Chicago is a terrible place to do business given the layers of permits, licenses, regulations, taxes, fees and corruption. Small businesses and the middle class left long ago. Faced with that decline, the Chicago solution is to impose higher taxes and more regulations.

A Chicago politician can always blame the Trump economy for Chicago’s failures and its violence… except that the current economy is setting new record highs and taking millions of people off of food stamps. There is even record low unemployment for young minority men… except in Chicago.

This is Chicago. You’re not hindered by the facts. The reporters won’t correct you. If some reporter presses you for answers, you can blame racism… even though minority members make up more than half of the Chicago City Council. Racism is a good enough answer for most reporters.

Unable to recycle waste in line with the targets imposed on them, rich countries have chosen to dump it — plastic, paper and cardboard — on poor ones, especially China. Lower environmental standards in much of Asia has made it cheaper to manage waste there and low-quality recycled plastic can sometimes be profitably produced from these waste streams, albeit in highly polluted conditions.

In recent years, the stream of waste delivered to China expanded vastly. Annual imports reached 85 million tons, including 8 million of plastic. The quantity was so huge that inspection at ports became impossible, and the unscrupulous found that even mixed or hazardous waste could profitably be sent, disguised as “recycling” to avoid landfill tax or high management costs in rich countries. Unable to handle this tsunami of refuse, the Chinese were forced to either burn or dump vast quantities. An unknown amount found its way to the oceans.

Paunio’s report says the opposite of what environmentalists want to hear. Where plastic pollution is concerned, he says, they are making the problem worse, not better. The problem is their quasi-religious devotion to recycling –  which feels good, but achieves little of any practical use.

The bloc focused on immigration and Brexit at the most recent EU summit, but Europe’s real threat stands somewhere else, according to Lorenzo Codogno, macroeconomist and former general director at the Treasury Department of the Italian Ministry of Economy. Mr Codogno said the eurozone is facing three factors similar to those that triggered a sharp acceleration of the government bond crisis in Europe during the summer of 2011, causing the European debt crisis.

In the run-up to the crackdown of several financial institutions within the EU during that year, the bloc saw private investors actively involved with Greece’s economy to lighten the country’s debt burden, a process that became known as Private Sector Involvement (PSI). During the same year, Italy’s government led by Silvio Berlusconi wanted to introduce a hefty reform of the pension system. 

In July 2011 expectations about global financial growth were not met after the US issued non-farm payroll figures, blasted as “awful” by Mr Codogno. Seven years later, Mr Codogno says similar issues have arisen within the eurozone during the last months. Mr Codogno said: “All ingredients seem to be present this time around as well.” Mr Codogno fears the trade war between the US and the EU may lead to a catastrophic outcome. 

The European debt crisis had its root in the global crisis that started in the US in 2008. In 2011 the crisis peaked, when five of the bloc's countries - Italy, Greece, Spain, Ireland and Portugal - failed to generate enough economic growth, risking an economic default. And in October 2011, the then-head of the Bank of England Sir Mervyn King referred to it as "the most serious financial crisis at least since the 1930s, if not ever". 

Similar statements have been produced by Poland and the Czech Republic, which also denied reaching any agreements on the matter. “There are not any new agreements regarding the reception of asylum seekers from EU countries, we confirm (that), like the Czech Republic and Hungary,” Polish Foreign Ministry spokesman Artur Lompart said.

Earlier on Saturday, media reported that, during the EU summit, 14 European countries, including some outspoken opponents of German Chancellor’s ‘open door’ policy, had allegedly “consented on a political level” to make a deal on taking migrants back. The document on the deal has been sent by Merkel to her coalition partners, according to Reuters.

The looming EU deal on migrants is vastly perceived as “Merkel-saving,” since her key ally and new Interior Minister Horst Seehofer threatened to start rejecting undocumented migrants at Germany’s border. In the worst-case scenario, the disagreement between them might spell the end for 70-years-long union between Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and Seehofer’s Christian Social Union (CSU), which would effectively lead to the downfall of Germany’s government and Chancellor.

Iran has also opened a uranium feedstock plant in the absence of the nuclear agreement. The nuclear plant that remained closed for nine years has now reopened, Iran’s atomic energy agency (AEOI) said on Wednesday.  Tehran prepares to increase uranium enrichment capacity if a nuclear deal with world powers falls apart, reported Reuters. Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei ordered the AEOI to start the necessary preparations to upgrade the country’s enrichment capacity in case the European efforts at a world deal fail.

The UF6 factory is part of the Isfahan uranium conversion facility, according to AEOI’s statement on its website.  The AEOI said on Wednesday that in response to Khamenei’s order and Trump’s renunciation of the deal, a plant for the production of UF6, the feedstock for centrifuge machines that enrich uranium, had been relaunched and a barrel of yellow cake has been delivered there.

“The Luftwaffe is at a low point,” Reuters quoted Gerhartz as saying.  Gerhartz said this assessment was based on a series of inspections of the country’s air force sites and discussions with military personnel.  “Aircraft are grounded due to a lack of spare parts, or they aren’t even on site since they’re off for maintenance by the industry,” he noted, adding that an inspection of Eurofighter multirole combat jets had taken a whole 14 months, twice as long as originally planned, which he said was unacceptable. 

