Ms Rinehart, whose family have accumulated vast wealth from iron ore mining, has seen her fortune dwindle since commodity prices began their inexorable slide last year. The Australian mining mogul has seen her estimated wealth collapse to around $11 billion (£7 billion) from a fortune that was thought to be worth around $30 billion just three years ago.

This colossal collapse in wealth is symptomatic of the wider economic problem now facing Australia, which for years has been known as the lucky country due to its preponderance in natural resources such as iron ore, coal and gold. During the boom years of the so-called commodities “super cycle” when China couldn’t buy enough of everything that Australia dug out of the ground, the country’s economy resembled oil-rich Saudi Arabia.

While the rest of the world suffered from the aftermath of the global financial crisis, Australia’s economy – closely tied to China – appeared impervious, with full employment and a healthy trade surplus. However, a collapse in iron ore and coal prices coupled with the impact of large international mining companies slashing investment has exposed Australia’s true vulnerability. Just like Saudi Arabia, which is now burning its foreign reserves to compensate for falling oil prices, Australia faces a collapse in export revenue.

The last big earthquake on the fault, estimated to have a 6.8-magnitude, occurred in 1868, according to the USGS. It killed about 30 people and caused extensive property damage in the Bay Area, particularly in the city of Hayward, from which the fault derives its name. Until the larger 1906 earthquake, it was widely referred to as the “Great San Francisco Earthquake.” “The population is now 100 times bigger in the East Bay, so we have many more people that will be impacted,” said Tom Brocher, a research geophysicist with the USGS. Brocher urged residents to take steps to prepare for a major earthquake.

Retired US Army Lieutenant Colonel Tony Shaffer, who today is an intelligence analyst on media outlets including Fox News, told G2 in an exclusive interview that the Chinese already have been conducting espionage on the nation’s critical infrastructures. Shaffer also is a senior fellow at the New York-based-London Center for Policy Research.

“The Chinese already have started,” Shaffer asserted. “Much of what used to be done to hack bulk power systems, SCADA systems, the Internet – it’s already being done.” SCADAs, or Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition systems, are computer-based systems that monitor and control industrial processes remotely, enabling the automatic functioning of the nation’s critical infrastructures.

SCADAs, or Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition systems, are computer-based systems that monitor and control industrial processes remotely, enabling the automatic functioning of the nation’s critical infrastructures.

"When we go swimming and we complain that our eyes are red, it's because swimmers have peed in the water," Michele Hlavsa, chief of CDC's healthy swimming program, told "Today."

The CDC also said in its report that the chlorine smell of pools isn't actually what you think. "What you smell are actually chemicals that form when chlorine mixes with pee, poop, sweat and dirt from swimmer's bodies... These chemicals - not chlorine - can cause your eyes to get red and sting, make your nose run, and make you cough."

"Yuck!" the CDC concluded.

Asked to sign the petition to support a 1% income tax on all white Americans in order to “even out the playing field” and redistribute the wealth amongst minority communities, the first man in the clip is incredulous that such a policy would pass but signs his name to it anyway.

Thankfully, a number of individuals refused to sign the petition, realizing that fighting racism by instituting racist policies was a dumb idea. The timing of the stunt is appropriate given recent revelations of a new government program that isn’t a million miles away from the notion of a white privilege tax.

The New York Post reports on the White House’s new data collection program which will pry, “into our most personal information at the most local levels, all for the purpose of 'racial and economic justice'.” “This Orwellian-style stockpile of statistics includes a vast and permanent network of discrimination databases, which Obama already is using to make 'disparate impact' cases against [discrimination],” writes Paul Sperry.

In proposing that Greece could be better off outside the euro, the irascible 72-year-old crossed a political Rubicon: he confirmed that the single currency was "reversible" after all. But having broken the euro's biggest taboo, commentators have now suggested that it should be Mr Schaeuble's Germany, rather than Greece, that should now take the plunge and ditch the euro.

Princeton economist and former IMF bail-out chief Ashoka Mody is among the most recent proponents of a German exit from the euro.

Mr Mody notes that a return to the deutsche mark would provide a two-fold boost to the rest of the beleaguered eurozone: it would immediately cause the euro to plummet in value, stimulating exports in the southern periphery, and also cause far less disruption to the rest of the bloc than a potential Grexit. "A deutsche mark would buy more goods and services in Europe (and in the rest of the world) than does a euro today, the Germans would become richer in one stroke", writes Mr Mody.

