The US and Soviet militaries learned first-hand of the potential consequences of a major EMP event when conducting high altitude nuclear tests over 50 years ago. In 1962 for example, a US military exercise dubbed “Operation Starfish” exploded a 1.4 megaton nuclear warhead 240 miles above Johnson Island in the Pacific Ocean. Alarmingly, the resulting EMP field caused street lights to blow out and affected telephone and radio communications in Hawaii, 900 miles away.

Fearing its use as a “first strike” weapon that would take out critical military command and control infrastructure, both superpowers spent the following decades hardening their military apparatus against such an attack. Our civilian infrastructure, however, has remained largely unshielded from severe electromagnetic events. Much of the knowledge on the effects of EMPs has been classified due to its national security implications. Over time, knowledge of the threat from an EMP has made its way into the public consciousness.

Senator Pat Roberts, Republican for Kansas, relinquished an eight-month hold he said was unrelated to Fanning’s qualifications or his sexuality. Roberts sought assurances from the Obama administration that detainees at the military’s Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, prison would not be relocated to Kansas, and he announced on the Senate floor Tuesday he received them.

The landmark move was praised by the Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender civil rights organization. His nomination comes five years after the repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell” legislation barring openly gay people from serving.

"Eric Fanning's historic confirmation today as Secretary of the US Army is a demonstration of the continued progress towards fairness and equality in our nation’s armed forces," HRC President Chad Griffin said in a statement. "Eric Fanning has spent his career serving this nation with tireless dedication, skill and ability, and as secretary he will bring that same commitment to the men and women of the US Army."

Most individuals and many transgender people use female or male pronouns and titles. Some transgender and gender non-conforming people prefer to use pronouns other than he/him/his or she/her/hers, such as they/them/theirs or ze/hir [Footnote: Ze and hir are popular gender-free pronouns preferred by some transgender and/or gender non-conforming individuals].

So people can basically force us — on pain of massive legal liability — to say what they want us to say, whether or not we want to endorse the political message associated with that term, and whether or not we think it’s a lie.

We have to use “ze,” a made-up word that carries an obvious political connotation (endorsement of the “non-binary” view of gender). We have to call people “him” and “her” even if we believe that people’s genders are determined by their biological sex and not by their self-perceptions — perceptions that, by the way, can rapidly change, for those who are “gender-fluid” — and that using terms tied to self-perception is basically a lie.

This is the government as sovereign, threatening “civil penalties up to $125,000 for violations, and up to $250,000 for violations that are the result of willful, wanton, or malicious conduct” if people don’t speak the way the government tells them to speak.

A study published by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) earlier this month indicates that roughly 28 percent of American bee colonies were lost just this past winter. More shockingly, the same report shows that nearly half of all bee colonies in the US, 44 percent, were devastated over the past year. Despite annual statistics only having been collected for the past six years, current research is showing that bee colonies are failing even during the summer months — a time when colony health is expected.

Unfortunately, the problem is not limited to the US. In the UK, losses of honeybees in the winter of 2014 to 2015, the last year statistics are available, surpassed 14 percent, a number that did not confirm previous findings which seemed to suggest honeybee populations were stabilizing.

Mr Johnson said: "This is the biggest stitch up since the Bayeux Tapestry. It stinks to high heaven. FTSE 100 chiefs are seeing their pay packets soar while uncontrolled immigration is forcing down wages for British workers. Now we learn that some fat cats have been secretly agreeing to campaign for remain while angling for lavish Government contracts. It makes us look like a banana republic."

"And it is also now beyond doubt that the so called renegotiation was a fiction designed to bamboozle the public. It was a meaningless mime, a ritual, a kabuki drama in which the outcome was utterly preordained. This is not the far-reaching and fundamental reform we were promised."

Sadly, this is what the endgame of socialism looks like. When an all-powerful government is elevated far above all other institutions in society and radical leftists are given the keys to the kingdom, this is the result. Food shortages, looting and rampant violent crime have all become part of daily life in Venezuela, and we all need to watch as this unfolds very carefully, because similar scenarios will soon be playing out all over the planet.

The funny thing is that Venezuela actually has more “wealth” than most countries in the world. According to the CIA, Venezuela actually has more proven oil reserves than anyone else on the globe – including Saudi Arabia. So how did such a wealthy nation find itself plunged into full-blown economic collapse so rapidly, and could a similar thing happen to us?

We are sitting on the largest mountain of debt in the history of the planet, and our debt-fueled prosperity is completely dependent on the rest of the world lending us gigantic amounts of money at ridiculously low interest rates and continuing to use our increasingly shaky currency which we are debasing at a staggering pace.

We consume far more than we produce, and unlike Venezuela we aren’t sitting on hundreds of billions of barrels of oil. The amount of “real wealth” that we actually have does not justify our current standard of living. The only way that we are able to live the way that we do is by stealing consumption from the future.

One study has found that our debt level is the highest that it has been since the Great Depression of the 1930s, and yet we continue to race down this road to economic oblivion without even thinking twice about it. What you sow is what you will reap. And just like Venezuela, America will ultimately reap a very bitter harvest.

The new rules have gone all-in to push the “gender identity” ideology and transgender agenda by demanding that everyone in the school system must use the scientifically incorrect pronouns and made-up names preferred by a tiny minority of people who say they prefer to be treated as members of the opposite sex.

Even scarier for parents, the new guidelines tell CPS employees that they must conceal from parents evidence that their child is claiming to be transgender and is experimenting with gender-switching while in school, if the child wants the parents excluded.

