Certainly statistics bear this out. Up to 20 percent of cats and dogs entering homes are given up for adoption within six months. And of those, about 2.7 million are euthanized each year. As for the pets that remain in homes, they often get much less care than they need, as shown by the fact that veterinary visits are on the decline and chronic disease among dogs and cats has sharply risen.

The reason for the decline in pet health can at least partially be accounted for by rising pet obesity. As we reported recently, pets are getting fatter alongside their owners, and as a consequence, cases of canine diabetes have risen by 32% since 2006. In fact, more than half of the pets in the US are now overweight, with one in five clinically obese, creating ideal pre-conditions for diabetes. But it isn't just canine diabetes that's increased. Reports show a 38 percent rise in canine arthritis and a 67 percent rise in feline arthritis in the eight years since 2007. Also, both dogs and cats have been suffering more thyroid and kidney disease than before, and apparently, even have more flea problems.

The reality is that in terms of cost and time required, taking on care of a pet isn't that different from deciding to have a child. This is even truer if you want to give the pet what it requires to thrive, rather than simply maintaining it. Some veterinarians say that pets really should get human-grade food instead of pet food (avoiding, of course, the human foods that are toxic to pets), and there's plenty of evidence to support that contention. These experts say that pets require home-cooked meals just as we do, and if you take it to the next level, that means meals composed of organic, high-quality ingredients. The average family eying puppies in the mall isn't thinking in such terms.

The indictment against Salah relates to his calls to use violence to block Jews from visiting the Temple Mount, the holiest site in Judaism, calls to racism and violence that have led MKs to launch a bill to outlaw Salah's movement.

Salah has labeled Israeli leaders “terrorists” and “enemies of Allah” in a speech to Muslims in Be’er Sheva, and was also jailed for five months in 2010 for spitting at an Israeli police officer. During a speech at a 2007 demonstration he accused Jews of using children's blood to bake matzah, invoking the infamous medieval blood libels used to trigger murderous pogroms in both Europe and the Middle East.

However, they aren’t accusations. The iOS terms clearly state that Apple will record what you say and may send it to subsidiaries and their agents. It goes on to add that they will record the names of your contacts, your relationships with them, in-home devices, and sometimes your location.

I don’t find this surprising at all, so it’s interesting to see some people question whether this is happening. We are carrying little tracking devices around with us that record what we say. And the worst part is that we all clicked “I agree.”

The book’s revelations come at a crucial time when some European countries are considering the commercial planting of GM crops following the European Parliament’s decision to allow member states to opt out of the blockade that has barred them from the EU until now. Based on the evidence presented in the book, Druker and Goodall assert that it would be foolhardy to push forward with a technology that is unacceptably risky and should never have been allowed on the market in the first place.

The book is the result of more than 15 years of intensive research and investigation by Druker, who came to prominence for initiating a lawsuit against the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) that forced it to divulge its files on GM foods.

Those files revealed that GM foods first achieved commercialization in 1992 only because the FDA:

• Covered up the extensive warnings of its own scientists about their dangers.

• Lied about the facts.

• And then violated federal food safety law by permitting these foods to be marketed without having been proven safe through standard testing.

The book points out that if the FDA had heeded its own experts’ advice and publicly acknowledged their warnings that GM foods entailed higher risks than their conventional counterparts, the GM food venture would have imploded and never gained traction anywhere.

In her foreword to Altered Genes, Twisted Truth, Goodall commends it for countering the disinformation and providing much-needed clarity. She states: “I shall urge everyone I know who cares about life on earth, and the future of their children, and children’s children, to read it. It will go a long way toward dispelling the confusion and delusion that has been created regarding the genetic engineering process and the foods it produces …Steven Druker is a hero. He deserves at least a Nobel Prize.”

The markets reacted to the US revising its crude oil production upwards for 2015 and signs that the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries will maintain production at current levels.

The US Energy Information Agency said on Tuesday it expects total oil production in 2015 to be 9.35 million barrels per day, slightly higher than the 9.3 million bpd in last month's short-term energy outlook.

The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries is now expected to hold firm on oil production policy at its next meeting in June unless non-OPEC members agree to reduce output, according to Abdullah bin Hamad al-Attiyah, Qatar's former minister of energy and industry, at the Doha Energy Forum.

Deutsche Welle: Why float the idea of a European army now?

Claudia Major: Juncker is using a particular political setting - the Ukraine-Russia crisis - to relaunch an idea that hasn't worked out before: the very old idea of integrating the military forces that goes back to the 1950s and eventually failed in 1954. When the idea, which has an economic and a political dimension, was first launched, there was a different threat perception, but by 1954 the situation had changed, the states felt less threatened and were less willing to engage in a very strong interdependence, and to abandon sovereignty in an area that is very much at the heart of the nations.

