Your customized headlines for Tue, Jul 24, 2012

The financial pain in Spain drove down global stock markets Monday as doubts flared anew about whether euro-zone nations would be able to solve their 2¹ / ₂-year-old debt and currency crisis.

Groaning under an austerity program that has pushed its unemployment rate higher than the U.S. rate during the Great Depression, Spain announced that its economy shrank by 0.4 percent in the second quarter of 2012 and that it would remain in recession until 2013. The country's borrowing costs soared to all-time euro-era highs as uncertainty about the finances of its banks and regional governments gripped investors.

There's no mystery as to why Congress is not doing more to help the economy: Disagreements between Republicans and Democrats have paralyzed the institution. In February 2011, congressional gridlock almost shut down the federal government. In August 2011, it almost caused a global financial crisis by breaching the debt ceiling. Markets are beginning to worry — rightly — that congressional paralysis might push the economy over the fiscal cliff in January 2013. At this point, the best we can hope for with Congress is that it will manage not to make things much, much worse. Asking lawmakers to make anything better is like asking them to build a rocket to the moon.

Last summer's fierce political debate over raising the federal debt limit cost taxpayers more than $1 billion in extra borrowing costs, including hundreds of hours in overtime for federal employees responsible for avoiding default, according to a new government report.

Expect graphs about guns and violence (including some you didn't see in this post), really scary numbers on who the political system listens to from Martin Gilens, new evidence that Mitt Romney and Barack Obama agree that Ayn Rand is wrong, a Europe explainer, EJ Dionne and much, much more.

In many ways today, HIV/AIDS has the same stigmas as leprosy did in Bible times. Leprosy was considered a death sentence. Victims were considered unclean and shunned by their families and communities. Yet, Jesus reached out to them, touched them, loved them, and healed them. This is the perfect representation of how the church should respond to people living with HIV/AIDS.