Paula Broadwell, the former CIA director’s biographer and lover, allegedly sent threatening messages to Jill Kelley, a 37-year-old “social liaison” for the US military in Tampa, triggering the FBI investigation which led to Gen Petraeus’s downfall.

When Mrs. Kelley, a family friend of the Petraeuses, learned from the FBI that the anonymous messages were coming from Mrs. Broadwell she turned to the former general for help. Gen Petraeus then urged Mrs. Broadwell to stop, according to the Washington Post.

Mrs. Kelley reportedly went to the FBI in early summer after she began receiving the emails. The relationship between the general and his biographer is believed to have ended in July.

On Sunday Mrs. Kelley, who insists that the former CIA director is just a close friend who is like a grandfather to her children, was identified as the woman Mrs. Broadwell believed was her rival.

Mrs. Kelley was silent yesterday after hiring Monica Lewinsky's former crisis manager.

As I said in this space yesterday..."you couldn't make this stuff up in a third-rate spy novel." This piece is from The Telegraph on Monday evening GMT...and I borrowed it from yesterday's edition of the King Report. The link is here. [Where's Allan Fotheringham when you need him the most? - Ed]

Your e-mails are not nearly as private as you think.

The downfall of CIA Director David Petraeus demonstrates how easy it is for federal law enforcement agents to examine emails and computer records if they believe a crime was committed. With subpoenas and warrants, the FBI and other investigating agencies routinely gain access to electronic in-boxes and information about e-mail accounts offered by Google and other Internet providers.

"The government can't just wander through your e-mails just because they'd like to know what you're thinking or doing," said Stewart Baker, a former assistant secretary at the Department of Homeland Security and now in private law practice. "But if the government is investigating a crime, it has a lot of authority to review people's e-mails."

This story was posted on the CNBC website during the New York lunch hour yesterday...and I thank West Virginia reader Elliot Simon for bringing it to our attention. The link is here.

Google Inc. said government requests to remove content from its search results and other services rose 71 percent in the first half of the year, according to a new report.

The owner of the world’s largest search engine said there were 1,791 requests in the six months through June, up from 1,048 during the last six months of 2011, according to its Transparency Report. Turkey’s government made 501 requests to remove content, up from 45 in the previous period, while the U.S. followed with 273, up from 187.

Google is under scrutiny from companies and governments around the world over what type of content it shows. Some countries are being more aggressive in seeking content removal from search results and sites such as video-sharing service YouTube. While the company may receive such requests, Google may choose not to comply, according to the report.

This Bloomberg story was posted on their website at 12:50 p.m. Mountain Standard Time yesterday...and it's the second item in a row from Elliot Simon. The link is here.

Both sides in the "fiscal cliff" debate stood their ground on Tuesday as they gathered in Washington for the first time since the elections, with a fundamental tax dispute preventing a broader compromise on deficit reduction.

The White House made clear it was ready to negotiate with Republicans on taxes and spending, but a spokesman for Democratic President Barack Obama said he will not budge on insisting that the wealthy's tax rates must rise in 2013.

The president wants to extend low individual income tax rates beyond year's end for 98 percent of Americans, but he will not agree to extending them for the top 2 percent of earners, said White House spokesman Jay Carney at a news conference.

On the Senate floor, Republican Leader Mitch McConnell said his party was open to discussing new government revenues, but not raising tax rates. "We're ... not about to further weaken the economy by raising tax rates and hurting jobs," he said.

This Reuters story was filed from Washington shortly after the markets closed yesterday afternoon in New York...and I thank Roy Stephens for his first offering of the day. The link is here.

As of this writing, the Texas petition to peacefully “withdraw” from the United States via the White House’s open petition webpage is up to 62,481 signatures, on its way to tripling the required names needed to trigger a response from the Obama administration.

No doubt Texas’ desire to break free is a source of amusement inside a White House that has mastered the art of belittling the opinions of its challengers, but there is one not-so-small problem here: Texas could pull it off.

