Police state paranoia has long stoked angst and outrage, until an incident like the Boston Marathon bombings takes place and the nation heaves a sigh of relief that security cameras gazed unblinkingly upon Beantown’s streets and sidewalks. Eyes in the sky — cameras that keep tabs on possible red-light runners, peer out at ATM users and stand sentry for commercial businesses — provided investigators key intelligence that led to identifying suspects in the attack. A department store camera held the much-viewed footage released by the FBI.

The developments have once again pitted personal rights against public safety. Politicians at every level — from the sheriff in Tampa to members of Congress — are urging the deployment of more surveillance and law enforcement access to captured material. Civil libertarians and privacy advocates, just as predictably, are preaching restraint.

“There is going to be more of a push to have more cameras on the streets, and it will be difficult to resist that push,” said Neil Richards, a privacy advocate and law professor at Washington University in St Louis. He authored a Harvard Law Review paper last month titled “The Dangers of Surveillance,” where he wrote that the amount of observation these days “should give us pause.”

“The difficult balance is to have them [cameras] there for extraordinary efforts such as what we’ve seen this week but not for us to live in an emergency situation all the time,” he said.

He added that 185 bodies had been buried, but the death toll is thought to be greater, as locals are continuing their search for the dead. Brigadier General Austin Edokpaye told government officials that the militants were using heavy weaponry – among it machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades. He added that the extremists were also using the town’s civilians as human shields during the fighting.

Massacres, kidnappings and raids have characterized Nigeria’s extremist insurgency in the predominantly Muslim northern regions of the country since 2010.

According to one US Defense official, the deal is “one of the most complex and carefully orchestrated arms packages in American history.” Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel recently embarked on a six-day trip that includes meetings with officials in Israel, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates.

The arms deal is expected to sail through Congress amid strong pressure from domestic weapons manufacturers. In addition, US lawmakers appear eager to increase funding sources for the US military in the wake of the controversial budget cuts adversely impacting the Pentagon.

The goal of the Obama administration has been to sell weapons both to key Arab allies and to Israel, while maintaining America’s long-standing policy of maintaining Israel’s military superiority within the region.

In 2011, Mr Berlusconi was forced to step down after a picture of his infamous Bunga Bunga alleged bondage and sex parties heated up tabloids around the world. In most years, Europeans chuckle about this type of instability: “it’s an Italian thing”. But by controlling 16% of the European Union’s GDP, political trouble just became European economic trouble as Italy’s debt was downgraded to BBB+ and a growing Italian bank run seems to have begun.

The realization that Italy is even too big for Germany to bail out seems to have sparked yesterday’s 5% crash in German stocks and is again heating up the European financial crisis.

The study of teenagers, published in the journal Parenting: Science and Practice, found the painful effects of harsh discipline - such as verbal threats or spanking - are offset by the child's feeling of being loved. The researchers said being punished is unlikely to result in antisocial behaviour further down the line, as long as the child believes their punishment is coming from “a good place”. Smacking is controversial and has been found to carry a greater risk of manifesting aggression, delinquency and hyperactivity - but authors claims this can be moderated.

However, a spokesperson for the NSPCC who have campaigned for the practice to be illegal, said: “Smacking is not an effective form of punishment and undermines the trusting relationship between a child and their carer. And it just teaches children to be violent. Young people tell us smacking leaves them feeling upset but often doesn’t deter them from doing what they were smacked for. We want to help parents use other more constructive methods to teach their children the difference between right and wrong.”

Previous research has found children are more likely to grow into well adjusted adults if their parents are firm disciplinarians. Traditional “authoritative” parenting, combining high expectations of behaviour with warmth and sensitivity, leads to more “competent” children, according to the 2009 study by researchers from London's Institute of Education.

In what looked more like a post-game celebration following a Boston Celtics NBA championship, or a Red Sox World Series victory - major media reported the communal outpouring of national pride where residents could be seen with painted faces, brandishing American flags, and heard shouting “USA, USA”. How did Friday become such a huge ‘patriotic moment’ for the people of Boston? Was this some kind of victory for America? President Obama also emerged from ‘The Situation Room’ in typical Hollywood fashion, to inform the people of New England that they “owed a debt of gratitude to federal and local law enforcement officers and officials”.

Was it really a success? The Voice of America has called it, “A Week of Terror” in Boston. But other than mustering en mass and on cue, many are still left asking this question of the 9,000 law enforcement, “What have they actually done so far?” It seems that the biggest urban dragnet in US history could not manage to find the suspect, who was eventually found by a neighbor having a cigarette break.

What is obviously clear by the public reaction, and by the incessant grandstanding by a handful of officials at multiple press briefings, was that the people of Boston had been conditioned to believe that an overwhelming police and military show of force in Boston was necessary in order to ‘make them feel safe’.

For federal and local officials, this was their own personal ‘Katrina moment’, and the media circus scrum saw a number of individuals and departments almost competing for air-time in a bid to make their own corner of the crisis relevant while the national media spotlight was still fresh. The words of former White House chief of staff Rahm Emmanuel can be heard echoing through Boston: “Never let a good crisis go to waste”…

In a series of tweets posted by South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham on Friday, the conservative, ‘strict constructionist’ argued that nineteen-year-old Dzhokhar Tsarnaev — suspected of being one of the Boston Marathon terrorists and taken into custody on Friday evening — should be treated as an enemy combatant and denied his due process rights under the Constitution.

Were the Administration to follow Graham’s advice, Tsarnaev would forever be denied his Fifth Amendment right to remain silent and to have the counsel of an attorney. Without these rights granted to all defendants pursuant to Miranda, anything this suspect might say to interrogators before being advised of these rights would still be admissible in a court of law. I say ‘forever denied’ because Mr Tsarnov will not be getting his Miranda warnings for a period of time even without declaring him an enemy combatant.

