After more than a decade of hiding across the border in Pakistan’s lawless tribal belt, al-Qaeda terrorist cells have moved back into southern Afghanistan following the withdrawal of British and American forces at the end of 2014.

Now Afghan security officials are warning that al-Qaeda chiefs are hoping to use their new Afghan base to plot a fresh wave of terror attacks against the West and its allies.

“Al-Qaeda has taken advantage of the withdrawal of Western troops to re-establish its headquarters in southern Afghanistan,” said a senior Afghan defence official. “Now they are back they will be determined to use Afghanistan as a base to prepare new attacks against Western targets.”

On the GSA website, the association states: “If the child is recognized by the family and school/community as a girl and lives culturally as a girl, then Girl Scouts is an organization that can serve her in a setting that is both emotionally and physically safe.” Girls participating in the scouts will now be obliged to recognize transgenderism as a normal lifestyle, critics say.

The conservative American Family Association expressed its outrage at the policy change, accusing scout leaders of “losing their moral compass.” This is the case of adults being “willing to experiment on our kids — both the boys who are confused and the girls who will wonder why a boy in a dress is in the bathroom with them.”

If you think you know what lies ahead better than these people, then these articles will waste your time. But if you think they may have a seagull-like instinct for coming financial storms, then pour yourself a cup of coffee and read these stories very, very carefully.

Billionaire George Soros is preparing for an economic storm. He has reduced his stock investments by 33% and increased his gold-mining holdings by $264 million. Central banks also are running to buy gold. China, which consumes 40% of all newly mined gold each year, recently bought Barclays’ precious-metals storage business. It is clear that these big players know something about the coming price of gold. (RT 2016 May 18)

Gold and silver prices still are being rigged. Bullion banks, like JP Morgan Chase, are allowed to sell contracts for future delivery of precious metals far in excess of what they have. If you can sell something you do not have, you can sell as much of it as necessary to depress the price. It’s that simple. The current number of ounces sold in this fashion now is 500 times greater than what is actually available for delivery. When that bubble bursts – as it must – the splat will be enormous. Those holding paper contracts will be jumping from high-rise buildings. Those holding gold and silver will be wealthy. (Money Metals 2016 May 16)

“The idea of specialness, exceptionality and unique rights of the American state and American people has been used in US internal political rhetoric for quite a while, but in recent years it has been actively and persistently offered in US foreign policy documents and public speeches on international politics delivered by US officials,” Judge Valery Zorkin said at the St Petersburg international legal forum on Thursday.

“Any unbiased and educated person would see that this statement by Obama is an almost exact copy of leading politicians and propaganda specialists of the Third Reich, including Adolph Hitler… In essence, Obama is using the exact same thing that Nazi bosses said about the German exceptionalism when they started the world war,” he added.

• The Keynesian god of growth has failed.

• The Keynesian god of borrowing from the future to fund today's consumption has failed.

• The Keynesian god of monetary stimulus / financialization has failed.

Every major central bank and state worships these Keynesian idols.

The global financial system is in the eye of an unprecedented hurricane. While central bankers are congratulating themselves on their god-like mastery of Nature, and secretly praying to the idols of the Keynesian Cargo Cult every night, the inevitable consequence of borrowing from the future, the obsession with "growth" at any cost and financialization / monetary stimulus…is systemic collapse.

Don't fall for the mainstream media and politicos' shuck-and-jive that all is well and "growth" will return any day now. The only "growth" we're experiencing are the financial cancers of systemic risk and financialization's soaring wealth/income inequality.

"Our meeting is the message," Francis said in a brief comment at the start of his meeting with Sheikh Ahmed al-Tayeb, shortly after he had hugged and kissed his guest, Vatican officials told a small pool of reporters covering the event. In a statement on the trip, Al-Azhar, an institution that also comprises a prestigious seat of learning, said the two sides had agreed to convene a "peace conference".

