Specific actions protected under the legislation include:

1. Brandishing a pastry or other food which is partially consumed in such a way that the remnant resembles a weapon.

2. Possession of a toy weapon which is five (5) inches or less.

3. Possession of a toy weapon made of plastic or wood snap-together building blocks.

4. Using a finger or hand to simulate a weapon.

5. Vocalizing imaginary firearms or munitions.

6. Wearing articles of clothing or accessories that support or advance Second Amendment rights or organizations.

The bill also protects students who use objects such as a pencil to simulate a gun, as well as protecting those who draw pictures of firearms, military vehicles, aircraft or any object that can be deemed to protect constitutional freedoms.

"We must not avoid confrontation with populists, nationalists, with these brainless people who call themselves Eurosceptics," he told the Greek Ta Nea newspaper while on a visit to Athens. "They all promote anything national without making proposals of their own." His comments are an opening shot in what is expected to be a fierce political battle in European elections this May amid a growing popular backlash against the eurozone.

"I am concerned about the situation in our union," he said. "The economic crisis could activate centrifugal political forces that could prove dangerous to the European Union as a whole."

Martin Callanan MEP, the leader of the European Conservatives and Reform group, in the European Parliament, said: "The most dangerous people in the EU are those who put their head in the sand and ignore people's concerns about the direction the EU has taken. They are the brainless ones who can only shout abuse at those who want the EU to interfere less."

Mr Steinmeier's remarks are the first time that a senior German politician has identified Eurosceptic opposition as an existential threat ahead of spring elections to the European Parliament that are expected to mark big gains for anti-EU parties. Mr Steinmeier's hostility to Eurosceptics also includes British Conservatives like David Cameron, the Prime Minister.

The inquiry by the European parliament's civil liberties committee says the activities of America's National Security Agency (NSA) and its British counterpart, GCHQ, appear to be illegal and that their operations have "profoundly shaken" the trust between countries that considered themselves allies.

The 51-page draft report, obtained by the Guardian, was discussed by the committee on Thursday. Claude Moraes, the rapporteur asked to assess the impact of revelations made by the whistleblower Edward Snowden, also condemns the "chilling" way journalists working on the stories have been intimidated by state authorities.

Though Snowden is still in Russia, MEPs are expected to take evidence from him via video-link in the coming weeks, as the European parliament continues to assess the damage from the disclosures. Committee MEPs voted overwhelmingly on Thursday to have Snowden testify, defying warnings from key US congressmen that giving the "felon" a public platform would wreck the European parliament's reputation and hamper co-operation with Washington.

Hedge funds with trading activities exceeding a set value of $400 billion to $600 billion would also be assessed by national authorities to gauge whether they need extra rules because their collapse could spark a crisis, the Financial Stability Board said in a statement yesterday.

The report addresses “the risks to global financial stability and economic stability posed by the disorderly failure of financial institutions other than banks and insurers,” Mark Carney, Bank of England governor and FSB chairman, said in the statement. “They are integral to solving the problem of financial institutions that are too big to fail.”

The FSB, which brings together regulators and central bankers from the Group of 20 nations, is ranking banks and insurers by their potential to cause a global meltdown and demanding bigger financial cushions to avert a repeat of the 2008 credit freeze.

As Reuters reports, "If a ship docks in one of the closed ports," warned Libya's defense ministry, "then we will destroy it," but the group, led by tribal leader and 2011 civil war hero Ibrahim Jathran, shrugged off Tripoli’s warning, stating "we welcome global oil companies ... The oil security guards will guarantee the safety of tankers."

The development adds to an air of chaos as the weak Tripoli government struggles to rein in the armed groups that helped oust Muammar Gaddafi in 2011 but which kept their guns and are now demanding political power and a bigger share of the country’s oil wealth.

His supporters are aghast. “A black life ain’t worth nothing,” one shouts in court. One of his relatives stands outside the court shouting “No peace, no justice!” and gives a black power salute. But this is Britain, the relative is white – and the case of Mark Duggan does not conform to any “race riot” model. There were the usual attempts to argue differently yesterday, along with revived talk about “police racism” that lit the tinder of inequality.

But two years since the riots, it is hard – almost impossible – to conclude they can be explained by racial discrimination. The strange thing about Britain is that our social problems tend to have very little to do with racism, and all too much to do with the worklessness that still plagues inner-city estates.

It is also a gross exaggeration to describe the riots as a direct result of Duggan’s death. Those who took to the streets of Manchester and Milton Keynes had little idea who he was: they saw, from 24-hour news, that order seemed to have collapsed and that there was a great chance of some profitable criminality.

