When in doubt, surge!

The Trump administration is weighing a drastic change when it comes to Afghanistan: Whether to send as many 5,000 more troops in the fight, a military official told NBC News.

deja vu all over again

Like Afghanistan, the withdrawal of U.S. troops from South Vietnam was predicated on a single proposition:

The American ground forces in Vietnam would be reduced through the policy of Vietnamization and the war turned over to an improved ARVN [Army of the Republic of Vietnam] and government capable of defending its territory and its people.

As we know, that never happened.
We have been trying to do the same thing in Afghanistan for over 15 years, longer than we failed to do in Vietnam. As recently as Autumn 2009, the U.S. government announced that after eight years and $27 billion, the results of the Afghan Army and Police training program were so bad that it was declared a failure.
The website despair.com defines “incompetence” as “When you earnestly believe you can compensate for a lack of skill by doubling your efforts, there’s no end to what you can’t do.”

Yemen gets more complicated

Senior tribal, military and political leaders have formed a new council seeking the secession of southern Yemen, the former governor of the area's main city Aden said on Thursday, threatening to bring more turmoil to a two-year-old civil war.
Aidaroos al-Zubaidi made his announcement in a televised address in front of the flag of the former nation of South Yemen, whose forces were defeated by the north in 1994 and brought into a reunified country.

DAPL already leaking

The Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) has already sprung a leak in South Dakota, according to the state’s Department of Environment and Natural Resources. The pipeline spilled 84 gallons of oil even though it is not yet operational.

So NOT shooting is a bad thing?

Mader says he was let go by the Weirton Police Department for not shooting the emotionally disturbed Williams during a domestic disturbance call on May 6, 2016. The incident began when a female caller said Williams was threatening to hurt himself. Another officer ended up fatally shooting Williams, 21, just minutes later and within seconds of arriving at the scene. On Wednesday, Mader filed a lawsuit against the city of Weirton claiming that he was wrongfully terminated, that his constitutional rights were violated and that the city thereafter "engaged in a pattern of retaliation designed to destroy Mr. Mader's reputation."
The suit was filed on Mader's behalf by the ACLU of West Virginia and attorney Timothy P. O'Brien.
"The City of Weirton's decision to fire officer Mader because he chose not to shoot and kill a fellow citizen, when he believed that he should not use such force, not only violates the Constitution, common sense and public policy, but incredibly punishes restraint," O'Brien said.

Where have all the insects gone?

Over that time the group, the Krefeld Entomological Society, has seen the yearly insect catches fluctuate, as expected. But in 2013 they spotted something alarming. When they returned to one of their earliest trapping sites from 1989, the total mass of their catch had fallen by nearly 80%. Perhaps it was a particularly bad year, they thought, so they set up the traps again in 2014. The numbers were just as low. Through more direct comparisons, the group—which had preserved thousands of samples over 3 decades—found dramatic declines across more than a dozen other sites.
Such losses reverberate up the food chain. "If you're an insect-eating bird living in that area, four-fifths of your food is gone in the last quarter-century, which is staggering," says Dave Goulson, an ecologist at the University of Sussex in the United Kingdom, who is working with the Krefeld group to analyze and publish some of the data. "One almost hopes that it's not representative—that it's some strange artifact."
...Beyond the striking drop in overall insect biomass, the data point to losses in overlooked groups for which almost no one has kept records. In the Krefeld data, hover flies—important pollinators often mistaken for bees—show a particularly steep decline. In 1989, the group's traps in one reserve collected 17,291 hover flies from 143 species. In 2014, at the same locations, they found only 2737 individuals from 104 species.

hedge funds facing criminal probe

U.S. prosecutors are investigating one of Wall Street’s darkest markets, focusing on hedge funds suspected of inflating the value of debt securities in their portfolios to juice the fees they collect.
Having prosecuted traders who lied to customers about bond prices, the government is now scrutinizing hedge funds that allegedly solicited bogus price quotes from brokers, according to three people familiar with the matter who asked not to be identified. Such a practice would have enabled the funds to pump up the value of illiquid securities on their books.

usually this isn't a good thing

The current slump in expectations of market volatility is not just a stock market phenomenon -- it is the lowest it's been for years across fixed income, currency and commodity markets around the world.
It shows little sign of reversing, which means market players are essentially not expecting much in the way of shocks or sharp movements any time soon. It's an environment in which asset prices can continue rising and bond spreads narrow further...
It is most notably seen in the VIX index of implied volatility on the U.S. S&P 500 stock index, the so-called "fear index".
But implied volatility across the G10 major currencies is its lowest in three years, and U.S. Treasury market volatility its lowest in 18 months and close to record lows.
The VIX, meanwhile, has dipped to lows not seen since December 2006, is posting its lowest closing levels since 1993, and is on a record run of closes below 11. By comparison, it was at almost 90 at the height of the financial crisis.