The legal team led by Kerry W Kircher, who was appointed House General Counsel by Speaker John Boehner in 2011, claimed that the insider trading probe violated the separation of powers between the legislative and executive branch.

In 2012, members of Congress patted themselves on the back for passing the STOCK Act, a bill meant to curb insider trading for lawmakers and their staff. “We all know that Washington is broken and today members of both parties took a big step forward to fix it,” said Representative Bill Johnson, Republican for Ohio, upon passage of the law.

But as the Securities and Exchange Commission made news with the first major investigation of political insider trading, Congress moved to block the inquiry.

The SEC investigation focused on how Brian Sutter, then a staffer for the House Ways and Means Committee, allegedly passed along information about an upcoming Medicare decision to a lobbyist, who then shared the tip with other firms. Leading hedge funds used the insider tip to trade on health insurance stocks that were affected by the soon-to-be announced Medicare decision.

China currently operates several armed and unarmed drone aircraft and is developing long-range unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) for both intelligence gathering and bombing attacks. “The acquisition and development of longer-range UAVs will increase China’s ability to conduct long-range reconnaissance and strike operations,” the report said.

China’s ability to use drones is increasing and the report said China “plans to produce upwards of 41,800 land- and sea-based unmanned systems, worth about $10.5 billion, between 2014 and 2023.” Four UAVs under development include the Xianglong, Yilong, Sky Saber, and Lijian, with the latter three drones configured to fire precision-strike weapons.

“The Lijian, which first flew on November 21, 2013, is China’s first stealthy flying wing UAV,” the report said. The drone buildup is part of what the Pentagon identified as a decades-long military buildup that last year produced new multi-warhead missiles and a large number of submarines and ships.

Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Commander Hossein Salami threatened the US during a television interview aired on Tehran’s state-run television. “We have prepared ourselves for the most dangerous scenarios and this is no big deal and is simple to digest for us; we welcome war with the US as we do believe that it will be the scene for our success to display the real potentials of our power,” Salami was quoted as saying by the Fars News Agency.

The remarks came as Secretary of State John Kerry and several lawmakers met with Israeli leaders this week to discuss the Iranian threat.

Salami, according to Fars, “warned that Tehran will set fire to every military base from which a hostile US plane takes off for bombing Iran.”

“We warn their pilots that their first flight (to target Iran) will be their last one and no one will be allowed to go back safe and sound and they should call their flights as their last flight,” the IRGC leader was quoted as saying.

Comey said the Islamic State, also known as ISIL, is leveraging social media in unprecedented ways through Twitter and other platforms, directing messages to the smartphones of "disturbed people'' who could be pushed to launch assaults on U.S. targets.

"It's like the devil sitting on their shoulders, saying 'kill, kill, kill,''' Comey said in a meeting with reporters.

The FBI director's comments come in the midst of a federal investigation into a foiled attack in Garland, Texas, involving two ISIL sympathizers, one of whom, Elton Simpson, was long known to federal authorities.

While serving her 35-year sentence in military custody, Manning has taken to studying current freedom of information laws and has written a 31-page proposal for legislation to protect whistleblowers and those who publish the information they provide.

In particular, she proposes reforms to use of the Espionage Act, which has been used eight times during the Obama administration to prosecute people for passing classified information to the media, including to convict Manning herself.

Her proposed name for the bill is the National Integrity and Free Speech Protection Act (NIFSPA).

Writing in the Guardian Wednesday, Manning argued that protecting those who bring information to the press is essential to a functioning democracy since, "when the public lacks even the most fundamental access to what its governments and militaries are doing in their names, then they cease to be involved in the act of citizenship."

The Conservatives have 330 seats - four more than needed for a Commons majority - their first such victory since 1992. Mr Cameron's rivals Ed Miliband, Nick Clegg and Nigel Farage have all resigned after election disappointment.

The Conservative leader is now beginning the process of putting together the new government, with senior Cabinet appointments expected to be announced later on Friday. Mr Cameron said he would reach out to all parts of the UK and strive to "bring the country together" in the wake of the SNP's election landslide in Scotland - where it won 56 of the 59 seats.

The Conservatives' victory means they will be able to govern without the need for a coalition or a formal agreement with other parties. Speaking in Downing Street, he said: "We will govern as a party of one nation, one United Kingdom. That means ensuring this recovery reaches all parts of our country, from north to south, to east to west." He said he would press ahead with devolution of powers to all nations as well as the referendum on the UK's EU membership.

Jean-Claude Juncker, president of the European Commission, said he would work constructively with the new UK government and would consider "proposals, ideas or requests" about the UK's membership "in a very polite, friendly and objective way".

Labour has been all but wiped out by the SNP in Scotland and is failing to make enough gains in England and Wales. The Lib Dems are heading for as few as eight MPs, with Vince Cable, Ed Davey and Danny Alexander losing their seats.

The BBC forecast, with well over half of the results now in, is Conservative 329, Labour 233, the Lib Dems eight, the SNP 56, Plaid Cymru three, UKIP two, the Greens one and others 19.