This short story was posted on the businessinsider.com Internet site yesterday afternoon...and I thank Roy Stephens for sending it...and the link is here.

Looks like the Obama administration may have to respond to a petition seeking the green light for Texas to secede from the United States—one of 20 such requests filed on the official White House website since Election Day.

At the time of the writing of this post, the Texas secession petition had garnered 25,318 signatures—above the White House's self-imposed rules for requiring a reply.

Other secession petitions include requests for Arkansas, South Carolina, Georgia, Missouri, Tennessee, Michigan, Colorado, Oregon, New Jersey, North Dakota, Montana, Indiana, Mississippi, Kentucky, North Carolina, Alabama and New York.

This news.yahoo.com story from Monday was sent to me by Alberta reader Jerome Cherry...and the link is here.

The markets are going to go into meltdown soon, so expect stocks to lose 20 percent of their value, Marc Faber, author of the Gloom, Boom and Doom Report told CNBC on Tuesday.

“I don’t think markets are going down because of Greece, I don’t think markets are going down because of the ‘fiscal cliff’ — because there won’t be a ‘fiscal cliff,’ ” Faber told CNBC’s “Squawk Box.” “The market is going down because corporate profits will begin to disappoint, the global economy will hardly grow next year or even contract, and that is the reason why stocks, from the highs of September of 1,470 on the S&P, will drop at least 20 percent, in my view.”

Faber, who is known for his bearish views, cited tech giant Apple, a company whose disappointing earnings have caused its stock to fall 20 percent from its September highs and 14 percent in the past month.

This story was posted on the cnbc.com Internet site early yesterday morning...and I thank Scott Pluschau for bringing it to our attention. The link is here.

The catch-up boom in China, India, Brazil is largely over and will be followed by a drastic slowdown over the next decade, according to a grim report by America’s top forecasting body.

Europe's prognosis is even worse, with France trapped in depression with near zero growth as far as 2025 and Britain struggling to raise its speed limit to 1pc over the next three Parliaments.

The US Conference Board’s global economic outlook calls into question the "BRICs" miracle (Brazil, Russia, India, China), arguing that the low-hanging fruit from cheap labour and imported technology has already been picked.

This Ambrose Evans-Pritchard offering was posted on The Telegraph's website early yesterday evening GMT...and I thank Donald Sinclair for sending it. The link is here.

Alleged price-fixing in the energy markets is as serious as burglary, a Government minister said on Tuesday, after whistleblowers claimed some of Britain’s biggest energy companies were involved in rigging wholesale gas prices.

The Financial Services Authority and energy regulator Ofgem are examining claims that power firms are among companies involved in widespread manipulation of the wholesale gas market – potentially inflating prices paid by domestic energy customers.

All of the UK’s 'Big Six’ energy suppliers – Centrica, SSE, ScottishPower, EDF Energy, E.ON and RWE npower – denied involvement in price-fixing activity.

This is another story that was posted on the telegraph.co.uk Internet site early yesterday evening...and is Donald Sinclair's second offering in a row. The link is here.

Lawyers for Barclays will on Wednesday disclose the names after a High Court judge ordered the bank to hand them to the legal team of a care home operator that is suing the bank for mis-selling it complex interest rate derivatives.

The disclosure follows an attempt by Barclays to argue against the need for disclosure. However, Mr Justice Julian Flaux said on Tuesday that it was “unacceptable” to deny access to the names.

Guardian Care Homes is claiming £38m from Barclays over interest rate swaps the company alleges it was mis-sold. Barclays said: “It would be premature to comment on proceedings before the Judge has made his decision.”

This is the third and final offering from Donald Sinclair...and it's also from yesterday evening's Telegraph. The link is here.

While the Greek government has passed the most recent austerity measures demanded by its international lenders, it continues to encounter resistance to their implementation. In a rare act of unity, cities and unions are refusing to comply with demands for layoffs.

