The world is so messed up that calling it a 'freak show' doesn't quite do it justice. We need a new word to capture just how backwards, upside down, screwed up, and utterly freakish our world really is. Thankfully, we may have found one, thanks to our friends in Russia and an odious little troll known to inhabit the U.S. State Department until approximately 1 week ago. The whole world is psaki. We may also have found a word to describe the only proper response to seeing just how psaki the world is, thanks to Jen Psaki's equally cringe-worthy, 'ex-CIA' deputy, Marie. There's only one thing to do when you're confronted by such a scale of lies: to harf.

What makes the world so psaki? Why does it make us want to harf? Well, let's start with the people who inspire the words. What can we say about Jen Psaki and Marie Harf? They're both perfect poster children for the banal psychopathology upon which the USA, and by extension the rest of the world, is built. They're oh, so 'normal' with their cute smiles, propensity to humor and the ease with which they handle difficult situations. They're not just living the American dream, they are the American dream. But closely study these people, what they say and the way they say it, and you realise that those charming traits are used to mask a cold-blooded and ruthless ability to tell bare-faced lies to the world. And not just any old lies, but lies that obscure the fact that the US government is responsible for the deaths of innocent civilians on a daily basis. When you realise that, the smile and lighthearted manner isn't so 'cute' any more. Then again, they are the official State Department media liaisons, and therefore are tasked with white-washing the crimes of the massive planetary boil that is the US government and all of its institutions.

Having said that, we took the announcement that Psaki would no longer be gracing the State Dept. stage with her question-dodging and lie-spewing with a bit of disappointment. Harf was a decent replacement, but Psaki was such an easy target for us to highlight US government duplicity, and her regular 'endearing' blunders and non sequiturs and seeming inability to distinguish truth from falsehood, provided morbid entertainment to those who could see behind the veil of cuteness. As an example, here's what Psaki had to say on February 23rd about American stooge and president of Yemen, Hadi, who was recently deposed in the coup which sparked the Saudi and US bombardment of Yemen.

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was convicted on all charges Wednesday in the Boston Marathon bombing by a federal jury that now must decide whether the 21-year-old former college student should be executed.

Tsarnaev folded his arms, fidgeted and looked down at the defense table as he listened to one guilty verdict after another on all 30 counts against him, including conspiracy and deadly use of a weapon of mass destruction. Seventeen of those counts are punishable by death.

The verdict - reached after a day and a half of deliberations - was practically a foregone conclusion, given his lawyer's startling admission at the trial's outset that Tsarnaev carried out the terror attack with his now-dead older brother, Tamerlan.

The two shrapnel-packed pressure-cooker bombs that exploded near the finish line on April 15, 2013, killed three spectators and wounded more than 260 other people, turning the traditionally celebratory home stretch of the world-famous race into a scene of carnage and putting the city on edge for days.

Tsarnaev was found responsible not only for those deaths but for the killing of a Massachusetts Institute of Technology police officer who was gunned down days later.

A British police force has come under fire for publishing posters that critics say place the blame for rape on women rather than male attackers. Sussex Police issued the posters as part of a campaign to prevent rape. The force intends to put them up in pub toilets and bus stops.

Campaigners say the posters reinforce the message that victims rather than assailants are to blame in sexual assault cases. Sussex Police defended the posters, saying it wanted to raise awareness that vulnerable people could be targeted by rapists.

The posters feature an image of two young women taking a selfie, with the caption: "Which one of your mates is most vulnerable on a night out? The one you leave behind."

It goes on to say many rapes could be prevented if women "stick together and don't let your friend leave with a stranger or go off on their own."

Friends who play together, stay together. On a night out don't let your mates leave with a stranger or go off alone. pic.twitter.com/U3Hk3QCndu

— Sussex Police (@sussex_police) March 31, 2015

Sarah Green, director of the End Violence Against Women Coalition, said the posters were sending the wrong message - to the wrong people.

Energy companies in California used 70 million gallons of water for the hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, process to unearth oil and gas reserves, according to officials. The figure comes during the state's increasingly urgent push to conserve water.

That amount is of water used is less than previously projected by industry -- which estimated fracking used about 100 million gallons of water per year. Nevertheless, water in California is at premium. The state is entering its fourth year of record drought, and a mandatory water reduction plan was announced last week by Governor Jerry Brown. California may only have 12 months' worth of water left, as snowpack measurements for the year are set to hit record lows. Yet fracking operations are not included in the conservation efforts.

To unleash oil or natural gas from shale or other areas, the fracking process requires blasting large volumes of highly pressurized water, sand, and other chemicals into layers of rock. Once used, toxic fracking wastewater is then either stored in deep underground wells, disposed of in open pits for evaporation, sprayed into waste fields, or used over again.

