Back in 1811 and 1812, a series of absolutely devastating earthquakes along the New Madrid fault zone opened very deep fissures in the ground, caused the Mississippi River to run backwards in some places, and were reportedly felt as far away as Washington DC and Boston. They were the strongest earthquakes ever recorded east of the Rocky Mountains, and scientists tell us that it is only a matter of time before we experience similar quakes.

In fact, the US Geological Survey has admitted that the New Madrid fault zone has the “potential for larger and more powerful quakes than previously thought“, and the number of significant earthquakes in the middle part of the country has more than quintupled in recent years. Someday, perhaps without any warning, an absolutely massive earthquake will strike the New Madrid fault. Thousands of Americans will die, tens of thousands of structures will be completely destroyed, and millions of people will find themselves homeless.

Unlike on the west coast, buildings within the New Madrid fault zone are typically not constructed to withstand major earthquakes. If we were to see the type of earthquake that we saw a little over two centuries ago, it would be a disaster unlike anything that any of us have ever known.

The Intercept’s Jon Schwarz has collated several quotes from politicians; some who made the mistake of admitting their own wrong-doings, and others who were “whistleblowing” on the corrupt nature of American politics. Have a gander at the following quotable quotes, as uncovered over two articles by Schwarz and The Intercept’s discerning readers:

“I gave to many people, before this, before two months ago, I was a businessman. I give to everybody. When they call, I give. And do you know what? When I need something from them two years later, three years later, I call them, they are there for me. And that’s a broken system.” — Donald Trump in 2015, attempting to explain that the system was corrupt by pointing out that he was the cause of some large part of said corruption. “Don’t vote for the guy who claims to want to help you; vote for ME, I’m already corrupt!”

“This is what’s wrong. [Donald Trump] buys and sells politicians of all stripes. He’s used to buying politicians.” — Senator Rand Paul (Republican for Kentucky) in 2015, in response to Donald Trump’s admission. “The millionaire class and the billionaire class increasingly own the political process, and they own the politicians that go to them for money.”

“We are moving very, very quickly from a democratic society, one person, one vote, to an oligarchic form of society, where billionaires would be determining who the elected officials of this country are.” Also: “I think many people have the mistaken impression that Congress regulates Wall Street. The real truth is that Wall Street regulates Congress.” — Senator Bernie Sanders (Independent for Vermont) in 2015.

“The banks — hard to believe in a time when we’re facing a banking crisis that many of the banks created are still the most powerful lobby on Capitol Hill. And they frankly own the place.” – Senator Dick Durbin (Democrat for Illinois) in 2009. “American democracy has been hacked. The United States Congress … is now incapable of passing laws without permission from the corporate lobbies and other special interests that control their campaign finances.” — Al Gore, former Vice-President, in his 2013 book, “The Future.”

“His goal is to reduce the military to impotence,” Brady said in an interview. “That way, during his reign, which, thank God, is almost over, he could point to an emasculated military and say he didn’t have the capability to [do] anything about it. If it came to a confrontation, I don’t think he would fight.”

Brady explained Obama “changed the ethos of the military” by lowering standards and moral values. He specifically identified the removal of the bans on open homosexuality and women in combat positions as destructive. “It’s gone from a masculine-oriented outfit to a girly man kind of an outfit,” Brady said.

Brady laid out a chilling hypothetical example for soldiers and their family members. “The bottom line is this: If you’ve got a squad in the hills of Afghanistan and your squad is half female, half male and you’re going up against a Muslim terrorist squad from ISIS that’s all male, do you want your daughter in that squad? Your mother? Your wife? Going up against an all-male squad with your squad half females? I don’t think so.”

Yes, “ha, ha.” Although there’s nothing funny about the $1 trillion in capital that fled the country in 2015 on the heels of the PBoC’s bungled effort to “manage” a controlled devaluation of the yuan. Although Soros didn’t specifically mention either the RMB or the HKD, he did indicate he is betting against Asian currencies in an interview with Bloomberg TV last week and that, apparently, was cause for Beijing to issue a stern warning.

“Soros’s war on the renminbi and the Hong Kong dollar cannot possibly succeed — about this there can be no doubt,” the People’s Daily says, after calling Soros “the financial crocodile,” and blaming the billionaire for “increasing volatility in already unstable financial markets.”

“Reckless speculations and vicious shorting will face higher trading costs and possibly severe legal consequences,” Xinhua wrote over the weekend.

And so perhaps it is with Mr Cameron’s renegotiation gambit: the political campaign is so focused on the question of "four years" and in-work benefits and migration that it has neglected a far more divisive and potentially toxic issue – that of the euro safeguards.

