Widespread closures have roiled the retail industry, but many more stores are likely to shut down in coming years to keep up with a shift to online shopping, according to a report by investment firm UBS. An estimated 75,000 stores that sell clothing, electronics and furniture will close by 2026, when online shopping is expected to make up 25% of retail sales, according to UBS. Roughly 16% of overall sales are made online.

Analysts said the closures would affect a broad variety of retailers, affecting an estimated 21,000 apparel stores, 10,000 consumer electronics stores and 8,000 home furnishing stores. Already this year, retailers have announced plans to close thousands of stores as they keep up with changing consumer habits. Payless ShoeSource, which filed for Chapter 8 bankruptcy protection in February, is closing all 2,100 of its US stores, while Gymboree is shuttering its 800 locations. Sears, which has closed 1,300 Kmart and Sears stores since 2013, is scrapping an additional 80 locations.

A number of other retailers, including Gap, have hinted that store closures are on the horizon. The main reason for the shift, analysts say, is simple: Americans are increasingly shopping online. The average US household spent $5,200 online last year, up nearly 50 percent from five years earlier.

But the Prime Minister was handed a slim lifeline with the 27 states adding a 'flextension' ensuring the UK can leave earlier if she can convince MPs to pass a Brexit deal - but Brussels will not reopen the Withdrawal Agreement and change the Irish backstop to make that easier. The six-month extension will be accompanied by a technical review in June - described as a 'sop' for French President Emmanuel Macron who was slapped down by his colleagues after calling for punishing conditions and a short extension to be imposed on the UK.

Speaking in Brussels at 2am Mrs May insisted the Halloween extension leaves the door open to the UK leaving as early as next month if she is able to get her deal through Parliament at the fourth time of asking. She said: 'What we have agreed tonight means that we can actually leave the European Union before June 30. 'I know that there is huge frustration from many people that I had to request this extension. The choices we now face are stark, and the timetable is clear. So we must now press on at pace with our efforts to reach consensus on a deal which is in the national interest.'

If one were devising a formula to drive Europe and Germany back to some new version of their past, one could hardly do a better job than what US President Donald Trump is doing now. Overtly hostile to the EU, the Trump administration is encouraging the renationalization of Europe, as Secretary of State Mike Pompeo did in Brussels at the end of 2018, when he gave a speech touting the virtues of the nation-state.

Besides encouraging right-wing nationalism and the dissolution of pan-European institutions, the Trump administration has turned against the global free-trade regime that undergirds European and German political stability. The president himself has specifically targeted Germany, complaining of its large trade surplus and threatening a tariff war against German automobiles in addition to the tariffs already imposed on European steel and aluminum.

Imagine what the effects of even greater pressure and confrontation might be: a downturn in the German economy and, with it, the return of resentful nationalism and political instability. Now imagine that Greece, Italy, and other weak European economies were teetering and in need of further German bailouts that might not be forthcoming. The result would be the re-emergence of the economic nationalism and bitter divisions of the past. Add to this the growing doubts about the US security guarantee that Trump has deliberately fanned, along with his demands for increased defense spending in Germany and the rest of Europe. American policy seems bent on creating the perfect European storm.

Whether this storm will descend in five years or ten or 20, who can say? But things change quickly. In 1925, Germany was disarmed, a functioning, if unstable, democracy, working with its neighbors to establish a stable peace. French and German leaders reached a historic pact in Locarno, Switzerland. The US economy was roaring, and the world economy was in relatively good health, or so it seemed. A decade later, Europe and the world were descending into hell.

Today, it may well be that the German people and their neighbors in Europe can be counted on to save the world from this fate. Perhaps the Germans have been transformed forever and nothing can undo or alter this transformation, not even the breakdown of Europe all around them. But perhaps even these liberal and pacific Germans are not immune to the larger forces that shape history and over which they have little control. And so one can’t help but wonder how long the calm will last if the United States and the world continue along their present course.

Across Germany, there are still thousands of unexploded bombs dropped by the Allies during World War II. One blew up in Göttingen a few years ago, killing the three men trying to defuse it. Think of Europe today as an unexploded bomb, its detonator intact and functional, its explosives still live. If this is an apt analogy, then Trump is a child with a hammer, gleefully and heedlessly pounding away. What could go wrong?

Today, two-thirds of all personal bankruptcies in the United States are caused by medical bills, and most of the people going bankrupt actually had health insurance. Overall, more than half a million American families are financially ruined by medical bills each year, and meanwhile our “representatives” in Washington are doing absolutely nothing to fix the problem.

Here are some more numbers that show the current state of the US health care system…

–3.7 trillion dollars was spent on health care in the United States in 2018. That breaks down to $10,739 per person.

-If our health care system was a country, it would have the fifth largest GDP on the entire planet.

–76 percent of Americans believe that they pay too much for the quality of health care that they receive.

-The median charge for visiting an emergency room in the United States is well over a thousand dollars.

We have a system that is deeply broken, and it greatly frustrates me that both political parties seem so uninterested in getting a solution through Congress.

Nurses and midwives who try to explain to pregnant women that some vaccines contain neurotoxic mercury (thimerosal), for instance, or that aborted human fetal tissue is often used to manufacture vaccines, will now face the ire of Australia’s medical police state, which insists that all vaccines are 100 percent safe and effective.

The Australian government has also set up a snitch program for medical “offenders” to be reported by their “friends,” colleagues, or others who suspect that they might be in violation of this new speech code – like some kind of deep state spying and surveillance scheme contrived from the dystopian novel 1984.

Current CO2 levels of 410 parts per million (ppm) were last seen on Earth three million years ago, according to the most detailed reconstruction of the Earth’s climate by researchers at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) and published in Science Advances. Yes, you read that correctly, three million — million — years ago CO2 levels on Earth were the same as they are today, but there is one major difference between three million years ago and today…

Three million years ago, we humans were not driving cars or eating the meat that requires cow farts; we weren’t barbecuing or refusing to recycle or building factories; there was no Industrial Age, no plastic, no air conditioning, no electricity, no lumber mills, no consumerism, no aerosols.

In fact, three million years ago, there were probably no human beings on Earth, at least not human in the way we use that term today. And yet… CO2 levels were the same then as they are now… Hmmm…?

Seven former employees who worked in Amazon's voice review programme came forward with the startling revelations, reported by Bloomberg. They said the recordings - made through Amazon devices like the Echo speaker - are linked to the customer's first name, their device's serial number and even their personal account number.

Listened to by voice review employees worldwide, some of the clips feature intimate private moments in customers' lives - and even record harrowing crimes. Among the clips listened to by the former employees was a recording of a woman singing in the shower. Another recorded the sound of a child screaming - while a third recorded a sexual assault taking place, the employees said.

Amazon last night confirmed the staggering revelations - which will unnerve millions of Alexa users across the globe. A spokesperson for the trillion-dollar company said that "an extremely small sample of Alexa voice recordings" are analysed by staff.

Tim Loughtons said: "If the EU elections go ahead, it is highly likely the UK will elect an army of Nigel Farage mini-mes, who I am afraid will wreak havoc with the European Parliament.” Tory Brexiteers have said the bloc will regret allowing the UK to remain if it grants an extension to Article 50 and a delay to Brexit. In a speech to the Bruges Group, European Research Group (ERG) vice chair Mark Francois said: "My message to the European council tomorrow night would be as follows.

"This is the 21st century and you cannot hold a nation captive against their will. There is no point granting a temporary extension to kick the can down the road in the hope that we will finally ratify the withdrawal agreement, as we never will."