Hardship is particularly on the rise among whites, based on several measures. Pessimism among whites about their families' economic futures has climbed to the highest point since at least 1987. "Poverty is no longer an issue of 'them', it's an issue of 'us'," as 'the invisible poor' - lower income whites - are generally dispersed in suburbs (Appalachia, the industrial Midwest, and across America's heartland, from Missouri, Arkansas and Oklahoma up through the Great Plains) where more than 60% of the poor are white.

More than 19 million whites fall below the poverty line of $23,021 for a family of four - accounting for more than 41% of the nation's destitute - nearly double the number of poor blacks and as one survey respondent noted "I think it's going to get worse."

According to the Reserve Bank of India, “the traded amount of ‘paper linked to gold’ exceeds by far the actual supply of physical gold: the volume on the London Bullion Market Association (LBMA) OTC market and the major Futures and Options Exchanges was OVER 92 TIMES that of the underlying Physical Market.” In other words, there is a massive amount of paper out there, but very little actual physical gold to back it up.

And right now, we are witnessing voracious hoarding of physical gold all over the globe. This is especially true in Asia. All of this hoarding is putting a tremendous amount of pressure on those that have made all of these “paper promises”, because the truth is that there really isn’t all that much physical gold on the planet. In fact, Warren Buffett once estimated that if all of the gold in the entire world was brought into one place, it could be formed into a cube that would only be 69 feet long by 69 feet high by 69 feet wide.

As the emerging shortage of physical gold becomes increasingly apparent, the massive Ponzi scheme that the bullion banks have been running for decades is going to completely fall apart. The bottom line is that there is a very serious shortage of physical gold, and as this becomes increasingly apparent to the rest of the world, this is likely to cause a tremendous amount of instability in the financial markets in the months ahead.

According to the Chicago Sun Times citing year-end audits, Obama's former right hand man, Rahm Emanuel, closed the books on 2012 with $33.4 million in unallocated cash on hand — down from $167 million the year before — while adding to the mountain of debt piled on Chicago taxpayers. In addition to a liquidity problem, Chicago may also be quite insolvent as the city's total long-term debt soared to nearly $29 billion.

That’s $10,780 for every one of the city’s nearly 2.69 million residents. More than a decade ago, the debt load was $9.6 billion or $3,338 per resident. Of course, in a world in which debt is "wealth", this is great news... at least until debt becomes "bankruptcy."

But much of this explosion of international concern, we are told, is being instigated behind the scenes by a nexus including Lord Mandelson, Tony Blair, former ambassadors to Washington and the EU, and co-ordinated by a City PR firm behind the shadowy lobby group Business for New Europe.

The one issue, above all, these people are desperate not to see discussed is that which is gradually creeping up the agenda: namely that the only way we could get what most British voters say they want would be to invoke Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty and join countries such as Norway and Switzerland that are outside the EU, but enjoy full access to the single market without having to be carried along by the rest of that integrationist political baggage the EU seems set on.

Just as keen not to see this discussed, of course, is David Cameron, whose insistence that we cannot leave the EU sees him stumbling around asking for pie in the sky, such as a new relationship for Britain with a “reformed” EU, which is just not on the EU’s agenda. He should study the European Commission’s latest Eurobarometer poll, which shows that, while EU-wide “distrust” of the EU has doubled in six years to a record high of 60 per cent (with only 20 per cent of Britons now saying that they “trust” it), the one European country whose people appear to be “satisfied” with their lot more than any other – no fewer than 98 per cent of them – is Norway. Outside the EU.

As a result of chemical exposure, honey bees are more likely to succumb to the lethal Nosema ceranae parasite and die from the resulting complications. Scientists from the University of Maryland and the US Department of Agriculture on Wednesday published a study that linked chemicals, including fungicides, to the mass die-offs. Scientists have long struggled to find the cause behind the Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), in which an estimated 10 million beehives at an average value of $200 each have been lost since 2006.

UMD and DOA researchers found that pollen samples in fields ranging from Delaware to Maine contained nine different agricultural chemicals, including fungicides, herbicides, insecticides and miticides. One particular sample even contained 21 different agricultural chemicals. To test their theory, they fed pesticide-ridden pollen samples to healthy bees and then infected them with the parasite. They found that the pesticides hindered the bees’ abilities to resist the infection, thus contributing to their deaths. The fungicide chlorothalonil was particularly damaging, tripling the risks of parasitic infection.

“We don’t think of fungicides as having a negative effect on bees, because they’re not designed to kill insects,” Dennis vanEngelsdorp, the study’s senior author, said in a news release. He explained that federal regulations restrict the use of insecticides while pollinators are foraging, but noted that “there are no such restrictions on fungicides, so you’ll often see fungicide applications going on while bees are foraging on the crop.”

