WASHINGTON - Regulators on Friday shut two banks in California and two smaller banks in Georgia and South Dakota, boosting to 57 the number of federally insured banks to fail this year.
USA - This weekend, 40 years after man first landed on the Moon, more human beings than ever before are orbiting on a single spacecraft. In 1969, three men squeezed into Apollo 11's command module, a craft little bigger than a Mini.
IRAN - Tens of thousands of Iranians flooded the streets of Tehran yesterday to hear the country's most influential powerbroker pronounce the Islamic Republic in crisis and as he called for the release of those arrested in recent pro-democracy demonstrations.
ISRAEL/GAZA - Four members of a group of ultra-Orthodox Jews opposed to the existence of Israel have visited Hamas in Gaza. The men, clad in the traditional ultra-Orthodox garb of black hats and coats and with long side-curls in their hair, met Hamas leader Ismail Haniya.
UK - Police officers who practise witchcraft to get Pagan Police Association and their own religious holidays. Pagan PCs to get time off to celebrate Halloween and summer solstice (and have their own support group).
VATICAN - Oscar Wilde, whose flamboyant homosexuality shocked Britain in the 19th century, won an unlikely endorsement from the Vatican on Thursday.
USA - Vice President Joe Biden told people attending an AARP town hall meeting that UNLESS THE DEMOCRAT-SUPPORTED HEALTH CARE PLAN BECOMES LAW THE NATION WILL GO BANKRUPT and that the only way to avoid that fate is for the government to spend more money.
CHINA - China overtook Japan as the world's second-largest stock market by value for the first time in 18 months, after government stimulus spending and record bank lending boosted share prices this year.
USA - Congressional plans to fund a massive health-care overhaul could have a job-killing effect on New York, creating a tax rate of nearly 60 percent for the state's top earners and possibly pressuring small-business owners to shed workers.
UK - Failures in the way the banks are run played an important part in the financial crisis, according to a government-commissioned report. It calls for better trained non-executive directors with more power, and greater shareholder involvement.
USA - US President Barack Obama assured 15 leaders of Jewish American organizations of his commitment to Israel, but he also insisted he would continue to publicly press the Jewish State to conform to his vision of Middle East peace.
ISRAEL - Another anti-Israeli campaign, this time charging that the IDF destroyed a Christian hospital in Gaza earlier this year, has gone up in smoke following an investigation by the Jewish Telegraph Agency (JTA). One question remains: what was supposed to happen with the $1.67 million raised for "rebuilding" the hospital?
GERMANY - Germany's debate on how much national say there should be over further EU integration is intensifying two weeks after the country's constitutional court handed down a significant judgement on the EU's Lisbon Treaty.
BRUSSELS - Most Europeans have probably never heard of the European Defence Agency, which celebrates its fifth anniversary this month. Yet, this little known EU agency has slowly created a basis for the development of common military projects.
USA - Below is a reprint of a July 1, 2009 Open Letter to Congress by a team of prominent atmospheric scientists. 'You Are Being Deceived About Global Warming' - 'Earth has been cooling for ten years' - 'Present cooling was NOT predicted by the alarmists' computer models, and has come as an embarrassment to them'