Some denizens of America’s great cities probably wouldn’t mind a visit from the Pied Piper right about now. Several major US cities — including Boston, Chicago, New York and Washington, DC — have seen significant surges in rat complaints from their residents in recent months, according to city data reviewed by USA TODAY.

Grousing about rats has long been city-dweller sport, but the long-tailed, sharp-toothed nuisances have now become so populous and so aggressive that some cities are getting creative in their efforts to stay ahead of the rodents even as some frustrated city residents are increasingly taking matters into their own hands.

In Chicago, which historically notches more rat complaints than any other city, residents' reports of rodent activity rose by about 70% in the first quarter of 2016 compared to the same period last year.

The state-sanctioned seizure is just the latest in a number of worrying developments to come out of increasingly hardline Turkey, which is in advanced talks with the EU over visa-free travel for its 80 million citizens. Included in the seizures are Catholic, Protestant and Orthodox churches, one of which is over 1,700 years old.

The order to seize the churches was made on March 25 by Erdogan's council of ministers, according to the website World Watch Monitor. They claim it was made on the grounds that authorities intend to rebuild and restore the historical centre of the city, which has been partially destroyed by 10 months of urban conflict between government forces and militants from the Kurdish Workers' Party (PKK).

But the seizures have outraged worshippers at the churches, who fear a government coup against their religion, and are now threatening to take legal action against the decision. Ahmet Guvener, pastor of Diyarbakir Protestant Church, said: "The government didn't take over these pieces of property in order to protect them. They did so to acquire them." And the Diyarbakir Bar Association - which represents Christians worshipping at one of the churches, has now officially filed an appeal against the government's action.

Hard-right Jerusalem city council member Arieh King said he hoped that the Temple Mount would soon be free of what he termed “the abomination” currently at the site, while Rabbi Yisrael Ariel, head of the Temple Institute and a former Knesset candidate for the banned Kach party said the event was preparation for when the Temple Mount would be “flattened and cleaned” and the Temple rebuilt.

The model ceremony included the various ancient Temple rites prescribed by the Torah and Jewish law, including the slaughtering of a lamb by Cohanim, priests, in the white robes used in Temple times, the sprinkling of the blood and the burning of fats and other parts of the lamb on a model altar, and the blowing of trumpets by the Cohanim. It was conducted just next to the Beit Orot yeshiva on the Mount of Olives in full view of the Temple Mount.

The Passover Sacrifice is one of the religious commandments of the Torah obliging Jews to sacrifice a lamb on the Temple Mount on the day before the Passover pilgrimage holiday and eat on the first night of the festival. The organizers, the Joint Staff of Temple Organizations, emphasized that the event on Monday was a simulation and not supposed to represent the actual sacrifice.

Speaking before the ceremony began, King, who heads the United Jerusalem faction in the Jerusalem Municipal Council decried the current situation in which said that Jews were still prevented by the government from going to the Temple Mount and performing the Passover sacrifice. “We’re here opposite the Temple Mount,” he continued. “We can see the abomination upon it and we need to wish that even in our days we won’t see it anymore and we’ll see there the altar, the Cohanim and Levi’im and we’ll see ourselves there.”

Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu, another leader of the religious hard-right sector, was also in attendance, and underlined what he said was the importance of realizing that prayers for the rebuilding of the Temple which appear frequently in Jewish are practical. “When we talk of the Temple we’re talking about something practical and not something imaginary,” he told The Jerusalem Post. “In order to feel how practical this is we are doing this Passover sacrifice ceremony. All Jews, every day for 2,000 years, pray three times a day that this will be practical.”

Felix Ngole, a 38-year-old in his second year of study for a master's degree in social work at the University of Sheffield in South Yorkshire was told that he is no longer a student at the university after a committee ruled he "may have caused offense to some individuals" by issuing a Facebook post last September quoting Leviticus on the Bible's condemnation of homosexuality.

Ngole's post came in defense of Davis, the clerk of Rowan County, Kentucky, who became the center of a media firestorm last year when she refused to allow her office to issue same-sex marriage licenses with her name and title on them because of her religious objection to same-sex marriage.

Although Ngole's Facebook page is private and can only be seen by his friends, his post was brought to the attention of administrators at the university months later. Ngole's future at the university was then subjected to the "Fitness to Practice" committee, which ruled that his conservative Christian beliefs about marriage would negatively impact his "ability to carry out a role as a social worker" and that his post "transgressed boundaries which are not deemed appropriate for someone entering the social work profession."

At this point, dozens of subdivisions have been flooded and major sections of Interstate 10 and Interstate 45 are under water near downtown. Authorities are telling us that water is getting to areas that it has never been before, and Fire Department spokesman Jay Evans announced that the water is already 10 to 15 feet deep in some areas. But even though some parts of Houston have already gotten close to 20 inches of rain within the last 24 hours, there is more rain in the forecast, so this crisis is far from over.

The giant storm that has caused all of this rain was a complete surprise to many residents of Houston. A lot of people woke up on Monday morning to discover that their neighborhoods now resembled Waterworld. If this flooding was just an isolated incident, it wouldn’t really be that big of a deal. But the truth is that this flooding in Houston continues a very disturbing pattern that began in early October of last year. Since the end of September, the US has been hit by 8 historic floods, which works out to an average of more than one a month.

As "David" woos her with compliments, flowers and romantic walks in the park, Li fails to realise he is a foreign spy. The cartoons depict a scenario where Li gives David secret internal documents from her government office before they are both arrested. In the final image, Li is shown sitting handcuffed before two policemen who tell her she has a "shallow understanding of secrecy for a state employee".

