The study, published in Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly, studied the effects of subtle reminders of mass surveillance on its subjects. The majority of participants reacted by suppressing opinions that they perceived to be in the minority. This research illustrates the silencing effect of participants’ dissenting opinions in the wake of widespread knowledge of government surveillance, as revealed by whistleblower Edward Snowden in 2013.

The “spiral of silence” is a well-researched phenomenon in which people suppress unpopular opinions to fit in and avoid social isolation. It has been looked at in the context of social media and the echo-chamber effect, in which we tailor our opinions to fit the online activity of our Facebook and Twitter friends. But this study adds a new layer by explicitly examining how government surveillance affects self-censorship.

Elizabeth Stoycheff, lead researcher of the study and assistant professor at Wayne State University, is disturbed by her findings. "The adoption of surveillance techniques, by both the government and private sectors, undermines the Internet's ability to serve as a neutral platform for honest and open deliberation. It begins to strip away the Internet's ability to serve as a venue for all voices, instead catering only to the most dominant," she said.

But here's the thing, despite all the amenities, the views and the allure this building may have, the super rich do not appear to be knocking down any doors to get in. Only 13 units have closed out of 141, according to The Real Deal.

The late Ed Hart, a credit market analyst with whom I worked at Financial News Network, taught me the very high value of anecdotal information almost three decades ago. For instance, just before the Savings & Loan bubble burst in the 1980s, Ed told me that if you see a lot of antique furniture and art work inside an S&L, short the stock!

To him, it meant that depositor money was being ill used and the institution was bound for insolvency. On more than one occasion, I witnessed such excesses, only to see the offending lender wind up in receivership a mere few months later.

NIGERIA – Over 80 killed, children burned to death

On January 30, Boko Haram terrorists killed 86 people after they attacked a village in northeast Nigeria. The assault took place on the outskirts of the city of Maiduguri, which is the birthplace of the Islamist militant group. Citing an eyewitness who managed to survive the attack, AP reported that Boko Haram extremists firebombed huts. The survivor said that he had heard the screams of children burning to death from a hiding place in a tree.

IRAQ – 29 dead after ISIS suicide bomber strikes football match

Iraq is doing its best to try and return to some semblance of normality following the violence that Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) has brought to parts of the country. However, on Friday, three days after the Brussels attacks, at least 29 people were killed at a football match south of the capital, Baghdad.

PAKISTAN – Easter suicide bomb kills 70

Taliban faction Jamaat-ul-Ahrar claimed responsibility for Sunday’s suicide blast outside a public park in Pakistan’s eastern city of Lahore that killed at least 70 people and injured more than 280, many of whom were women and children.

SYRIA – ISIS massacres dozens in morning rush hour

On February 21, a series of explosions rocked a district of the Syrian capital, Damascus, killing at least 83 people. Two suicide bombers, who were linked to Islamic State, carried out the attack. The first explosion was a car bomb that targeted a busy school street in the Sayeda Zeinab district during rush hour. The blast was followed by two explosions allegedly carried out by suicide bombers wearing explosive belts, and targeted the crowds gathered at the site of the tragedy.

LEBANON – ISIS strikes Shiite stronghold a day before Paris attacks

A day before the Paris attacks, two suicide bombers struck in the Lebanese capital of Beruit, killing at least 43 people, with a further 240 people injured. Islamic State claimed responsibility, with members of the militant group blowing up a motorbike with explosives in the middle of a street.

“What I’ve heard over the past 24 hours is a bunch of excuses” from Europe following the fatal Brussels airport and metro attacks, Flynn said in an exclusive interview on Wednesday. “We have to stop apologizing for the political correctness that I see just running rampant.”

Flynn, who led the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) between 2012 and 2014 and commanded US Special Forces in Afghanistan and Iraq before that, believes there is a direct link between the migrant crisis and the Brussels and Paris terror attacks.

There is very little coordination between EU nations right now, even as border controls “absolutely” have to be tightened, Flynn warned, reminding that Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) has said it wanted to infiltrate Europe and the US through the refugee stream.

Every year the 10th graders at Imagine International Academy of North Texas in McKinney spend months working on a “personal project”. This year some chose projects about topics like the impact divorce has on elementary students, depression and being transgender. The high school students then presented their projects to the entire school, including to elementary students.

The school’s administration officer Julia Brady said teachers reviewed all the projects ahead of time and deemed them all appropriate. “I think those topics make plenty of sense on the high school level,” said Melissa Marrow, who has sons in the third and fourth grade at the school.

“But I don’t think my 8 or 10-year-olds are prepared to tackle some of those things without serious questions. I want to be the parent. I want to be able to walk through those things with them and not be surprised.”

Marrow said the school never notified parents that their children would be presented these topics, only finding out after the fact.

But while there has been some success in uncovering genes which make people more susceptible to various disorders, specialists say that the true causes of depression and anxiety are from life events and environment, and research should be directed towards understanding the everyday triggers.

Peter Kinderman, Professor of Clinical Psychology at the University of Liverpool, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “Of course every single action, every emotion I’ve ever had involves the brain, so to have a piece of scientific research telling us that the brain is involved in responding emotionally to events doesn’t really advance our understanding very much. And yet it detracts from the fact that when unemployment rates go up in a particular locality you get a measurable number of suicides.

