USA - When Noa Khamallah recently tried to pay cash for popcorn and soda at Yankee Stadium, his almighty dollars struck out. The stadium’s concession stands no longer take cash. An employee directed him to a kiosk that could convert his greenbacks into plastic. Khamallah, 41 years old, fed $200 into the reverse ATM, which subtracted a $3.50 fee and spat out a debit card with a balance of $196.50. Paying for anything in New York is expensive already, said Khamallah, who lives in the city. “If you add on top of that extra fees for being able to pay for food, that’s not right,” he said. Paying with cash used to be a way to get a discount. These days it can often cost an extra $1 to $6 — the sort of transaction fees once limited to swiping a credit card or using an out-of-network ATM.

UK - A Royal Artillery Regiment ignored the 80th anniversary of D-Day yesterday choosing to fly a rainbow flag at its HQ in honour of Pride Month instead. The HQ Battery at 47 Regiment Royal Artillery has chosen to support the gay and transgender community every day in June. The move angered some servicemen and women at the regiment's base at Larkhill in Wiltshire with one saying: "The Army has become so woke it's ridiculous." The flag is being raised every morning at Horne Barracks and features a white, pink and blue triangle for the transgender community and brown and black chevrons representing the "Black, Indigenous and People of Colour" or BIPOC community.

USA - Fox News tells the tale: Official US Navy Special Forces page draws backlash for ringing in Pride month: ‘Navy SEALs have gone woke’: The official Facebook page for the US Navy SEALs and Naval Special Warfare Command was mocked this weekend for marking the start of “pride month.” Backlash to the post surged when it was highlighted on the popular “Libs of TikTok” page on X, formerly known as Twitter. The post had no caption and included a photo with rainbow designs that read, “NSW. Dignity. Service. Respect. Equality. Pride.” Libs of TikTok shared the post to X on Saturday, writing, “The Navy SEALs have gone woke. Our elite special forces. This is terrifying.”

USA - With the official start of summer still weeks away, a record-setting heatwave is cooking the south-western US, causing dangerous conditions far earlier than normal. More than 34 million people were under heat alerts on Thursday afternoon, as warnings were issued from the southern tip of Texas across Arizona and Nevada, and up through the center of California to the northern part of the state. The brutal conditions are expected to linger through Friday, according to the National Weather Service, as communities across the region brace for days of potentially life-threatening temperatures. Parts of California, the Great Basin and the south-west are forecast to break daily-high temperature records on Thursday and Friday, as Las Vegas, Nevada, and Phoenix, Arizona, hit 110F for the first time this year.

ISRAEL - As fighting in Gaza continues, a second front looms in the north. The world should not be surprised when Israel responds to “terrorism” from the north, President Isaac Herzog has said, suggesting that West Jerusalem is preparing to escalate the conflict with the Lebanon-based Hezbollah. Herzog brought up Lebanon at Wednesday’s ceremony in Jerusalem, which marked the 57th anniversary of Israel taking control of the entire city during the 1967 conflict with Egypt, Syria and Jordan. Herzog claimed that Israel has been attacked “by Iran’s proxies in Lebanon” on a daily basis and that now was not the time to stand by and allow things to escalate. “This terrorist aggression must be stopped,” he said. Hezbollah official Naim Qassem told Al Jazeera on Tuesday that the group doesn’t consider Israeli threats to be serious. “We have decided not to widen the battle and we do not want an all-out war."

ISRAEL - Large swaths of northern Israel, already rendered uninhabitable by months of Hamas rocket fire, are now ablaze. Nearly 100,000 Israelis who were forced from their homes in October have been living as “displaced persons” for almost eight months. Hezbollah has also succeeded in carrying out a number of ground incursions into Israeli territory in “October 7 style,” though fortunately all civilian communities have been evacuated. After three quarters of a year, the Israeli people are asking: when will we go back home to the north? This week may finally provide our answer: amidst rumors of a June IDF ground operation into Lebanon, Israel has just called up 350,000 reservists: nearly the entire reserve corps. Yet this war will be unlike anything we’re used to.

MIDDLE EAST - A journey back in time to February 18, 1947, when there was no occupation, no settlements, no Nakba, no refugees. Simply put, there was no Israel. On that day, Ernest Bevin, the UK foreign minister, stood up in Parliament to explain why the British government had succeeded in creating Arab states in Iraq and Jordan but failed to find a solution in Palestine that was acceptable to Arabs and Jews. Bevin told the House of Commons that His Majesty's government had been thwarted because the conflict in the land was "irreconcilable".

