The company did not give a figure for the investment in the factory, but said its production capacity could reach a value of 2 billion yuan (US$322 million) annually. Robots are set to take over in many factories in the Pearl River Delta, the area of southern China known as the ‘world’s workshop’ because of the huge export manufacturing industry there, as labour shortages bite and local authorities face the need to spur innovation to counter the economic slowdown.

Since September, a total of 505 factories across Dongguan have invested 4.2 billion yuan in robots, aiming to replace more than 30,000 workers, according to the Dongguan Economy and Information Technology Bureau. By 2016, up to 1,500 of the city’s industrial enterprises will began replacing humans with robots.

Officials believed the trees will continue to die as summer approaches. “It is almost certain that millions more trees will die over the course of the upcoming summer as the drought situation continues and becomes ever more long term and as bark beetle populations continue to expand,” he said.

William Patzert, climatologist for Jet Propulsion Laboratory, has told the Los Angeles Times that Calfornia's dwindling snowpack and warmer temperatures pose an extreme fire danger in the state's forests. Warmer temperatures are rapidly drying out the state, he said. Traditionally by spring, the forest is green and lush due to a substantial rainy season. But four years of drought and warm temperatures have taken their toll.

Early last month we warned that California’s drought was approaching historic proportions and that if climatologists were to be believed, the country may see a repeat of The Dirty Thirties as experts cite “Dust Bowl” conditions. Governor Jerry Brown has called for statewide water restrictions aimed at reducing consumption by 25%.

Now, the conservation calls are getting much louder as the state’s water regulators have approved “unprecedented” measures aimed at curtailing the crisis.

Iraq, South Sudan, Syria, Democratic Republic of Congo and Nigeria had the most newly displaced people. Jan Egeland, the NRC's secretary general, said the figures should act as a wake-up call to political leaders. "Global diplomats, UN resolutions, peace talks and ceasefire agreements have lost the battle against ruthless armed men who are driven by political or religious interests rather than human imperatives," he said in a statement.

The NRC's annual Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC) report said Syria had the highest number of internally displaced people - people who remain in their homeland, as opposed to refugees, who cross borders. It said 7.6 million people had left their homes because of the conflict, now in its fifth year - at least 35% of the population.

The robot weighs 140kg and it is powered by specially designed software and advanced actuators (a type of motor that controls mechanisms). SeppuKuma (“Suicide Bear”) also offers 23 very different methods one can choose to end their life, including Everlasting Sleep (lethal injection), Pillow Kisses (suffocation), Peaceful Breath (helium asphyxia) and Sleepy time Hug which is where the robotic bear strangles its partner until their pulse stops for 15 minutes. All of these attributes enable the SeppuKuma to give its patient the power to choose how they get to end their own life.

The researchers have been working to develop a robot to assist with patient suicide since 2009. The first version was Robot for HAIRAKUMA which could lift a weight of up to 61kg. The second incarnation, HAIRAKUMA-II, weighs 230kg and can carry a weight of up to 80kg. The HAIRAKUMA-II was recalled immediately from test markets after a glitch in the AI Systems vital sign monitor left the bodies of 12 beta testing patient’s bodies horribly disfigured but still alive.

“The very sleek and friendly look is aimed at radiating an atmosphere of strength, forgiveness and cleanliness at the same time,” research leader Tsuneki Suko said. “We voted for this design among options presented by our designer. We hope to commercialize our suicide robot in the not too distant future.”

Timothy Adams, the chief executive of the IIF, which represents the world’s biggest banks, described liquidity as the “top issue” at high level meetings of central bankers, chief executives and other financial institutions.

He warned that the raft of regulation introduced in the wake of the 2008 crisis could potentially cause market gyrations larger than last October’s “flash crash” in US Treasuries. While Mr Adams supports tougher rules that have made the banks more resilient, he said a complex web of regulatory reform may have left banks less able to respond to the next crisis.

“There’s just less capacity for making markets,” he said. “Officials will say: we expect some volatility and this was part of this broader scheme of regulatory reform. But for the private sector there is this issue of: is the total effect of all of these various regulatory changes likely to produce outcomes larger than each individual regulatory reform and its consequences? The cumulative unintended result could end up being much larger than the one-off intended - we just don’t know.”

Nobel Prize–winning economist Robert Shiller has added a new chapter to his bestselling book in which he argues that bond prices are “irrationally high”. The global bond bubble has ballooned to more than 76 trillion dollars, and interest rates have never been lower in modern history. In fact, 25 percent of all government bonds in Europe actually have a negative rate of return at this point.

There is literally nowhere for the bond market to go except for the other direction, and when this bull market turns into a bear it will create chaos and financial devastation all over the planet. For years, ultra-low interest rates have enabled governments around the world to go on a debt binge unlike anything the world has ever seen.