Keep in mind that the horrible crimes that Mr Tsarneav is accused of committing occurred on US soil and that, no matter how heinous the terrorist acts Mr Tsareav is alleged to have carried out, he remains an American citizen with all the rights that come with the status. Also keep in mind that, in this country, we are all innocent until proven guilty.

History tells us that when the price of gold crashes, a recession almost always follows. History also tells us that when the price of oil crashes, a recession almost always follows. When both of those things happen, a significant economic downturn is virtually guaranteed. Just remember what happened back in 2008. Gold and oil both started falling rapidly in July, and in the fall we experienced the worst financial crisis that the US had seen since the days of the Great Depression. Well, a similar pattern seems to be happening again.

The price of gold has already crashed, and the price of a barrel of WTI crude oil has dropped to $86.37 as I write this. If the price of oil dips below $80 a barrel and stays there, that will be a major red flag. Meanwhile, we have just seen volatility return to the financial markets in a big way. When volatility starts to spike, that is usually a clear sign that stocks are about to go down substantially. So buckle your seatbelts - it looks like things are about to get very, very interesting.

At some point, there will be another major stock market crash. When it happens, we will likely see even worse chaos than we saw back in 2008. Major financial institutions will fail, the credit markets will freeze up, economic activity will grind to a standstill and millions of Americans will lose their jobs. I sincerely hope that we still have at least a few more months before that happens. But right now things are moving very rapidly and it is becoming increasingly clear that time is running out.

Illinois, Missouri, Michigan, Indiana, Iowa and Wisconsin all experienced flooding as heavy rainfalls hit the region Wednesday – posing a sharp contrast to the drought which months prior endangered commercial barge traffic on the Mississippi River. On Friday, barge shipping was halted on parts of the Illinois and Mississippi Rivers as flooding prompted the US Army Corps of Engineers to close several locks until at least the middle of next week.

Seven Mississippi River locks were closed in total between Thursday evening and Friday morning as water topped dams. The problem is set to intensify, as crests on the rivers are expected to be reached on Sunday at the earliest in more northern areas and several days later further south.

River levels are expected to exceed flood stage by 12 feet (4 meters) in some parts of Missouri and Illinois, running the risk of inundation, mass displacement of residents, and untold property damage. With Illinois thus far taking the brunt of the torrent, the city of Quincy epitomized the continued threat, where the Mississippi rose a “pretty amazing” 10 feet in 36 hours, National Weather Service hydrologist Mark Fuchs told AP.

Most of the deaths occurred in the city of Ya’an. It is quite close to where a huge quake hit in 2008, claiming the lives of almost 70,000 people. China’s Earthquake Administration has reported that over 1.5 million people have been affected by the earthquake and aftershocks.

Since the rescue operation began 54 people, two children and a pregnant woman among them, are reported to have been dug out alive from under the collapsed buildings. According to unofficial estimates, up to 90 per cent of all buildings in the Ya’an area have been somehow damaged by the earthquake.

But the driving force behind the most sophisticated drones remains the military, who use them for spying and killing. Their proliferation has led to thousands of deaths, the disruption of entire communities and increased political instability. The US example of sending drones wherever it wants and killing whoever it wants on the basis of secret information is leading to a world of lawlessness.

Innocent lives are snuffed out without a trace of accountability. Drones don’t give their targets a chance to surrender. They simply pulverise them. This technology extends god-like powers to democratically elected leaders – and potentially to dictators and terrorists. Those with armed drones include the US, UK, Israel, Iran and China. Some 76 countries all told have drones, with many in the process of weaponising them.

Iran is supplying drones to Hezbollah in Lebanon; South Africa is selling lethal drones to Saudi Arabia; Israel is selling drones all over Africa and Latin America. The global drones arms race, spurred on by the US, is in full cry. And there are terrifying reasons why we should think very carefully about a world left to their unblinking mercy.

Attorney general Petros Clerides said the assembly must have a say on the accord, which will inflict huge losses on depositors at Laika and Bank of Cyprus. The Orthodox Church of Cyprus expects to lose €100 million, crippling its charities.

It is unclear whether the government can muster a majority as popular fury erupts. The Communists and Socialists have been vehement critics of the deal. Green MP George Perdikis told the Cyprus Mail that he would vote against it to uphold the “freedom” of his country. “It is a crime to deliver Cyprus into the hands of the troika and allow it to become a colony.”

The Cypriot parliament threw out the original plan for a levy on guaranteed deposits below €100,000. A rejection of the final deal might exhaust patience in Berlin and Frankfurt. The country would be forced out of the euro within days if the European Central Bank cuts off support.

The pan-EU Socialist bloc in the European Parliament said the “neo-colonial” handling of Cyprus had been a disgrace and called for the Troika to be disbanded, while the Liberal bloc demanded for a probe to find out who was responsible the “disastrous” decision to target small savers.

The latest twist came as Europe’s top policy-makers vowed to press ahead with their hard-line crisis strategy, brushing aside warnings of an economic debacle and ignoring a devastating challenge to key austerity claims.

Beef and lamb samples were all found to be clear, but two out of 10 products labelled as cod did not contain any traces of that fish whatsoever. The institute said cheaper types of fish were being passed off as cod. The institute is based at Queen's University, Belfast (QUB) and its director, Professor Chris Elliott, described the findings as "fish fraud". People are buying cod, which is a high value fish, and actually they are getting a low value fish.”

He said while it was not a food safety issue, it was "another example of the integrity of the food chain being shown to be substandard".