“Sex offenders tend to move from country to country to avoid jail, but what makes Israel unique is the Law of Return, which essentially grants unhindered access to anyone who is Jewish to come here without any real screening,” said Manny Waks, the chief executive officer of Kol v’Oz, a newly formed non-profit that aims to prevent child sexual abuse in the global Jewish community. The Law of Return grants automatic citizenship in Israel to those who meet its definition of a Jew.

Among those accused of sexual abuse who have fled to Israel, Waks cited the prominent case of Malka Leifer, the former principal of a religious girls’ school in Melbourne, who allegedly assaulted eight of her charges. She is now under house arrest, and the Australian authorities are seeking her extradition. Waks noted several other cases of pedophiles and alleged pedophiles from the United States, Britain and the Netherlands who had fled to Israel either after being charged or to avoid being charged.

“It seems to us Israel is increasingly becoming a refuge for pedophiles and alleged pedophiles,” said Waks. “It’s an easy get-out-of-jail card for them.” According to research data he cited, one in five children in Israel experiences sexual abuse.

The plastic we discard into the ocean often makes its way into the mouths and stomachs of sea creatures. A post-mortem of the creatures, found ashore near the town of Toenning in Schleswig-Holstein, Germany, showed their stomachs were full of plastic. This plastic included a 13-metre-long (43-foot-long) fisherman’s net and a 70-centimetre (28-inch) piece of plastic from a car. A man posted a shocking image on Instagram of some of the plastic found in their stomachs.

The sperm whales probably didn't die by being poisoned by plastic, however. Scientists thought it was likely they perished from heart failure due to starvation. “These findings show us the results of our plastic orientated society,” Schleswig-Holstein environment Minister Robert Habeck told the Daily Mail. “Animals inadvertently consume plastic and plastic waste which causes them to suffer and at worst, causes them to starve with full stomachs.”

The 2013 study was set out to determine whether or not viewing television at 29 months (about 2.5 years) was associated with school performance at 65 months (about 5.5 years). The study, which was conducted on 991 girls and 1,006 boys with parent and teacher reported data, came to this conclusion:

“Increases in total time watching television at 29 months were associated with subsequent decreases in vocabulary and math skills, classroom engagement (which is largely determined by attention skills), victimization by classmates, and physical prowess at kindergarten. These prospective associations, independent of key potential co-founders, suggest the need for better parental awareness and compliance with existing viewing recommendations put forth by the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP).”

According to this study, every 1.2 hours of television viewing for children at 29 months results in poorer motor, vocabulary, math, and social skills, and even an increase in the likelihood of being bullied, as television inhibits the development of self-confidence. The study also notes that many parents seem to be unconcerned about how long their children spend watching TV. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that children over age 2 do not watch more than 2 hours per day, and that children below the age of 2 watch no TV at all.

You can believe that inmates cherish that hour and you can imagine how shocked the residents of Indiana’s Wabash maximum security prison were to find out from researchers that one third of all children aged 5 to 12 in the UK play outdoors for less than 30 minutes each day, while a fifth of parents surveyed said their children don’t go outside at all.

“Outdoor play isn’t happening,” the “Dirt Is Good” initiative found in a survey of 12,000 parents. “Almost a third of children play outside for 30 minutes or less a day and one in five don’t play outside at all on an average day.” So what are kids in the UK doing instead? Why, staring at screens of course. "Children spend twice as much time on screens inside as they do playing outside," the same study found.

The article, published in Rodong Sinmun — the print mouthpiece of the North Korean government — comes less than a month after the UN Security Council voted in favor of slapping the Hermit Kingdom with tougher sanctions, after the country teased its potential nuclear and military capabilities earlier this year. The editorial stated that hardships to come might evoke another “arduous march” — the term assigned to the famine that struck the country in the mid-1990s, killing as many as 3 million people, reports the Telegraph, a British newspaper.

“We may have to go on an arduous march, during which we will have to chew the roots of plants once again,” the editorial piece read. Rodong Sinmun called for a “70-day campaign of loyalty” and reportedly demanded that the North Korean people demonstrate their allegiance to Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un. To that end, the country is requiring all residents of Pyongyang, North Korea’s capital city, to deliver about 2 lb of rice to state warehouses each month.

The Telegraph reports that the country has also requested nearly half a million tons of food aid from other countries. As of last month, however, only 17,600 tons had arrived.

We are witnessing opposition to the establishment everywhere from Germany, France, and Britain, to even China. The Chinese version of Donald Trump is Ren Zhiquiang, who has defied the Communist Party Leader President Xi Jinping. Normally, anyone who would criticize the head of the party would end up in prison.

Things are changing on a global scale. This is what our computer model has been warning would lie on the other side of 2015.75. What has emerged in China is rather amazing, for the sophisticated Chinese people, including scholars, journalists, students and dissidents, have all supported Ren against the Chinese Communist Party. That is quite amazing and unprecedented in modern times.

The “establishment” in so many countries are refusing to connect the dots. There is a change in the political winds and what is coming is something that takes place about once every 309.6 years. The last change in the political wind produced the American Revolution against monarch which caught on in France, and eventually in England structurally.

The question is what will the wind blow into town this time? Democracy at last? Or will be it be more oppression from the establishment?

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."