Look, you’d say, we have moon rock samples and pictures and we left laser reflectors on the surface and... basically you still don’t believe me but that’s because you’re mad and no proof on earth (or the moon) would satisfy you. It’s true that there was always the big one which wasn’t quite so easily dismissed. This was the Kennedy assassination - but here you could be fairly sure that the whole thing was a terrible, impenetrable murky morass.

This nice, cozy state of affairs lasted until the early 2000s. But then something changed. These days conspiracy theories don’t look so crazy and conspiracy theorists don’t look like crackpots. In fact, today’s conspiracy theory is tomorrow’s news headlines. It’s tempting, I suppose, to say we live in a golden age of conspiracy theories, although it’s only really golden for the architects of the conspiracies. From the Iraq war to Fifa to the banking crisis, the truth is not only out there, but it’s more outlandish than anything we could have made up.

Where do you start? We could look at the EU and pick anything from its rarely signed-off accounts to the giant sham that let Greece join the Euro in the first place. We could look at UK defence procurement – and how we get so much less bang for our buck than France. We could peer at the cloying, incestuous relationship between the UK’s political class and its media moguls and how our leaders still fawn over a man whose poisonous control over so much of our media dates back to a dodgy deal in 1981 that was denied for 30 years. We could look at the NSA and its intimate/bullying relationship with tech companies. And we could go on and on and on.

In the X-Files, Fox Mulder’s famous catchphrase was, “I want to believe” but that’s because the conspiracy theories he dealt with were rather good fun. Ours, by contrast, tend to involve an endless procession of wealthy old men abusing their power. So I don’t want to believe any more. I want my kids to grow up in a world where conspiracy theories are something you laugh at.

The Union flag must "always take priority", a spokesman for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office told the Daily Mail. The spokesman added: "It is flown from the FCO’s main flagpole at all times. It is never substituted for another flag. It is the FCO’s long-standing policy to fly the Union flag, national flags and the flags of Overseas Territories."

A spokesman for Stonewall, the LGBT rights charity, said: “It’s hugely disappointing that British embassies have been banned from flying the rainbow flag this summer. Pride events celebrate and recognise the diverse LGBT community, and flying the flag demonstrates a commitment to supporting this community. We know the rainbow flag has been welcomed and flown with pride in the past, and hope this decision will be reconsidered.”

Senate Bill 862, which Oklahoma Governor Mary Fallin signed into law this week, says, Gold and silver coins issued by the United States government are legal tender in the State of Oklahoma. No person may compel another person to tender or accept gold or silver coins that are issued by the United States government, except as agreed upon by contract.

The new law also exempts all state-level taxes that Oklahoma residents would otherwise have to pay when exchanging gold or silver back into paper money:

While frackers and big energy remain exempt from the restrictions, Caren Trgovcich, chief deputy director of the water board, explains, "we are now at the point where demand in our system is outstripping supply for even the most senior water rights holders." With "the whole damn state out of water," AP reports State water officials told more than a hundred senior rights holders in California's Sacramento, San Joaquin and delta watersheds to stop pumping from those waterways.

As NASA concluded previously, as difficult as it may be to face, the simple fact is that California is running out of water — and the problem started before our current drought. NASA data reveal that total water storage in California has been in steady decline since at least 2002, when satellite-based monitoring began, although groundwater depletion has been going on since the early 20th century.

Right now the state has only about one year of water supply left in its reservoirs, and our strategic backup supply, groundwater, is rapidly disappearing. California has no contingency plan for a persistent drought like this one (let alone a 20-plus-year mega-drought), except, apparently, staying in emergency mode and praying for rain. In short, we have no paddle to navigate this crisis.

“The decommissioning of the Zimbabwean dollar has therefore been pending and long outstanding since 2009,” Mangudya said on Thursday. “We cannot have two legal currency systems. We need therefore to safeguard the integrity of the multiple-currency system or dollarization in Zimbabwe.”

The economy plunged into crisis after the government started a campaign in 2000 of violent seizures of white-owned commercial farms to distribute to black subsistence growers, slashing exports of tobacco and other crops. Inflation surged to 500 billion percent and the economy shrank during a near decade-long recession that ended in 2009. Under policies implemented by a coalition government, the economy began expanding and the recognition of foreign currencies as legal tender helped tame inflation.

