The risk of an economic slowdown spreading from Europe’s peripheral nations to the region’s core countries, a sharp slowing of growth in China, and the possibility that US interest rates are hiked before the world’s biggest economy is ready were also on HSBC’s list.

The risk that the European Central Bank fails to launch “full-blown” quantitative easing was cited as another threat, as was the potential for “severe” strength of the US dollar, which would spur a sell-off in commodity markets that are all priced in the currency. Hyperinflation in Japan and a sudden evaporation of market liquidity also posed risks, HSBC said.

Italy’s Corriere della Sera newspaper, analyzing the pope’s remarks, concluded he believed animals have a place in the afterlife. It drew an analogy to comforting words that Pope Paul VI was said to have once told a distraught boy whose dog had died: “One day, we will see our animals again in the eternity of Christ. Paradise is open to all of God’s creatures.”

The news accounts of Francis’ remarks were welcomed by groups like the Humane Society of the United States and People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, who saw them as a repudiation of conservative Roman Catholic theology that says animals cannot go to heaven because they have no souls. “My inbox got flooded,” said Christine Gutleben, senior director of faith outreach at the Humane Society, the largest animal protection group in the United States. “Almost immediately, everybody was talking about it.”

Charles Camosy, an author and professor of Christian ethics at Fordham University, said it was difficult to know precisely what Francis meant, since he spoke “in pastoral language that is not really meant to be dissected by academics.” But asked whether the remarks had caused a new debate on whether animals have souls, suffer and go to heaven, Mr Camosy said, “In a word: absolutely.”

In his relatively short tenure as leader of the world’s one billion Roman Catholics since taking over from Benedict XVI, Francis, 77, has repeatedly caused a stir among conservatives in the church. He has suggested more lenient positions than his predecessor on issues like homosexuality, single motherhood and unwed couples. So to some extent, it was not a surprise that Francis, an Argentine Jesuit who took his papal name from St Francis of Assisi, the patron saint of animals, would suggest that they have a place in heaven.

What they won’t say is that it took a record-breaking $20.7 million of advertising, intended to misinform and confuse voters, for them to buy this “victory.” On the very day the judge denied voters in Oregon the right to have their votes counted, the pesticide and junk food makers were buying up seats on Capitol Hill, to make the case that no state should be allowed to pass a law requiring mandatory labeling of GMOs.

They are doing everything in their power to hide the truth about the toxic food they are producing, and the poisons they are unleashing into our environment. Just as we will continue to do everything in our power to expose their dirty, toxic secrets.

The fact is, they are losing. Vermont has passed a solid, enforceable GMO labeling law. Sales of organics continue to outpace sales of their GMO junk food. Companies like Coca-Cola and General Mills are struggling. Last week Hershey's announced it will remove genetically engineered high fructose corn syrup from its brand-name products. The United Nations has declared that small farmers, not Monsanto, will feed the world.

The Marxist vision of society has been disproved many times, always at epic human cost. However, his doctrine that productive forces propel history has stood the test of time – and is invaluable for an understanding of the current predicament of the European Union.

It elegantly explains why European Monetary Union was destined to fail. The state socialists and former communists who invented the euro never got to grips with this aspect of Marxist thought.

Only Conservatives with an intelligent appreciation of economics and history – an enlightened congregation that included Margaret Thatcher, Oliver Letwin, Peter Lilley, Tim Congdon, John Redwood, Nicholas Ridley and Alan Walters – grasped that the EMU would collapse under the weight of its own contradictions, and that it was folly to construct a single currency before the political conditions were in place.

However, the legislation was passed yesterday 325-100 via a voice vote, a green light for what Amash describes as “one of the most egregious sections of law I’ve encountered during my time as a representative”.

The bill allows the private communications of Americans to be scooped up without a court order and then transferred to law enforcement for criminal investigations. The legislation effectively codifies and legalizes mass warrantless NSA surveillance on the American people, with barely a whimper of debate.

Levin, who is retiring, maintains that Bush officials used the unconfirmed meeting to link Iraq to 9/11 and Al-Qaeda in order to justify the US invasion in Iraq. "There was a concerted campaign on the part of the Bush administration to connect Iraq in the public mind with the horror of the September 11 attacks. That campaign succeeded," said Levin, who cited opinion polls from that time showing that many Americans believed former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein was involved in the attacks. "Of course, connections between Saddam and 9/11 or Al-Qaida were fiction."

Levin has called for the full declassification of the Prague CIA cable and has repeatedly called on the directors of the CIA to make it public. Levin said the war in Iraq was the most significant event in his 36 years as a United States senator, and the cable is an important historical record showcasing why the US went to war in Iraq in 2003.

Levin said he is bringing up the CIA cable from a decade ago because it is about giving the American people a full account of the march to war as new information becomes available. He said it is about trying to hold leaders who misled the public accountable, and about warning future leaders that they must not commit sons and daughters to battle on the basis of false statements.

Carmen Maria Rodriguez of Radio Marti asked the question that sparked Dieng’s direct censure of Iran’s recent waves of calls for Israel’s annihilation. Dieng went on to elaborate that not only are Iran’s genocidal threats to wipe Israel off the map “totally unacceptable,” but also that “Israel is a state, and has the right to exist as a state, and its security has also to be protected.”

