The banner ads bear tag lines like, “Support freedom, not fear,” and, “America is better when we welcome refugees.” They lead to a microsite located at Americaisbetter.org with Old Glory-clothed, American flag-waving young people, with a light-skinned blonde leading the way for others who appear to be ethnic minorities partially or fully obscured behind her.

The site in turn quotes conservative icon former president Ronald Reagan, saying, “America is better when we embrace President Reagan’s ‘shining city … teeming with people of all kinds, living in harmony and peace.’”

The site derides “who would make us react in fear of those different from us.” It continues, “As commander in chief, Reagan kept America safe. At the same time, he was the world’s ‘Great Liberator,’ in the words of British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. He welcomed refugees from the Soviet Union, Cuba, Vietnam, and elsewhere.”

The instrument of choice has been used throughout its history, with the last person sentenced to death in France losing their head. Now the 87-year-old, who was expelled from the party in 2011 after anti-semitic comments about the Holocaust, wants convicted terrorists to pay the ultimate price.

Le Pen, who publicly feuded with the new NF leader, his daughter Marine Le Pen, said: “We must restore the death penalty for terrorists, with decapitation.” Sick group ISIS are infamous for posting beheading videos of their victims oniine. The controversial politician made the highly charged comments as part of his plans to stop future terrorist attacks on the streets of Paris.

He said he wants to “force dual citizens to make a choice”, completely eradicating dual French citizenship. The last person to be killed by the French state was Tunisian Hamida Djandoibu in 1977 for torturing and murdering a 21-year-old woman, and was accused of assaulting and raping another 15-year-old. France abolished the death penalty in 1981.

Daniel Alkhari, a 25-year-old Chaldean priest, ministers in a refugee camp in the Iraqi Kurdish capital of Erbil. The camp is home to more than 800 Iraqi Christians who have been displaced by the self-described Islamic State in recent years. The church inside the camp hosts services each weekend in three Christian faith traditions – Roman Catholic, Chaldean, and Assyrian — and the ministers of each tradition are responsive to the needs of all.

“ISIS has done better than almost any group in the past two millennia in bringing Christians together in this region,” Alkhari told me. “To them, a Christian is a Christian. This common threat has unified our different traditions.” And Alkhari has a strong ally in Rome. Pope Francis has spoken repeatedly of an “ecumenism of blood” that is bringing Christians together in the Middle East under the common threat of religious persecution.

The Fars report added that the drills involved over 120 Basij battalions, in which fighter-jets bombed targets in the dessert and dozens of gun-wielding squadrons representing IDF soldiers guarding the shrine replica.

Fars quoted one Basij commander as saying the drills were organized "to exercise preparedness to fight against possible threats in the region.” Basij fighters are a volunteer arm of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps and have been arriving in Syria to reinforce Syrian government troops in an offensive in the contested northern city of Aleppo and other insurgent-held areas.

The German political class continues to insist that “European unification is the only possible answer to globalisation”, as Wolfgang Schäuble, the Finance Minister, put it a few days ago. The line most widely reported from his speech, about a single skier setting off a Lawine, or avalanche, was taken to be a disobliging reference to his colleague Angela Merkel’s mishandling of the refugee question.

But if, as is entirely possible, Schäuble replaces Merkel as Chancellor, Germany’s drive towards the creation of a United States of Europe will become even more determined. He sought to prepare his listeners for transfers from rich members of the euro to poor ones, and for further surrenders of national powers.

Opinion polls show the country is split down the middle. But they also show the Christian Democrats losing ground, and Alternative for Germany, which takes a harder attitude to these things, in double figures for the first time. And other European countries have declined to show solidarity on the refugee question with Merkel. She suddenly looks isolated, and the chances that she will retire in the near future have greatly increased.

Her most likely replacement is Schäuble, confined to a wheelchair since an attempt on his life in 1990, but respected even by his opponents as a man of formidable intellect and grip. But Schäuble is no push-over. We should not imagine Germany is about to be transformed into a nation state of a Gaullist disposition. The Germans are in the midst of a very long process of discovering what it means to be German, and on their answer to that question will depend the future of Europe.

