“Anytime a head of state, member of Congress, or the most conservative member of the US Supreme Court is found dead, an extensive autopsy and toxicology examination should be both immediate and mandatory,” said Gheen. “The horrid reaction and comments about his death expressed by many liberals online illustrate that Scalia was hated by many people.”

Gheen said Scalia’s death “hands the power of the Supreme Court to the modern left for the first time in American history. The court can now vote, even without a replacement of Scalia, to radically change the United States of America,” he said. “Scalia’s death means the Supreme Court is now very likely to rubber stamp Obama’s unconstitutional amnesty orders, tear down Republican drawn districts in many states including North Carolina, and take deep left turns on abortion, gun rights, or anything the liberals have ever dreamed of. Scalia was a solid vote against Obama’s immigration orders to be decided by April of this year.

“We do not contend there is a conspiracy, we contend that there should be no doubts, and the way authorities and the media are rushing conclusions will leave major doubts and legitimate concerns about a death that could lead to a radical political transformation of America to the left,” said Gheen.

An assortment of Syrian rebels backed by the United States, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar are fighting to hold them back. Kurdish forces allied both to Washington and Moscow are taking advantage of the chaos to extend Kurdish territories. The Islamic State has snatched a couple of small villages, while all the focus was on the other groups.

Ahead of a supposed pause in the hostilities negotiated by world powers and due to be implemented later in the week, the conflict seems only to be escalating. Turkey joined in over the weekend, firing artillery across its border at Kurdish positions for a second day Sunday and prompting appeals from the Obama administration to both Turks and Kurds to back down.

Syria’s civil war long ago mutated into a proxy conflict, with competing world powers backing the rival Syrian factions almost since the earliest days of the armed rebellion against President Bashar al-Assad. But perhaps never before have the dangers — or the complications — of what amounts to a mini world war been so apparent as in the battle underway for control of Aleppo.

“There’s a spiral of insecurity here that is not being managed,” said Salman Shaikh, a political consultant whose Shaikh Group is engaged in mediation efforts in the Syrian war. “What we are seeing is a classic, really complicated balance-of-power struggle that could become a very dangerous situation.”

But more is at stake than the outcome of Syria’s war. The Aleppo offensive is affirming Moscow’s stature as a dominant regional power across the heart of the Middle East. The advances by Shiite Iraqi and Lebanese militias are extending the sway of Iran far beyond the traditional Shiite axis of influence into Sunni areas of northern Syria.

Speaking to Schulz, Patriarch Kirill warned that a confrontation between “two major powers” with “immense destructive force” had the potential to devastate “the whole world,” calling for an improvement in relations between Russia and the United States as soon as possible. “A large-scale war should be averted at all costs,” he said, adding that it should be the “number one priority for the Americans, the Russians, and many other people with a sensible perspective on what is happening.”

The Patriarch stressed that most people in the US are “Christians who share the same values and belong to the same global Christian family” as Russians, urging the two nations to use this cultural affinity “to build bridges, rather than deepen the divide” between the two countries.

Addressing the crisis in the Middle East, the Patriarch called on all countries seeking to put an end to the wars in Syria and Iraq, as well as to defeat terrorist groups, “to join their efforts for the sake of [this] goal.”

According to the Patriarch, the current situation in the Middle East requires joint action by all parties concerned, including “Russia, the United States, Western Europe, and some Arab countries.”

Saudi Arabia is among one of the closest allies to the US, but its role in the Middle-East has thus far primarily been a destructive one. It is currently engaged in a bloody conflict in Yemen, in which civilians are a daily victim, yet despite the resemblances the Yemen conflict has to Syria, it does not draw as much criticism from the US-led international coalition, nor the media. In Yemen, Saudi Arabia has taken on the same role the US fulfills in Syria; they are the leader of a Sunni coalition of states carrying out air strikes.

As a close ally to the US, it receives no criticism for civilian casualties or other acts of aggression from western leaders, essentially enjoying a carte blanche for the fulfillment of its military ambitions in the region. Saudi Arabia has now turned its sights onto Syria, shaking all hopes of peace.

On 13 February, days before a proposed ceasefire is due to take effect in Syria, Saudi Arabia confirmed it has begun sending troops and aircraft to Turkey's Incirlik base for a possible joint intervention in Syria. Saudi's plan for involvement in Syria has been thinly veiled as an offer to join the war against the Sunni terrorist group Islamic State; however the Saudi regime has thus far expressed more hostility towards Assad, with their foreign minister, Adel al-Jubeir, stating "There will be no Bashir al-Assad in the future."

Russia’s safety watchdog Rosselkhoznadzor has officially announced on Wednesday that American producers have failed to meet Russian biological standards, and that their corn and soybeans are “unfit for human consumption”.

