According to a new study by the Boston Consulting Group, currently the expectation is that machines, which now account for 10 percent of all manufacturing tasks, are likely to perform about 25 percent of them by 2025. (To understand the economics of this transition, one need only consider the American automotive industry, where a human spot welder costs about $25 an hour and a robotic one costs $8. The robot is faster and more accurate, too.) The Boston group expects most of the growth in automation to be concentrated in transportation equipment, computer and electronic products, electrical equipment, and machinery.

Meanwhile, algorithms are writing most corporate reports, analyzing intelligence data for the NSA and CIA, reading mammograms, grading tests, and sniffing out plagiarism. Computers fly planes — Nicholas Carr points out that the average airline pilot is now at the helm of an airplane for about three minutes per flight — and they compose music and pick which pop songs should be recorded based on which chord progressions and riffs were hits in the past. Computers pursue drug development — a robot in the UK named Eve may have just found a new compound to treat malaria — and fill pharmacy vials.

Xerox uses computers — not people — to select which applicants to hire for its call centers. The retail giant Amazon “employs” 15,000 warehouse robots to pull items off the shelf and pack boxes. The self-driving car is being road-tested. A number of hotels are staffed by robotic desk clerks and cleaned by robotic chambermaids. Airports are instituting robotic valet parking.

Researchers have devised a method of bypassing a fundamental barrier to the rapid spread of genes within a population. They believe that it could be used to spread malaria-resistant genes in mosquitoes to prevent transmission of disease to people. However, it could also be used to spread harmful genes rapidly in the wild, which has led other researchers to call for the imposition of strict safety controls over such research in case of an accidental escape from a laboratory.

The scientists have already demonstrated that it works in fruit flies reared in a high-security laboratory. When a genetically modified fly was mated with a normal fly, the mutated gene was passed on to about 97 per cent of the offspring, instead of the usual one-in-three proportion dictated by classical genetics.

"As a globally connected society and an export-based economy, Germany, more than others, depends on a functioning rules-based order," said Steinmeier, stressing that "the European Union is the world's most sophisticated example of a regional order. As such, we need to defend it."

With regard to the Ukraine conflict, Steinmeier pointed out: "We need to make sure that the military situation is calmed down in order to set the preconditions necessary to bring about a political process stipulated in the Minsk agreements." On the tense relations between the EU and Russia, Steinmeier said much "depends on whether Russia will be steering or disturbing the political process [in Ukraine]. The question will be whether we will be able to restore the trust that has been shattered."

Each year, the National Science Foundation releases a multi-million dollar study that monitors societal change in the adult population of the United States. The NSF researches things like life satisfaction, race relations, crime and punishment, and religion. For the past decade, this study has shown a steady decrease in the number of religious Americans.

Nearly 1 in 4 Americans say their religious preference is "none." This has increased almost 20 percent since the 1990s, when the percentage of Americans who affiliated as nonreligious was in the single digits. In comparison, around 24 percent of Americans affiliate as Catholic, the largest religious denomination in the United States. If the trend keeps increasing, in a few years the largest religion in the United States could be no religion at all.

The number of Americans never attending church or other worship services each weekend is at an all time high. More than a third of Americans say they never attend a worship service.

Last week, a trio of Google researchers published a paper on a new artificial intelligence system dubbed FaceNet that it claims represents the most-accurate approach yet to recognizing human faces. FaceNet achieved nearly 100-percent accuracy on a popular facial-recognition dataset called Labeled Faces in the Wild, which includes more than 13,000 pictures of faces from across the web.

Trained on a massive 260-million-image dataset, FaceNet performed with better than 86 percent accuracy. However, the approach Google’s researchers took goes beyond simply verifying whether two faces are the same. Its system can also put a name to a face — classic facial recognition — and even present collections of faces that look the most similar or the most distinct.

This is all just research, but it points to a near future where the types of crime-fighting, or surveillance-enhancing, computers we often see on network television and blockbuster movies will be much more attainable.

“In the long term, if we don’t make it available we’re afraid they’ll just take it,” said Charlie Mathews, a fourth generation rice farmer with senior rights to Yuba River water. He and his fellow growers have agreed to sell 20 percent of their allotment to Los Angeles’s Metropolitan Water District as it desperately searches to add to its dwindling supply.