The atmosphere was tense at the courtyard of the Thessaloniki city hall. Dozens of municipal workers in Greece's second-largest city staged a protest Monday morning against the planned lay-offs of 27,000 civil servants. "I have been working for the city for 22 years," said one of the city administration's 4,000 employees. He requested anonymity for fear of jeopardizing his position even further. "I fear for my job. All of us do."

A few hours later, city workers and journalists packed inside city hall to observe the city council meeting. The meeting ended with a decision to disobey the central government. Mayor Yiannis Boutaris had submitted the motion -- a refusal to send the Interior Ministry a list of workers ripe for dismissal. City administration and unions, so often enemies, were united.

This story showed up on the German website spiegel.de yesterday...and I thank Roy Stephens for his third offering in today's column. The link is here.

For the paltry sum of just £10 million, Kuwait earned a place in the Guinness Book of Records last night as it celebrated the golden jubilee anniversary of its constitution in style by laying on the biggest fireworks display of all time.

A dazzling array of colours illuminated the skies above the country's capital of Kuwait City as a staggering 77,282 fireworks were launched over the period of an hour.

A representative of Guinness World Records announced the achievement on Kuwait television at the end of the display which had been watched by tens of thousands of Kuwaitis and expatriates on the Arabian Gulf Road by the sea.

It sure was pretty...but £10 million? This spectacular photo-essay/video was embedded in a dailymail.co.uk article on Sunday...and I thank Marshall Angeles for finding it for us. The link is here.

The first one is with Bill Fleckenstein...and it's headlined "This is a Moment in Time That's Never Been Seen Before". The second is with Keith Barron...and it's entitled "Global Gold Production is Poised to Fall Off a Cliff".

Gold discovery rates are decreasing even as exploration spending in the industry reached a record $8 billion last year, according to Jamie Sokalsky, chief executive officer of Barrick Gold Corp., the world’s largest producer.

There were three discoveries last year, compared with 11 in 1991, and none of those can be described as “supergiant,” or holding more than 20 million ounces, Sokalsky said at a conference in Hong Kong. Breakeven costs were rising, he said today, predicting gold’s bull market shows no signs of ending.

Gold is poised for a 12th annual gain, driven by increased investor and central-bank purchases as governments around the world boost stimulus to revive their economies. Global gold mine output may increase 0.7 percent in 2013, the slowest pace since 2008, according to Barclays Plc, which forecasts that total physical supply may shrink 0.4 percent next year. A further rally may not spur much higher output, he told the conference.

“I don’t see a surge in gold production if we saw a gold price of $3,000,” Sokalsky said. “At a higher gold price, we’d still be experiencing the same challenges. I’d suggest there’d be very limited response to that higher gold price.”

A wildly bullish story for the gold price. It's going to be interesting to see how long JPMorgan et al can keep the lid on prices with this sort of news. This Bloomberg story was filed from Singapore yesterday...and I thank Elliot Simon for bringing it to our attention. The link is here.

I fully expect that gold and silver will become far more precious than they are today. They will also be desired by a greater percentage of the population. Banks in the United States have almost all gotten out of the business of buying and selling physical precious metals, which means that coin dealers will be the largest beneficiaries of this surge in demand. So, I foresee good times ahead for coin dealers in the next one to three years. However, they will come no matter who won last week’s elections.

But, I have a couple of warnings for dealers. First, the additional competition from dealers selling on the Internet will result in far smaller profit margins than the modest profit levels that dealers were used to. Second, the coming tidal wave in demand will outstrip the ability of any coin dealer, bullion wholesaler, ingot fabricator, or refinery to handle. Therefore, let the good times come, but they will not necessarily be easy to manage.

So you see, dealers are the winners of the election, but they were set up for this triumph no matter who got the most votes.

This short commentary by Patrick Heller was posted on the numismaster.com Internet site yesterday...and is Elliot Simon's second story in a row. The link is here.

A Montana state lawmaker is asking that he be paid in gold coins because of his lack of faith in the U.S. dollar amid a rising deficit.