In the long term, Europe needs its own army – not an intervention army that proactively wages wars, but a defensive army with crisis management capabilities where Europe can actually live up to its high normative standards. There's an EU defense summit coming up in June, and EU foreign affairs chief Federica Mogherini just launched the process of rewriting a European security strategy. These are elements that could support setting up a European army. We could find a common denominator in what European security policy is.

Germany last month rejected renewed calls from Greece for war compensation, saying the issue had been settled at world power talks that led to German reunification in 1990. But Tsipras said his government approved plans to revive a parliamentary commission to look into the issue. "After the reunification of Germany in 1990, the legal and political conditions were created for this issue to be solved. But since then, German governments chose silence, legal tricks and delay," Tsipras told a parliamentary debate. "And I wonder, because there is a lot of talk at the European level these days about moral issues: is this stance moral?" he said.

The campaign for war damages has been waged for decades both by former Greek governments and private citizens. But it has recently gained momentum due to painful economic measures imposed on Greece under the international bailout deal. The Greek government has not officially quantified its reparation claims, and Berlin has long said that it has already honored all its war obligations, including a payment of 115 million deutschmarks (59 million euros) to Greece in 1960. Tsipras said the 1960 deal only covered compensation for the victims of Nazi horrors, not the destruction wrought on Greece by the 1941-1944 occupation during World War Two.

The highlands of western Panama are an odd place for a fish farm. But then the Atlantic salmon reared there is unusual. It’s genetically engineered to grow twice as fast as typical farmed salmon, containing a growth-hormone gene from Chinook salmon and DNA from an eel-like species. It could boost production and reduce the environmental burden of salmon farming. If it ever gets into the shops, that is.

In 2012, the AquAdvantage salmon, reared by the US-based AquaBounty Technologies, looked set to become the first GM animal approved for human consumption. A panel appointed by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said the fish is safe to eat and poses no threat to the environment. Approval seemed imminent, despite opposition from environmental groups alarmed by the prospect of a GM salmon escaping. But the FDA stalled. Today, AquaBounty’s fast-growing salmon is stuck in the pipeline.

Of course, in the aftermath of revelations that back in 2013, none other than the NSA was exposed for secretly 'monitoring' the SWIFT payments flows, one could wonder if being kicked out of SWIFT is a curse or a blessing, however Russia did not need any further warnings and as we reported less than a month ago, Russia launched its own 'SWIFT'-alternative, linking 91 credit institutions initially. This in turn suggested that de-dollarization is considerably further along than many had expected, which coupled with Russia's record dumping of TSYs, demonstrated just how seriously Putin is taking the threat to be isolated from the western payment system. It was only logical that he would come up with his own.

Today, Reuters report that China's international payment system, known simply enough as China International Payment System (CIPS), which serves to process cross-border yuan transactions is ready, and may be launched as early as September or October. According to Reuters, the launch of this will remove one of the biggest hurdles to internationalizing the yuan and should greatly increase global usage of the Chinese currency by cutting transaction costs and processing times.

It will also put the yuan on a more even footing with other major global currencies like the US dollar, as CIPS is expected to use the same messaging format as other international payment systems, making transactions smoother. CIPS, which would be a worldwide payments superhighway for the yuan, will replace a patchwork of existing networks that make processing renminbi payments a more cumbersome process.

In other words, while the west was using every provocation involving the Ukraine civil war as an opportunity to pressure Russia into developing its own cross-border payment system, it achieved not only just that but it also pushed China to accelerate the roll out of its own international payment system, in the process telegraphing to the world that the USD is replaceable as a reserve currency and giving any other nations (such as the BRICs) the green light to think of SWIFT as an alternative to either the Russian or Chinese payment system (which with enough political and financial stimulus, they would be delighted to do).

Less than 24 hours after starting to inquire about the dossier presented to him by a senior Labour Party politician, the editor was confronted in his office by a furious member of parliament who threatened him and demanded the documents. “He was frothing at the mouth and really shouting and spitting in my face,” Don Hale told The Daily Beast. “He was straight at me like a raging lion; he was ready to knock me through the wall.”

Despite the MP’s explosive intervention, Hale refused to hand over the papers which appeared to show that Leon Brittan, Margaret Thatcher’s Home Secretary, was fully aware of a pedophile network that included top politicians. The editor’s resistance was futile; the following morning, police officers from the counter-terror and intelligence unit known as Special Branch burst into the newspaper office, seized the material and threatened to have Hale arrested if he ever reported what had been found.

More than 30 years later, an inquiry into allegations of child sex abuse rings, murder, and cover-ups has been launched by the British government after Scotland Yard detectives said they believed statements by victims who claimed they were systematically abused as young boys at sex abuse parties attended by judges, politicians, intelligence officers, and staff at the royal palaces.