He’s far from the only worrier. In April, Jamie Dimon, the chief executive of JP Morgan Chase, devoted three pages of his annual shareholder letter to the subject, writing that dislocations in the US government bond and currency markets were a “warning shot across the bow”. In May, Nouriel Roubini, the US economist made famous for predicting the US housing problems that led to the financial crisis, wrote about “the liquidity timebomb”.

In June, Stephen Schwarzman, the chief executive of private equity firm Blackstone, penned a comment piece for The Wall Street Journal on bond market liquidity entitled: “How the next financial crisis will happen”. Why has this seemingly esoteric subject got so many knickers in such a twist?

Every market is a tug-of-war between buyers and sellers. Liquidity is a gauge of both the size of the market (the number of buyers and sellers) and its depth (the number of buyers and sellers of both small and large amounts of securities). Why is the depth of the market important? Because you’re sure to find plenty of willing buyers if you want to sell £10,000 of government bonds. But if you want to sell £100 million-worth, it might be a touch harder.

If there isn’t a buyer, supply could momentarily outweigh demand and the price will start to fall before you get a chance to execute the trade. This is called market impact. The less liquidity there is, the greater the impact large trades will have. If lots of people are all trying to sell lots of stuff at once, it could get messy.

Last week, his office described some areas in which Prime Minister David Cameron has demanded EU reform as "highly problematic", dampening the Government's hopes of achieving a significant renegotiation of the UK's ties with Brussels. But the former Luxembourg prime minister last night declared Britain would not leave the 28-member bloc, despite an upcoming referendum on the UK's membership of the EU due before the end of 2017.

Speaking at a conference in Brussels, Mr Juncker said: "There will not be Brexit. I spent three years of my life to avoid Grexit. I will not spend three years of my life to facilitate Brexit.” Responding to Mr Juncker's claim that British voters will not choose to leave the EU, Ukip leader Nigel Farage said the president had shown "insufferable arrogance". He added: "The British people will decide for themselves and I'm confident they'll vote for prosperity and freedom."

Andy Wigmore, head of communications for Brexit campaign group Leave.EU said: "His arrogance is astounding, he and Cameron are not addressing the problems that people really care about. Even Cameron's own MP's are saying his so-called renegotiations are weak. We're confident that most people will see right through their sham and vote to leave."

Following the attack, Facebook activated its safety check feature. This is the first time the feature has been activated in Nigeria, and follows criticism that it was done after the Paris attacks but not elsewhere. Yola has twice been hit by deadly bomb attacks this year.

The city lies in the north-eastern state of Adamawa, one of the worst hit by the Boko Haram insurgency. More than 80 people have been taken to hospital, some with serious injuries, emergency workers say.

Before the Paris attack, the feature was only used in natural disasters. The safety check allows people to inform their contacts they are safe. The BBC's technology reporter Dave Lee says during emergencies mobile phone networks often collapse under the stress of everyone using their phones at the same time - so this is one way to help solve that by informing possibly hundreds of friends in one go.

The system was first used earlier this year during the Nepal earthquake. Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg announced the Yola Safety Check in a Facebook post but added "unfortunately, these kinds of events are all too common, so I won't post about all of them." This is the third attack this year in Yola.

All this story proves is that very small children are being used to push an agenda in this country. How a six-year-old comprehends gender identity issues has, at the very least, to be up for serious debate. Most child psychologists agree that child cognitive development happens in four stages, and it isn’t until sometime between age seven and 12 that kids are fully able to understand logical, rational thought — but that’s only in regard to things they can touch or see. The ability for most kids to be able to reason without dependence on visual or tactile aids comes in the pre-teen years.

