The lawmaker from the opposition Left Party slammed the US-led military bloc as an organization that poses “significant security risk to the world” and “systematically violates international law.” NATO revealed its true colors when it waged an “aggressive war” against Yugoslavia without the UN’s approval, and carried out numerous interventions, which claimed the lives of “countless victims,” Neu argued.

He pointed out that last year NATO’s member states spent more than $1 trillion on defense, which is far more than the defense budgets of its rivals, China and Russia, combined.

“To keep the military-industrial complex going, to keep the agitation, you always have to have an enemy.” Paul was concerned about the principle of having an international organization that not only gets the US involved everywhere around the world, but also “badgers” and pressures other countries to back US adventures in places like Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria and elsewhere.

He pointed to the looming inability of Washington to afford a global empire – the US national debt is currently $22 trillion and counting – and the growing dissatisfaction of allies with the US imposing its will and telling them what to do. “I don’t think that’s going to last forever. Matter of fact, I see some cracks in that already,” Paul said.

“The purpose of this competence is to ensure consistency with the exchange rate and monetary policy of the Union.” Specifically, Draghi made this statement to two Italian members of the European Parliament.

At the time it did not seem notable for any reason other than its peculiar timing, but now things are starting to make more sense as The Wall Street Journal reports that Italy’s ruling populists pushed ahead this week with efforts to seize control of the central bank and its gold reserves. But as The Wall Street Journal concludes, the 5 Star Movement and the League support public ownership of the gold reserves, and with backing from parties comprising 60% of lawmakers, the draft law has enough support to pass.

Theresa May has written to the EU asking for permission to delay Brexit until June 30 - but Brussels will tell her it must be a year-long extension to March 31 2020, it was revealed today. Donald Tusk has said that a 12-month 'flextension' offer is 'the only reasonable way out' of the crisis and will urge leaders of the EU's 27 member states to back him later today.    

This morning the Prime Minister sent a letter to Mr Tusk to formally request an extension to Article 50 that will delay the UK's departure beyond April 12 to June 30 - but wants a 'termination clause'. This would allow the UK to leave on May 22 - the day before European elections - if a deal can be pushed through the UK Parliament. But Mrs May's letter admits that if she fails Britain would go to the polls to elect MEPs, who would be paid a €100000-a-year salary to sit in Brussels as the UK tries to leave. 

EU sources have said they will reject Mrs May's June 30 Brexit date and tell her that a year-long deal is the only option. With No Deal now off the table she would be forced to accept it. Theresa May's cabinet is considering giving MPs a vote on holding a second referendum as the price of a deal with Jeremy Corbyn, it emerged today. But ministers are considering quitting if Britain does not leave by May and backbench Brexiteers said today: 'The little bit of credibility she has left would be completely shattered' if she offered a new public poll. 

Talks between Mrs May and Mr Corbyn continue today with a customs union proposal looking the most likely compromise. But Labour's deputy leader Tom Watson said today it's 'highly unlikely' that the party would support a cross-party deal with the Prime Minister if a second referendum was not included. 

Well, the Russians are rattling sabers again — and the United States is still needed both to contain an expansionist Moscow and dampen strategic competition among NATO’s European member states… But now with Vladimir Putin’s Russia threatening the European security order and Germany a vital member of the liberal democratic club, it is not German aggression that anyone seriously fears but its opposite: passivity… As Europe’s richest and most populous nation, Germany can and should do more…

Narrow-minded and negligent as Berlin’s scrimping on defense may be, Trump is partly to blame for this situation. His constant berating of allies, rhetorical undermining of NATO and all-around indecency have rendered the issue of defense spending politically toxic in Germany, where, given the country’s history, it is already a political millstone. Leaders here are understandably hesitant to make the case for increased military spending so as not to be associated with one of the most unpopular American presidents in history.

Yet Germans need to get past their intense personal dislike of this particular White House occupant and realize that enhancing their defense capabilities is in their own best interest. That they are unable to is evidence of a profound political and strategic immaturity. Rebuilt by the United States after World War II and protected by it ever since, Germany is, according to one Berlin political analyst, like a “spoiled child living in its parents’ house.”

For all their complaining, 65 percent of Germans still believe that the United States would fulfill its NATO commitment by using military force to defend an ally threatened by Russia, while only 40 percent think their own country should. Consider the current transatlantic tensions a belated, if inevitable, form of growing pains.