Ruling on a program revealed by former government security contractor Edward Snowden, the 2nd US Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan said the Patriot Act did not authorize the National Security Agency to collect Americans' calling records in bulk.

Circuit Judge Gerard Lynch wrote for a three-judge panel that Section 215, which addresses the FBI's ability to gather business records, could not be interpreted to have permitted the NSA to collect a "staggering" amount of phone records, contrary to claims by the Bush and Obama administrations.

"Such expansive development of government repositories of formerly private records would be an unprecedented contraction of the privacy expectations of all Americans," Lynch wrote in a 97-page decision. "We would expect such a momentous decision to be preceded by substantial debate, and expressed in unmistakable language. There is no evidence of such a debate."

ACLU lawyer Alex Abdo welcomed Thursday's decision. "Mass surveillance does not make us any safer, and it is fundamentally incompatible with the privacy necessary in a free society," he said.

Noting how the committee intends to support the ecumenical journey in Europe, "where many of the divisions that still exist between Christians had their beginning," Francis said, “today, thank God, the situation is very different.” The ecumenical movement, the Pope stated, has enabled the Churches and the Ecclesial Communities in Europe "to take great steps on the way of reconciliation and peace."

Initiatives - including the recent European Ecumenical Assemblies and the Charta Oecumenica, written in Strasbourg in 2001 - are reasons "for great hope for surmounting the divisions, though in the awareness of the long way ahead towards the full and visible communion among all believers in Christ."

Despite all its difficulties, moving forward in this way, he said, "is already an integral part of the process of reconciliation and of communion that the Lord asks of us and makes us fulfill." "The closer we are to Christ, the more we will be united among ourselves." Only by speaking with one voice, the Pope said, will the Churches and Ecclesial Communities in Europe be able to give effective answers to the new and decisive challenges they find themselves in today.

The Four Corners investigation also found evidence of routine abuse, harassment and assault, including sexual assault and exploitation, along with underpayment of wages “with potentially hundreds of millions of dollars in stolen pay going missing every year.”

With workers denied bathroom and water breaks, forced to endure up to 22 hour shifts, and, in one case, made to sleep in a dog’s bed, the report has shocked and dismayed many consumers, with calls for government regulation and an appropriate response from the major retailers identified in the report, which includes Coles, Woolworths, Aldi, Costco, IGA, and fast food chains KFC and Red Rooster.

Dread that the abominations people create will become their masters, or their executioners, is hardly new. But voiced by a renowned cosmologist, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur and the founder of Microsoft — hardly Luddites — and set against the vast investment in AI by big firms like Google and Microsoft, such fears have taken on new weight. With supercomputers in every pocket and robots looking down on every battlefield, just dismissing them as science fiction seems like self-deception.

The question is how to worry wisely.

The first step is to understand what computers can now do and what they are likely to be able to do in the future. Thanks to the rise in processing power and the growing abundance of digitally available data, AI is enjoying a boom in its capabilities. Today’s “deep learning” systems, by mimicking the layers of neurons in a human brain and crunching vast amounts of data, can teach themselves to perform some tasks, from pattern recognition to translation, almost as well as humans can.

As a result, things that once called for a mind — from interpreting pictures to playing the video game “Frogger” — are now within the scope of computer programs. DeepFace, an algorithm unveiled by Facebook in 2014, can recognise individual human faces in images 97% of the time.

Crucially, this capacity is narrow and specific. Today’s AI produces the semblance of intelligence through brute number-crunching force, without any great interest in approximating how minds equip humans with autonomy, interests and desires. Computers do not yet have anything approaching the wide, fluid ability to infer, judge and decide that is associated with intelligence in the conventional human sense. Yet AI is already powerful enough to make a dramatic difference to human life.

Some 52 per cent of voters say they would prefer Mr Cameron to continue in Downing Street, with 31 per cent favouring Mr Miliband. But the likely outcome remains far from clear with the Tories on 35 per cent and Labour on 34 per cent. To compound the uncertainty, 25 per cent of those likely to vote say they are undecided or may yet switch parties.

Unless there is a last-minute surge to the Conservatives, Britain is facing a Parliament so deadlocked that no stable government can be formed. Bank of England and Treasury officials are understood to have discussed potential responses if there is an extended period of stalemate.

Yesterday Mr Miliband repeatedly refused to rule out seeking to govern even if Labour finishes well behind the Tories in a hung Parliament. The country's political leaders have already started to vote this morning as the outcome of the election hangs on a knife-edge.

It would be the first time since 1924 that a second-placed party has tried to rule – prompting a furious row about the legitimacy of the government. Last night Mr Cameron made a final plea for voters not to take the country ‘back to the brink’ by letting in a weak Labour government propped up by the SNP, which is on course to seize 50 seats and become Westminster’s third party.

Voting Ukip or Liberal Democrat simply makes it more likely that Mr Miliband – who would implement higher taxes and borrowing, open the door to mass immigration and deny voters a say on the EU – enters No 10, he told the Mail. He warned Britain was in ‘grave danger’ of a French-style economic crisis if the election results in political paralysis.