“Since the products shipped from the United States pose a real threat to Russia, and the US guarantees are not valid, we reserve the right to introduce temporary restrictions on imports of US corn and soybeans,” said Rosselkhoznadzor spokesman Aleksey Alekseenko.

The Russian ban on unhealthy American produce is part of a bigger plan that Putin initiated earlier in the year where he has promised that Russia will become the world’s biggest exporter of non-GMO food and an “organic superpower”.

Saudi Arabia has also announced intentions of sending ground troops into Syria. This threatens an escalation in the war with Saudi Arabia and the NATO member Turkey fighting on the one side, and Syria's armed forces and Russia on the other. The consequences would be unpredictable. While not only having massively built up Turkey and Saudi Arabia's arsenals, and allowing AWACS airborne radar systems to be used in the Syrian war, Berlin is focusing on the period after combat has ended. Refugees are supposed to serve as channels for enhancing German influence in Syria.

The German government is also hoping to enhance its influence in Iraq through a Marshall Plan-like reconstruction effort. German military personnel are beginning to consider Russia's intervention in Syria as having prevented IS/Daesh from taking power in Damascus and carrying out offensives against other countries - including Israel.

Philip Hammond has predicted that a “contagion” of other European countries could call for their own referendums if Britain left the European Union. Mr Hammond warned that the rest of the EU would not want Britain to succeed outside the EU and that Europe would look “very less in our image.” His comments come as the Prime Minister struggles to maintain Cabinet unity ahead of a crunch summit in Brussels this week when he hopes to agree a deal for the European Union referendum.

Speaking to the BBC’s Andrew Marr show, Mr Hammond said: “What I think I fear and many people in Europe fear is that without Britain Europe would lurch very much in the wrong direction. Britain has been an enormously important influence in Europe, an influence for open markets, for free trade, for a less dirigiste approach to running the economy.

“We would be dealing with a Europe that looked very less in our image and I think the thing that we have to remember is that there is a very real fear in Europe that if Britain leaves, the contagion will spread.”

He added: “I think people who say we'd do a great deal with Europe if we left, forget that the countries remaining in the European Union would be looking over their shoulder at people in their own countries saying, 'if Britain can do it why can't we?' They will not have an interest in demonstrating that we can succeed outside the European Union.”

Mr Krichbaum’s warning came in a clash with senior Tory MP Sir Bill Cash, who accused the German politician of ‘threatening’ Britain. Sir Bill said Britain had fought Germany in two world wars to keep its freedoms and was not going to surrender them to a German-run Brussels now.

But the timing of his latest comments, so close to the referendum, is bound to be seen as provocative. Mr Krichbaum and Sir Bill had a sharp but courteous disagreement during a meeting in The Hague on Monday, but the gloves came off when they argued face-to-face afterwards. Mr Krichbaum, seen by some as Mrs Merkel’s anti-Cameron ‘attack dog’, claimed Britain’s economy would be devastated as a result of lost EU trade deals, saying: ‘You won’t be able to survive, trading conditions will not be in your favour.’

Sir Bill retorted: ‘Yes we can. We’ve been doing it for generations. We have a multi-billion-pound trading deficit with the EU: you run a multi-billion surplus. You need to sell us your cars and trucks. What do you take us for? Do you think we are incapable of running our own affairs?’ It was at this point that lawyer Mr Krichbaum, 51, a member of Mrs Merkel’s ruling Christian Democrat party retorted: ‘There is the question of tariffs.’

Indignant Sir Bill replied: ‘You’re not threatening me, are you?’ The Conservative MP told his German adversary: ‘There is history between our two countries. We have had to battle for our freedom over the last century. We should not and will not be governed by EU majority voting dominated by Germany.’

The row had started earlier at a formal meeting when Sir Bill declared: ‘Our people no longer trust the democratic structures of the EU. We are not going to be in the second tier of a two tier Europe effectively run by Germany.’ A defiant Sir Bill told The Mail on Sunday: ‘Mr Krichbaum’s reference to trade tariffs was a clear threat. It is basically Germany telling the British to get lost; it’s in their DNA to want to be on top.’

The old, pre-crisis view was that this was tantamount to insanity: there was a “zero bound to interest rates” which meant that they could never enter negative territory. The reason? People would simply not put up with them, and would pull their cash out of banks and hold notes and coins, which of course pay zero interest rates (and therefore come with an opportunity cost when rates are high but start to look attractive when interest rates fall below zero). In extremis, there would even be a run on bank accounts.

