United States

Just when you thought the Don Jr. story was starting to fizzle, due to revelations which would suggest that nothing of substance was discussed in his meeting with the now infamous Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya, NBC News has just dropped a new "bombshell" detail that the heretofore unknown, and quite 'mysterious', third-party that attended that meeting with Veselnitskaya was none other than a Soviet-born counter intelligence officer.

With President Donald Trump safely out of the country, joining French President Emmanuel Macron at a Bastille Day parade in Paris, A federal judge in Hawaii has ordered a temporary loosening of the Trump administration’s travel ban after finding that the administration’s strict interpretation of the Supreme Court’s decision isn’t justified. The ruling was issued by US District Judge Derrick Watson – a longtime Obama ally and the same judge who blocked the second “watered down” Trump travel ban back in March.

In a relatively shocking article - don't forget the Vatican has been extremely outspoken for a man in his office - a close ally of Pope Francis has written in a widely-read Vatican publication attacking Stephen Bannon, the senior White House strategist and lamenting a drift towards fundamentalism among some US conservative Catholics who backed Donald Trump as president.

It was another painfully low-volume overnight session, which however did not prevent global stocks from hitting another record highs, capping their best week in over two months as the dollar stayed close to nine-month lows following Yellen's dovish retreat in which she noted caution on persistently low inflation (hence today's CPI print will be especially important) as odds of future rate hikes in 2017 and 2018 dropped.

Authored by Nauman Sadiq via Oriental Review,

According to a recent infographic by New York Times, 79,000 US troops have currently been deployed in Europe out of 210,000 total US troops stationed all over the world, including 47,000 in Germany, 15,000 in Italy and 17,000 in the rest of Europe. By comparison, the number of US troops stationed in Afghanistan is only 8,400 which is regarded as an occupied country. Thus, Europe is nothing more than a backyard of corporate America.