Europe

One day after Donald Trump infuriated Angela Merkel and the rest of his G-7 peers, when the US president refused to endorse the Paris climate treaty, prompting the German chancellor to say  that “the whole discussion about climate has been difficult, or rather very unsatisfactory... here we have the situation that six members, or even seven if you want to add the EU, stand against one", Germany's prime minister made what many have dubbed, an "era-defining" statement.

On Friday evening, in previewing Trump's upcoming "war room" effort in response to the escalating media reports about Russia, the WSJ reported that one of the contemplated changes was a drastic cut to Trump's Twitter privileges, with lawyers allegedly tasked to comb through and preapprove the president's social media outbursts, to wit:

Authored by Ryan McMaken via The Mises Institute,

States have always thrived on the fear of the taxpayers, and states have always justified their existence in part on the idea that without the state, we'd all be overrun by barbarians, or murdered by our neighbors. Charles Tilly, a historian of the state, frequently noted that the modern state as we know it, was born out of war, and was created to wage war. War and the state are inseparable. 

Authored by Jim Rickards via The Daily Reckoning blog,

Is there gold price manipulation going on? Absolutely. There’s no question about it. That’s not just an opinion.

There is statistical evidence piling up to make the case, in addition to anecdotal evidence and forensic evidence. The evidence is very clear, in fact.

In the first segment of Friday night's "Trump bombshell" report published almost at the same time by Reuters and the WSJ, anonymous sources reported that Trump is preparing a "war room" upon his Saturday return from Europe, to "combat negative reports and mounting questions about communication between Russia." We did point out some discrepancies: on one hand, Reuters said that Steve Bannon and Jared Kushner (who subsequently WaPo reported was trying to set up "backchannels" with Russians in the second Friday night long-weekend bombshell) were coordinating the "war room" and the White House'