In essence, this is the boring-but-important bit in which George Osborne, the chancellor, secures a number of “safety mechanisms” to stop the 19 eurozone countries using their in-built majority to gang up on the Brits and the other non-Euro states.

The British side wants a number of basic assurances. These include promises that the UK will never have to pay to bailout failed eurozone states and that the eurozone will always involve the full 28 member states in decision making, except on very narrow eurozone matters.

More importantly, Mr Osborne wants an “emergency brake” – not to be confused with the migration “emergency brake” – that will enable non-euro states to delay eurozone decisions that they believe are inimical to the proper workings of the single market.

Sorrell’s comment, reported by the DC Whispers website, raises eyebrows given his position as head of, “The single most influential and prominent marketing firm in the world with decades-old ties to the most elite of the elite.”

Sorrell, who is the Chief Executive Officer of WPP PLC (Wire and Plastic Products), has a net worth of over $150 million dollars and is described as having “huge clout” in the world of advertising. “Sorrell’s opinions have huge weight,” reported the Guardian in a 2008 profile.

Harvard University’s Niall Ferguson told Reuters that Trump’s chances “could be over before Super Tuesday,” and that populists never win the presidency, but that the public is “mad as hell” and this is what’s driving the Trump phenomenon. Ferguson was even more candid in comments he made to Bloomberg, asserting, “I think there’s going to be a wonderful catharsis, I’m really looking forward to it: Trump’s humiliation. Bring it on.”

According to columnist Ann Coulter, that “humiliation” could come in the form of a “fake scandal” that breaks right before the Iowa caucus. As we previously reported, the powerful Bilderberg Group, which counts Ferguson and Sorrell as two of its regular attendees, backed Hillary to become president at its annual confab in June last year.

Marcelo Castro said that nearly 220,000 members of Brazil’s armed forces would go door-to-door to help in mosquito eradication efforts, according to Rio de Janeiro’s O Globo newspaper. It also quoted Castro as saying the government would distribute mosquito repellent to some 400,000 pregnant women who receive cash-transfer benefits.

But all major Brazilian dailies quoted Castro as saying the country is “badly losing the battle” against the Aedes aegypti mosquito that transmits Zika, dengue, chikungunya and yellow fever. “The mosquito has been here in Brazil for three decades, and we are badly losing the battle against the mosquito,” the Folha de S Paulo newspaper quoted him as saying as a crisis group on Zika was meeting in the capital, Brasília.

Alarm over the virus, linked to a rising number of mental birth defects among children of mothers infected by it, comes two weeks before the nationwide Carnival celebrations, a highlight of Brazil’s tourism calendar. It also comes 200 days before Rio de Janeiro hosts the opening ceremonies of the 2016 Olympics, the first ever to be held in South America.

Following a warning by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention last week that pregnant women should not travel to 14 countries and territories in the Caribbean and Latin America where the virus has spread, Brazil’s health ministry said pregnant women should seek medical advice before visiting.

Municipal authorities in São Paulo, the country’s biggest city, said they had distributed faster testing materials to help public hospitals identify patients infected with dengue, another mosquito-borne virus whose outbreaks have worsened in recent years.

Despite the spreading alarm, local officials in the run-up to the Olympics and Carnival say current measures to prevent the spread of Zika and other mosquito-borne viruses should be enough to ensure that tourists and locals minimise the chance of infection.

After a few days, she recovered and for the next five months everything appeared to be fine. But in the final weeks before the birth of her son, Lorenzo, the scans began to show that his brain was not developing properly. Now aged one and half months, Lorenzo was born with microcephaly, a neurological disorder that stunts the growth of the baby’s cranium, limiting it to a circumference of less than 33cm.

Typically, life expectancy for babies born with the condition is reduced. In 90% of cases, brain function is also reduced. Lorenzo is one of four babies born with the condition recently in the city of Campinas, amid a nationwide rise in incidences of the condition. So far this year, 1,248 cases have been reported in 14 states across Brazil, compared with just 59 in 2014.

The north-east has been hit hardest, with 646 cases reported in the state of Pernambuco, where the local authorities declared a state of emergency on 1 December. Though it is not official policy, Cláudio Maierovitch, the director of the communicable disease surveillance department at the ministry of health, has advised women in high-risk areas to avoid attempting to conceive. “Don’t get pregnant at the moment,” he said. “That’s the wisest course of action.”

