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.”

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.