“It detracts from the idea that trauma in childhood is a very very powerful predictor of serious problems like experiencing psychotic events in adult life, so of course the brain is involved and of course genes are involved, but not very much, and an excessive focus on those issues takes us away from these very important social factors”

Almost half of adults will suffer from a mental health condition at some stage in their life and more than a third of GP surgery consultations are due to mental problems.

Dr Theresa Deisher, PhD, who was the first person to discover adult cardiac-derived stem cells, found that residual cellular DNA from aborted babies demonstrates both oncogenic and infectious characteristics in vaccines.

Aborted human fetal tissue, it turns out, has long been used in the production of vaccines, despite the fact that traces of DNA from this tissue can persist in the final product. The consequences of this, says Dr Deisher, can include both genetic damage and markers of autism.

"It is possible that these contaminating fragments could be incorporated into a child's genome and disrupt normal gene function, leading to autistic phenotypes," wrote Dr Deisher in a paper titled "Spontaneous Integration of Human DNA Fragments into Host Genome."

The country’s national income will shrink, hundreds of thousands if not millions of jobs will vanish, the City of London’s core industry — financial engineering — will migrate across the channel, the currency will collapse, house prices will plummet, European firms will stop selling products to Brits, the US government will impose massive tariffs on British imports, and even Britain’s already dismal climate will get worse.

Project Fear’s shrillest shills include the British government and institutions of State, the UK’s most powerful business lobby group The Confederation of British Industry, the City of London Corporation (and all the too-big-to-fail financial institutions whose interests it faithfully serves), the European Union, the International Monetary Fund, and the world’s biggest fund manager BlackRock.

Another prominent prophet of Brexit doom and gloom is the Bank of England, an institution that, according to its charter at least, is supposed to be “independent” from national politics, but which has done nothing but feed the fear. In testimony to the UK government’s Treasury Select Committee earlier this month, the central bank’s Canadian and former Goldmanite Chairman Mark Carney warned that Brexit is the “biggest domestic risk to financial stability,” with potentially dire consequences for Britain’s balance of payments, its housing market, foreign investment, and its banks.

It’s a shame no one bothered to ask Carney to identify the biggest non-domestic threat to Britain's financial stability — he might have admitted that it was the euro, as his predecessor as Bank of England governor, Mervyn King, recently acknowledged.

The Netherlands' National Coordinator for Security and Counter-Terrorism (NCTV) agency said on Wednesday that Dutch military police would carry heavier arms to ensure the security of ‘high-risk sites’ such as government buildings, parliament, Jewish institutions and major transit hubs and border crossings. The agency, however, has not specified the exact type of weapons officers would carry.

Earlier, Norway also announced it would temporarily arm all police patrols in the capital Oslo. “This is because of the unresolved situation in Belgium, both in terms of the scope of the attack and who is behind it,” acting police chief Roger Andresen told broadcaster NTB on Tuesday. Norway's Police Security Service (PTS) pointed out that the level of the terror threat to the country remains unchanged – although it hasn’t excluded the possibility that the situation may escalate.

The UK has stepped up security at airports, railway stations, and London transport hubs, including the Tube, as well as at key ports such as Calais and Dover. “As a precaution, forces across the UK have increased policing presence at key locations, including transport hubs, to protect the public and provide reassurance,” said Metropolitan Police Assistant Commissioner Mark Rowley following the British government’s emergency response committee meeting on Tuesday.

He specified social media as the future of news. “If they can’t even get their facts right, be trusted with clear information and then report it accurately is it any wonder that we are all turning to Facebook, Twitter and other internet sources for our news and information?” He said this of his own career: “I am ashamed to be a journalist”. And left us with a piece of advice: “Trust nothing you read or watch”.

The BBC is the envy of much of the world: a media free from vested interest; free to serve the public for the greater good. We observe the likes of Fox News in the USA and are thankful. This is the concept of the BBC, but the reality is far from it. A major content analysis from Cardiff University reveals the BBC is in fact pro-business and conservative leaning in its coverage, contrary to George Osborne’s claims that the BBC has an ‘anti-business’ slant.

A root cause of this is the way members of the BBC Trust are selected. The BBC Trust is the body that governs and regulates the corporation. Currently, the monarch appoints BBC Trust members on the advice of government ministers. This has led to a public service run by people with strong business and political affiliation.

The BBC is worth fighting for. The concept is incredible, but it needs huge reform. The government should not simply dictate who sits on the regulatory body. The BBC Trust should be representative of the public it is supposed to serve, not the vested interest it is supposed to bypass. When Darvall tells us to trust nothing we read in the media, his advice penetrates even the BBC, which is often considered the global standard of honest journalism.

“So often in the past there has been a division between left and right, between capitalists and communists or socialists, and especially in the Americas, that’s been a big debate,” Obama said. “Those are interesting intellectual arguments, but I think for your generation, you should be practical and just choose from what works. You don’t have to worry about whether it really fits into socialist theory or capitalist theory. You should just decide what works,” he added.

Obama went on to praise Cuba’s socialist system under dictator Raúl Castro, touting the country’s free access to basic education and health care, although he acknowledged that Havana itself “looks like it did in the 1950s” because the economy is “not working”. Obama concluded his comments by arguing that a market-based system “has to have a social and moral and ethical and community basis”.