Botswana has barred entry to anyone traveling from the Democratic Republic of Congo to prevent an Ebola outbreak in that country from spreading, leaving more than 100 trucks carrying copper from Congo stranded at a border crossing.

The vehicles, hauling copper to South Africa from the continent’s biggest producer of the metal, have been in neighbouring Zambia since Monday, when they were denied entry into Botswana, The Times of Zambia reported.

Congo was the world’s sixth-largest producer of copper last year, according to U.K.-based commodity-research company CRU Group, and the largest producer of cobalt, a mineral used in rechargeable batteries.

more http://www.mining.com/botswana-blocks-at-least-100-copper-trucks-from-congo-over-ebola-fear/

Maybe that means they are going up soon. Or maybe demand is falling. Or maybe they over produced because of the high prices in the past. Or maybe its just normal abnormal values thanks to COMEX.

“The MSM is working overtime to make Russia the enemy.”

Yep! Wouldn’t want anyone looking a little closer to home doncha know.

yeah, it seems that way, assuming the news we’re getting from the MSM is actually true. I’m not sure I trust any news out of Ukraine.

Remember, “the attack on the Russian convoy” story? Magically disappeared, guess it just wasn’t true.

Now we have this AND “Russian Hackers involved in hack attack on JPM”

The MSM is working overtime to make Russia the enemy.

Russian and Ukraine troops battle in south, prompting fears that invasion has begun

KIEV, Ukraine — Fighting between the Ukrainian military and what Ukrainian and Western officials say are Russian troops worsened early Thursday, prompting fears in Ukraine that a Russian invasion of their territory has begun.

Ukrainian officials say Ukrainian troops are continuing to battle combined Russian and separatist forces on a new southern front around the border town of Novoazovsk, east of Crimea on the Sea of Azov. A military spokesman also said Russian troops are increasing surveillance from northern Crimea, the autonomous Ukrainian peninsula annexed by Moscow in March.

As firefights and shelling continued all day Wednesday and into the night, there were differing reports on whether Novoazovsk, a previously quiet border town, had fallen to Russian-backed separatists. Russian troops and their allies do control villages north of there, according to military spokesman Andriy Lysenko.

more http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/russian-and-ukraine-troops-battle-in-south-prompting-fears-of-widescale-invasion/2014/08/28/04b614f4-9a6e-40f4-aa21-4f49104cf0e4_story.html

Russian hackers attacked the U.S. financial system in mid-August, infiltrating and stealing data from JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM) and at least one other bank, an incident the FBI is investigating as a possible retaliation for government-sponsored sanctions, according to two people familiar with the probe.

The attack resulted in the loss of gigabytes of sensitive data, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the probe is still preliminary. Authorities are investigating whether recent infiltrations of major European banks using a similar vulnerability are also linked to the attack, one of the people said.

more http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-08-27/fbi-said-to-be-probing-whether-russia-tied-to-jpmorgan-hacking.html

More confident in gold than anything in his life. 30-60% decline in SM.

http://video.cnbc.com/gallery/?video=3000306070&play=1

“Europe getting smoked, I guess Ukraine is back in the news.”

Looks like Russia is taking another bite. It’s just a little taste …

the 9 am pre SM opening attack.

It just never ends.

…. not updated since aug 22 (what I can see).

Anyone knows why??

NEMO

Revised to up 4.2%, jobless claims flat at 298K

Surprised pm’s aren’t really getting whacked, just getting drip sold a little. I guess Ukraine is winning the pm battle for now.

Nice to see a little up move in the metals this am – especially silver – just hope it sticks today. We have weekly jobless claims and Q2 GDP to get through, so those are the potential land mines.

Some pretty nice blocks went through at the close yesterday in the miners, GDX over a million shares, someone has nice timing.

Europe getting smoked, I guess Ukraine is back in the news.

http://www.inquisitr.com/1433417/9-year-old-girl-shoots-her-shooting-instructor-at-firing-range/

http://m.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-28948946

9 year old shoots instructor. Instructors fault although sad for him and his family and this child will be scared for life. Already the talking heads but with worthless information as usual.

I saw part of the video for one the parents should of never started her out with a machine gun and two without safe training first. I saw him put her in a side stand that would be okay for a grown man but not a little girl. One she pulled the trigger she would lose balance and apparently that’s what happened. Two when a person is under stress muscles will tense and the trigger finger will tighten and not let loose especially for a terrified child and a machine gun. It is the same reason people in gun fight get killed for the reverse reason as they don’t release the trigger finger to shoot again or people under stress like cops who have the finger on the trigger and don’t let go or squeeze the trigger under stress or reaction accidentally and should have never had it there until they were to shoot. She would tighten her finger on the trigger making things worse. If she had  this training ” to release her finger prior to shooting this tragedy as well as took in consideration her strength and balance and holding on to her  probably wouldn’t of happened.

We’ll see if our leaders take Merkel’s advice. Somehow I don’t think it will be heeded.

ISIT ISIS or ISIT Foley?