In May, the weekly newsmagazine Der Spiegel reported, citing military sources, that most of Germany’s 128 Typhoon multirole fighters were unavailable for training and combat use.

The ultimate source of the special bond between Google and the Obama White House — and modern progressive government more broadly — has been their common ethos. Both view society’s challenges today as social-engineering problems, whose resolutions depend mainly on facts and objective reasoning.

Both view information as being at once ruthlessly value-free and yet, when properly grasped, a powerful force for ideological and social reform. And so both aspire to reshape Americans’ informational context, ensuring that we make choices based only upon what they consider the right kinds of facts — while denying that there would be any values or politics embedded in the effort.

Other OPEC members who are able to do so will soon cease their production, while the countries under sanctions (Venezuela and Iran), mingled in crises (Libya and perhaps soon Iraq) or touching the limits of their production capacity (Angola), will suffer losses with a cheaper barrel without the possibility of producing more barrels. In the camp of those who welcome the ‘Opexit’ of Russia and Saudi Arabia, there are, of course, energy-importing countries that are following the rise in their fuel prices with concern.

All this shows the obsolescence of OPEC, an organisation that is supposed to bring together the oil-exporting countries, but does not include, for example, either Russia or the United States, while including irreconcilable enemies (Iran, Saudi Arabia). Thus, despite the intervention of non-OPEC member countries, it is failing to bring balance and stability to the desired prices of both importers and exporters.

A joint statement issued by the Christian Association of Nigeria said more than 6,000 Christian worshippers - “mostly children, women and the aged” - had already been killed this year. They said: “There is no doubt that the sole purpose of these attacks is aimed at ethnic cleansing, land grabbing and forceful ejection of the Christian natives from their ancestral land and heritage. What is happening in Plateau state and other select states in Nigeria is pure genocide and must be stopped immediately.”

They said those responsible were being allowed to “go scot free” and said the Nigerian government was wrongly trying to paint the attacks as “farmers/herdsmen clashes”. The statement said: “How can it be a clash when one group is persistently attacking, killing, maiming, destroying and the other group is persistently being killed, maimed and their places of worship destroyed?”

Austrian Chancellor, Sebastian Kurz, has confirmed the EU leaders agreed Italy and Greece can set up migrant centres on their soil if they want to. The European Council summit lasted so long because the group failed to agree on the final statement as Italy had temporarily blocked the adoption of the documents of the EU summit, insisting on the coordination of migration issues.

Italy has been pushing to see EU countries share the responsibility of asylum-seekers on Italian soil. Speaking of his pleasure at a deal on migration being reached, Italy's new hardline Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte said: “Italy is no longer alone after this EU summit.”

"After nine hours of discussions, an agreement has been found. It is European cooperation that has won the day," Macron said as he left talks that began on Thursday evening and lasted until dawn on Friday. He added: “Europe will have to live with migratory pressures for a long time.”

This could happen just as Italy’s Lega-Five Star insurgents force a budget showdown with the EU, threatening to set off a chain of events that ultimately leads to euro rupture and a Lex Monetae default on vast German credits. Both sagas may well intrude before the final Brexit summit in October. A "no deal" breakdown would then start to have an existential feel for Germany. Its car industry sells 770,000 vehicles a year to the UK, more than to the US and China combined. Britain is their profit cash-cow.

There might be a spontaneous "patriotic" boycott of German cars by UK consumers in such circumstances. Tariffs each way, plus "rules of origin" requirements, would break Volkswagen’s and BMW’s supply chains. They would have to switch from Continental to UK subcontractors as fast as possible to protect their sunk costs in UK plants. Eurointelligence says the combined effect of Trumpian tariffs and a Brexit bust-up would amount to “cardiac arrest” for the core industry of the German economy, already reeling from the diesel scandal and struggling to keep up on electric cars.

Of the three threats, Brexit is by far the easiest to defuse. Theresa May is bending over backwards to avoid a clash. Yet Berlin has chosen to take a maximalist ideological position despite the enormous risk. The German elites have come to believe their own rhetoric about the sacral qualities of the single market and the EU Project, even if a cynic might think it cover for mercantilist advantage. 

Amid the barrage of demands on Mrs May over recent days, we have a gem from the German Federation of Industry (BDI): “The United Kingdom is Hurtling Towards a Disorderly Brexit”. Britain “has to accept” – note the imperial tone – the customs union, the single market, and EU law under the sway of the European Court. There is no glimmer or recognition that both the Tories and Labour fought the last election on manifestos rejecting such outcomes, and that violating this is a capital crime.

One year on, the EU has done all of these things to Britain. It has divided and ruled Britain’s panicking political classes. It wants us to contribute to the defence of Europe, while excluding us from its information-sharing schemes and Galileo, the satellite system. France is using Brexit to build its own special relationship with America. Northern Ireland is being used to tie us in to the single market and customs union. And while Britain is not ready for a “no deal” Brexit, the EU is upping its own preparations for that outcome.