And for all its relative economic strength, the euro was always at its heart a political construct designed to neuter a reunified Germany 25 years ago. Paradoxically, Mr Mody now says that a release from the shackles of the single currency could finally pave the way for Germany to act as the "benevolent hegemon" a functioning fixed-exhange rate system has always needed. "To stay close, Europe's nations may need to loosen the ties that bind them so tightly," he writes.

Instead, these laws are written in such a way that anyone that says something that “offends” or “insults” someone else is guilty of “hate speech”. Even if you never intended to offend anyone and you had no idea that your words were insulting, in some countries you can be detained without bail and sentenced to years in prison for such speech.

Today, there are highly restrictive hate speech laws in Canada, in Mexico and in virtually every single European nation. The United States is still an exception, but the truth is that our liberties and freedoms are being eroded every single day, and it is only a matter of time until “hate speech laws” are used to take away our freedom of speech too.

Once such laws are in place in the United States, it won’t be difficult for the government to find you if you are committing “hate speech”. As I have written about repeatedly, the US government already monitors virtually everything that is said and done on the Internet.

And then, on Sunday, more than 5 inches of rain fell in the open desert east of the Coachella Valley. Rushing water flooded into the wash beneath the bridge and ate away at the dirt around the foundations. Eventually, one end of the eastbound lanes cracked free of the highway and tumbled to the desert floor, cutting the primary route between Arizona and Southern California.

Built in 1967, the Tex Wash Bridge sits on Interstate 10, linking Los Angeles to Phoenix. Located just east of Palm Springs, California, the bridge is owned and maintained by the California Department of Transportation, or CalTrans. Officials there said they were investigating how a highly rated bridge managed to fail so spectacularly.

An average of more than 20,000 cars per day pass through the area, according to federal highway statistics. Traffic was rerouted to give motorists options around the crucial arterial link.

The European Commission has now proposed a €7 billion (£5 billion) "bridging" loan to help Greece pay debt interest. Some of the money could be used to repay the IMF. Greece has already missed two deadlines to pay the Fund €1.6 billion (£1.1 billion) in debt interest on loans it has already received, earning it the dubious honour of being the first major Western economy to default on an IMF loan.

The European Commission's latest proposal for bridging finance may face opposition from the UK and other non-eurozone members of the EU. The proposal envisages providing short-term financing to Greece from the European Financial Stability Mechanism (EFSM). This fund is backed by all 28 members of the EU, rather than just the 16 members of the eurozone, which would mean UK taxpayers contributing further to financial support for Greece.

The split between the IMF and the EU comes just hours before the Greek parliament is due to vote on a raft of economic reforms demanded by the Eurogroup over the weekend as a condition of a third Greek bailout.

Katseli, a former PASOK Minister, appealed to citizens to return their deposits to the banks “now that the banks are open” after a three-week holiday and capital controls. “Let’s all help our economy,” Katseli urged Greeks and added “If you take your money out of your chests and houses – which are not safe in any case – and deposit at banks, this will enhance liquidity.” “There will be no need to 'haircut' deposits in the future if we all act responsibly,” she added -cheerfully I suppose.

Katseli’s appeal triggered laughter among Greeks and one stressed with hint to capital controls “Oh yes! I will bring my money back to the bank and get it back 60 by 60 euro.” Another one noted “Ah sure! Banks will never see my money again, I prefer to buy tonnes of peanuts with it.” A third commented “Certainly. And the banks will go bust after a while…”

A fourth recounted a very unfortunate incident in 2010 and busted into tears and laughter. Back then Finance Minister Evangelos Venizelos had appealed to the Greeks to buy Greek bonds. The man invested 10,000 euros to help Greece. Two years later, his investment underwent a 53%-haircut due to the PSI. Now the nominal value of his investment is … "I don’t even open the envelopes coming from the bank anymore, too frustrating,” he told me.

