Merkel’s comments at the Munich Security Conference, an annual gathering of world leaders and top global defense and foreign policy officials, followed days of acrimony between the US and Europe over Iran. Merkel told the group — which included the largest US delegation ever with dozens of members of Congress, Ivanka Trump, Pence and others — that she shared American concerns about many Iranian efforts to increase its power in the region.

But while she said the split with the US over Iran’s nuclear agreement “depresses me very much,” she defended it as an important channel to Tehran, stressing the need for international diplomacy. Germany, Britain, France, China, Russia and the European Union have been trying to keep the 2015 deal with Iran alive since President Donald Trump unilaterally pulled out of it last year.

“The time has come for our European partners to stop undermining US sanctions against this murderous revolutionary regime,” Pence said. “The time has come for our European partners to stand with us and with the Iranian people, our allies and friends in the region. The time has come for our European partners to withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal.” Merkel’s speech was warmly received, while Pence’s was met with polite applause.

Speaking as Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko looked on, she told him his country would continue to be a transit country for Russian gas even after the pipeline is complete. Merkel noted that Europe also has enough terminals to receive more liquefied gas from the US, among other options. “There’s nothing that speaks against getting gas from the United States, but to exclude Russia is the wrong strategic signal,” she said.

Merkel quoted the US Republican senator Lindsey Graham as saying: “Multilateralism may be complicated, but it’s better than simply staying at home alone.” “Now that we see great pressure on the classic order we are used to, the question now is: do we fall apart into pieces of a puzzle and think everyone can solve the question best for himself alone?”

Merkel said, adding that it’s better to “put yourself in the other’s shoes … and see whether we can get win-win solutions together”. She was speaking at the Munich security conference on Saturday, immediately before the US vice-president Mike Pence, who insisted: “America first never meant America alone.”

Pence repeatedly challenged Europe, saying it was time to pull out of the Iran nuclear deal and accusing Iran of trying to commit a fresh Holocaust. He also demanded the EU step forward for freedom and recognise Juan Guaidó as the sole legitimate representative of Venezuela. In an uncompromising speech, he also called on Germany to increase its defence spending, and abandon its plan to build a new gas pipeline from Russia – Nord Stream 2.

In the new book, which in other languages bears the more provocative title of Sodom: Power and Scandal in the Vatican, author Frédéric Martel — who is openly gay and an LGBT activist — accuses the Catholic Church of hypocrisy for its opposition to gay marriage and adoption when so many of its own clerics are active homosexuals.

“It is no exaggeration to say that homosexuality has become a plague in the clergy, and it can only be eradicated with spiritual weapons,” he said. “It is an enormous hypocrisy to condemn the abuse, claim to weep for the victims, and yet refuse to denounce the root cause of so much sexual abuse: homosexuality.”

Information like this is useful for navigation. But the exact same data that is used to predict traffic patterns can also be used to predict other kinds of information – information people might not be comfortable with revealing. For example, data about a mobile phone’s past location and movement patterns can be used to predict where a person lives, who their employer is, where they attend religious services and the age range of their children based on where they drop them off for school.

These predictions label who you are as a person and guess what you’re likely to do in the future. Research shows that people are largely unaware that these predictions are possible, and, if they do become aware of it, don’t like it. In my view, as someone who studies how predictive algorithms affect people’s privacy, that is a major problem for digital privacy in the US.

"An iAPI system allows for a two-way communication in near real-time. The airlines transmit the API message on a per-person basis to the requesting authorities at the time of check-in, while law enforcement agencies have the opportunity to decide whether a certain person is allowed or not to board a plane by issuing a board/no-board message."

Think about what this means, the self-proclaimed "largest regional security organization in the world" the OSCE, wants to conduct background checks of every airline passenger in the world. "The work of the OSCE spans the globe, encompassing three continents - North America, Europe and Asia - and more than a billion people." Giving a private organization the ability to control the right to travel of nearly 8 billion people is horrifying.