The maverick Zehut party is steadily gaining traction in the polls under the banner of Jewish rights in the Holy Land, much to the chagrin of their left-wing opponents. A Temple Mount agenda is built into his party’s platform which calls to move government facilities to the Temple Mount and give the Chief Rabbinate authority over the site. Many have said that this is an extremist position which will lead to war, but Shmuel Sackett, co-founder of the party and one of its candidates for the Knesset, refuted these claims.

“Building the 3rd and final temple in Jerusalem has been the dream of Jews for more than 2,000 years. The goal of the State of Israel is to bring about the fulfillment of the Jewish dream and not the destruction of it,’ Sackett told Breaking Israel News. “We must educate the world as to the beauty of that dream and to the wonderful peace it will bring. Not every dream can be realized immediately but we must do what we can to move closer to that reality.”

A study in the journal Clinical Pediatrics examined just artificial food colors, and found these harmful chemicals in 96.3 percent of candies, 94 percent of fruit-flavored snacks and 89.7 percent of drink mixes and powders. When children’s and adult foods were examined together, 43.2 percent of all products were made with artificial colors. Fresh produce was the only food category not made with artificial colors (yes, that means meat, dairy and baked products may all contain fake color!).

Over the last five years, it has hit a neonatal unit in Venezuela, swept through a hospital in Spain, forced a prestigious British medical center to shut down its intensive care unit, and taken root in India, Pakistan and South Africa. Recently C. auris reached New York , New Jersey and Illinois, leading the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to add it to a list of germs deemed “urgent threats.”

The man at Mount Sinai died after 90 days in the hospital, but C. auris did not. Tests showed it was everywhere in his room, so invasive that the hospital needed special cleaning equipment and had to rip out some of the ceiling and floor tiles to eradicate it. “Everything was positive — the walls, the bed, the doors, the curtains, the phones, the sink, the whiteboard, the poles, the pump,” said Dr Scott Lorin, the hospital’s president. “The mattress, the bed rails, the canister holes, the window shades, the ceiling, everything in the room was positive.”

C. auris is so tenacious, in part, because it is impervious to major antifungal medications, making it a new example of one of the world’s most intractable health threats: the rise of drug-resistant infections. For decades, public health experts have warned that the overuse of antibiotics was reducing the effectiveness of drugs that have lengthened life spans by curing bacterial infections once commonly fatal. But lately, there has been an explosion of resistant fungi as well, adding a new and frightening dimension to a phenomenon that is undermining a pillar of modern medicine.

“It’s an enormous problem,” said Matthew Fisher, a professor of fungal epidemiology at Imperial College London, who was a co-author of a recent scientific review on the rise of resistant fungi. “We depend on being able to treat those patients with antifungals.” Simply put, fungi, just like bacteria, are evolving defenses to survive modern medicines.

Many major regions within the eurozone including the likes of Germany, France, and Italy have struggled to deal with a declining rate of overall growth and the weakening performance of large financial institutions.

Russel Napier wrote: The key consequence of this collapse will be the destruction of the euro. The expected success of the far-right and far-left in the European parliamentary election in May this year augurs the beginning of the end for the currency union. Both extremes share a commitment to the return of sovereignty to their parliaments that is incompatible with a single currency.

Whether the UK [leaves] the European Union (EU) with a comprehensive Brexit deal or not, in an event in which the euro loses most of its momentum and the eurozone economy declines substantially in the next few years, the UK market could appeal to investors as a potentially safe haven.

The UK, where democracy and the rule of law will remain largely unchallenged, will become an attractive safe-haven investment for European investors facing increasingly authoritarian regimes and property sequestration on the mainland.

The founding architect of the monetary union has warned that Brussels’ dream of a European superstate will finally be buried amongst the rubble of the crumbling single currency he designed. “Realistically, it will be a case of muddling through, struggling from one crisis to the next. It is difficult to forecast how long this will continue for, but it cannot go on endlessly,” he told the journal Central Banking in a remarkable deconstruction of the EU project.

The respected economist launched a withering attack on so called eurocrats and German Prime Minister Angela Merkel, accusing them of betraying the principles of the euro and demonstrating scandalous incompetence over its management. And he savaged the whole idea of a federal “United States of Europe”, saying the attempt to push through federalisation in a stealth manner “by the back door” has turned the very foundations that the currency was built on into a complete mess of patchwork legislation, into which it is sinking fast.

The coming collapse of the euro is inevitable. The question is when rather than if. It gives us no pleasure to say so as the collapse of the euro will be financially painful for family, friends and people and companies in all EU nations.