Last winter, the honey bee population declined by 31.1 percent, with some beekeepers reporting losses of 90 to 100 percent of their bee populations. Scientists are concerned that “Beemageddon” could cause the collapse of the $200 billion agriculture industry, since more than 100 US crops rely on honey bees to pollinate them.

It’s not a strict cause and effect relationship — if value x, then riots — simply an observation that the probability of riots spikes at a certain point. Other things, like, say, Mohamed Bouazizi setting himself on fire, might be the actual trigger, but day-to-day survival as it pertains to food is what allows the gun to fire.

Bar-Yam’s model has another “success,” according to a paper posted on the arVix pre-print server last week. Rioting that occurred last year during a platinum miner’s strike in South Africa — in which 34 strikers were killed by government forces — coincided neatly with a spike in the global price of maize. Stagnant wages matched with spiking food costs yields unrest. It matches well with a similar spike in 2008 that resulted in another series of riots in the country.

An ominous twist is that corn producers in the US are currently growing more corn than the market is demanding. That is, the cost of corn for consumers is hovering at the edge of riot levels, while the selling price of corn is too low for producers. This has happened before, during the Great Depression and immediately preceding the Dust Bowl. Farmers ripped up fields for wheat and corn crops as fast as possible to make ends meet as the market price for corn tumbled, while in the eastern US, the country starved under catastrophic unemployment.

What followed shortly afterward was the black sky hell of the Dust Bowl drought. And, at the moment, the United States’ corn producing regions remain in a drought second only to the Dust Bowl. It’s an epic and confusing mess of circumstances with that distorted echo of some of America’s worst years. A notable difference is that the world is much more global now, with our Dust Bowl resonating in even more vulnerable parts of the world. Unfortunately, Bar-Yam’s model is about to see many more tests.

For many, accepting something that has not occurred during their time on the planet is not possible. The laws of economics and mathematics may shape history but they are not controlled by history.

The form of cataclysm and its timing is indeterminable. Political decisions continue to shape both. The madmen who are responsible for the coming disaster continue to behave as if they can manage to avoid it. Violating Einstein’s definition of insanity, they continue to apply the same poison that caused the problem. These fools believe they can manage complexities they do not understand. We are bigger fools for providing them the authority to indulge their hubris and wreak such damage.

Mathematics is definitive. There are mathematical limits that control the ability to service debt. Once these limits have been breached, some amount of the debt will be defaulted on. The breach point is referred to as a debt death spiral. The US has passed this mathematical point and is in a death spiral. The political class in America, either via misguided economic policies or a deliberate attempt to hide the true condition of the country, has put us here. They will continue to employ whatever policies they believe will keep things going for a while longer. The tragic ending has been cast. Economics cannot trump mathematics.

Jack, who previously presented hacks involving ATMs and insulin pumps at the annual Black Hat conference in Vegas, was confirmed dead Friday morning by the San Francisco Medical Examiner’s office, Reuters reported. He passed away Thursday this week, but the office declined to offer any more details at this time. Jack’s death came one week to the day before he was scheduled to detail one of his most recent exploits in a Black Hat talk called “Implantable Medical Devices: Hacking Humans.”

“I was intrigued by the fact that these critical life devices communicate wirelessly. I decided to look at pacemakers and ICDs (implantable cardioverter defibrillators) to see if they communicated securely and if it would be possible for an attacker to remotely control these devices,” Jack told Vice last month.

Black Hat’s organizers will not be filling Jack’s spot at the event as a mark of respect for a “legendary and irreplaceable” man. Security firm IOActive also tweeted their condolences in homage of their “beloved pirate.” After around six months of research, Jack said he developed a way to hack one of those devices remotely and send it a high-voltage shock from upwards of 50 feet away. “If the devices can be accessed remotely, there's always a potential for abuse,” he told Vice tech reporter William Alexander.

Officers from the Royal Gibraltar Police were forced to impose diversions and create beachside holding areas as Spanish authorities 'choked' the border, causing massive tailbacks in 30C heat. It was the second day that border guards had blocked links to the mainland, in a move that seemed calculated to bring Gibraltar to a standstill.

The move follows a string of recent incidents which have included Spanish police opening fire on a jet-skier in British waters, incursions by Spanish police boats, and Spanish air force jets roaring across the territory. In the extraordinary jet-ski incident last month, a boat from Spain’s Guardia Civil entered Gibraltan waters and took potshots at 32-year-old Dale Villa as he rode his watercraft close to a popular beach.

Most recently Spanish fishermen sparked a stand-off with the Royal Navy as they attempted to disrupt the creation of an artificial reef in the Bay of Gibraltar last week. The fishermen used fast boats to weave in between British vessels involved in the reef-laying operation in a bid to create large waves to disrupt the work, the Sunday Express reported.

The tension began in 1704 when an Anglo-Dutch force captured Gibraltor from Spain during the war of the Spanish succession. The territory was then ceded to Britain under the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713. Historically, it has proved to be an important base for the Royal Navy.

