One starts to glimpse the extraordinary possibility that the US oil industry could be the last one standing in a long and bitter price war for global market share, or may at least emerge as an energy superpower with greater political staying-power than Opec.

It is 10 months since the global crude market buckled, turning into a full-blown rout in November when Saudi Arabia abandoned its role as the oil world's "Federal Reserve" and opted instead to drive out competitors. If the purpose was to choke the US "tight oil" industry before it becomes an existential threat - and to choke solar power in the process - it risks going badly awry, though perhaps they had no choice. "There was a strong expectation that the US system would crash. It hasn't," said Atul Arya, from IHS.

"The freight train of North American tight oil has just kept on coming. This is a classic price discovery exercise," said Rex Tillerson, head of Exxon Mobil, the big brother of the Western oil industry. Mr Tillerson said shale producers are more agile than critics expected, which means that the price war will go on. "This is going to last for a while," he said, warning that any rallies are likely to prove false dawns.

Over the next few months, a big chunk of Greek government bonds held by the IMF and the European Central Bank will mature. Unless negotiations produce a load of new cash for Greece, there will be a default, and right now there is very little optimism that we will see an agreement any time soon. In fact, as I wrote about the other day, behind the scenes banks all over Europe are quietly preparing for a Grexit.

European news sources are reporting that the Greek banking system is on the verge of collapse, and over the past couple of weeks Greek bond yields have shot through the roof. Most of the things that we would expect to see in the lead up to a Greek exit from the eurozone are happening, and now we will wait and see if the Greeks actually have the guts to pull the trigger when push comes to shove.

At this point, many top European officials are quietly admitting that it is more likely than not that Greece will leave the euro by the end of this year.

An estimated 1,500 people were forced to flee the nearby town of Ensenada after the eruption, while several smaller townships were also cleared. The volcano is located near the tourist town of Puerto Varas and the city of Puerto Montt, a little more than 620 miles south of Chile's capital, Santiago. The National Mining and Geology Service issued a high alert, setting up an exclusion zone of 12.5 miles around the volcano, barring access to the area. Trevor Moffat, who lives in Ensenada, some six miles from the volcano, said the eruption happened without warning. Volcano Calbuco's last major eruption happened in 1961, with a weak eruption following in 1972.

Chile, on the Pacific 'Rim of Fire', has the second largest chain of volcanoes in the world after Indonesia, including around 500 that are potentially active. In March, volcano Villarrica, also in southern Chile, erupted in spectacular fashion, sending a plume of ash and lava high into the sky, but quickly subsided. Volcanoes occur at the edges of tectonic plates which make up the earth's crust, either where these plates are moving toward or away from one another. Eruptions occur when magma from the Earth's core forces its way to the surface, exploding through weak points in the crust.

Many Americans have expressed strong concern over the training on social media, and locally some Bastrop County residents have stated their apprehension for the military training to local county officials. Officials have responded by saying that JADE HELM 15, a form of Realistic Military Training (RMT), will coordinate with local law enforcement agencies and local property owners affected by this training exercise.

“The nature of warfare is always changing and US Army Special Operations Command’s mission is to make certain the Army’s various Special Operations Forces are trained, equipped and organized to successfully conduct worldwide special operations in support of our nation’s interest,” Army Lieutenant Colonel Mark Lastoria, a command spokesman, told the Washington Post in an email, according to a March 31 news article. “Training exercise Jade Helm is going to assist our Special Operations Soldiers and leadership in refining the skills needed against an ever changing foreign threat.”

A recent biotech discovery — one that has been called the biggest biotech discovery of the century — showed how scientists might be able to modify a human genome when that genome was still just in an embryo.

This could change not only the genetic material of a person, but could also change the DNA they pass on, removing "bad" genetic codes (and potentially adding "good" ones) and taking an active hand in evolution. Concerned scientists published an argument that no one should edit the human genome in this way until we better understood the consequences after a report uncovered rumors that Chinese scientists were already working on using this technology.

But this new paper, published April 18 in the journal Protein and Cell by a Chinese group led by gene-function researcher Junjiu Huang of Sun Yat-sen University, shows that work has already been done, and Nature News spoke to a Chinese source that said at least four different groups are "pursuing gene editing in human embryos."

Specifically, the team tried to modify a gene in a non-viable embryo that would have been responsible for a deadly blood disorder. But they noted in the study that they encountered serious challenges, suggesting there are still significant hurdles before clinical use becomes a reality.

