in four students are classified as “disabled” — often simply because they experience “stress and anxiety” — and are thus given special accommodations. This can sometimes mean getting twice as long as their peers to take exams.

EUROPE - “...we will return briefly to another major anticipation we addressed last September, the one concerning the arrival of the petro-yuan via the creation of the Shanghai Energy Stock Exchange and the oil futures contracts denominated in yuan and exchangeable to gold. At the time, among other things, we had anticipated that Saudi Arabia could not resist for very long and would soon sell its oil in yuan to the world's largest importer, China. In doing so, Saudi Arabia, historically at the heart of the petrodollar system, would put a definite end to the hegemony of the dollar as energy exchange currency."

EUROPE - A US decision to reimpose sanctions on Iran is supporting China’s newly established crude oil futures, and may spur efforts to start trading oil in yuan rather than dollars, traders and analysts said. Since launching in March, Shanghai crude oil futures ISCC1 have seen a steady pick-up in daily trading, while open interest - the number of outstanding longer-term positions and a gauge of institutional interest - has also surged. Traded daily volumes hit a record 250,000 lots last Wednesday, more than double the day before, spurred by news of the Iran sanctions. The jump helped the front-month Shanghai futures contract account for 12 percent of the global oil market last week, up from just 8 percent in week one.

UK - Knives are too sharp and filing them down is a solution to soaring violent crime, judge says. A judge has proposed a nationwide programme to file down the points of kitchen knives as a solution to the country’s soaring knife crime epidemic. Last week in his valedictory address, retiring Luton Crown Court Judge Nic Madge spoke of his concern that carrying a knife had become routine in some circles and called on the Government to ban the sale of large pointed kitchen knives. Latest figures show stabbing deaths among teenagers and young adults have reached the highest level for eight years, and knife crime overall rose 22 per cent in 2017. In the past two months, he said, there have been 77 knife-related incidents in Bedfordshire, including three killings.

USA - Foreign exchange (or forex) reserves are a key indicator of economic health. They provide policymakers with a tool to control inflation, ensure the continual flow of imported goods into the country, and generally provide a sense of security in uncertain economic climates. With the US national debt recently topping an eye-popping $21 trillion, we started thinking about how the US stacks up against the rest of the world in forex reserves. We got our data from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for Q1 2018.