The utter simplicity and truth of Dieng’s statements stand in stark contrast to the common diplomatic barrage against Israel heard in the United Nations.

Nearly 240 departing and incoming commercial flights had been canceled at San Francisco International Airport by late morning, and delays for other flights averaged two hours, airport duty manager Bob Ritiski said. A downtown San Francisco subway station serving the financial district was closed through the morning commuter rush because of a power outage, and the city's electrified bus system was halted in many areas, transit officials said.

The storm was expected to provide only a small measure of relief from California's record, multi-year drought that has forced water managers to sharply reduce irrigation supplies to farmers and prompted drastic conservation measures statewide, weather officials said.

As much as 3 feet (1 meter) of snow is predicted this week for the higher elevations of the Sierra Nevada mountain range. But meteorologists said many months of rainfall would be needed to pull the state out of the drought.

In a nearly 15-minute speech from the Senate floor, McCain offered what is arguably the most robust defense so far of the report's release, referencing his own experience as a prisoner of war in Vietnam and rebuking his Republican colleagues by endorsing the study's findings. It is a thorough and thoughtful study of practices that I believe not only failed their purpose — to secure actionable intelligence to prevent further attacks on the US and our allies — but actually damaged our security interests, as well as our reputation as a force for good in the world.

His long time amigo Senator Lindsey Graham was one of many politicians and intelligence officials to say that the report — which contained graphic accounts of physical and psychological abuse — could damage American interests abroad and that the timing of its publication was "politically motivated. The timing of the release is problematic given the growing threats we face," Graham said on Tuesday. "Terrorism is on the rise, and our enemies will seize upon this report at a critical time. Simply put, this is not the time to release the report."

But most poignantly, McCain spoke of his own five-and-a-half-year captivity in Vietnam to argue that torture fails to yield credible information. "I know from personal experience that the abuse of prisoners will produce more bad than good intelligence. I know that victims of torture will offer intentionally misleading information if they think their captors will believe it. I know they will say whatever they think their torturers want them to say if they believe it will stop their suffering."

McCain added (emphatically) that "the use of torture compromises that which most distinguishes us from our enemies, our belief that all people, even captured enemies, possess basic human rights."

[Quoted from ‘atlantic.com’] "Verschärfte Vernehmung" – the Gestapo’s methods of examination.

The phrase "Verschärfte Vernehmung" is German for "enhanced interrogation". Other translations include "intensified interrogation" or "sharpened interrogation". It's a phrase that appears to have been concocted in 1937, to describe a form of torture that would leave no marks, and hence save the embarrassment pre-war Nazi officials were experiencing as their wounded torture victims ended up in court. The methods are indistinguishable from those described as "enhanced interrogation techniques" by the president.

We witnessed this in the summer of 2008 when a crash in commodity prices preceded the financial crisis in the fall by a couple of months. And right now, we are witnessing what may be another major collapse in commodity prices. In recent weeks, the price of copper has declined substantially. So has the price of iron ore. So has the price of nickel. So has the price of aluminum. You get the idea. So this isn’t just about oil. This is a broad-based commodity decline, and if it continues it is really bad news for the US economy.

Just remember what happened back in 2008. A lot of middle class families were living on the financial edge every month, and because they didn’t have any cushion to fall back on, millions of those families ended up losing their homes when their jobs disappeared. You need to have an emergency fund that can cover at least six months of expenses. You don’t want a job loss or a major emergency to put you into a situation where your family could be put out into the street.

And for those that still have lots of money invested in the stock market – I really hope that you know what you are doing.

The market giveth, and the market taketh away. And when the market taketh away, the consequences can often be exceedingly cruel.

Revolutionary changes sweeping the world’s energy industry will drive down the price of liquefied natural gas (LNG), creating a “multi-year” glut and a much cheaper source of gas for Europe. Francisco Blanch, the bank’s commodity chief, said Opec is “effectively dissolved” after it failed to stabilize prices at its last meeting. “The consequences are profound and long-lasting,” he said.

The free market will now set the global cost of oil, leading to a new era of wild price swings and disorderly trading that benefits only the Mid-East petro-states with deepest pockets such as Saudi Arabia. If so, the weaker peripheral members such as Venezuela and Nigeria are being thrown to the wolves.

The bank said in its year-end report that at least 15 percent of US shale producers are losing money at current prices, and more than half will be under water if US crude falls below $55.

Towed nets were used to scoop up plastic from five sub-tropical 'gyres' - huge areas of circulating ocean currents - as well as coastal Australia, the Bay of Bengal and the Mediterranean Sea. Albatrosses on remote pacific islands have been found to be ingesting so much plastic that their stomachs become full and they die. The sharp foreign objects also lacerate their gut walls.

Elsewhere, the bodies of sea turtles are being found with stomachs full of plastic, because they are prone to mistaking bags for jellyfish. The plastic can block the digestive tract, leading to a slow death from starvation. It was recently estimated that 90 per cent of seabirds found dead on beaches have ingested plastic.