United Kingdom

British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson has drawn a storm of criticism for statements he made about war-torn Libya this week, which included discussion of UK investment opportunities only after Libyans "clear the dead bodies away."  He made the comments while describing his August visit to the North African country at a Conservative party conference Tuesday night, which drew a smattering of laughter from the audience.

Authored by Julia Conley via TheAntiMedia.org,

“We have so much wind and wave power that it is retrograde in the extreme to lend any support to the fracking industry.”

Environmental groups from around the world applauded Scotland on Tuesday for its decision to ban fracking, following an overwhelming public outcry against the practice - and called for the United States and the rest of the United Kingdom to follow suit.

It's deja vu all over again.

In a repeat of yesterday's session, where US equities and the dollar levitated in a one-way trade, Tuesday's muted session - where in addition to closed China and South Korean markets, Germany's Dax is also shut for holiday - has seen early dollar and European equity strength, while the S&P is set for new record highs amid higher E-minis and a VIX that is again lower after 5 consecutive days of declines.

U.K. leisure carrier Monarch Airlines filed for insolvency on Monday, the biggest ever failure of a British airline, stranding tens of thousands of travellers overseas and prompting the country’s biggest-ever peacetime repatriation effort, as the government has to find a way to to arrange the return of 110,000 tourists, and marking the third failure of a major European operator in five months. Monarch cancelled about 300,000 future bookings and apologized to customers and staff as it became the UK’s largest carrier to go into administration, according to Reuters.

While S&P futures were modestly higher, rising 0.1% in a quiet session in which China, South Korea, India and Hong Kong were closed for holidays, the Euro, Spanish stocks and bonds were broadly lower as Spain faces its worst constitutional crisis in years following a dramatic, violent crackdown on Sunday's Catalan independence referendum in which 89% of the voters wanted to secede from Spain.