Clinton email evidence so far doesn’t suggest intent to break law, officials say ... Prosecutors and FBI agents investigating Hillary Clinton’s use of a personal email server have so far found scant evidence that the leading Democratic presidential candidate intended to break classification rules, though they are still probing the case aggressively with an eye on interviewing Clinton h...Read More

Republicans can drag democracy down with them ... US Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump campaigns in South Bend, Indiana Donald Trump’s pending presidential nomination has confirmed what many have argued for years: The Republican Party is not well. - Bloomberg via Chicago TribuneMore and more, Donald Trump seems to us at least partially an extension of the Tea Party movement th...Read More

Glenn Reynolds: Don’t let U.S. become next Rome ... Entrenched political elites will sacrifice anything to retain power, including their own country.... As you vote, remember that the more resources you put under the control of the political class, the more likely it is that things will eventually go bad. Politicians seldom look past the next election, and they're willing to sacrifice pretty...Read More

The president claims that Congress's authorizations in 2001 and 2002 for the wars against Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein can be stretched to cover his current campaign [against ISIS]. – The New York TimesThe U.S. Constitution is gone. Kaput. For years it stood as the bedrock of a republic that kept its government chained. For years the constitution limited government intervention, letting the f...Read More

The end of oil as we know it ... Oil has crashed. But a short-term drop in the price of oil is nothing compared with the end of demand for oil as we know it. The more extreme scenario is what Bernstein Research is now talking about. Energy analyst Neil Beveridge is out with a new note that explores the question of demand - with a prediction that the end of oil as we know it is coming in 2030....Read More

Ted Cruz drops bid for Republican nomination, clearing path for Trump ... Ted Cruz suspended his US presidential campaign on Tuesday after a crushing defeat in Indiana's primary, leaving the way clear for Donald Trump to become the Republican nominee. - UK GuardianIt seems more likely now that Trump will be the Republican nominee for president. But there are seemingly two main questions to answe...Read More

In January, the Department of Housing and Urban Development announced grants totaling $1 billion in 13 states to help communities adapt to climate change, by building stronger levees, dams and drainage systems.One of those grants, $48 million for Isle de Jean Charles, is something new: the first allocation of federal tax dollars to move an entire community struggling with the impacts of climat...Read More

Water shortages will deliver 'severe hit' to world by 2050 - World Bank ... Global water shortages are taking their toll. The World Bank has issued a stark warning that the Middle East, Africa and Central Asia will receive a particularly "severe hit" by 2050, and global mismanagement needs to be addressed urgently. -RTWe just published an analysis of water-scarcity propaganda on Monday and now the...Read More

Leaked papers show 'unsurprising' TTIP disagreements: Dutch trade minister BusinessEurope May 2, 2016 The lack of agreement between the US and Europe on a controversial trade agreement is unsurprising, Dutch trade minister Lilian Ploumen said on Monday. The minister was commenting on the leak of confidential negotiating documents relating to the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership...Read More

But I have to say, it's great, it looks like you're really enjoying your last year of the presidency. Saw you hanging out with NBA players like Steph Curry, Golden State Warriors. That was cool. That was cool, yeah. You know it kinda makes sense, too, because both of you like raining down bombs on people from long distances, right? What? Am I wrong? – Larry Wilmore at the White House corresp...Read More

Was it a blip, or a breakthrough? Scientists around the globe are revved up with excitement as the world's biggest atom smasher - best known for revealing the Higgs boson four years ago - starts whirring again to churn out data that may confirm cautious hints of an entirely new particle. Such a discovery would all but upend the most basic understanding of physics, experts say. -Washington PostHe...Read More

Scott Minerd, global chief investment officer of Guggenheim Partners, said on Wednesday it is a good time to dip into U.S. Treasuries in the wake of their sell-off. “It is impossible to get the timing of anything exactly right. You have to ask yourself, ‘Are you a speculator or an investor?'” -ReutersPuerto Rico is about to default on bond obligations today, but some of the l...Read More

The world will run out of fresh drinking water by 2050 because of the Western world's meat centered diet, according to a secret report just released on WikiLeaks. Nestle executives, concerned about the company's future in a world threatened by climate change ... discovered that high meat consumption is depleting the world's fresh water supply. – InquisitrThe Nestle report dates back to 20...Read More

Overall, the ongoing rise in supply would be adequate to satisfy the growth in oil demand in 2H14, resulting in a well-balanced market – OPEC Forecast, June 2014 (right before oil price collapse)Oil prices have plummeted 70 percent from highs in June 2014 and not many upstream oil and gas operations are making money. – Omar Mawji, OilPrice.com, May 2015 In the first half of 2014, it wa...Read More

Identity 2016: ‘Global citizenship’ rising, poll suggests ... People are increasingly identifying themselves as global rather than national citizens, according to a BBC World Service poll. The trend is particularly marked in emerging economies, where people see themselves as outward looking and internationally minded. However, in Germany fewer people say they feel like global citizen...Read More

One day we're saving the banks; the next day we're saving the auto industry; the next day we're trying to see whether we can have some impact on the housing market. – President Barack ObamaYesterday's New York Times devoted 6,000 words and a main feature to nothing short of an all-out defense of Obama's economic legacy. In the process, they went full Keynesian.From the opening paragraph that...Read More

The dollar has an opportunity to make history. After three straight years of gains, strategists are forecasting the US currency will be a world beater again in 2016, strengthening against seven of 10 developed world peers by the end of the year. – Median estimate from Bloomberg SurveyTwo data points may establish a trend. Three can confirm the trend - with a margin of error.But what happe...Read More

The European Union always was an American project. It was Washington that drove European integration in the late 1940s, and funded it covertly under the Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon administrations. - TelegraphAmbrose Evans-Pritchard is telling the truth again, or at least part of it, in this most recent column of his. But we find ourselves disagreeing with him on some im...Read More

Germany to launch 1 billion-euro discount scheme for electric car buyers ...Germany is set to launch a new incentive scheme worth about 1 billion euros ($1 billion) to get more consumers buying electric cars as it struggles to meet a target of bringing 1 million of them onto its roads by the end of the decade. The costs of the incentives, similar to those already established in some other European...Read More

Trump's World to watch as Trump outlines his foreign policy ... Critics have accused the Republican front-runner of bigotry and posing a danger to U.S. national security. Many foreign policy and defense advisers say his views are worrying, mingling isolationism and protectionism, with calls to force U.S. allies to pay more for their defense and proposals to impose punitive tariffs on some import...Read More