Overwhelmingly, it was former convicts who went off to loot. Of the 3,000 convicted, four-fifths had been through the courts before and a quarter had chalked up more than 10 previous offences. This looks less like an act of mass protest – against the treatment of Duggan, or anything else – and more like opportunistic crime. Known members of criminal gangs were disproportionately represented in the rioters, especially in Leeds and Nottingham. But again, you can look in vain for a racial element.

Speaking from her Paris headquarters, Miss Le Pen, whose party is expected to score well in forthcoming European elections, said Ukip is avoiding an alliance due to "electoral considerations". "They say they're not in agreement with us.

"My foot," she told the Telegraph. "OK, we don't have the same economic policies [but] they share our point of view on the European Union and immigration: everyone must control his borders, European technocrats must disappear, the European Soviet Union must collapse, everyone must have their own currency, their economic policy and decide in their own home."

"There are political considerations behind this," she said. "Ukip currently presides its own group and will try to rebuild that group (after the EU elections in May). If they don't manage to create a group again, they will surely not find it a bad idea to join with us."

Nigel Farage, the head of Ukip, ruled out joining forces, stating on Thursday: "We keep getting this every fortnight or so don't we? Look, we've made it clear that we don't intend to do a political deal at any point with French National Front. As a strictly non-racist and libertarian party, Ukip will be ploughing our own furrow in Europe with parties with which we are happy to do business and make a stand against the EU's political union."

The Abidor et al vs Napolitano et al case, which Judge Korman just dismissed in favor of the government, focused upon warrantless searches of laptops without suspicion at the border. In this case, an American student was stopped at the border after travelling to several Middle Eastern countries and was forced to unlock/surrender his laptop computer. Despite the fact that nothing illegal was found on the computer, it still took nearly two weeks for Abidor to recover his laptop (which held the only copy of his thesis paper).

While dismissing this case, Judge Korman conceded to the government’s assertion that there is a 100 miles zone inland from every international border where federal authorities to have the ability to search and seize digital devices without warrant or cause — his only caveat to this concession was that “if suspicionless forensic computer searches at the border threaten to become the norm, then some threshold showing of reasonable suspicion should be required.”

In short, if you live in or are travelling within 100 miles of any US border, it would be legal for federal authorities to stop you, force you to give them the password for your laptop, and seize your files — no warrant would be needed and there would be no certainty that you would ever recover your files or your digital devices.

"The virus likes cold, wet and cloudy days," said Rodney Baker, a swine veterinarian at Iowa State University at Ames, Iowa, the top pork producing state in the United States. At this time of year the virus gets frozen on clothes and shoes, making it easy to track around and spread, Baker added.

Porcine Epidemic Diarrhea virus (PEDv), which causes diarrhea, vomiting and severe dehydration in hogs, has spread quickly across the US hog belt since its discovery in the United States in April 2013. California and Wyoming are the latest states to report confirmed cases of the deadly pig virus, bringing the number of states affected to 22, the US Department of Agriculture said on Thursday.

The virus, which is transmitted orally and through pig feces, has left the hog industry scrambling to curb its spread and has fueled concerns that hog supplies will fall in the spring and summer. There are no official figures for pigs lost to the disease but US hog industry analysts estimate one million to four million have died.

Only one of the bombs went off and no one was hurt. But the killings are further heightening security concerns ahead of the Winter Olympics in Sochi, which also lies near the Caucasus region, where an Islamic insurgency is simmering.

Russia has already tightened security before next month’s Games, on which President Vladimir Putin has staked a lot of political and personal prestige, and is on high alert after suicide bombers killed at least 34 people in separate attacks in the southern city of Volgograd last month. Mr Putin said after the Volgograd attacks that he would annihilate all "terrorists" in Russia.

The Winter Olympics open in Sochi on February 7. The Black Sea resort is on the western edge of the Caucasus mountains where the insurgents want to carve out an Islamic state. The head of Russia's Olympic Committee has said no more can be done to safeguard the Games because every measure possible is already in place.

Lending companies — some of which are backed with venture funding from Google Ventures, the venture-capital arm of Google Inc, and Accel Partners, an early Facebook Inc investor — are looking at potential problems such as whether applicants put the same job information on their loan application as they posted on LinkedIn, or if they shared on Facebook that they had been let go by an employer.

A small business that draws negative reviews on eBay also could undermine its chances of getting more credit, lending companies say. The practice is being used largely by start-ups that grant smaller loans, but the concept seems likely to spread. Fair Isaac Corp, which provides the credit scoring used in more than 90% of lenders decisions, says it is weighing possibilities for incorporating social media.

The "preferential option for the poor" is back. The doctrine that so inflamed controversy in the 1970s and 1980, famously wedded to Nicaragua's Sandinista cause, now has a Papal imprimatur. It is close to becoming official doctrine for the world's 1.2 billion Roman Catholics under "Evangilii Gaudium", the Pope's first apostolic exhortation.