As the california drought continues it's rampage, Fracking Companies go undisturbed.#CaliforniaDrought

— IPL (@IsaacPLambert) April 4, 2015

"Hydraulic fracturing uses a relatively small amount of water - the equivalent of 514 households annually," Steven Bohlen, the state oil and gas supervisor, told Reuters, which first reported the water usage figure.

A divorced man and his seven kids have been found dead in their home on Maryland's Eastern Shore. Authorities believe they were poisoned by carbon monoxide fumes from a generator they used after their electricity was cut off due to unpaid bills.

The bodies of Rodney Todd and his children - two boys and five girls - were found in their house in Princess Ann, 140 miles to the southeast of Baltimore, a week after they were last seen alive.

Stephanie Wells, a supervisor at the nearby University of Maryland Eastern Shore, where Todd was a kitchen worker, filed a missing person report with the police after she went to Todd's house on Monday morning and knocked at the door, but got no answer.

RIP to the the family of 8 in #Maryland who all died of carbon monoxide poisoning, due to their power being cut off. http://t.co/gLuMcuO4CS

— Stose (@Stose) April 7, 2015

"He was a good person; he always did what he was told," Wells told AP. "He took care of seven kids. I last saw him on March 28, and I'd asked co-workers to look for him because it didn't seem right."

Neighbors also said they had knocked on the doors. Leo Lawson, a spokesman for Somerset County Schools, said school personnel had been looking for the children as well, but could not find out if anybody was at home.

Translated from German for RI by Mihajlo Doknic

Last week Florian Harms, chief-editor of SPIEGEL ONLINE, explained to his declining readership what goals the editors have set for this year. The goal is to "even better inform the readership about current world events", and to continue to practice "journalism based on clear rules and principles."

According to TrafficEstimate.com, Spiegel.de has lost 14.6% of its traffic over the course of the last year. The losses actually wipe out gains made as the Ukraine conflict began to heat up. Later, as Spiegel's bias made itself evident, German readership began an exodus, resulting in a nearly-20% drop over the course of five months.

Last year those Spiegel principles led above all to a steep decline in readership. While there is no sign of self-criticism in his post, Mr Harms explained what this highly regarded SPIEGEL-journalism actually is.

With lawmakers preparing to vote on a bill blocking parents from skipping vaccinations for their children, prominent vaccine skeptic Robert F. Kennedy Jr. arrived at the Sacramento screening of a film linking autism to the vaccine preservative thimerosal and warned that public health officials cannot be trusted.

"They can put anything they want in that vaccine and they have no accountability for it," said Kennedy, who walked onto and left a Crest Theater stage to standing ovations, of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Wednesday afternoon will see the first hearing for a bill eliminating the personal belief exemption parents can cite in order to avoid vaccinating their kids. Senate Bill 277 was prompted by soaring exemption rates in some schools districts and outbreaks of long-dormant diseases like measles and whooping cough.

A businessman from Ukraine, who recently left the country, told the German magazine "Der Tagesspiegel" that after the events on Maidan Square the situation has significantly deteriorated.

The situation in the country became much worse after Maidan events, a Ukrainian businessman who recently left the country told the German magazine "Der Tagesspiegel."

The man, called "Vadim" by the magazine, said that corruption and bribery became even more widespread than before, with bandits demanding higher "protection fees," which were a usual practice in the Ukrainian business sector in previous years.

For a short period of time, the situation changed in a positive way and they were "in the seventh heaven," Vadim said. But then the bandits again came to power, and "the new mafia," working in conjunction with the corrupt police, became even stronger.

"Earlier there were men with Kalashnikovs who came and demanded money. Today, they come with an official letter from corrupt officials with whom they work and ask for more."

Vadim claims that laws adopted by the new Kiev government to combat corruption are just a fiction.

He also said the mafia in Lviv tried to blackmail him after he refused to pay the bribe. The bandits threatened to poison his guard dogs and hang out the flag of the People's Donetsk Republic on his house.

The smart grid isn't coming. It's already here.

Everywhere people's houses are being fitted if they already haven't with smart electric meters and smart water meters. These meters communicate real-time usage data via radio frequency (which comes with its own set of health problems).

Essentially, consumption of utilities in your home is being big brother tracked and traced at all times on the smart grid.

Sure, it was sold to everyone as a "smart" solution for keeping consumption in check, that it would decrease utility bills because people could use it to check out how much they use and find smart ways to cut down. (How many people are really even doing that, by the way?)

Jurors in the trial of 21 year old Dzhokhar Tsarnaev are hoping to return a verdict on Wednesday, following weeks of testimony in the Boston Marathon bombing trial.

Tsarnaev faces either life in prison or the death penalty.

Here are five stunning questions that were not asked during this historic trial in Massachusetts...