Savers with Zimbabwe dollars in their bank accounts will get a flat $5 for anything up to 175 quadrillion Zimbabwean dollars. They can convert any cash they have “on a no questions asked basis” at a rate of $1 to 250 trillion Zimbabwe dollars for notes printed before 2009, Mangudya said.

Here Mr Lyon explains why the trust has become even more cautiously positioned since the start of 2015, so much so that even Warren Buffett’s company is no longer viewed as a buy. “It is our job to avoid bubbles, so when stock markets are in buoyant mood and people become more greedy we do the opposite, preferring to be circumspect and protect investors from the risks.

“Global markets have enjoyed a largely uninterrupted rally over the past six years and the FTSE 100 has hit an all-time high this year, but we view these things as reason for caution rather than celebration. How has the equity weighting of the trust changed over the past couple of years? We had 75 percent of the trust invested in shares in 2009, 45 percent at the start of 2015 and 40 percent now.”

The euro partners have agreed in the face of the solidified negotiations with Greece on a contingency plan for Athens. This became known on Monday in Berlin and Brussels. It stipulates that creditors want to give the Greeks initially another chance and wait to see if by the end of the week it is possible to Euro finance ministers to agree with the government in Athens to the corners to meet the current emergency program.

Elapses this deadline without agreement, to be convened without further delay a special meeting of heads of state and government in Brussels. In an interview for this is Friday night. At the special summit a political solution should be sought again.

French President Francois Hollande warned on Monday against the failure of the negotiations. The deadlines were extremely short. "I have often said: caution, we now come in a period that can be turbulent, if no agreement is found," he said during a visit to the air show in Le Bourget near Paris. If Athens refuse to remain the euro area countries as a last resort, to isolate Greece in the payment system.

Syriza sources say measures being drafted include capital controls and the establishment of a sovereign central bank able to stand behind a new financial system. While some form of dual currency might be possible in theory, such a structure would be incompatible with euro membership and would imply a rapid return to the drachma.

The confidential plans were circulating over the weekend and have the backing of 30 MPs from the Aristeri Platforma or 'Left Platform', as well as other hard-line groupings in Syriza's spectrum. It is understood that the nationalist ANEL party in the ruling coalition is also willing to force a rupture with creditors, if need be.

"This goes well beyond the Left Platform. We are talking serious numbers," said one Syriza MP involved in the draft. "We are all horrified by the idea of surrender, and we will not allow ourselves to be throttled to death by European monetary union," he told the Telegraph.

Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras ignored pleas from European leaders to act fast. Instead he blamed creditors for Sunday's breakdown of the cash-for-reform talks, the biggest setback in long-running negotiations to unlock aid. He said his government had a responsibility to defend Greece's dignity and would resist demands for further pension cuts. "It is not a matter of ideological stubbornness. It has to do with democracy," said the 40-year-old leftist, who was elected on a pledge to end austerity.

Athens now has just two weeks to find a way out of the impasse before it faces a 1.6 billion euro repayment due to the International Monetary Fund, potentially leaving it out of cash, unable to borrow and dangling on the edge of the currency area. Germany and other creditor nations demanded that Athens come to its senses and offer new proposals.

"It won't work that Greece sets the terms and says 'everyone has to dance to our tune'. Greece needs to get back to reality," Volker Kauder, parliamentary floor leader of Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservatives, told ARD television. Belgian Finance Minister Johan Van Overtveldt said the euro zone's credibility would be damaged and radical forces in other countries emboldened if past accords with Greece were changed.

These remarks are especially shocking following the 2013 Edward Snowden revelations detailing the scope and scale of the illegal global surveillance the United States and their allies in the Five Eyes group have been engaged in following 9/11. Information leaked by the former NSA contractor sparked universal outrage but nowhere has it been so widespread as in Germany, considering that the US allegedly even spied on the phone of Chancellor Angela Merkel.

"Germany, German politicians and the German economy are among the primary targets of American intelligence services," Polli told Deutsche Wirtschafts Nachrichten, adding that authorities are technically unable to protect the government, businesses and society from snooping.

Following the revelations, Merkel tried to push through a bilateral no-spy agreement with the United States. "At no point in time has Washington taken [the deal] seriously," the security expert said. Therefore, nothing has changed and the surveillance goes on.