America sure used to be the greatest country in the world … We stood up for what was right. We fought for moral reason. We passed laws, struck down laws, for moral reason. We waged wars on poverty, not on poor people. We sacrificed, we cared about our neighbors, we put our money where our mouths were and we never beat our chest. We built great, big things, made ungodly technological advances, explored the universe, cured diseases and we cultivated the world’s greatest artists AND the world’s greatest economy.

We reached for the stars, acted like men. We aspired to intelligence, we didn’t belittle it. It didn’t make us feel inferior. We didn’t identify ourselves by who we voted for in the last election and we didn’t scare so easy. We were able to be all these things and do all these things because we were informed… by great men, men who were revered. First step in solving any problem is recognizing there is one. America is not the greatest country in the world anymore.

We have managed to survive crackdowns, clampdowns, shutdowns, showdowns, shootdowns, standdowns, knockdowns, putdowns, breakdowns, lockdowns, takedowns, slowdowns, meltdowns, and never-ending letdowns.

We’ve been held up, stripped down, faked out, photographed, frisked, fracked, hacked, tracked, cracked, intercepted, accessed, spied on, zapped, mapped, searched, shot at, tasered, tortured, tackled, trussed up, tricked, lied to, labeled, libeled, leered at, shoved aside, saddled with debt not of our own making, sold a bill of goods about national security, tuned out by those representing us, tossed aside, and taken to the cleaners.

We’ve had our freedoms turned inside out, our democratic structure flipped upside down, and our house of cards left in a shambles.

Seven other states and the District of Columbia allow full-term babies to be killed for any or no reason. Two other states allow full-term, healthy babies to be aborted if they were conceived during rape or through incest. Also, take note of Alaska, Colorado, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, Vermont and the District of Columbia.

Those places are virtual killing fields. They don’t even require the pretense of a “health” reason for women to abort their full-term babies. In those 7 states, there are no bans on abortion at any stage. It’s open season on babies who, through no fault of their own, have the misfortune of being conceived in the wrong womb.

Isis Davis-Marks held nothing back in expressing her bigoted hatred towards all white males, whom she admittedly and broadly regards as liars and sexual predators. Isis further compared all white males to the Honorable Justice Brett Kavanaugh, whom she personally believes is guilty of past improprieties against women based solely on the unsubstantiated hearsay of Christine Blasey-Ford.

“When I’m watching the white boy – who is now a white man by this point – on CNN, I’ll remember a racist remark that he said, an unintentional utterance that he made when he had one drink too many at a frat party during sophomore year,” Isis wrote, fantasizing about how she plans to destroy white boys’ lives by dredging up anything she can to tarnish their reputations – if only she remembers to capture that incriminating evidence now.

Isis’ column goes on to denigrate white boys using offensive and derogatory language that, were it to be inverted coming from a white boy against queer, black girls like Isis, would have quickly become a national controversy about “racism” resulting in expulsions and other career-ending punishments. But because a black girl wrote this screed against white boys, nobody except for the independent media and commenters even batted an eye.

Such are the possibilities unleashed by notorious programs like FakeApp, which have enabled bad actors to superimpose the face of unsuspecting victims onto the body of someone else, inviting a predictable flurry of fake celebrity porn. The videos are called deepfakes, and while much has been said about the dangers they impose, the real issues are far broader than you may realize.

Deepfakes are only the first step in a chain of technological developments that will have one distinct end: the creation of AI clones that look, speak, and act just like their templates. Using neural networks and deep learning programs, these clones will first exist in video and in virtual worlds. Whether you’re knowingly involved or not, they’ll provide exacting reproductions of your facial expressions, accent, speech mannerisms, body language, gestures, and movement, going beyond the simple transplanting of faces to offer comprehensive, multidimensional imitations.

In the more distant future, these advances in machine learning will be married to advances in robotics, enabling physical robots to fully assume the form and behavior of particular human beings, both alive and dead. In the process, the nature of individuality and personhood will be altered, as we find ourselves living alongside our own clones and proxies, which will act on our behalf as alternate versions of ourselves. This isn’t Westworld science fiction. It’s already starting to happen.