The human gut contains around 3,500 different microbial species, which together make up some three pounds in weight. Scientists now believe a diet based on a limited range of highly processed foods, rather than those found in a balanced, healthy diet, can wipe out the number of stomach flora by more than a third.

The discovery could explain why some people put on weight while others don’t, despite eating roughly similar amounts of fat, sugar, protein and carbohydrates. The finding emerged from studies conducted by Tim Spector, professor of genetic epidemiology at King’s College London.

Professor Spector said: “Microbes get a bad press, but only a few of the millions of species are harmful, and many are crucial to our health. What is emerging is that changes in our gut microbe community, or microbiome, are likely to be responsible for much of our obesity epidemic, and consequences like diabetes, cancer and heart disease”.

Excluding fat and sugar are less important to a healthy diet than making sure the food one eats is as diverse and natural as possible, Professor Spector said. His advice chimes with studies suggesting that Belgian Beer, garlic, coffee, leeks and celery are ideal foods for promoting healthy gut flora.

He said Crown Prince Mohammed bin Nayef, who is also interior minister, would lead the Saudi delegation and the king's son, Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who is defense minister, will also attend. President Barack Obama had planned to meet Salman one-on-one a day before the gathering of leaders at the presidential retreat but the White House did not take his decision to skip the summit as a sign of any substantial disagreement with the US.

The king, who took power in January after his brother King Abdullah died, has not traveled abroad since his ascension to the throne. At the summit, leaders of Gulf nations will be looking for assurance that Obama has their support when the region feels under siege from Islamic extremists and Syria, Iraq and Yemen are in various states of chaos. Arab allies also feel threatened by Iran's rising influence and worry the nuclear pact taking shape with the US, Iran and other nations may embolden Tehran to intrude more aggressively in countries of the region.

Of the ACLU, he said: “Communism, of course, is the goal.” Although he is said to have ‘recanted’ that comment, he did so after too many others had discovered his real purposes. Tragically, the ACLU still remains in place. Baldwin’s history is rife with his support of Soviet Russian style Marxism and only requires a brief search to pull up the actions comprising his legacy.

Although many in the past have set the table for the USA’s destruction, it was not until Barack Hussein Obama took the US White House as his own that the final phase began implementation. It has been extremely easy for Obama and his syndicate to “transform” (aka “dismantle and decimate”) the USA from within, as the people of the country had already been conditioned to following the authority of leftist-run public (government) school systems and would buckle to any far-Left Luciferian authority’s order they faced. The new mantra is “It’s better to die than be called a racist, homophobe, Islamophobe” etc.

In order to prove they were none of those, a great portion of the liberal electorate voted for Obama so that they might be counted as a good guy or girl by their peers. Policies to actually help the country to prosper and become freer no longer mattered… it was how the “selfie” crowd was perceived that counted. That remains true today. So… they elected Obama to assuage their presumed shame for forgotten past sins and allowed him to do whatever he wanted to the country and to them.

Generations are now being raised to submit to any and all leftist authority and to regurgitate their mantras and beliefs on command. To not do so would be unseemly to the indoctrinated… and, nowadays, it has become increasingly dangerous. I and others have written innumerable columns about what Obama has been doing to destroy our country.

(From The National Review)

In an interview with ABC Radio last week, philosopher and professor Adam Swift said that since “bedtime stories activities… do indeed foster and produce… [desired] familial relationship goods,” he wouldn’t want to ban them, but that parents who “engage in bedtime-stories activities” should definitely at least feel kinda bad about it sometimes: “I don’t think parents reading their children bedtime stories should constantly have in their minds the way that they are unfairly disadvantaging other people’s children, but I think they should have that thought occasionally,” he said.

I note this article because people like Mr Swift always seem to find their way into policy making circles. Think Johnathan Gruber. What one day is just the idiotic ranting of an obscure professor overnight becomes law, with the force of law.

'I always call for a European army as a long-term project. It is not something you can build from scratch tomorrow morning,' he said. Juncker has consistently backed the idea that the EU's 28 member nations - all no strangers to a bloody, war-torn past - should accept a military arm, a need highlighted by the Ukraine crisis.

