United Kingdom

Here’s a terrific meditation by English writer Niall Gooch, who has been thinking about the Benedict Option, and the way Britain’s surfeit of old churches can be part of it. Excerpts:

While the biggest news of the night had nothing to do with either oil or China, all that mattered to US equity futures trading also was oil and China, and since WTI managed to rebound modestly from their biggest 2-day drop in years, continuing the trend of unprecedented, HFT-driven volatility which has far surpassed that of equities and is shown in the chart below...

US military contractor Kellogg, Brown and Root (KBR) and Israeli arms company Elbit Systems have won a £500-million contract to provide aircraft training for the UK military. RT reports: The Affinity venture, in which the two are partners, will provide fixed wing training for sections of the UK Armed Forces concerned with aviation. Affinity’s component is part of a larger deal led by Ascent Flight training and worth £1.1 billion. Ascent is itself a fifty-fifty venture between international arms firms Babcock and Lockheed Martin.

• Punxsutawney Phil Does Not see shadow, signifying an early spring (CBS)
• Front-Runners Give Ground as Rivals Make Mark in Iowa (WSJ)
• Republican Cruz bests Trump in Iowa race, Clinton edges out Sanders (Reuters)
• Iowa Narrows the Field (BBG)
• Global stocks snap winning streak as oil pressure returns (Reuters)
• ‘Dark Pool’ Settlements Bring Tangled Relationships to Light (WSJ)
• BP Shares Plunge on Steep Loss Amid Oil Price Slide (WSJ)
• UBS Shares Tank on Wealth-Management Performance (WSJ)

Scientists in the UK have been given the green light to genetically modify human embryos for the first time. The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) regulator has approved a licence for researchers at the Francis Crick Institute in London to use gene editing in research.