That said, the fact that interest rates of -0.5% or so are manageable doesn’t mean that interest rates of -4% would be. At some point, the cost of holding cash in a bank account would become prohibitive: savers would eventually rediscover the virtues of stuffed mattresses (or buying equities, or housing, or anything with less of a negative rate).

But abolishing cash wouldn’t actually work, and would come with terrible side-effects. For a start, people would begin to treat highly negative interest rates as a form of confiscatory taxation: they would be very angry indeed, especially if rates were significantly more negative than inflation. The policy would also blur monetary and tax policy: should central banks be in charge, or politicians? This would devastate central bank independence.

Abolishing cash would also abolish privacy, which would infuriate many. Economists have so far been proved wrong when it comes to the viability of negative interest rates. The last thing we now need is harebrained schemes to abolish cash. It wouldn’t work, and the public rightly wouldn’t tolerate it.

This is in stark contrast to previous claims by tech manufacturers, like Playstation, who vehemently deny their devices record personal information, despite evidence to the contrary, including news that hackers can gain access to unencrypted streams of credit card information. The new Samsung controversy stems from the discovery of a single haunting statement in the company’s “privacy policy,” which states: “Please be aware that if your spoken words include personal or other sensitive information, that information will be among the data captured and transmitted to a third party.”

This sparked a back and forth between the Daily Beast and Samsung regarding not only consumer privacy but also security concerns. If our conversations are “captured and transmitted,” eavesdropping hackers may be able to use our “personal or other sensitive information” for identity theft or any number of nefarious purposes.

There is also the concern that such information could be turned over to law enforcement or government agencies. With the revelation of the PRISM program — by which the NSA collected data from Microsoft, Google, and Facebook — and other such NSA spying programs, neither the government nor the private sector has the benefit of the doubt in claiming tech companies are not conscripted into divulging sensitive consumer info under the auspices of national security.

Canadians were quite smug, back then, with the Canadian dollar trading above par with the US dollar and we wanted to remind them that not only would the Canadian dollar not be a haven from a US dollar collapse, but the loonie would collapse before the US dollar, since nothing is backing it but the US dollar and Canada had no gold (amongst many other reasons).

The Canadian government sold another 1.3 tons of gold in recent weeks and now holds an even smaller amount, 1.7 tons of gold, total. Back in 1965, Canada had 1,023 tons of gold reserves but by 1985 it only held 500 tons. As part of a central bank scheme to damp the price of gold against the dollar, Canada kept selling along with other banks. Canadians are already finding out how brutally mismanaged their currency has been. And Americans should take note because it will happen there next.

Throughout the 1990s up to 2002, Canada kept selling. And now it holds a laughable 1.7 tons. Compare that to China’s 1,700 tons. The US says it has 8,000+ tons, but no one has seen it since the 1950s… and we go by the “if no one has seen it in over 80 years it’s probably not there” rule.

Food prices have skyrocketed in Canada due to the decline of the Canadian dollar. Images have gone viral on the internet of $7 cauliflowers and celery and $3 cucumbers. While the Canadian government has been selling the last vestiges of its gold holdings, wise Canadians who have been buying gold have seen their investment rise dramatically, in Canadian dollar terms, in the last two months alone.

“We can do it!” she cried, welcoming the first trainloads of refugees into Munich as they were applauded onto the platforms by crowds, who wanted to show that Germany was different from Hungary and other eastern European states that had spurned this human tide.

That was September – but how quickly the mood seems to have soured, as Germany comes to terms with the realities involved in absorbing more than a million migrants who were promised a better life. Mrs Merkel has borne the brunt of the fallout. Her personal approval ratings hit a four-year-low this month, with Germany’s leading mass-market newspaper, Bild, posing a front-page question that seemed unthinkable only a year ago: “Is Merkel still the right one?”

Despite famine, religious wars, worldwide conflict and the spread of civilization, the heads of the Roman Catholic and the Russian Orthodox churches haven't spoken since the Great Schism of 1054 shattered Christendom, so they had a lot of catching up to do when they sat down for their historic meeting Friday afternoon in Cuba.

Pope Francis and Patriarch Kirill embraced and kissed one another three times on the cheek as they met in the wood-paneled VIP room at Havana's José Martí International Airport. The two church leaders then proceeded to a pair of straight-backed chairs turned at angles. After another round of handshakes for the cameras and greetings with members of their entourages, the two men sat and began talking. Clasping their hands in their laps, both occasionally gestured and nodded as they spoke. They held a two-hour "personal conversation" and then signed a joint declaration.

"We are brothers," Francis said as he embraced Kirill in the small, wood-paneled VIP room of Havana's airport, where the three-hour encounter took place. "Now things are easier," Kirill agreed as he and the pope exchanged three kisses on the cheek. "This is the will of God," the pope said.