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It basically comes down to two things, according to PPI: The number of people detained for pretrial purposes has been escalating, and federal and state authorities have been increasingly using local jails to house their inmates as well. These two sets of circumstances cover the bulk of people sitting in jail cells in the majority of states. Only a third of those jailed locally are there because they’ve actually been convicted of a crime, the report reads.

That local jail authorities have been farming out beds to wardens of the state and federal prison systems is particularly troubling, given that this system turns jailing into a side-hustle of sorts. Sheriffs and county jail directors can justify expanding these local detention centers, even if crime is dropping, by accounting for inmate traffic from state and federal partners. When looking at how Louisiana became the incarceration capital of the world, one would think it’s because crime is just out of control there. But that’s not the case. According to the report:

This phenomenon is most visible in Louisiana, where the state has largely outsourced the construction and operation of state prisons to individual parish sheriffs. Just over half (52 percent) of the state’s prison population is housed under contract with local jails; and as a result two-thirds (67 percent) of the people held in Louisiana jails are not “traditional jail inmates.” Unlike other states, Louisiana’s jail building boom appears to have been entirely fueled by the pursuit of contracts with the state’s prison system.

The Global Peace Index 2017, issued annually by the Institute of Economics and Peace (IEP), shows the U.S declining 11 places in the global rankings to 114th out of 163 surveyed nations.

America is safer than war zones such as Syria —which came in last place—Iraq, Afghanistan and Somalia, which are classified ‘very low’. But the U.S. is only ranked ‘medium’ and appears below Haiti, which has struggled with poverty and violent crime since Hurricane Matthew in 2010, and Liberia, which is dealing with the legacy of its brutal civil war.

Every European country with the exception of Greece (ranked 73rd) appears in the two top echelons of peaceful countries—’high’ and ‘very high’— while Canada is ranked eighth. Iceland, New Zealand and Portugal occupy the top three spots in 2017.

The IEP said in its annual global report the dramatic fall was the result of increased political uncertainty, higher crime, corruption and less acceptance of minorities.

The IEP specifically pointed to deepening polarization in the U.S. that peaked during the 2016 presidential election in its findings. It said racial tensions and income inequality had exacerbated the political problems in the United States.

Up to half of all current jobs in the retail sector are likely to vanish because of e-commerce, automation of jobs and the closing of brick-and-mortar stores.

Millions of retail jobs — as we now know them — are going the way of gas station attendants. Just as ATMs replaced many bank tellers, automated check-out stations are supplanting retail clerks.

And have you watched in-store “shoppers” who do Amazon price checks while they’re standing in the aisles? Have you noticed how many of them leave the store without making a purchase when they found savings by buying online?

But more important to the overall economy than the disappearance of mostly low-income, entry-level jobs in the check-out lane is that the retail jobs likely to remain are requiring different skill sets.

And — another big consequence — the funnel is narrowing through which retail workers are able to get promotions to better-paying, career-type jobs.

Trump, tapping into the “America First” message he used when he was elected president last year, said the Paris accord would undermine the U.S. economy, cost U.S. jobs, weaken American national sovereignty and put the country at a permanent disadvantage to the other countries of the world.

“We don’t want other leaders and other countries laughing at us any more. And they won’t be,” Trump said.

“The same nations asking us to stay in the agreement are the countries that have collectively cost America trillions of dollars through tough trade practices and in many cases lax contributions to our critical military alliance,” Trump added.

It’s called the Stratolaunch aircraft, and it’s massive. The plane has a 385-foot wingspan, which makes it the largest in the world by that metric. It weighs about 500,000 pounds dry, but that can swell to a maximum takeoff weight of 1.3 million pounds. Stratolaunch moves all that weight across the ground on 28 wheels, and eventually will carry its cargo through the air thanks to six 747 aircraft engines.

That much we know, because they have spent so much time analysing the future and how it might affect the way they manage their affairs. But there is a far greater risk that dovetails with the threat of these new technologies – their own short-term greed.

This is nothing new. Every industry that has faced such momentous transition has faced the same issues. Just ask the print media. Just ask Kodak. Just ask the motor industry. Executives are driven by short-term profit incentives, few are prepared to cannibalise existing earnings in order to position their business for a different business model.

Now we see the utilities going through the same issues. They have assets – poles and wires that stretch across the country like no other network in the world – that are not easily replaced or substituted.

But they have a major problem: as the costs of new technologies fall dramatically, the cost of grid-based electricity is soaring in the opposite direction.

Robert Bigelow, an entrepreneur who is working closely with Nasa on future space missions, has suggested that he knows that our planet has an alien presence that is “right under our noses”.

Mr Bigelow made the announcement during an episode of the show 60 Minutes that focused on his work with the space agency.

His company, Bigelow Aerospace, is developing an expendable craft for humans that can inflate and might provide the space habitats of the future.

They have already been tested out in journeys to the International Space Station. And the two organisations are working on further co-operation.

But during that episode Mr Bigelow began to talk about his belief in aliens – and his claim that UFOs have come to Earth and extraterrestrials have an “existing presence” here.

“I’m absolutely convinced [that aliens exist],” he told reporter Lara Logan. “That’s all there is to it.”

Asked by Ms Logan whether he also thought that UFOs had come to Earth, he said he did.

“There has been and is an existing presence, an ET presence,” Mr Bigelow said. “And I spent millions and millions and millions – I probably spent more as an individual than anybody else in the United States has ever spent on this subject.”

The group from Saint Petersburg, who publish a blog on abandoned sites across Russia, came across the money after following rumours that large quantities of cash had been dumped in old missile silos near Moscow after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Komsomolskaya Pravda news website reports. After travelling for several hours across rough terrain in Russia’s Vladimir region, they found the mine overflowing with cash.

The site contains an estimated one billion roubles ($18m; £13.5m at current exchange rates, or $33.3m at the “official” Soviet rate in 1991) in Soviet Union banknotes of various denominations issued between 1961 and 1991, all no longer legal tender in the Russian Federation. The mine had been flooded in recent years, leaving what was essentially a swamp of banknotes bearing the face of Vladimir Lenin, the explorers’ YouTube channel shows.

“The goal of this technology is to generate electricity from where the rivers meet the ocean,” said Christopher Gorski, assistant professor in environmental engineering at Penn State. “It’s based on the difference in the salt concentrations between the two water sources.”