It’s not really surprising that Southern California is looking for a place to buy water. But what is making news is how much they’ve agreed to pay for it: $700 per acre foot of water. Just last year, rice farmers were amazed when they were offered $500 per acre foot. This new price means growers will earn a lot more money on the fields they don’t plant, making water itself the real cash crop in California. “It’s much more than we ever expected to get.”

“But at the same time, that just shows the desperation of the people that need it,” Mathews said. The ripple effect of this will be felt around the entire state. If a Bay Area water district needs to buy more water, it will now be competing with Los Angeles to do it. “They have to pay whatever the last price, the highest price, people will pay,” Mathews said.

The regulations, carrying fines up to $500, add to restrictions put in place last year that rein in outdoor water use — for example, barring people from hosing down driveways. The new terms tread deeper into homes, businesses and the lives of most Californians, and are indicative of the state’s worsening water woes. “We are not seeing the stepping up and the ringing of alarm bells that the situation warrants,” said Felicia Marcus, chair of the State Water Resources Control Board, which voted unanimously for Tuesday’s conservation mandates.

Conservation efforts statewide have fallen short of Governor Jerry Brown’s call for 20 percent reductions. Year-over-year water use in California dropped only about 10 percent during the last seven months of 2014, the period tracked by state officials. While the water board has empowered local water agencies to fine customers for violating state rules, most water departments, including the Bay Area’s five largest agencies, have not imposed penalties.

The western corn rootworm appears to have evolved to eat the corn that was bioengineered to defeat it. That has led the US Environmental Protection Agency to consider limits to continuous corn planting — experts say the practice of planting corn for three or more years in the same field has helped rootworms build up resistance.

"The GMO crops are available, and they've done a great job for a long time, but now we have a very formidable adversary with the western corn rootworm," said Brad Howe, a corn grower who farms in Gilman, Illinois, near where some rootworm resistance problems have been found. "They seem to be a pest that is able to constantly adapt to its environment and continue to change. So we've been fighting it and fighting it."

Monsanto's corn seed business has accounted for about half of its consolidated annual gross profits. Citi Research recently indicated that Monsanto's corn seed is gaining share, citing a survey of farmers in the Corn Belt.

The western corn rootworm has been around in the Corn Belt for decades but the voracious bugs started gaining resistance in the past several years to several varieties of engineered corn that utilize insect-specific toxin proteins, experts say. Rotating intermittently from corn to soybeans usually gets rid of the problem, but not always.

Police also said they had made 19 arrests by 1700 GMT, mostly on charges of disturbing the peace and arson after seven police cars were set ablaze and a police station pelted with rocks. Firefighters also came under attack during several of the 47 times they were called out to douse the flames of burning automobiles and barricades made from toppled garbage bins. Police said 80 officers had been hurt by an irritant gas, but were later put back on duty, while Blockupy protest organisers said on Twitter that over 100 demonstrators were injured by tear gas and pepper spray.

The target of protesters' anger was the ECB's new 185-metre (605-foot) high twin-tower headquarters, officially opened by the central bank's president Mario Draghi at 11:00 am (1000 GMT). Draghi, addressing some 100 invited guests at a low-key ceremony, rejected blame for the suffering brought by budget cuts and austerity policies amid the financial crisis in Europe.

"As an EU institution that has played a central role throughout the crisis, the ECB has become a focal point for those frustrated with this situation," Draghi said. "This may not be a fair charge – our action has been aimed precisely at cushioning the shocks suffered by the economy," he said.

"But as the central bank of the whole euro area, we must listen very carefully to what all our citizens are saying." In Berlin, leading politicians condemned Wednesday's chaotic scenes. Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said that "no one has the right to threaten life and limb of police and firefighters".

The minister, who was in Bahrain as part of a Gulf tour that will also take him to other Gulf states, said that his visit was to reinforce military cooperation with the kingdom. “We want to work together to boost military ties with Bahrain,” he said.

“This visit paves the way for a common ground and joint marine manoeuvres with Bahrain in the near future should not be ruled out,” he said. It was revealed last week that Qatar and Turkey have signed a military agreement that gives both countries the possibility to deploy soldiers in each other’s territory in special cases.

