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Blackburn with Darwen borough currently has seven rough sleepers on its streets the council’s leader has revealed.

Three weeks ago, I was living in Terre Haute, Indiana.

Terre Haute has a population of less than 60,000. Blackburn and Darwen has a population of over 150,000.

Terre Haute has an estimated 500 homeless people.

It will get down to 1°F/-17 °C there on Wednesday night.

Almost certainly not news to any British people, but it was news to me and I think that's really cool.

I couldn't even imagine something like that in the U.S.

I chose not to find out whether or not “camelicious” is an accurate description.

The U.S. Army base formerly known as Fort Bragg will once again bear its old name — but this time but in honor of a new namesake.

The Fayetteville, N.C. base was originally named after the controversial Confederate general Braxton Bragg, and bore that title for a century. The Defense Department changed it to Fort Liberty in 2023 as part of a broader initiative to rename nearly a dozen military installations that had previously honored Confederate leaders.

On Monday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth issued a memorandum changing the base's name once again, this time to Fort Roland L. Bragg.

"That's right: Bragg is back," Hegseth said as he signed the document on board a military aircraft, in a video shared by the Department of Defense (DoD).

Bragg, a private first class with the 17th Airborne Division, isn't exactly a household name. The DoD describes him as a "World War II hero who earned the Silver Star and Purple Heart for his exceptional courage during the Battle of the Bulge."

Debra Sokoll, one of Bragg's daughters, told NPR on Tuesday morning that she was surprised to learn of the renaming just a few minutes earlier when another reporter called to ask about it.

Her husband, Chris Sokoll, said someone from the Army had left them a message on Monday night, but they hadn't yet returned the call.

On Sunday, Trump hinted that the United States might renege on some of the $36.22 trillion that it owes on the national debt. Speaking to reporters Sunday on Air Force One about Elon Musk’s review of government spending, Trump said:

We’re even looking at Treasury. There could be a problem—you’ve been reading about that, with Treasuries, and that could be an interesting problem because it could be that a lot of those things don’t count. In other words, that some of that stuff that we’re finding is very fraudulent, therefore maybe we have less debt than we thought of. Think of that!

“For those not familiar with how financial markets work,” Paul Krugman later explained on BlueSky, “U.S. Treasuries are the ultimate safe asset, used as collateral for everything. Even a hint that some Treasuries might not be honored could bring everything to a screeching halt.”

The bond market’s initial reaction to Trump’s comments was to shrug them off. “Trump’s veiled threat is so insane that it won’t happen,” Harvard economist Jason Furman assured me. Politico’s Victoria Guida quoted an administration official saying that Trump was talking about unspecified Treasury payments, not Treasuries, prompting some of the business press (for instance, Bloomberg) to report that Trump’s meaning was unclear. Trump’s meaning was not unclear, and that administration official was lying when he or she said Trump was talking about unspecified Treasury payments. Go back and look at what Trump said. It’s on video, for Christ’s sake. (Fast forward to 21:15.) He said, “Treasuries.” You aren’t imagining things. Your president is not a well man.

The bond market’s calm won’t last if Trump repeats his threat once or twice more, as he tends to do until he gets a reaction. Or it may react with even greater alarm than expected when Trump and congressional Republicans reveal their deficit-busting tax plan. (The bond market has for some time been freaking out about the budget deficit.) “The political world needs to appreciate the fact that he’s playing with fire that will burn everyone,” MSNBC’s Steve Benen observed Monday. I second that.