'A common army among the Europeans would convey to Russia that we are serious about defending the values of the European Union,' he told Germany's Welt am Sonntag in March. A joint EU force would also rationalise defence spending and drive further EU integration.

For many European Union states, however, defence is a no-go area, with Britain especially hostile to sacrificing what it sees as a core sovereign prerogative to Brussels. Britain also insists that NATO, the US-led military alliance set up to hold the Cold War line against the Soviet Union, should remain the focus of European defence efforts.

Juncker told the forum that considering the current fragmented state of EU military readiness, it was perfectly 'right that central and eastern European countries put their trust primarily in NATO.' 'The 28 armies are just not up to it,' he added. EU leaders are due to review the bloc's security policy at a June summit to take on board the threat posed by a more assertive Russia and turmoil across North Africa and the Middle East.

With the first votes on the Trade Promotion Authority (TPA) that would fast-track TPP just days away, it’s looking like Senate Majority Leader Senator Mitch McConnell (Republican for Kentucky) expects Americans to accept former House Speaker Representative Nancy Pelosi’s (Democrat for California) Obamacare logic for the trade deal: you have to pass it to find out what’s in it.

“If you want to hear the details of the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal the Obama administration is hoping to pass, you’ve got to be a member of Congress, and you’ve got to go to classified briefings and leave your staff and cellphone at the door,” Politico’s Edward-Isaac Dovere wrote earlier this week. “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. And no matter what, you can’t discuss the details of what you’ve read.”

"It is really worrisome," said top House Ways and Means Committee Democrat Representative Sandy Levin. "Countries do not want to give away their jurisdiction to some arbitrary panel," he added.

At issue is the pending Trans-Pacific Partnership treaty and a provision called "Investor-State Dispute Settlement," or ISDS, that would let foreign firms challenge US laws, potentially overruling those laws and resulting in fines to be paid by taxpayers. The provisions are becoming common in some trade deals between other nations.

Levin also joined in Alabama Republican Senator Jeff Sessions' demand that the Asia trade pact be opened to the public. Currently, it is being kept in secret and only those cleared to see it are allowed to. Levin said, for example, that he was barred from discussing some TPP provision with Jeffrey Sachs, prominent international economist at Columbia University. The White House has dismissed the secrecy claims, but Sachs said, "It is secret. I haven't seen it. I can't see it."

The legal team led by Kerry W Kircher, who was appointed House General Counsel by Speaker John Boehner in 2011, claimed that the insider trading probe violated the separation of powers between the legislative and executive branch.

In 2012, members of Congress patted themselves on the back for passing the STOCK Act, a bill meant to curb insider trading for lawmakers and their staff. “We all know that Washington is broken and today members of both parties took a big step forward to fix it,” said Representative Bill Johnson, Republican for Ohio, upon passage of the law.

But as the Securities and Exchange Commission made news with the first major investigation of political insider trading, Congress moved to block the inquiry.

The SEC investigation focused on how Brian Sutter, then a staffer for the House Ways and Means Committee, allegedly passed along information about an upcoming Medicare decision to a lobbyist, who then shared the tip with other firms. Leading hedge funds used the insider tip to trade on health insurance stocks that were affected by the soon-to-be announced Medicare decision.

China currently operates several armed and unarmed drone aircraft and is developing long-range unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) for both intelligence gathering and bombing attacks. “The acquisition and development of longer-range UAVs will increase China’s ability to conduct long-range reconnaissance and strike operations,” the report said.

China’s ability to use drones is increasing and the report said China “plans to produce upwards of 41,800 land- and sea-based unmanned systems, worth about $10.5 billion, between 2014 and 2023.” Four UAVs under development include the Xianglong, Yilong, Sky Saber, and Lijian, with the latter three drones configured to fire precision-strike weapons.

“The Lijian, which first flew on November 21, 2013, is China’s first stealthy flying wing UAV,” the report said. The drone buildup is part of what the Pentagon identified as a decades-long military buildup that last year produced new multi-warhead missiles and a large number of submarines and ships.

Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Commander Hossein Salami threatened the US during a television interview aired on Tehran’s state-run television. “We have prepared ourselves for the most dangerous scenarios and this is no big deal and is simple to digest for us; we welcome war with the US as we do believe that it will be the scene for our success to display the real potentials of our power,” Salami was quoted as saying by the Fars News Agency.

The remarks came as Secretary of State John Kerry and several lawmakers met with Israeli leaders this week to discuss the Iranian threat.

Salami, according to Fars, “warned that Tehran will set fire to every military base from which a hostile US plane takes off for bombing Iran.”

“We warn their pilots that their first flight (to target Iran) will be their last one and no one will be allowed to go back safe and sound and they should call their flights as their last flight,” the IRGC leader was quoted as saying.

Comey said the Islamic State, also known as ISIL, is leveraging social media in unprecedented ways through Twitter and other platforms, directing messages to the smartphones of "disturbed people'' who could be pushed to launch assaults on U.S. targets.

"It's like the devil sitting on their shoulders, saying 'kill, kill, kill,''' Comey said in a meeting with reporters.

The FBI director's comments come in the midst of a federal investigation into a foiled attack in Garland, Texas, involving two ISIL sympathizers, one of whom, Elton Simpson, was long known to federal authorities.

While serving her 35-year sentence in military custody, Manning has taken to studying current freedom of information laws and has written a 31-page proposal for legislation to protect whistleblowers and those who publish the information they provide.

In particular, she proposes reforms to use of the Espionage Act, which has been used eight times during the Obama administration to prosecute people for passing classified information to the media, including to convict Manning herself.

Her proposed name for the bill is the National Integrity and Free Speech Protection Act (NIFSPA).

Writing in the Guardian Wednesday, Manning argued that protecting those who bring information to the press is essential to a functioning democracy since, "when the public lacks even the most fundamental access to what its governments and militaries are doing in their names, then they cease to be involved in the act of citizenship."

The Conservatives have 330 seats - four more than needed for a Commons majority - their first such victory since 1992. Mr Cameron's rivals Ed Miliband, Nick Clegg and Nigel Farage have all resigned after election disappointment.

The Conservative leader is now beginning the process of putting together the new government, with senior Cabinet appointments expected to be announced later on Friday. Mr Cameron said he would reach out to all parts of the UK and strive to "bring the country together" in the wake of the SNP's election landslide in Scotland - where it won 56 of the 59 seats.

The Conservatives' victory means they will be able to govern without the need for a coalition or a formal agreement with other parties. Speaking in Downing Street, he said: "We will govern as a party of one nation, one United Kingdom. That means ensuring this recovery reaches all parts of our country, from north to south, to east to west." He said he would press ahead with devolution of powers to all nations as well as the referendum on the UK's EU membership.

Jean-Claude Juncker, president of the European Commission, said he would work constructively with the new UK government and would consider "proposals, ideas or requests" about the UK's membership "in a very polite, friendly and objective way".

Labour has been all but wiped out by the SNP in Scotland and is failing to make enough gains in England and Wales. The Lib Dems are heading for as few as eight MPs, with Vince Cable, Ed Davey and Danny Alexander losing their seats.

The BBC forecast, with well over half of the results now in, is Conservative 329, Labour 233, the Lib Dems eight, the SNP 56, Plaid Cymru three, UKIP two, the Greens one and others 19.

Ruling on a program revealed by former government security contractor Edward Snowden, the 2nd US Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan said the Patriot Act did not authorize the National Security Agency to collect Americans' calling records in bulk.

Circuit Judge Gerard Lynch wrote for a three-judge panel that Section 215, which addresses the FBI's ability to gather business records, could not be interpreted to have permitted the NSA to collect a "staggering" amount of phone records, contrary to claims by the Bush and Obama administrations.

"Such expansive development of government repositories of formerly private records would be an unprecedented contraction of the privacy expectations of all Americans," Lynch wrote in a 97-page decision. "We would expect such a momentous decision to be preceded by substantial debate, and expressed in unmistakable language. There is no evidence of such a debate."

ACLU lawyer Alex Abdo welcomed Thursday's decision. "Mass surveillance does not make us any safer, and it is fundamentally incompatible with the privacy necessary in a free society," he said.