Developed by Odortec, an Israeli company that specializes in scent-based weapons for law enforcement, in collaboration with the Israeli police, skunk water emits a stench that has been described as a cross between a rotting animal corpse, raw sewage and human excrement. The smell is so strong that Israeli police refuse to store the substance inside their stations.

Released at high pressure from a water cannon attached to the top of a military truck, the skunk odor sticks to walls, clothing, hair and skin for days and is impossible to wash away. Ramallah-based activist and writer Mariam Barghouti once told The Electronic Intifada’s Patrick Strickland that “the water lingers on your skin to a point when you want to rip your skin off.”

The German public are said to be excited about the prospect of the royal visit and Mrs Merkel will attend a dinner with Mr Cameron at the Bellevue Palace on June 24, the day before a vital two-day meeting with other European leaders.

Downing Street insists that the Germans have invited Mr Cameron to the dinner and that the timing is coincidental.

However, the visit and dinner could barely have come at a better time for the Prime Minister as he is struggling to attract European allies in his attempts to renegotiate Britain's relationship with the EU.

The agenda was poverty, and Francis inveighed against the “economy of exclusion” as he addressed Mr Ban’s delegation at the Apostolic Palace. But in an informal meeting with Mr Ban and his advisers, Francis shifted the discussion to the environment and how environmental degradation weighed heaviest on the poor.

“This is the pope of the poor,” said Robert Orr, who attended the May 2014 meeting as Mr Ban’s special adviser on climate change and described the informal conversation with Francis. “The fact that he is making the link to the planet is really significant.”

On Thursday, Francis will release his first major teaching letter, known as an encyclical, on the theme of the environment and the poor. Given the pope’s widespread popularity, and his penchant for speaking out on major global issues, the encyclical is being treated as a milestone that could place the Roman Catholic Church at the forefront of a new coalition of religion and science.

Francis, the first pope from the developing world, clearly wants the document to have an impact: Its release comes during a year with three major international policy meetings, most notably a United Nations climate change conference in Paris in December. This month, the Vatican sent notifications to bishops around the world with instructions for spreading the pope’s environmental message to the more than one billion Catholics worldwide.

By wading into the environment debate, Francis is seeking to redefine a secular topic, one usually framed by scientific data, using theology and faith. And based on Francis’ prior comments, and those of influential cardinals, the encyclical is also likely to include an economic critique of how global capitalism, while helping lift millions out of poverty, has also exploited nature and created vast inequities.

“We clearly need a fundamental change of course, to protect the earth and its people — which in turn will allow us to dignify humanity,” Cardinal Peter Turkson of Ghana, who oversaw the drafting of the encyclical, said at a conference on climate change this spring at the Vatican.

Bioethics benefits: “Bioethics is better than it would otherwise have been, because people queer in their sexual interests and identities have challenged misconceived concepts of health and disease, challenged obstacles to access and equity in healthcare, and forced attention to professional standards in clinical care, among other things.”

Defending LGBT parenting: To show that the battle is not completely over, Murphy cites Oxford philosopher John Finnis’s implacable opposition to adoption by male and female homosexuals as “intrinsically evil”. Putting “skepticism about LGBT people as fit parents fully behind it” will be one of the first tasks of fully developed LGBT bioethics.

Promoting new reproductive technologies: In the not-too-distant future it may be possible to use stem cell technology to create synthetic gametes for gay and lesbian couples. This will allow them to raise their own genetic children. “This option would go a long way in helping transgender people express and consolidate their gender identity,” writes Murphy.

Another development could be “male pregnancies”: Now that it is possible to transplant a uterus, why couldn’t males bear children? Paying for them: Shouldn’t insurers and the government pay for these very expensive technologies, if they already cover costs for heterosexual couples? “We need to begin asking these LGBT-centric questions.”

According to the BLS [Bureau of Labor Statistics], after a torrid 2014, in which there was a 24% surge in beef prices which central planners blamed on everything except their policies, in May the Beef and Veal price index just rose to a new all time high of 260.8, up 12.3% from a year ago, and up 30% in the past two years.

So yes, aside from soaring rent prices and costs of food that won't actually force you into an early grave, there is almost no inflation anywhere. Well, except gasoline prices too. After dropping sharply through the end of 2014 and in January, they have unambiguously surged pretty much in a diagonal line ever since.