Now, its economy is based on tourism, financial services and shipping. Under the 2006 constitution of Gibraltar, the territory governs its own affairs although defence and foreign relations are still the responsibility of the UK Government. Located on the southern end of the Iberian Peninsula, it is an area of 6.8 square kilometres.

'The Government of Gibraltar has called on the UK to take up the matter of this military incursion into the airspace of Gibraltar at the highest diplomatic and military levels,' said a government spokesman. A foreign office official added: 'We have raised this with London and Madrid.' The jets are understood to have come from a Spanish aircraft carrier, Juan Carlos I, based about 10 miles from the Rock. Spanish Defence Ministry deny that Spanish fighter jets entered Gibraltar airspace.

The incident comes just days after Prime Minister David Cameron complained to his Spanish counterpart Mariano Rajoy over an incident in which a British jet skier was allegedly shot at by Spanish police in the waters surrounding the Rock. It comes after Spanish police twice entered British waters - once in a public rebuke to British warnings not to do so.

Last week, the Foreign Office protested to the Spanish government after a boat from Spain’s Guardia Civil entered Gibraltan waters and took potshots at 32-year-old Dale Villa as he rode his jet-ski close to a popular beach. Just three days later, a police boat was seen in British waters again.

Mr Cameron said: ‘I have raised this with the Spanish Prime Minister. I think this is a totally unacceptable episode and I made that clear. I think it’s very important the people of Gibraltar know that we support them, we support their sovereignty, we will always stand up for them and stand by them. I think it’s very important countries obey all the international rules, all the international laws.’

Any US guarantee to the Palestinians that the upcoming negotiations with Israel will be based on the pre-1967 lines would be a violation of written US commitments given to then-prime minister Ariel Sharon, former Foreign Ministry legal adviser Alan Baker wrote in a letter sent this week to Secretary of State John Kerry.

The group quotes from US president George W Bush’s letter to Sharon on April 4, 2004, which it said was given as a political quid pro quo, in return for Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza. According to that letter, “As part of a final peace settlement, Israel must have secure and recognized borders, which should emerge from negotiations between the parties in accordance with UNSC Resolutions 242 and 338.”

“In light of new realities on the ground, including already existing major Israeli population centers, it is unrealistic to expect that the outcome of the final status negotiations will be a full and complete return to the armistice lines of 1949, and all previous efforts to negotiate a two-state solution have reached the same conclusion.”

These commitments were later affirmed by a large majority of the US House of Representatives, and – as Baker and Fuchs wrote to Kerry – was “also given legal affirmation as part of an Israeli governmental decision and attached to the disengagement implementation law of October 27, 2004.” The letter, however, has since been a source of contention, with former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton distancing the Obama administration from its commitments.

Survey data exclusive to The Associated Press points to an increasingly globalized US economy, the widening gap between rich and poor, and the loss of good-paying manufacturing jobs as reasons for the trend. The findings come as President Barack Obama tries to renew his administration's emphasis on the economy, saying in recent speeches that his highest priority is to "rebuild ladders of opportunity" and reverse income inequality.

As nonwhites approach a numerical majority in the US, one question is how public programs to lift the disadvantaged should be best focused - on the affirmative action that historically has tried to eliminate the racial barriers seen as the major impediment to economic equality, or simply on improving socio-economic status for all, regardless of race.

Hardship is particularly growing among whites, based on several measures. Pessimism among that racial group about their families' economic futures has climbed to the highest point since at least 1987. In the most recent AP-GfK poll, 63 percent of whites called the economy "poor."

"I think it's going to get worse," said Irene Salyers, 52, of Buchanan County, Virginia, a declining coal region in Appalachia. Married and divorced three times, Salyers now helps run a fruit and vegetable stand with her boyfriend but it doesn't generate much income. They live mostly off government disability checks. "If you do try to go apply for a job, they're not hiring people, and they're not paying that much to even go to work," she said. Children, she said, have "nothing better to do than to get on drugs."

The Pope's remarks are being seen as much more conciliatory than his predecessor's position on the issue. Turning to the issue of women priests, he said the Church had spoken and had said "no", but the role of women should not be restricted. "We cannot limit the role of women in the Church to altar girls or the president of a charity, there must be more," he said in a wide-ranging 80-minute long interview with Vatican journalists.

Five months after he took over from Pope Benedict, he said gay people should be fully accepted in society, even though the Catholic teaching was that homosexual acts were sinful. "The Catechism of the Catholic Church explains this very well," Pope Francis said. "It says they should not be marginalised because of this but that they must be integrated into society."

But he condemned what he described as lobbying by gay people. "The problem is not having this orientation," he said. "We must be brothers. The problem is lobbying by this orientation, or lobbies of greedy people, political lobbies, Masonic lobbies, so many lobbies. This is the worse problem."