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.

This has in turn caused mass deaths with at least 25 separate colonies wiped out since the weekend. 'The heatwave was basically a catastrophe for all the bat colonies in south-east Queensland,' he said. 'That's obviously going to have a pretty disturbing impact on those colonies and those colonies are vital to our ecosystem.' The smell of bat carcasses has caused problems for locals.

The Scenic Rim Regional Council, west of Brisbane, has organised rubbish collectors to clear up the carcasses of about 2,000 bats. Residents near Boonah's Athol Terrace lookout say they have been putting up with the stench of the dead animals for four days.

Queensland Health is advising people not to touch the animals and to call authorities for help in clearing them away. Sammy Ringer from Bat Rescue echoed those concerns, saying it was best to call a wildlife volunteer or a vet. 'Don't touch them, they're stressed,' she said. 'If they do bite or scratch you and break the skin you can get a vaccination, you can get a shot for the lyssavirus.'

For a year now, his magnum manifesto has loomed large over current best-sellers on iTunes, where at the time of this writing two different digital versions of Mein Kampf rank 12th and 15th on the Politics & Current Events chart alongside books by modern conservative powerhouses like Sarah Palin, Charles Krauthammer and Glenn Beck.

In fact, all seven of Beck’s books trail Herr Hitler’s nearly century-old tell-all, which consistently holds its own against new e-blockbusters like Game Change by John Heilemann and Mark Halperin, This Town by Mark Leibovich, and Nate Silver’s The Signal and the Noise.

Mein Kampf hasn’t made The New York Times nonfiction chart since its US release in 1939, the same year Germany invaded Poland, and its print sales have fallen steadily ever since. But with a flood of new e-book editions, Hitler’s notorious memoir just clocked a banner digital year. One 2012 English-language version is currently the number one Propaganda & Political Psychology book on Amazon. Another digital selection is a player in the Globalization category.

Or to put it another way: On Amazon, there are more than 100 versions of Mein Kampf for sale in every conceivable print and audio format, from antique hardbacks to brand-new paperbacks. Of those 100 iterations, just six are e-books — yet all six of them rank among the 10 best-selling versions overall. And those are just the ones people are paying for.

General William Shelton said in a speech that China currently has a missile that can destroy US satellites and warned that the threat of both space weapons and high-speed orbiting debris is growing. The threat of attack to large communications and intelligence satellites is prompting a major study on whether to diversify the current satellite arsenal of scores of orbiters.

The four-star general also said he is wary of the United States joining an international code of conduct for space, an initiative promoted by former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. The code likely would constrain the United States’ freedom of action in the increasingly contested realm of space, he said during remarks at George Washington University.

Over the past several decades, satellites have revolutionized war fighting and caused a shift in the character of military forces from large ground armies to forces that emphasize agility and speed. Shelton said the United States’ highest priority military satellites are those that provide survivable communications and missile warning. Current systems cost about $1 billion each.

If any of these critical satellites are attacked and destroyed in a conflict or crisis, the loss “would create a huge hole in our capability” to conduct modern, high-tech warfare, Shelton said.

Under pressure from France, EU leaders last month asked the bloc’s foreign policy chief, Catherine Ashton, to draw up options for an EU intervention in the country to support French and African troops already there. However, while EU member states backed a similar mission to Mali last year, in just a couple months some EU diplomats have been more sceptical about the goals of this mission, suggesting it could take longer to reach consensus — if one is reached at all.

Any mission would need to be approved by all 28 EU member states. Baroness Ashton is to present her plan for initial review on January 20. France, the country’s former colonial ruler, deployed 1,600 troops in December to support an African Union peacekeeping force there. The United Nations authorized the mission to stabilize the country, which has been ravaged by a cycle of revenge killings between Muslims and Christians.

Two former presidents, a vice president and a judge all warn that the NSA’s current mass surveillance is tyranny. Top American constitutional experts say that spying by the Obama administration is worse than the spying done by Nixon.

Why isn’t Obama impeached for such tyranny? In fact, historians say that the NSA’s spying is worse than the Stasi East Germans. They also say that NSA spying is exactly the type of oppression that the Founding Fathers launched the Revolutionary War to stop.

Where is America’s immune system?

We have all seen the photographs that confirm the remains of demolition "cutter charges" in the remains of the towers. And we all know how the BBC reported that Building 7 collapsed 26 minutes before it actually happened, indicating a script was being followed (but alas, not carefully enough).

With the official story in free fall, Americans are wondering just who did this heinous deed. With the US Government itself the prime suspect, many are asking if the US Government had help from an outside nation, one with a long track record of world-changing dirty tricks. As I have mentioned before, the best way to tell if you are being lied to is to look for what should be there but isn't. In the case of the claim that Saudi Arabia was behind 9-11, what should be there and isn’t is a motive for Saudi Arabia to do something like that.

Saudi Arabia does not have a history of dirty tricks, nor a demonstrated ability to carry out such deceptions. More to the point, Saudi Arabia has no motive to attack the United States. Private Saudi investment in the US economy is over $400 billion. Saudi Arabia is a major creditor to the US Government. Exact figures are hard to find but Saudi Arabia has loaned the US Government hundreds of billions of dollars. Saudi Arabia is not going to risk an attack on the US because all that wealth would vanish. The Saudi wealth inside the US would be frozen or seized, and the outstanding loans to the US would never be repaid.

The X1.2-class flare was recorded by sun-observing satellites, including NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory, at about 2:32 pm eastern time. X-class flares are the strongest category of solar outbursts, although X1.2 is toward the category's low end. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Space Weather Prediction Center said the flare sparked a strong radio blackout.

For days, space weather forecasters have been bracing themselves for solar eruptions from a large active sunspot region called AR1944. This region has now turned to face Earth directly, which means strong solar flares are likely to send storms of charged particles — also known as coronal mass ejections, or CMEs — heading straight for us. Strong solar storms can damage satellites and electrical grids. One such outburst in 1989 knocked out power for a wide swath of Quebec.