China's state secrets law is notoriously broad, covering everything from industry data to the exact birth dates of state leaders. Information can also be labelled a state secret retroactively. President Xi Jinping has overseen a sweeping revamp of the security apparatus, aimed at combating threats both at home and abroad.

Along with the main text in the letter, there was also a note next to the tickbox for male/female explaining that the national recording system only gives two options for gender but to help their child choose a gender they most identified with.

It read: 'We recognise that not all children and young people identify with the gender they were assigned at birth or may identify as a gender other than male or female, however the current systems (set nationally) only record gender as male or female. Please support your child to choose the gender they most identify with. Or if they have another gender identity please leave this blank and discuss with your child's school.'

Parents have criticised the move claiming children should be allowed to 'enjoy their innocence'. They also described it as a 'dangerous approach' since four-year-olds do not yet have an adult view of the world or fully understand gender roles. “Schools should be teaching kids to read and write, not prompting them to consider gender swaps” said Tory MP Andrew Bridgen.

The controversy comes just three months after the council sent a 'profoundly confusing' gender survey to pupils at Blatchington Mill School, in Hove, with 25 options to choose from. As well as traditional options of 'girl' and 'boy', children aged 13 to 18 were also invited to select from a list that included 'genderqueer', 'tri-gender', 'gender fluid' and 'intersex'.

Why the squirreling? One possible reason is the creeping imposition of negative interest rates across the world, which could make it more rewarding to bypass banks — and a safe or vault is, well, more secure than a mattress. Welcome to the upside-down world of modern monetary policy. In this new reality, borrowers get paid and savers penalized.

Almost 500 million people in a quarter of the global economy now live in countries where interest rates measure less than zero. That would’ve been an almost unthinkable phenomenon before the 2008 financial crisis, and one major economies didn’t seriously consider until two years ago, when the European Central Bank first partook in the experiment. Now the ECB and the Bank of Japan are diving deeper into the sub-zero world as they seek more ways to spark inflation.

The upshot: Now that they’ve tried the tool, central banks are likely to put it to use. Where once they assumed the “zero lower bound,” as it’s known in technical jargon, was as low as they could go, now they know better. Says Gabriel Stein, an economist at Oxford Economics, “Negative rates are here to stay.”

Kirby noted that the Federal Reserve had 3 emergency meetings in 3 days last week. Janet Yellen also had a secret meeting with Biden and Obama which violated American security protocols by having the President and his VP in the same location. Kirby thinks the whole American Empire of Debt will be unwound within weeks. That would mean, if he is right, maximum turmoil in American streets either prior to the Republican and Democratic presidential conventions in July or the November elections. Hillary thinks she should be crowned Empress but even she will see maximum resistance when the economy collapses.

Boring but critical economic stuff: The SGE (Shanghai Gold Exchange) will be launched officially on April 19. The Chinese have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with SWIFT (Society for Worldwide Interbank Fund Transfer). SWIFT is the second most used system of settling global trade after the American CHIPS system (Clearing House Interbank Payment System). The MOU will allow China’s CIP (Chinese Interbank Payment system) to work closely with SWIFT. Kirby believes this will marginalize the US dollar and payment system. He believes China will back their currency with gold soon after the CIP and SWIFT system merge.

"We are in favor of a ban on minarets, on muezzins and a ban on full veils," Beatrix von Storch, who is also a member of the European Parliament, told the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung. "Islam is in itself a political ideology that is not compatible with the basic law," she said. The program would also call for tight control over mosques and Islamic religious schools teaching in Germany.

Her deputy Alexander Gauland, who leads the AfD in Brandenburg, voiced a similar stance. "Islam is not a religion like Catholic or Protestant Christianity, but rather intellectually always associated with the takeover of the state," he said. "That is why the Islamization of Germany is a danger." He went further to state that an enlightened Euro-Islam is impossible, calling the religion a foreign body. Storch said there is a place for Muslims in Germany as long as the secular law is not challenged.

AfD’s Euroskeptic and anti-immigration message resonated with German voters during last month’s regional elections. The party won seats in three state legislatures while pushing down Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats. In Saxony-Anhalt AfD won 24 percent of the vote, surpassing the chancellor’s party.

Also, out of 147 heavy-lift Super Stallion helicopters, only 42 are operational. Officers at military air stations in South Carolina, which the channel spoke to, name several reasons for the alarming state of the Marine fleet, such as budget cuts, the fight against Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) in Syria and the toll of wars in Afghanistan and Iraq all contributing to the problem.

US military spending dropped from $691 billion in 2010 to $560 billion in 2015. Lack of funds has forced the Marines to seek unconventional ways to procure the needed parts. They were reduced to ‘cannibalizing’, or taking parts from one aircraft to get another one airborne. This even led to the snatching of aircraft parts from museums in order to keep planes flying, according to the Military Times news outlet.

Nagalese is what prevents vitamin D from being produced in the body, which is the body’s main defense to naturally kill cancer cells. According to Thebigriddle.com: Nagalase is a protein that’s also created by all cancer cells. This protein is also found in very high concentrations in autistic children. And they’re PUTTING it in our vaccines!!

This prevents the body from utilizing the Vitamin D necessary to fight cancer and prevent autism. Nagalese disables the immune system. It’s also known to cause Type 2 Diabetes. So basically… they weren’t killing these doctors because they had found the cure to cancer or were successfully treating autism… they’re killing them because these doctors had been researching and had the evidence that the vaccines they’re injecting our precious children with are CAUSING our current cancer and autism crisis!!

And that it’s obviously being done knowingly and on purpose! The doctors they killed in Florida had been collaborating and were getting ready to go public with the information.