Yet, so-called “experts” claim the parents are just advocating for the child expressing “his” true self. What six-year-old knows his or her true self? Most young adults don’t even know that. Transgender identity is a concept that a six-year-old would not even begin to comprehend without it being specifically taught to him or her. This is a six-year-old child who has obviously been thoroughly confused on what is otherwise not an issue six-year-olds deal with.

There are six-year-olds who pretend they are dogs and cats or super heroes who can fly. Doesn’t mean that’s true, either.

By setting high-standard trade rules that will support 21st-century commerce and providing ambitious liberalization of trade and investment, the TPP will strengthen and broaden the mutually-beneficial linkages between our economies; enhance our regional and global competitiveness; support the creation of jobs and new opportunities for young people; promote economic growth and development in our countries; support innovation and help to alleviate poverty; and ensure the greatest benefits for our people.

We are pleased that the negotiated‎ text of the TPP agreement is now available in full for review and consideration before it is signed.

Wood is a co-author of Drilling Through the Core: Why Common Core is Bad for American Education, published in September by Pioneer Press. The book includes Wood’s history of the Common Core controversy and critical essays by more than a dozen mathematicians and English scholars. “The major criticism coming from the scholars is that it’s lowered standards in both math and English language arts, the two parts of the K-12 curriculum that the Common Core covers,” Wood told CNSNews.com.

“When the Common Core was being put in place, there was a large promise that it would be ‘internationally benchmarked’, meaning the standards would be as high or higher than the highest standards found around the world. And if you go into Common Core materials, you will still find that phrase.

“But the math standards are set way below all of the Asian nations, and the US language arts standards are not matched to international standards,” Wood pointed out. Wood predicted that during the next three or four years, more states will become disenchanted with Common Core because “it is way more expensive than advertised and the results are much worse than anyone had expected.”

“Inventing a one-size-fits-all curriculum for the country, pretending it’s a state-level initiative while ceding enormous power to the federal government and private corporations that actually run the Common Core, that experiment will wind down. It clearly is something that the American public is going to resist tooth and nail, and that makes it politically unsalvageable.

When I last reported on this, we were still behind 2006’s record pace, but now we have surged ahead of it. Overall, the average for the last 10 years for the number of acres burned in the US through November 13th is 6,464,947, and so we are more than 50 percent ahead of that pace right now. Clearly, what we have been experiencing is highly unusual. Could it be possible that this is some form of judgment on America?

In August and September, all of a sudden it seemed like major fires were erupting all over the western third of the United States. I know, because at one point a huge fire came to within 10 miles of my own house. Fortunately, no homes were damaged in my area, but in other parts of the country a tremendous amount of property was destroyed.

Could it be possible that we are witnessing a pattern of judgment that began in the August/September time frame? In the Scriptures, we see that there is often a progression to judgment. For example, if you go back to the book of Exodus, God didn’t hit the Egyptians with the worst plague first. Rather, there was a progression to the plagues that built up to a crescendo at the end.

Could it be possible that a similar pattern is starting to play out right in front of our eyes? If it is, it won’t take us long to find out. If these fires, floods, earthquakes, etc are all part of a larger pattern, we should expect to see even worse events in the not too distant future. So let’s watch and see what happens.

Take college as an example. The artificial scarcity is accreditation: if the institution isn’t accredited, the diplomas it issues are worthless. Suppose (as I propose in my book The Nearly Free University and the Emerging Economy) that college diplomas were awarded on the basis of standardized exams and essay questions: the only thing that matters is what the student learned, not what bureaucratic hoops the cartel has erected to protect itself from real competition.

As for healthcare, the cartel hides behind opaque pricing and complex billing that is paid by insurers or the government; the consumer has no choice and no access to the real costs. Many cartels are obscured by complex ownership arrangements. The majority of the mainstream media is famously owned by six corporations; this concentration of ownership (and thus of political influence) dominates the cartel-state-dominated American economy.

Cartels will fight to the death to retain their privileges and profits. The status quo works just fine for them, and they will never let reform reduce their privileges, power or profits. But once the average household depends on government handouts just to remain nominally solvent, the slide over the cliff has already started.