In 1983, a controversial MP, Geoffrey Dickens, had made a series of incendiary claims about active pedophiles in the corridors of power. He handed a file containing the names of alleged perpetrators to Leon Brittan; publicly the authorities shrugged off the claims and no trial or prosecution would follow. The dossier mysteriously disappeared.

Time and again crimes were reported but voices from above silenced the complaints before they came to court. Carl, who does not wish to give his second name, told The Daily Beast that this culture of secrecy, which had apparently paralyzed the British legal system, helped to scare off victims who wanted to report their powerful abusers. If a society is incapable of protecting its weakest and most vulnerable members from sexual assault by powerful adults, it’s hard to call that society civilized. Just horrible.

By churning through all of the detritus of your life — what you read, where you go, what you say —the government can predict what you will do. By mapping the synapses in your brain, scientists — and in turn, the government — will soon know what you remember. And by accessing your DNA, the government will soon know everything else about you that they don’t already know: your family chart, your ancestry, what you look like, your health history, your inclination to follow orders or chart your own course, etc.

Of course, none of these technologies are foolproof. Nor are they immune from tampering, hacking or user bias. Nevertheless, they have become a convenient tool in the hands of government agents to render null and void the Constitution’s requirements of privacy and its prohibitions against unreasonable searches and seizures.

Consequently, no longer are we “innocent until proven guilty” in the face of DNA evidence that places us at the scene of a crime, behavior sensing technology that interprets our body temperature and facial tics as suspicious, and government surveillance devices that cross-check our biometrics, license plates and DNA against a growing database of unsolved crimes and potential criminals.

Indeed, there was a time when most Americans thought nothing of driving a few miles over the speed limit, pausing (rather than coming to a full stop) at a red light when making a right-hand turn if no one was around, jaywalking across the street, and letting their kid play hookie from school once in a while. Of course, that was before the era of speed cameras that ticket you for going even a mile over the posted limit, red light cameras that fine you for making safe “rolling stop” right-hand turns on red, surveillance cameras equipped with facial recognition software mounted on street corners, and school truancy laws that fine parents for “unexcused” absences.

My, how times have changed. Today, there’s little room for indiscretions, imperfections, or acts of independence — especially not when the government can listen in on your phone calls, monitor your driving habits, track your movements, scrutinize your purchases and peer through the walls of your home. That’s because technology — specifically the technology employed by the government against the American citizenry — has upped the stakes dramatically so that there’s little we do that is not known by the government. In such an environment, you’re either a paragon of virtue, or you’re a criminal.

If you haven’t figured it out yet, we’re all criminals. This is the creepy, calculating yet diabolical genius of the American police state: the very technology we hailed as revolutionary and liberating has become our prison, jailer, probation officer, Big Brother and Father Knows Best all rolled into one.

How do you survive in the American police state? We’re running out of options. As Philip K Dick, the visionary who gave us Minority Report and Blade Runner, advised: “If, as it seems, we are in the process of becoming a totalitarian society in which the state apparatus is all-powerful, the ethics most important for the survival of the true, free, human individual would be: cheat, lie, evade, fake it, be elsewhere, forge documents, build improved electronic gadgets in your garage that’ll outwit the gadgets used by the authorities.”

He told LBC: "We’ve got a strategy to encourage people, with their cameras, that is to move them down to eye level." But he warned they needed to be positioned correctly to be useful, adding: "Over the last year as facial recognition software has got better we can apply the software to the images of burglaries or robberies and we can compare those images with the images we take when we arrest people.

"What we need to be able to do is to be able to compare that photograph with the images we have of people committing a crime. As importantly, you get a whole shot of what happened at the event: What did they steal? Did they use a knife? You get all that. But more relevant today is a face. That’s what we need."

In addition, the institute operates an educational center for visitors and a preparatory training program for members of the priestly family who wish to be ready to serve as soon as the Temple is rebuilt. The altar is a central component to the Biblical sacrificial service. In fact, there were separate altars for the incense and for other sacrifices.

According to the Bible, the altar may not be made out of stones hewn by metal implements. The altar prepared by the Temple Institute, under the direction of architect Rabbi Shmuel Balsam, follows this requirement.

It is constructed instead from bricks fired at roughly 1,000 degrees Celsius (1,832 degrees Fahrenheit), to withstand the immense heat of the Temple’s eternal flame and the weight of the sacrificial animals. Its measurements conform to the interpretation of Maimonides.

What makes the altar so unique is that it can be disassembled and reassembled easily, allowing it to be transported quickly and efficiently from its current location, on display at the institute, to the Temple Mount when the time comes. It was inaugurated in December 2014 and is now ready for use. With Passover around the corner, and the Passover sacrifice a central component of the traditional celebration, perhaps that time will come soon!