Showing very little restraint since the last financial crisis, they have piled up debts that are exceedingly dangerous. If interest rates were to return to historical norms, it would instantly create the greatest government debt crisis in history.

The irrational global financial bubble that investors have been enjoying for the past few years has stretched on far longer than it should have. But that is the way irrational bubbles work – they just keep going even when everyone can see that they have become absolutely absurd. However, eventually something always comes along and bursts them, and once that happens markets can crash very, very rapidly.

"Over the past few weeks, my office has been inundated with calls referring to the Jade Helm 15 military exercise scheduled to take place between July 15 and September 15, 2015," Gohmert said in a Tuesday statement. "This military practice has some concerned that the US Army is preparing for modern-day martial law. Certainly, I can understand these concerns."

"When leaders within the current administration believe that major threats to the country include those who support the Constitution, are military veterans, or even 'cling to guns or religion,' patriotic Americans have reason to be concerned," Gohmert wrote.

The congressman took particular issue with the layout and labels of the Pentagon map for the exercise. "Once I observed the map depicting 'hostile,' 'permissive,' and 'uncertain' states and locations, I was rather appalled that the hostile areas amazingly have a Republican majority, 'cling to their guns and religion,' and believe in the sanctity of the United States Constitution." Gohmert called on the Pentagon to change the map, the names on the map, and said "the tone of the exercise needs to be completely revamped so the federal government is not intentionally practicing war against its own states."

Only members of the House and Senate are currently allowed to view the text of the deal, and even they are forbidden from discussing what it contains. As a new report from Politico published Monday details, "If you’re a member who wants to read the text, you’ve got to go to a room in the basement of the Capitol Visitor Center and be handed it one section at a time, watched over as you read, and forced to hand over any notes you make before leaving."

As for the public, a few unauthorized leaks of the text have previewed a deal that would "dramatically expand the power of corporations to use closed-door tribunals to challenge — and supersede — domestic laws, including environmental, labor, and public health, and other protections."

The lack of transparency over the trade agenda has become a central argument for a growing number of opponents, who see the deal as a corporate power grab and "feel they are being treated with disrespect and condescension," as Politico's Edward-Isaac Dovere explains.

Speaking to an audience at the Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium, Jean-Claude Juncker said a "Grexit" would expose the EU to huge risk, leaving the euro prey to forces who "would do everything to try to decompose" what remained of the monetary union. “Grexit is not an option,” said Mr Juncker.

“If we were to accept, if Greece were to accept, if others were to accept that Greece could leave the area of solidarity and prosperity that is the eurozone, we would put ourselves at risk because some, notably in the Anglo Saxon world, would try everything to deconstruct the euro area piece by piece, little by little.”

Right now, the most popular movie in America is “Avengers: Age of Ultron”, and in recent years we have watched films about “mutants” and “superheroes” become some of Hollywood’s biggest moneymakers. But transhumanists believe that we will soon be able to literally turn ourselves into such superheroes as technology continues to increase at an exponential rate.

And once we have superhuman powers and superhuman intelligence, they are convinced that we will eradicate all sickness, disease, poverty and war. Many of them actually believe that we will be able to achieve immortality and establish a utopia on Earth just a few decades from now. In other words, we won’t need a “God” because we will have become our own gods.

And there are even some transhumanists that couch their hopes and dreams for the future in religious terminology. For example, transhumanist Mark Pesce is fully convinced that transhumanism will allow ordinary humans “to become as gods”…

This lack of a complete picture comes partially because the scientists stumbled upon this finding. Lead researcher Johannes Karstensen, of Germany’s GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel, and several other scientists have studied this part of the world’s oceans for about a decade. Every couple of years, they retrieve and check their instrumentation.

“In 2010, when we recovered our instruments, we all of a sudden saw that the typically high oxygen was very low, nearly absent,” Karstensen told weather.com. “That really was remarkable for us. First we thought there was a problem with the censor, but we have another instrument a little deeper, about 100 meters, and that also recorded much lower values typically found in that range.”

Karstensen said it’s likely not the first time these Atlantic dead zones have shown up in data, but in all likelihood, other researchers wrote them off as inaccurate, an outlier, a measurement error because these areas are expected to have high oxygen levels. Only in the past decade or so, he added, have instruments produced high-enough quality data to get proper oxygen readings.

Shri Rakesh Tikait, National Spokesperson for the Bhartiya Kisan Union (BKU) explains:

"The government is exhibiting its pro-industry stance by pushing for unneeded, unwanted and unsafe GMOs in our farming. We want all open air field trials of GM crops stopped immediately in the country since such open air trials pose not only a risk of contamination but also risk of trade rejection. Further, any moves towards trade liberalization in agriculture whether through the WTO route or through free trade agreements are unacceptable to us.”