Dr Mary Gatter, President of Planned Parenthood’s Medical Director’s Council, is asked, “What would you expect for intact tissue?” Gatter starts to haggle immediately, “Why don’t you start by telling me what you’re used to paying?” When pushed for a number, Gatter says, “Well, you know in negotiations the person who throws out the figure first is at a loss, right? So…”

When pushed again for how much her Planned Parenthood affiliate is willing to sell baby body parts for, she responds, “Okay, $75.” When the buyer tells her that number seems low Gatter responds, “I was going to say $50.” Then the buyer offers her $100 to which Gatter quickly responds, “Okay.”

After the first video was released last week in which Dr Deborah Nucatola also appears to negotiate the price of fetal body parts, Planned Parenthood insisted that the price Nucatola mentioned was only related to the costs incurred by Planned Parenthood with no profit involved. In the Nucatola video, however, she is seen and heard explaining that the Planned Parenthood affiliates in the body parts business wanted to do more than “break even.”

CMP’s Project Lead David Daleiden said, “Planned Parenthood’s top leadership had admitted they harvest aborted baby parts and receive payments for this. Planned Parenthood’s only denial is that they make money off of baby parts, but that is a desperate lie that becomes more and more untenable as CMP reveals their business operations and statements that prove otherwise.”

Yet Francis refers to the devil continually. He does not believe him to be a myth, but a real person, the most insidious enemy of the church. Several of my theologian colleagues have said that he has gone a bit overboard with the devil and hell! We may be tempted to ask, why in the devil is Pope Francis so involved with the prince of demons?

This intelligent Jesuit Pope is diving into deep theological waters, places where very few modern Catholic clerics wish to tread. Francis' seeming preoccupation with the devil is not a theological or eschatological question as much as a call to arms, an invitation to immediate action, offering very concrete steps to do combat with the devil and the reign of evil in the world today.

In his homilies, Francis warns people strongly to avoid discouragement, to seize hope, to move on with courage and not to fall prey to negativity or cynicism.

In a famous speech in 1946, Winston Churchill proposed “a kind of United States of Europe” as a way of eradicating Europe’s warring past, but it was fairly obvious that he did not envisage Britain as part of it. “We are with Europe, but not of it. We are linked but not combined. We are interested and associated but not absorbed,” was how Churchill put it, a way of thinking that has defined Britain’s ambivalent attitude to Europe ever since.

Instead, this would be primarily a Franco-German construct, with Britain pursuing an alternative destiny as part of a Commonwealth of Nations. At the time, Britain still had rationing and austerity, but as the victorious nation, it nonetheless looked in rather better shape than much of the rest of an economically ruined continent.

In or out, Britain has little option but to remain part of the single market. Anything else would be a giant economic leap in the dark. The real issue is only that of terms, and ensuring that whatever other madnesses the eurozone inflicts on itself to hold the whole thing together do not directly disadvantage us. As things stand, the eurozone is on a long road to oblivion. It will be a very different, and less blindly integrationist, Europe we will be dealing with 10 years hence, or so we must hope.

Justice Barbara Jaffe has granted a "writ of habeas corpus" and is ordering officials at Stony Brook University to show cause for why they are holding the chimps, Hercules and Leo, in captivity. When word got around that a couple of chimpanzees had been granted human rights by a court of law, Justice Jaffe clarified her statements, striking down the "writ of habeas corpus" which theoretically gave the chimps the same rights as humans. Striking down her initial wording, she said it was simply a way to formally direct the university officials to the courtroom to present their case.

The Nonhuman Rights Project, which signed off on the judge's order, saw a first-time glimpse of what they work so hard for - court recognized animal rights. They believe that some animals, like chimps, are "legal persons" with the right of "bodily liberty." The question being raised is this: Are chimps the property of human owners or do the animals have the right to own their own body and liberty? Does an animal have the same rights as humans? If they are being harmed, abused, or detained, can they be represented in court and ultimately be freed?

The Nonhuman Rights Project seeks to free Hercules and Leo from their cages at Stony Brook in hopes they will be released to an animal sanctuary in Florida. However, if the chimps are indeed property of Stony Brook and no harm can be proven, then can the court order the animals be taken away from their owners? "Nonhuman animals do not have legal rights any more than they have legal responsibilities," said Bob Kohn, a lawyer from Manhattan, who opposes efforts to give human rights to chimps and other animals. "For a court to hold otherwise would have tremendous adverse legal and moral implications for mankind."