This will have consequences. "While the earnings of a minority are growing exponentially, so too is the gap separating the majority from the prosperity enjoyed by the happy few. This imbalance is the result of ideologies that defend the absolute autonomy of the marketplace and financial speculation," Pope Francis says.

The conservative power of the Papal Curia is being broken. All of a sudden the Vatican is the spearhead of radical economic thinking. The best-known of the Pope's newly-minted Council of Cardinals is none other than Archbishop Reinhard Marx, the firebrand "Rote Kardinal" of Munich and author of Das Kapital: A Plea for Man.

Until now there has been no unifying or coherent voice of protest against what Pope Francis calls the "idolatry of money", or a "new tyranny" of worldwide scale that relentlessly imposes its own rules, and knows no limits. So the task has fallen to the Catholic Church, the greatest moral and mobilising force in the world, flanked to some degree by Anglican prelates and Lutheran bishops.

This economic struggle has mass appeal. It may prove to be the launching pad for a Christian revival, inevitable in some form as militant Islam prompts Westerners to look back to their own cultural roots.

Viviane Reding, vice president of the European Commission and the longest serving Brussels commissioner, has called for "a true political union" to be put on the agenda for EU elections this spring. "We need to build a United States of Europe with the Commission as government and two chambers – the European Parliament and a "Senate" of Member States," she said.

Mrs Reding's vision, which is shared by many in the European institutions, would transform the EU into a superstate, relegating national governments and parliaments to a minor political role equivalent to that played by local councils in Britain. Under her plan, the commission would have supremacy over governments, and MEPs in the European Parliament would supersede the sovereignty of MPs in the House of Commons. National leaders, meeting as the European Council, would be reduced to consultative, second chamber roles similar to the House of Lords.

Nigel Farage, the leader of Ukip, said that Mrs Reding had revealed the true choice for British voters to make at polling stations. "For people in power in Brussels that is the only choice on offer, no reform just a United States of Europe.

On 22 May the British people must ask themselves if they want this and vote accordingly," he said. "I am sure people will say no to this centralist fanaticism." Mrs Reding's comments illustrate the growing gulf between a Europe committed to "ever closer union" and Britain, which is pushing to reduce the EU's powers. "We assume Britain's leaving the EU so we don't even bother thinking about British sensitivities at the moment," said an official.

Unemployment and poverty levels are setting record highs, car sales are setting record lows, and there is an ocean of bad loans and red ink everywhere you look. Over the past several years, most of the attention has been on the economic struggles of Greece, Spain and Portugal and without a doubt things continue to get even worse in those nations.

But in 2014 and 2015, Italy and France will start to take center stage. France has the 5th largest economy on the planet, and Italy has the 9th largest economy on the planet, and at this point both of those economies are rapidly falling to pieces. Expect both France and Italy to make major headlines throughout the rest of 2014. I have always maintained that the next major wave of the economic collapse would begin in Europe, and that is exactly what is happening.

Europe truly is experiencing an economic nightmare, and it is only going to get worse. It would be hard to put into words the extreme desperation that unemployed workers throughout Europe are feeling right now. When you can't feed your family and you can't find work no matter how hard you try, it can be absolutely soul crushing.

And this is just the beginning. The extreme recklessness of European banks such as Deutsche Bank and US banks such as JPMorgan Chase, Citibank and Goldman Sachs is eventually going to cause a financial catastrophe far worse than what we experienced back in 2008. When that crisis arrives, the flow of credit is going to freeze up dramatically and economic activity will grind to a standstill.

Unemployment, poverty and all of our current economic problems will become much, much worse. So as bad as things are right now, the truth is that this is nothing compared to what is coming.

The magnitude of today's debt in Western economies will mean fiscal austerity will not be sufficient, Harvard economists Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff said in the report, as policymakers continue to underestimate the depth and duration of the downturn.

"It is clear that governments should be careful in their assumption that growth alone will be able to end the crisis. Instead, today's advanced country governments may have to look increasingly to the approaches that have long been associated with emerging markets, and that advanced countries themselves once practiced not so long ago," they said.

Delving into the realms of history, they detail the widespread default by both advanced and emerging European nations on World War I debts to the United States during the 1930s. The research suggests that "collective amnesia" of this history has led to current policies that in some cases risk exacerbating the final costs of deleveraging.

"In Europe, where the financial crisis transformed into sovereign debt crises in several countries, the current phase of the denial cycle is marked by an official policy approach predicated on the assumption that normal growth can be restored through a mix of austerity, forbearance, and growth," Reinhart and Rogoff said.