UNITED NATIONS - Technological advances and escalating geopolitical tensions are imperiling the global population with the highest risk of a nuclear conflict since the Soviet Union broke up in 1991, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has warned. “Humanity is on a knife’s edge,” Guterres said in a recorded speech presented on Friday at the annual Arms Control Association meeting in Washington. “The risk of a nuclear weapon being used has reached heights not seen since the Cold War.”

USA - Unrealized losses in the US banking system are once again on the rise, according to new numbers from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC). In its Quarterly Banking Profile report, the FDIC says banks are now saddled with more than half a trillion dollars in paper losses on their balance sheets, due largely to exposure to the residential real estate market. Unrealized losses represent the difference between the price banks paid for securities and the current market value of those assets. Although banks can hold securities until they mature without marking them to market on their balance sheets, unrealized losses can become an extreme liability when banks need liquidity. “The number of banks on the Problem Bank List, those with a CAMELS composite rating of ‘4’ or ‘5’ increased from 52 in fourth quarter 2023 to 63 in first quarter 2024."

USA - They are called zombies, companies so laden with debt that they are just stumbling by on the brink of survival, barely able to pay even the interest on their loans and often just a bad business hit away from dying off for good. An Associated Press analysis found their numbers have soared to nearly 7,000 publicly traded companies around the world — 2,000 in the United States alone — whiplashed by years of piling up cheap debt followed by stubborn inflation that has pushed borrowing costs to decade highs. And now many of these mostly small and mid-sized walking wounded could soon be facing their day of reckoning, with due dates looming on hundreds of billions of dollars of loans they may not be able to pay back.

USA - From 2014 to 2024, average menu prices have risen between 39% and 100% — all increases that outpace inflation during the given time period (31%). McDonald’s menu prices have doubled (100% increase) since 2014 across popular items — the highest of any chain we analyzed. Popeyes follows McDonald’s with an 86% increase, and Taco Bell is third at +81%. Menu prices at Subway and Starbucks have risen by “just” 39% since 2014 — the lowest among chains we studied. These are also the only restaurants where prices have risen by less than 50%. The restaurants we evaluated raised prices by 60% on average between 2014 and 2024. That means they’ve raised prices at a rate nearly double the national rate of inflation. Five different restaurants — McDonald’s, Popeyes, Taco Bell, Chipotle, and Jimmy John’s — raised their prices at more than double the actual inflation rate. McDonald’s raised prices so much that their average menu prices increased more than three times the national rate of inflation.

GERMANY - The German government has finalized new plans for a potential war, including reinstatement of compulsory military service and deployment of NATO troops on its eastern flank, citing rising concerns over perceived threats from Russia. The country’s new defense framework was approved by Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s cabinet on Wednesday, replacing guidelines that dated back to 1989. “As a result of Russian aggression, we have a completely changed security situation in Europe,” Interior Minister Nancy Faeser said in a statement.

RUSSIA - Just two decades ago, for the first time ever, the great continent of Eurasia was dominated by one power – which, as it happened, wasn’t even Eurasian itself. Indeed, in the continent’s West, NATO, led by the US, was going through a Big Bang expansion, admitting seven new members between the Baltic, the Black Sea, and the Adriatic. US-inspired and -supported color revolutions, first in Georgia and then in Ukraine, were pointing to the next candidates to join the alliance. In the south of Eurasia, the United States, having invaded Iraq, was ruling the region supreme from Baghdad. Having routed the Afghan Taliban, US forces were also entrenched in Kabul, supported as they were by military bases in the neighboring Central Asian nations, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan.

RUSSIA - Russian President Putin addressed the annual economic forum in St Petersburg on Wednesday, where he took the opportunity to put the US and NATO on notice concerning Kiev being given the greenlight to use Western weapons to attack Russian territory. He suggested that he's mulling the option of providing adversaries of the West with Russian long-range missiles. Below is what he said: “That would mark their direct involvement in the war against the Russian Federation, and we reserve the right to act the same way,” Mr Putin told a three-hour meeting with the senior editors of international news agencies.

USA - Retail stores are being shut down at a staggering rate all over the country. If we stay on the pace that we are on, the total number of stores closed in 2024 will be nearly 40 percent higher than the total number of stores closed in 2023. That is what you call a crisis! Meanwhile, banks are shuttering hundreds of branches from coast to coast, and a “restaurant apocalypse” is sweeping across the nation. Everywhere around us, “space available” signs are going up on buildings that were once considered to be prime commercial real estate. If someone tries to convince you that the US economy is in good shape, just show them this article and ask them why so many once prosperous businesses are closing. Needless to say, they will not be able to win the argument after that. If the US economy is heading in the right direction, why are many of the largest retail chains in the US shutting down stores?