Writing in the Telegraph, he said: "Now, more than ever, we need Christian people to speak up for their faith, to articulate their beliefs in sensible and courteous ways. Our society needs a reminder of our foundational beliefs in honesty, faithfulness, right and wrong. Don’t be intimidated by a hostile workplace, challenge the hostility with good humour."

The report revealed a law firm which renamed its Christmas party the “End of Year Party” for fear of being sued and a teacher who told a class people who believed in God were "religious nutters". He added: "I have never found one single Muslim, Hindu, Sikh or Buddhist who was the least bit offended by someone wishing them a “Happy Christmas”."

The church’s 171 bodies, known as presbyteries, voted on the constitutional change Tuesday, months after the General Assembly recommended it, the New York Times reported. “Finally, the church in its constitutional documents fully recognizes that the love of gays and lesbian couples is worth celebrating in the faith community,” said Rev Brian Ellison, executive director of the Covenant Network of Presbyterians, to the New York Times. “There is still disagreement and I don’t mean to minimize that, but I think we are learning that we can disagree and still be [in] church together.”

The Presbyterian Church USA is headquartered in Louisville, Kentucky, and touts about 1.8 million members, making it the largest of the Presbyterian denominations in the nation. Still, a segment of the church’s membership – mostly in the more conservative camps – cut ties in 2011 after the governing body ratified a decision to let gays and lesbians serve as ordained pastors, elders and deacons.

As for ripple effects in other church denominations, Alan Wisdom, a Presbyterian who serves as the interim editor of Theology Matters, said not to worry. “I don’t see any further large mainline denominations making the same move,” he said, the New York Times reported. So far, the Episcopal Church, the United Church of Christ, the Quakers and the Unitarian Universalist Association of Churches allow clergy to perform gay marriages.

That means, Treasury officials say, they will have to take "extraordinary measures" beginning Monday to keep the federal government's head above fiscal water. Unless Congress acts quickly to raise the limit, those measures will include putting a stop to a planned $46 billion investment in the federal employee pension fund, which is scheduled for June.

By halting the reinvestments, the government effectively borrows that money to help stay under the debt. However, by law, that money must be repaid before the debt limit can be increased again. Other measures the Treasury will likely take are drawing down a currency stabilization fund and imposing moratoriums on state and local government deposits, USA Today reported.

The federal government began imposing limits on the amount the Treasury can borrow nearly a century ago, but because of multiple recent struggles to stay beneath it Congress simply suspended the law. The suspension, granted in February 2014, expires Sunday.

Citigroup got the most help of the four in the bailout, $2.5 trillion. That company has at least 427 offshore divisions where it squirrels away profits out of reach of the American people. Those funds, as of early 2014, totaled $43.8 billion, which would mean $11.7 billion in tax revenue for the United States if they were brought to this country.

Bank of America received a $1.3 trillion bailout from the American people. In 2014, it had $17 billion in profits stashed offshore, which would bring $4.3 billion in funding for education, infrastructure and other badly needed projects in the United States.

JPMorgan Chase got a $416 billion bailout from American taxpayers. That bank has hidden $28.5 billion overseas which would bring in $6.4 billion to the US Treasury.

Goldman Sachs was the recipient of $814 billion in virtually zero-interest loans, as well as $10 billion from the government. It’s holding $22.5 billion offshore that would bring $4.1 billion back to the American people.

Of course, banks aren’t the only companies taking advantage of tax havens. Apple, for instance, famously worked it out so two of its subsidiaries have no home country to which to pay taxes. But then Apple didn’t come hat-in-hand begging the American people not to let it go under.

He says that the US will fail in that overriding objective; German technology and capital will combine with Russian natural resources and “land-power,” to produce a truly bipolar world: US v Eurasia. So: he sees the US strategy as being to block that, by weakening both Germany and Russia. That strategy would explain what Obama is doing in Ukraine, and the sanctions that are hurting both Russia and Germany, but Friedman thinks that nothing can work.

The American political scientist George Friedman is chief of intelligence think tank “Stratfor Global Intelligence”, which he founded in 1996. The headquarters of Stratfor is located in Texas. Stratfor advises 4,000 companies, individuals and governments around the world, reports the New York Times. These include Bank of America, the US State Department, Apple, Microsoft and Lockheed Martin, Monsanto and Cisco, on security issues.