Spending on food at home and food away from home have been converging over the past 60 years, with traditional home-cooked family meals on the decline. According to the USDA, for the first time ever, the amount spent eating out has surpassed what US consumers spend on food at home.

President Trump made the announcement with a 3-tweet statement …

According to an internal memo leaked to the press, Brussles said it should act “within days” if new sanctions the US plans to impose on Russia prove to be damaging to Europe’s trade ties with Moscow. Retaliatory measures may include limiting US jurisdiction over EU companies.

“In brief, the sta­tus quo that was hatched and nurtured by U.S. strategists after World War II and has for decades been the principal ‘beat’ for DoD is not merely fraying but may, in fact, be collapsing…”

“Right now, Social Security continues to take in through revenue more than it pays it through benefits, which is expected to continue until 2022. Once Social Security begins to pay out more than it takes in, it will be forced to liquidate the assets held by the trust funds.”

Coming at a “sensitive” moment for US-Russian hacking diplomatic relations, on Friday Foreign Policy reported that emails belonging to a senior US State Department intelligence official involved in Russian affairs have been leaked by a hacker known as “Johnnie Walker.”

President Donald Trump said that his first face-to-face meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday, and which lasted for more than two hours on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Hamburg, was “tremendous.”

“Friday’s ruling by the U.S. District Court takes the state’s finances from horrific to catastrophic,” Comptroller Susana Mendoza, a Democrat, said in an emailed statement after the ruling. “Ppayments to the state’s pension funds; state payroll including legislator pay; General State Aid to schools and payments to local governments will likely have to be cut.”

The US isn’t yet grappling with the economic disaster that is a shrinking popuation – unlike Japan. Though it’s starting to look like a not-too-distant possibility…

There’s currently a push in the halls of Washington D.C., to establish a new branch of the military by 2019, one whose focus would be operations among the stars. Proposed legislation by House representatives would create a “Space Corps” that would serve “as a separate military service within the Department of the Air Force.”

At least five people have been shot, including House Majority Whip Steve Scalise – the third ranking Republican – and aides, during a baseball practice in Virginia Wednesday, Fox News confirmed. The shots were reported on East Monroe Street in Del Ray, Alexandria police said on Twitter at 7:30 a.m. The location was near a YMCA.

“With all this excess inventory, landlords are trying to do whatever they can to keep malls occupied. The more empty spaces, the more difficult it is to attract new tenants.”

“We’re going to start to see some real pain now,” Senate President John Cullerton told reporters in Springfield on Wednesday after both S&P and Moody’s downgraded Illinois to just above junk, the lowest ever rating for a US state. “We’re going to start to see downgrades. We don’t have any funding for schools. We don’t have any funding for higher end and a bunch of social programs.”

On Tuesday afternoon the US began the first ever missile test involving a simulated attack by an intercontinental ballistic missile, firing off an interceptor from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. And according to an update from the Defense Agency, the test was a success.