The incident took place in the center of the small town of Sonderborg in southern Denmark at about 10 pm local time Wednesday. She told police that an English-speaking man knocked her to the ground, tried to unbutton her pants and undress her. However, she was apparently able to protect herself as she pulled out pepper spray and used it against the man, who escaped the scene and hasn’t been charged.

Police say that the girl may face a fine. “It is illegal to possess and use pepper spray, so she will likely be charged for that,” local police spokesman Knud Kirsten said, as cited by TV Syd. According to The Local, the girl’s fine could be about 500 kroner ($72) and that has sparked outrage on social media.

The Swedish chemist and mineralogist, Georg Brandt discovered it in the year 1735. Cobalt is widely used in batteries and in electroplating. It is estimated that more than 50% of the world’s cobalt is mined from the DRC. In the past, the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund estimated that more than 40,000 children were working in cobalt mines in the DRC.

In this latest report, Amnesty International said it has documented evidence of children as young as seven-years-old working in cobalt mines. The children are reportedly mining the cobalt that is being used in the manufacturing of lithium-ion batteries. Apple and Microsoft are said to be purchasing these batteries without doing any proper background checks.

The American technology companies purchasing these exploited minerals are responsible for fueling the conflict in the DRC, according to a 2001 report by the United Nations. The country’s economy has declined drastically since the mid-1980s. Its citizens are among the poorest people on earth. The Congolese people are consistently assigned the lowest, or near lowest, nominal GDP (gross domestic product) per capita in the world.

“I have serious concerns about this,” he continued. “I expect more responsible decisions from you, as a physicist.” Merkel shrugged off the interruption, claiming, “I will meet my responsibility and do everything to ensure Germany has a good future.”

The man was quickly escorted out of the room and now faces legal action from Merseburg University, which vowed to review his position and take legal action against him for “damaging the faculty’s reputation.” The professor was undoubtedly referring to Germany’s open border policy and the migrant rape epidemic that culminated in the mass sexual molestation of women in Cologne and other German cities on New Year’s Eve.

On January 14, the New York Supreme Court, Appellate Division, Third Department, upheld the agency’s order and the fines, a decision the Alliance Defending Freedom - which represented Robert and Cynthia Gifford - said amounted to confirming, “that the government can punish the Giffords for declining to coordinate a ceremony that conflicts with their conscience.” The couple lives in a barn they built on their farm and have occasionally hosted weddings on the first floor and the surrounding backyard area, according to ADF.

“After the agency ruled that the Giffords were guilty of ‘sexual orientation discrimination,’ it fined them $10,000, plus $3,000 in damages and ordered them to implement re-education training classes designed to contradict the couple’s religious beliefs about marriage,” a press release issued following the court decision stated. In order to comply with the order, the couple will have to attend those “re-training” classes or have a “trainer” come to them, according to ADF.

“All Americans should be free to live and work according to their beliefs, especially in our own backyards,” ADF legal counsel Caleb Dalton, who argued before the court on behalf of the couple in Gifford vs Erwin, said in a statement. “The government went after both this couple’s freedom and their ability to make a living simply for adhering to their faith on their own property.”

The Vatican in a statement said the conversation delved into the nuclear accord recently taking effect and "the important role that Iran was called to play" to combat terrorism along with other countries in the region. Iran was also urged to help fight arms trafficking, the Vatican said.

The Vatican described the talks as "cordial" and said "common spiritual values were highlighted," as well as good Iranian-Vatican relations. After the meeting, Iran's president asked Pope Francis to pray for him. The Vatican meeting was a key part of an Iranian effort to take a more prominent place on the world stage after a nuclear deal with Western powers.

Rouhani's visit to the Holy See saw the first meeting between a pope and an Iranian president since 1999. Iran is eager to carve out a bigger role in mediating Middle East conflicts. Francis' papacy has emphasized mediation and conflict resolution, including his role in helping Cuba and the United States to normalize their relations.

Tehran is keen on re-establishing energy and other economic ties with Europe, long a dependable trading partner. Iran also wants to end decades of diplomatic distance with the West in the wake of the landmark deal with six nations, including the United States, to curb Tehran's nuclear activities and end economic sanctions. Before going to the Vatican, Rouhani told a forum of business leaders in Rome that "Iran is the safest and most stable country of the entire region."

Italy also sees Iran as a potential peacemaker in Syria's civil war, as the Italian government fears the warfare will further destabilize Libya, just across the Mediterranean from southern Italy, fuel terrorism and jeopardize energy security. "Italy has always backed the role of Iran as a regional player in resolving tensions in the area, starting with the Syrian crisis," Foreign Minister Paolo Gentiloni said after meeting his Iranian counterpart, according to his office.