A little humor raising children goes a long way. When my children were a little lax on brushing their teeth, my comments were a little like this: “Janet, your breath would stop a charging rhino dead in his tracks! Jeremy, try brushing your teeth with Sani-Flush this time! Jarvis, go take the top two layers of yellow off your teeth!”

never had to remind them again.

rno

“Not sure you can be a politician in the US unless you’re a lunatic, sociopath or psychopath.”

Good point! Not too funny though … or the joke’s on us.

Well, well, well. It’s about time they face reality and admit the damage they did here. The foreign global influences took and took and took from the USA for decades. WWI WWII Korea, Vietnam and a bunch of other places where we had to fight for free.

Then with currency and tax related incentives, they made us export half our industries to Asia and other places, so they can get the work, produce wealth for themselves, and sell to the US consumers, instead of Americans selling home made products to Americans.

All along they not only dumped under priced quality products onto our shores, they dumped their excess population into our laps. The 11 million number is a farce, a joke. Its more like 25% of our nation is foreign born, maybe 70 million?

They kept us on artificial life support for decades. With stock market booms, real estate booms low rates food stamps etc. The final life support was the no doc liar loans. After that final meltdown, no more artificial options except reality.

They seem to be bringing some work back here. But they are STILL trying to give us more R/E and Stock market booms. Lets face it. They CAN’T bring ALL the work back here. The rest of the world would be out of work.

Not sure you can be a politician in the US unless you’re a lunatic, sociopath or psychopath.

Make no mistake, loss of USD hegemony means war unfortunately. JMHO

We’ll see if our leaders take Merkel’s advice. Somehow I don’t think it will be heeded.

If some politicians think we should have a nice war so it will revive our economy then they are truly lunatics.

Merkel Slams US Hegemony? “America Can’t Solve All The World’s Problems Anymore”

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 08/27/2014 18:29 -0400

First Russia and China, then UAE, Egypt, and Turkey… and now it appears Germany (following a phone call with Putin) is pulling the rug out from under US hegemony – just as Obama’s warmongery ramps up…

• *MERKEL SAYS U.S. CAN’T SOLVE ALL THE WORLD’S PROBLEMS ANYMORE

Which is odd because just yesterday, President Obama (who never lies) stated “The United States is and will remain the one indispensable nation in the world…“ adding that “no other nation can do what we do.” Perhaps he is wrong?

“Even a superpower can’t solve all of the problems alone anymore,” German Chancellor Angela Merkel says.

Merkel did not stop there…

• *PUTIN, MERKEL URGE DE-ESCALATION IN UKRAINE, KREMLIN SAYS
• *PUTIN, MERKEL DISCUSSED GAS TRANSIT VIA UKRAINE, KREMLIN SAYS
• *PUTIN INFORMED MERKEL OF NEW EAST UKRAINE AID PLAN: KREMLIN
• *MERKEL URGES HOLLANDE TO CONTINUE REFORMS IN FRANCE
• *MERKEL SAYS HOLLANDE HAS CHANCE TO REVIVE FRENCH ECONOMIC POWER

Seems like she is returning to the offensive from the defensive…

 

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-08-27/merkel-slams-us-hegemony-america-cant-solve-all-worlds-problems-anymore

 

Russia accused of opening new front against Ukraine

Kiev and Western allies accused Moscow of launching a new military incursion across Ukraine’s eastern border on Wednesday, as hopes faded that talks held just 24 hours earlier between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko might mark a turning point in the five-month-old crisis.

Ukrainian military spokesman Andriy Lysenko said a group of Russian soldiers had crossed the border in armored infantry carriers and a truck and entered the town of Amvrosiyivka, not far from where Ukraine detained 10 Russian soldiers on Monday.

Meanwhile, the battle for Ukraine’s strategic coastline heated up Wednesday as pro-Russian rebel forces entered Novoazovsk, a resort town of 40,000 on the Sea of Azov. The town lies in a strategically significant location — on the road linking Russia to the Ukrainian port of Mariupol and onto Crimea, the Black Sea peninsula Russia annexed in March.

U.S. State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said Wednesday that the new military incursions on Ukraine’s eastern border indicated a “Russian-directed counteroffensive” was underway.

“Information, which in recent hours has gained another hard-facts confirmation, is that regular Russian units are operating in eastern Ukraine,” Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said earlier Wednesday. “This information, coming from NATO and confirmed by our intelligence, is in fact unequivocal.”

more http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2014/8/27/ukraine-new-front.html

One other area to look at is the fact that the Shanghai metals exchange will be fully live by October. Quite interesting however is the status of their silver inventory. This has now dropped to a tiny 103 tons, down from 1,143 in Jan. 2013, just 19 months ago. How will this exchange settle without inventory? Will the Chinese replenish the inventory from the supposed COMEX stocks? Will the COMEX stocks even make through the September delivery period as more contracts are still outstanding than there is silver for delivery? I assure you, if any exchange anywhere in the world is found not able to deliver, a scramble for metal will ensue where not even the strongest “leg” in the world will be able to kick the can further!

more http://blog.milesfranklin.com/when