Jerry O’Neil, a Republican just re-elected in his northern Montana district, says his constituents told him he was not honoring his duty to uphold the U.S. Constitution, which O’Neil and Gold Standard supporters say requires the government to print money backed by gold.

“I believe that if you take a look at the Constitution, that’s what it says,” he told POLITICO. “I think we’ve gotten a tremendously long way from it.”

So he wrote a letter to the state Legislature asking to be paid his public salary in gold and stating: “It is very likely the bottom will fall out from under the U.S. dollar. Only so many dollars can be printed before they have no value.”

This story was posted on the politico.com website just before lunchtime on the East coast...and I thank Elliot Simon for his final offering of the day. The link is here.

This story, with a Chris Powell-fabricated headline, showed up as a GATA release yesterday...and its real title was "How About a Fort Knox of Your Own? It was posted on the nytimes.com Internet site just after midnight...and the link is here.

The surplus in the global silver market is expected to edge up to 300 million ounces in 2012 from a year earlier, the global head of metals analytics at GFMS, a Thomson Reuters unit, said on Wednesday.

Philip Klapwijk, speaking on the sidelines of a conference in Hong Kong, also said demand for silver fabrication had weakened, although some of the decline had been offset by higher silver output in China.

"The situation this year is that we see weaker fabrication demand on two main reasons. One is industrial fabrication has slowed quite considerably this year, especially in recent months, and we see weakness especially in the electronics field and photovoltaic end users," said Klapwijk.

Mr. Klapwyijk...along with the company he represents...has always been right up there with the like of Jon Nadler...and also Jeff Christian and his CPM Group. They are strong with the dark side of The Force, so I'd take anything that this gentleman has to say with a huge grain of salt. But, in the interests of balanced reporting, I'm posting it. I found it over on the mineweb.com Internet site in the wee hours of this morning...and the link is here.

Silver will increase in value five times over the next three years, according to mixed asset fund manager Ian Williams.

"Silver is about to enter a sustained bull market that will take the price from the current level of $32 an ounce to $165 an ounce and we expect this price to be hit at the end of October 2015," he predicted.

"This forecast is based entirely using technical & cyclical analysis and is in keeping with the mathematical form displayed so far in the bull run that has taken Silver from $8 an ounce in 2008 to its current price of $32 an ounce – having hit $50 an ounce in 2011."

Mr. Williams is not the sharpest knife in the drawer...and I'm wondering how much of his 'research' was stolen from Ted Butler. I'm also wondering why such a story showed up in The Telegraph at this point. Anyway, $165 the ounce is a good start...and would have been there long ago if it weren't for JPMorgan et al. I thank Phil Barlett for sharing this story with us...and the link is here.

Silver market analyst Ted Butler, interviewed yesterday by MineWeb's Lawrence Williams, discussed manipulation of the market but reasserted his belief that silver's price appreciation potential is far greater than gold's.

In actual fact, there was no interview at all. Lawrie just took Ted's weekend commentary to his paying subscribers and put it in his own words...and you get to read it for free!

However, the fact that Ted's and GATA's work is starting to show up with increasing frequency on the most respected [and conservative] of precious metal websites, of which the mineweb.com is right up there at the top, speaks volumes for the increasing credibility of the message...and the messengers.

It's almost pointless to say that this is a must read...and I found it in a GATA release early yesterday morning. It was obviously posted on the mineweb.com's Internet site after I filed yesterday's column, or I would have caught it before I hit the 'send' button, as their website is the last thing I check before I hit the 'send' button. The link is here.

This 28-minute video clip is a must watch...and Chris Powell has a few things to say in this preamble as well that are more than worth reading. The video clip itself was posted over at the youtube.com Internet site yesterday afternoon...and the link to the GATA release is here.

The direct question about the silver investigation is contained in this 3-minute youtube.com clip...and I thank Matthew Nel for sending it. The link to that is here.