A statement quoted Tayeb as telling Francis: "We need to take a joint stance, hand in hand, to bring happiness to humanity. Divine religions were revealed to make people happy, not to cause them hardship." The imam's deputy, Abbas Shuman, told Egyptian TV channel CBC that the two leaders had agreed to resume dialogue and that the proposed conference would cover the issues of poverty, extremism and terrorism.

The Vatican did not immediately confirm the conference plans. A spokesman said the talks had been "very cordial" with the imam spending 30 minutes with the pope and just over an hour in total at St Peter's. Tayeb's decision to fly to Rome, unexpectedly announced last week, followed the easing of serious tensions that marked the reign of Francis's predecessor, Benedict XVI.

School officials can't stop you anymore. To question your biological age would be "bigoted" or "discriminatory" because you self-identify as a permanent 17-year-old. It's your civil right, you see, to decide to be a man, a woman, a child or even a teenager. Whatever biology you want to be that day, it's yours for the asking!

After you clean up on the court, if you're wondering where your team coach is, he's showering with the girls' varsity team because he suddenly decided he was an 18-year-old female today. Thank goodness we live in a progressive society that respects his "right" to be himself, huh? Some of the girls started to complain when he entered the shower looking all naked and gross, but they were quickly chided back into line by the school's thought police enforcers who reminded them that they would be practicing "intolerance" if they didn't allow their 35-year-old coach to shower with them. None of them wanted to be called "intolerant," so they all just showered with the guy and told themselves what loving, compassionate, progressive people they were.

A conservative skeptic might observe all this and say, "Hey, wait a minute! These people can't change their biology! That guy's a 35-year-old creepy dude!"

But biology, you see, is now considered wholly subjective and decided based on a whim. If you DECIDE to be female, everyone else must now accept you as a female. And if you DECIDE to be 15 years old, how can anyone argue differently? If they dare say, "But your birth certificate says you're 35, not 15," then you just call them an intolerant, discriminatory bigot and threaten to sue them for violating your civil rights.

This is what America has now come to: An insane, delusional land of the politically correct mentally ill. When an entire society loses touch with biological reality and economic reality, it's only a matter of time before the entire system collapses upon itself, by the way. This era of runaway lunacy won't last for long.

This brings me to the perfect answer that young Christian gal at the Indiana pizza parlor should have given when she was under attack for saying their pizza shop wouldn't cater for a gay wedding... She should have announced to the world that she self-identifies as a 15-year-old gay man trapped in the body of an older woman and forced to serve pizza to white racist bigots in Indiana. The entire lunatic media would have turned her into a cultural hero!

Presented to the European Geosciences Union General Assembly last April, the study looks at the extreme impacts of natural hazards like earthquakes, tsunamis, extreme weather and volcanoes. It states that “extreme volcanic eruptions pose a higher associated risk than all other natural hazards” including asteroid impacts.

It has led to numerous reports that the earth is in the midst of a volatile ‘volcano season’ – a ‘ticking time bomb’ period that could see supervolcanoes in places like Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming erupt and kill millions.

Speaking to the International Business Times Rebecca Williams, volcanologist at the University of Hull said there is “no such thing” as "volcano season". “There has been talk about Yellowstone erupting and killing everyone but this is nonsense. There is no scientific data that suggest an eruption is likely to occur in the near future,” she said.

To put this amount in perspective, the US spent more on its military than the next six nations combined, with China coming in second at $215 billion, followed by Saudi Arabia at $87 billion, Russia at $66 billion, with the United Kingdom, India and France spending roughly $50 billion each on defense expenses.

The sheer enormity of the sums being given to the military-industrial complex is enough to boggle the mind. Think for a moment how else that $600 billion could be spent to actually assist in creating growth rather than death.

Consider that in January 2015, the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) found there were 564,708 homeless people on a given night in the United States – the government could actually purchase a $1 million dollar home for each individual homeless person in the US and still have money left over.