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.”

There was even a letter signed by 200 economists, highlighting the same dangers. This recalled the 1981 letter signed by 364 economists warning of the threat of recession – published just as the economy was starting to recover. Such an overwhelming consensus of economists might seem impressive. After all, how could so many different voices come to the same conclusion, yet still be wrong? Easily.

They aren’t umpteen different voices. These people are the victims of group-think. Moreover, there is a long history of the global economic establishment getting the most important issues of the day profoundly wrong. It did not foresee the fall of communism, the collapse of inflation or the global financial crisis.

The Treasury, backed up by most of the economic establishment, and opposed by only a small group of economists (of whom I was one), said that if we left the ERM, inflation would surge, interest rates would rise, and the economy would be damaged. In the event, we were forced out of the system on 16 September 1992, which was soon dubbed “Black Wednesday”. The result was that inflation fell, interest rates were cut and the economy recovered. Black Wednesday was soon renamed “Golden Wednesday”.

In the late 1990s, it was being debated whether the UK should join the euro. We were told by the great and the good that if we did not join, much of the City would decamp to Paris and Frankfurt, the Japanese carmakers would up sticks and our economy would be severely damaged. Meanwhile, in those countries which did join, the economy would surge forward, helped by the end of exchange rate uncertainty and the beginning of complete transparency about prices.

Why did the proponents of eurozone membership get this so blatantly wrong? Even though I believe that we should leave, I concede that there are some good arguments for remaining in the EU. But the fact that various economic bodies with a less than distinguished record of foreseeing the future warn us against leaving is not one of them.

A 5.6 quake is considered strong according to the Japanese 7-point scale. NHK reports there was no immediate tsunami warning, however. Japan Nuclear Power Association says a reactor at Tokai Nuclear Plant in Tokai village has "suspended operation" due to the quake. Tokyo Electric Power reports no incidents at the plant.

This comes exactly a month after a devastating quake hit the Japanese city of Kumamoto on the island of Kyushu, with 200 aftershocks rocking the country following the initial tremor of 6.5 magnitude. Forty-nine people lost their lives in the tragedy, with some 110,000 people being evacuated from areas close to the epicenter.

Crushing the dreams of "extreme monetary policy"-setters, Rajan goes on to discuss the sanity of 'helicopter money' warning that people will not be 'stimulated' to spend but will question: "What kind of world are we in when the central bank prints money and throws it out of the window?"

Blasphemy!!

Mr Rajan said that instead of seeking stimulus, people should recognise that slower growth was probably a part of ageing economies and perhaps the result of low interest rates, which protected inefficient companies from going out of business. Which makes no sense whatsoever... because the central planners are "magic" and can do anything, right? Just look at the 'markets'...

Famously rejecting the centralised, unaccountable, federal Europe of Delors, Margaret Thatcher proposed instead a wider, decentralised, outward-looking democratic Europe of independent, freely- trading and cooperating nation states:

“I want to start by disposing of some myths about my country, Britain, and its relationship with Europe and to do that, I must say something about the identity of Europe itself... Europe is not the creation of the Treaty of Rome... Nor is the European idea the property of any group or institution.”

Powerful stuff... but we are sure Cameron would suggest The Iron Lady was being "divisive and stupid"...

Riki Wilchins, who has undergone “sex change” surgery and is a far-left social change activist, wrote in the gay publication The Advocate last week that social conservatives and many LGBT activists are missing the point when it comes to the transgender bathroom debate. The title of Wilchins' article makes the points succinctly: "We'll Win the Bathroom Battle When the Binary Burns."

People should be able to enter whatever bathroom “fits their gender identity,” Wilchins wrote, but the fact that we even have “male” and “female” bathrooms reflects something about society that needs to change. There are many “genderqueer” or “non-binary” people, Wilchins wrote, pointing to a student who recently “came out” to President Obama as “non-binary” at a London townhall as a notable example.

“Non-binary” people don’t identify as male or female and they often want to be referred to as “they” or “hir” or “zer.” So the fact that there are even intimate facilities that reflect the “binary” truth about gender should change, Wilchins wrote. In the eyes of LGBT advocates, the notion of only two genders (which one can pick, of course) is antiquated.

Scientists are now contemplating the creation of a synthetic human genome, meaning they would use chemicals to manufacture all the DNA contained in human chromosomes. The prospect is spurring both intrigue and concern in the life sciences community, because it might be possible — if someone were able to create a totally artificial genome — to implant that genome into embryos and create human beings without parents.

While the project is still in the idea phase, and also involves efforts to improve DNA synthesis in general, it was discussed at a closed-door meeting at Harvard Medical School in Boston on Tuesday. The roughly 150 attendees were told not to contact the media or to tweet about the meeting.

Organizers said the project in some ways would be a follow-up to the original Human Genome Project, which was aimed at reading the sequence of the three billion chemical letters in the DNA blueprint of human life. The new project, by contrast, would involve not reading, but rather writing the human genome — synthesizing all three billion units from chemicals.

But such an attempt would raise numerous ethical issues. Could scientists create humans with certain kinds of traits, perhaps people born and bred to be soldiers? Or might it be possible to make copies of specific people?

On Sunday, US Secretary of State John Kerry met with Saudi King Salman to lay the groundwork for the meeting. Since March, a national unity government has been gradually exerting its influence in Libya following years of unrest in the country. However, the government – led by businessman Fayez al-Sarraj and backed by much of the international community – faces political opposition from within Libya and the threat of the so-called "Islamic state" (IS) establishing a bigger foothold.

"A common effort is needed to help the process of bringing stability to Libya," said Italian Foreign Minister Paolo Gentiloni ahead of the summit. The flow of migrants from Libya across the Mediterranean to Europe is also a topic for discussion in Vienna. The meeting is scheduled to last for two days, with the focus shifting to Syria on Tuesday. Representatives from Iran, Saudi Arabia and Russia are also expected to attend.