The guidelines state that when talking to parents or legal guardians “school staff should not disclose a student’s preferred name, pronoun, or other confidential information pertaining to the student’s transgender or gender nonconforming status without the student’s permission, unless authorized to do so by the Law Department.”

From our top leaders on down, people are engaged in incredibly self-destructive behavior and are making extremely irrational decisions. Some would describe it as being given over to a depraved mind, and I would have to agree. It is almost as if some sort of severe form of mental illness were rapidly spreading through the air and infecting everyone. Virtually every day I am immersed in news and current events, and it can be difficult to shock me after all this time. But lately, there have been quite a few stories that have stunned even me.

One of the big reasons why there is so much craziness in America today is because there is no longer a shared set of values or morals that unites us. You would like to think that we should all be able to at least agree on the US Constitution, but in law school I learned that courts routinely ignore the Constitution whenever it suits them. In fact, we might as well not even have a Constitution anymore because hardly anyone in the legal community takes it seriously these days.

Without any foundation to stand on, it is inevitable that our nation will crumble. The widespread insanity that we are witnessing is simply the acceleration of a process of decay that has been in motion for decades. I would like to think that we could turn things around, but at this point I am not very optimistic.

The system, dubbed the Pilot, comprises two earpieces to be worn by two people who do not speak the same language and uses an app so the duo can converse with ease. It is claimed to be the first 'smart earpiece' capable of translating between two languages. The company behind the technology, Waverly Labs, said: 'This little wearable uses translation technology to allow two people to speak different languages but still clearly understand each other.'

While the first generation device works only when speaking to someone wearing an earpiece, future generations could listen to everything happening nearby, so pairs of devices won't be needed. It could be likened to the Universal Translator device in Star Trek.

Governor Greg Abbott explained that the letter was in response to a written appeal made by Obama on April 8, requesting that Texas “review” its economic sanctions against the Islamic Republic – as was promised to Tehran in the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the nuclear deal between Iran and world powers reached in July.

“I strongly oppose the Iran deal because it undermines the national security of the United States and its strategic allies abroad – especially our most important Middle East ally, Israel,” Abbott wrote to Obama. “Entering into an agreement with a country that consistently calls for ‘death to America,’ and repeatedly articulates antisemitic policies is short-sighted and ignores geopolitical realities.”

The decision represents an important step in the growing legitimacy of the Government of National Accord, which is backed by the UN. Libya has been split between two governments since 2014, with rival parliaments located in Tripoli and the east. The GNA has been fighting to impose its control over the two competing governments, as well as various militias and jihadi groups, including Isis.

Speaking in Vienna after a meeting with the other major powers, Mr Kerry said that the GNA was “the only entity that can unify the country” and was “the only way to generate the cohesion necessary to defeat Daesh”, another name for Isis.

The meeting in Vienna brought together all the permanent members of the UN Security Council, including Russia and China, and a number of other governments in the region. In a statement, the governments said that they supported maintaining the UN arms embargo, but would support the GNA’s request for “necessary lethal arms” to counter Isis and other terrorist groups.

The experiment, called the Reanima project, will be conducted by researchers from two India-based biotech companies — Bioquark and Revita Life Sciences — on a new drug formula called BQ-A-001. The drug contains stem cells that researchers hope will grow into useful neurons, along with a number of different proteins and peptides that will break down damaged cells and create a microenvironment in which the stem cells can mature.

The researchers plan to use this drug along with neurological interventions already used on brain dead patients, such as Transcranial Laser Therapy and Median Nerve Stimulation. Inspired by organisms like salamanders that can regrow severed or damaged tails, Bioquark researchers have been developing regenerative treatments for a host of uses, from cancer to spinal cord injuries.

In this first trial of the Reanima project, the researchers are simply looking to see if a drug can prompt the “dead” brain to regrow functional neurons that could help restore the brain function. The study will take place in India.

If you have followed my work for a while, then you probably already know that I have been consistently warning that an eruption of Mount Rainier is coming, and of course Mount Hood and Mount Saint Helens are exceedingly dangerous volcanoes as well. If any one of the three were to erupt on a massive scale, it would instantly become the biggest news story of the year.

Mount Rainier has been dubbed a “time bomb”, “the most dangerous mountain in the United States” and “one of the most dangerous volcanoes in the world” because it sits so close to Seattle, Tacoma and other major cities along the coast of Washington state. In the event of a full-blown eruption, countless numbers of people would literally be buried alive in a tsunami of super-heated mud.

These tsunamis of super-heated mud are known as “lahars”, and scientists believe that Mount Rainier is capable of producing lahars that could move at speeds of up to 50 miles per hour.

If the United States remains in combat in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria until the end of Mr Obama’s term — a near-certainty given the president’s recent announcement that he will send 250 additional Special Operations forces to Syria — he will leave behind an improbable legacy as the only president in American history to serve two complete terms with the nation at war.

Mr Obama, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009 and spent his years in the White House trying to fulfill the promises he made as an antiwar candidate, would have a longer tour of duty as a wartime president than Franklin D Roosevelt, Lyndon B Johnson, Richard M Nixon or his hero Abraham Lincoln.

Granted, Mr Obama is leaving far fewer soldiers in harm’s way — at least 4,087 in Iraq and 9,800 in Afghanistan — than the 200,000 troops he inherited from Mr Bush in the two countries. But Mr Obama has also approved strikes against terrorist groups in Libya, Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen, for a total of seven countries where his administration has taken military action.

“No president wants to be a war president,” said Eliot A Cohen, a military historian at John Hopkins University who backed the war in Iraq and whose son served there twice. “Obama thinks of war as an instrument he has to use very reluctantly. But we’re waging these long, rather strange wars. We’re killing lots of people. We’re taking casualties.”