Moments ago the NY Department for Financial Services announced that Deutsche Bank would pay $2.5 billion "in connection with the manipulation of the benchmark interest rates, including the London Interbank Offered Rate ("LIBOR"), the Euro Interbank Offered Rate ("EURIBOR") and Euroyen Tokyo Interbank Offered Rate ("TIBOR") (collectively, "IBOR")."

According to FT calculations, "this is the largest fine to date in the sprawling worldwide Libor investigation" and beneficiaries of DB's criminal generosity include New York State Department of Financial Services (NYDFS) which will get $600 million, $775 million go to the US Department of Justice (DOJ), and 227 million GBP (approximately $340 million) to the United Kingdom’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA).

Best of all $800 million will end up in the bank accounts of the Commodities Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), the same CFTC which can now afford to upgrade from ticker tape and actually have some sense of the pervasive manipulation taking place in the S&P on a daily basis.

Most importantly for DB's 98,138 employees is that while DB will "terminate and ban individual employees who engaged in misconduct" nobody will go to jail. AGAIN. In other words it just cost DB's about $25,474 per employee to keep its Libor-manipulating employees (and thus, senior level management because the stench always goes to the very top) out of prison.

With the passage of House Bill 195 into law, the State of Louisiana has banned the use of cash in all transactions involving secondhand goods. State representative Ricky Hardy, a co-author of the bill, claims that the bill targets criminals who traffic in stolen goods. According to Hardy, “It’s a mechanism to be used so the police department has something to go on and have a lead.” The bill prohibits cash transactions by “secondhand dealers,” defined to include garage sales, flea markets, resellers of specialty items, and even non-profit resellers like Goodwill.

So the aim of the bill is not to aid law enforcement in apprehending criminals, none of whom would be ever stupid enough to turn over such information. The real intent is to feed government’s insatiable hunger for tax revenues by completely stripping law-abiding citizens of financial privacy in secondhand transactions, every detail of which is fed directly into police files.

This troubling development in Louisiana parallels the intensification of the war on cash by the Federal government. Last month it was reported that the US Justice Department ordered bank employees to snitch to the cops on customers who withdrew $5,000 or more. In a speech, assistant attorney general Leslie Caldwell exhorted banks to “alert law enforcement authorities about the problem” so that police can “seize the funds” or at least “initiate an investigation”.

The government is hungry for your money. They want your tax dollars even when you pay $0.50 for a used paperback book at a garage sale. Ridiculous? Absolutely. But nobody ever accused a politician of being rational or logical or content with the current level of taxation. They always want more money, and they’ll do whatever it takes to get another nickel out of your pocket.

The poster is at the center of heated legal debate over public safety and free speech. On Tuesday, US District Judge John Koeltl ruled that New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) cannot stop the controversial ad from running on scores of subway cars and buses. The MTA has argued that the ad could incite violence against Jews, but Koeltl rejected that idea.

MTA officials “underestimate the tolerant quality of New Yorkers and overestimate the potential impact of these fleeting advertisements,” he ruled. “Moreover, there is no evidence that seeing one of these advertisements on the back of a bus would be sufficient to trigger a violent reaction. Therefore, these ads — offensive as they may be — are still entitled to First Amendment protection.”

But even if the ads don’t incite violence in New York City, they could overseas. Earlier this month, Egypt’s top religious authority called AFDI’s posters “racist” and issued a fatwa, or official edict, against them. “This hazardous campaign will leave the gate of confrontation and clashes wide open instead of exerting efforts towards peaceful coexistence and harmony,” according to the edict.

The government has resorted to increasingly desperate measures to fill their coffers in the absence of fresh bail-out cash from its international creditors. On Monday, an emergency presidential decree forced up to 1,500 local government bodies to transfer their excess cash reserves to the Bank of Greece.

The measure, which was pushed for by Brussels, has met fierce resistance in the country. Giorgis Kaminis, the mayor of Athens, said he would fight the confiscation law, attacking it as "unconstitutional".

“We’re determined to use all political and legal means we can to repudiate the content of the decree,” the Union of Municipalities and Communities said in statement on Tuesday night.

The raid could generate an estimated €1.2 billion to €2 billion for the treasury by seizing reserves in commercial banks and shifting them to the central bank in Athens. But Greece's labour minister said his government would seek alternative solutions should mayors and local governors resist the measures.