Francis said he supported the statements made by US Catholic bishops who called the separation of children from their parents "immoral" and "contrary to our Catholic values." "I am on the side of the Bishops' Conference," Francis told Reuters, referring to those statements. "It's not easy, but populism is not the solution," he added. There was no mention of the fact the US Conference of Catholic Bishops received $176 million in federal contracts for refugee resettlement in 2015 and 2016 alone.

Pope Francis had nothing to say about the allegations some 300 "predator priests" sexually abused more than 1,000 children in Pennsylvania since 1947. In July, Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro wrote a personal letter to Pope Francis, warning him that "a comprehensive investigation" by his office had found "widespread sexual abuse of children and a systemic cover-up by leaders of the Catholic Church."

Shapiro says he never received a response. "We have no comment at this time," Paloma Ovejero, deputy director of the Vatican's press office, said on Wednesday. On Thursday, the Vatican again declined to comment. Perhaps the Pope could work on getting his own house in order before casting stones?

US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and Mexican Economy Minister Ildefonso Guajardo are slated to resume talks Wednesday for a fourth straight week as the two sides scramble to reach an agreement before the end of August.

“Right now, it appears they are getting incredibly close to finishing the discussions between the US and Mexico,” said Inu Manak, who has monitored the talks for the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank in Washington. “It would be a very big thing if the US and Mexico have settled their issues,” Wallach said. “But there is no final NAFTA deal unless Canada, in the few remaining days, agrees to rejoin the process and also comes to an agreement.”

The idea is to bury the spent fuel on site, about 100 feet from the ocean and just a few feet above the water table. Edison has already begun transferring the waste from cooling pools into specially designed steel canisters. The containers are prone to corrosion and cracking, and cannot be monitored or repaired. Work crews even discovered a loose bolt inside one of the canisters earlier this year.

But flawed storage containers are just one of many worrisome aspects of the scheme. San Onofre sits on an active earthquake fault, in an area where there is a record of past tsunamis.

On the face of it, these should be heady times for American workers. US unemployment is as low as it’s been in nearly two decades (3.9% as of July) and the nation’s private-sector employers have been adding jobs for 101 straight months – 19.5 million since the Great Recession-related cuts finally abated in early 2010, and 1.5 million just since the beginning of the year.

But despite the strong labor market, wage growth has lagged economists’ expectations. In fact, despite some ups and downs over the past several decades, today’s real average wage (that is, the wage after accounting for inflation) has about the same purchasing power it did 40 years ago. And what wage gains there have been have mostly flowed to the highest-paid tier of workers.

The term “bear market” is being thrown around a lot lately, but a lot of people don’t understand what a “bear market” actually is. A bear market is generally considered to be when we see a decline of 20 percent or more from the 52-week high, and after the carnage of this past week a lot of those thresholds are now being crossed. It would probably be too early to call this a “global stock market crash”, but we are well on the way to getting there.  The following are 5 signs that global financial markets are entering a bear market…

#1 Global stocks have now fallen beneath all key moving averages.  Those key moving averages are important psychological thresholds for investors…

#2 European banking stocks have now officially entered a bear market, and all major European stock indexes are now red for the year.

#3 Global banking stocks are down a whopping 23 percent from the peak established earlier this year, and that means that they have officially entered a bear market.

#4 Emerging market stocks have fallen 20 percent from the peak, and that means that they are also now in a bear market.

#5 When demand for industrial metals falls, that indicates that an economic slowdown is coming.  On Wednesday, prices for industrial metals fell to their lowest level in almost a year, and “Dr Copper” officially entered a bear market.

If the financial carnage continues (and that is a big “if”), this could be the beginning of another financial crisis like we experienced in 2008, and that would almost certainly mean a crippling global recession.

It still is not clear if China’s delegation will carry with it a reform offer serious enough to stave off the Trump administration’s threat of tariffs.  The US side will be lead by Under Secretary of the Treasury for International Affairs David Malpass. China is sending a trade envoy to Washington in a renewed effort to end a worsening tariff dispute that has raised worries it will chill global economic growth.

The delegation led by a deputy commerce minister will visit in late August to discuss “issues of mutual concern,” the Commerce Ministry announced Thursday. It gave no details of a possible agenda. The two governments are poised to impose a new round of tariff hikes on $16 billion of each other’s goods next week in their worsening conflict over Beijing’s technology policy.

The study, written by Dr Robert Hancké of the London School of Economics in partnership with derivatives trading company IG, looked at what would happen were Germany to decide to quit the single European currency and go it alone once more – with potentially dire economic consequences. It states: “As the strongest economy in the eurozone, Germany is the only country that can credibly leave the euro.”

“Some German citizens and politicians see themselves as 'victims’ of the euro, feeling that it forces them to prop up countries with weaker economies. If that feeling grows, a majority of citizens could vote in favour of a new deutschmark if given the choice.” The research points out that Germany is the “economically dominant” country in the euro area, accounting for roughly 27 percent of the eurozone’s total GDP.

The report suggestions that a move to create a new German national currency would have “dramatic regional consequences” and would very likely to opposed by the other 18 member-states of the EU who have adopted the euro as their currency. The report suggests: “Germany’s departure from the eurozone would likely lead to the collapse of the currency and conceivably even the European Union as a whole.”

And now, two years later, the situation appears to be getting worse as The Wall Street Journal reports, in a prediction released Wednesday, the Bureau of Reclamation, a multistate agency that manages water and power in the West, said there is a 52% probability that water levels will fall below a threshold of 1,075 feet elevation by 2020.

The Colorado River, which supplies water to 40 million people from Denver to Los Angeles, has been in long-term decline amid what bureau officials call the driest 19-year period in recorded history. If Lake Mead’s water levels fall below the 1,075 feet threshold, it could trigger the first ever federal shortage declaration on the Colorado River - which experts say could undermine the Southwest’s economy.

So far, more than 80 people have died due to the severe weather, and there are still weeks of monsoon season to go. Monsoon season in India is often a sight to behold, as the natural beauty is enhanced with vibrant greens which normally underlie the Asian countryside.

However, when the waters become severe enough, the landscape gives way to a deep brown as floods engulf vast swathes of the country. This year’s deadly flooding has taken much more of a toll on Kerala, as people are being crushed in landslides and drowned by steadily rising water.