In joint interviews with five European newspapers, Mr Cameron today argued the EU has “overreached itself with directives and interventions and interferences”. Asked whether there will be treaty change, Mr Cameron said he is “absolutely convinced that there will be the need to reopen at some stage these treaties, not least to solve the problem of the eurozone”.

He said, “I don't want to give you a shopping list. I think this should be a discussion across Europe about how we make the EU more flexible, and how we make clear that powers can flow back to nation states as well as flow forward to the EU.” He added, “We need to recognise that consent for Britain's membership of the EU and all the ways that it's changed has become wafer-thin in Britain. Politicians, if they do their job properly have to recognise this fact rather than try and brush it under the carpet.”

Lucke added that while some areas like competition policy and banking regulation should remain at the EU level, most other decisions should be returned to national governments. Looking ahead to September’s federal elections, he argued that “many of Angela Merkel’s supporters will vote for us.”

In a feature on the party in Die Welt, Thorsten Jungholt argues that if the election will be tight, even a modest electoral result for the party could be enough to deprive the CDU/CSU and FDP coalition of an outright victory. An Infratest Dimap poll for the paper shows that the party can potentially count on support from across the political spectrum with 29% of Die Linke’s voters, 21% of SPD voters, 19% of CDU/CSU voters and 14% of Green voters saying they could see themselves voting for the party “in principle”.

These economists, including Tsinghua University professor Li Daokui and ANZ Bank's Liu Ligang, see Japan's plan to double its monetary base within two years as "blackmail" and have criticised the Japanese central bank's decision to open the liquidity floodgates to bump up the economy.

Liu said Japan's unprecedented easing programme, aimed at ending more than two decades of deflation, was "a monetary blackmail" targeted at other export-driven Asian countries such as China and that the central bank should sell more yuan and buy the US dollar to push down the yuan.

He also called on authorities to guard against a fresh wave of hot money into China's fragile financial markets, warning that Japan's move would reignite the so-called carry trade, under which investors borrow in low-interest yen and invest in high-interest markets. "The massive monetary stimulus by the Japanese central bank could spell doom for other nations in the region," said Tsinghua's Li, a former adviser to the People's Bank of China.

First, we will not build Europe without, and even more so against its people. We cannot succeed if the citizens do not feel part of the project. As the Mayor of Thessaloniki rightly recalled: “Only if the people see the benefits of the European Union in their daily lives will they continue to believe in it”.

Second, in order to enable citizens to continue to believe in Europe, the latter must find the means, among its leaders and within its institutions, to show that the project remains beneficial, or, at least, that Europe is not per se responsible for all that is happening.

Third, in the light of the current situation, it is essential that Europe – and above all the Commission – starts tackling the rise of populism throughout the continent. More and more of these movements are questioning the very essence of the European project, and the risk is real that they might succeed.

Finally, We need to engage in an open debate with the people of Europe, put all cards on the table, listen and rebuild together.

A span of unfinished apartment blocks in the Siska complex on the outskirts of Ljubljana is emblematic of the former Yugoslav republic's woes, just as many such ghost neighborhoods in Europe's debt-choked south stand testament to the depth of the broader continent's economic problems.

The rows of buildings, housing 833 flats in all, stand mostly empty, casualties of a property boom turned bust and a subsequent recession. Alongside, Vegrad, a company once led by a well-placed politician, also planned to build a hotel, but got no further than digging an enormous hole. An apt symbol, as Slovenia comes under growing pressure to seek a bailout to fill a financial hole, just as Cyprus did last month.

The countries are different in many ways, but they have at least two things in common: like Cyprus, Slovenia needs to recapitalize its biggest banks, and it does not have the money to do so.

In 2001 Goldman Sachs executive Jim O’Neill invented the BRIC’s. Russia and China, as two powerful neighbors obviously have long standing and important bilateral relations. But equally obviously, have little in common with Brazil and South Africa. However, in 2009 they organized a first summit. Just a week ago we all of a sudden hear the BRIC’s are planning to open up a competitor to the IMF. India is also involved. They’re still working out the details and it’s not a done deal yet, but the move looks very serious.

And there is of course the euro, which, make no mistake, is in great shape. True, Eurocrat legitimacy is suffering because of the euro crisis, even in Germany the currency is losing support. But the euro crisis is purely for internal consumption, to sucker the nations into surrendering budget responsibility to Brussels. This is the final frontier for a full blown EU federalist Super State. While the euro is deeply hated, this is not really a problem for the Money Power: it isn’t in this business to make friends and it does not mind a big fight. It only fears real alternatives and these are nowhere to be seen.

There is nobody proposing anything real, people are just letting off steam. Once they get their fiscal union, the crisis will quickly end. People have a short memory. The euro was designed to be eventually backed by gold and the ECB has enough of the stuff to be ready for the coming transition.

In fact, if current trends continue, it is estimated that by 2030, more than 86% of Americans will be either overweight or obese. For some people, this picture looks dreadful enough already, but the truth is that it barely scratches the surface of the problem. Neurobiology research has shown that food can cause serious addiction, the kind that addictive drugs do. Dr Nicole Avena and her colleagues from the department of Psychiatry, University of Florida, report that the consumption of sugar not only alters brain function and behavior, but it also elicits the same type of withdrawal symptoms like opiate drugs do.

In other words, sugar affects the opioid receptors in the brain, which are recognized by natural (endogenous or not) opioid substances. On the other hand, foods rich in fat seem to affect the brain in a different way, although they cause withdrawal-type symptoms as well. Many studies show that there is a unique relationship between emotional balance and fatty acids.

Latest research shows that the diet during pregnancy has a significant impact on the nutritional choices of the offspring. It is now confirmed that when the expectant mother follows a high-fat diet, her baby shows a measurable preference for sugar. However, this is not just a behavioral trait casually passed on to the next generation by means of mimicking the behavior of adults. On the contrary, as a result of the maternal diet, the DNA and subsequent expression of genes encoding opioid and dopamine receptors in the brain of the child is altered in a manner that promotes addiction.

In a twisted way, the new generation is genetically pre-programmed to be addicted to junk food, even before they are born. This perfect self-feeding loop guarantees long-term profits for the food corporations and chronic debilitating disease for humans, for generations to come. By designing and selling addictive, low quality and disease-promoting products, Big Food has achieved the unthinkable: to create a dedicated army of health-compromised, addicted fans, whose cognitive, biochemical and even genetic potential to break free of their addiction is hijacked before birth.

The Motiva oil refinery, located in Port Arthur, Texas, is controlled by Royal Dutch Shell and Saudi Aramco, the largest oil company in Saudi Arabia and in the world. Motiva’s owners recently sunk $10 billion into expanding its capacity for processing gasoline, diesel and other petroleum products. The changes also make the refinery capable of handling lower-quality heavy crude oil that Saudi Arabia has been producing recently — oil that most refineries can’t process.

“The Saudis are securing a home for their heavy crude,” Fadel Gheit, a senior oil analyst at Oppenheimer & Company, told The New York Times. But from the look of the refinery one would be hard pressed to know about its Saudi ownership. Inside the facility a visitor will find “a couple of Saudi Aramco coffee-table books on display in the executive offices and a pair of Saudi and Saudi Aramco flags inside the refinery’s small museum,” according to the Clifford Krauss of the Times. Little else reveals the Middle East presence behind the operation of the mammoth oil factory.

Lady Thatcher, born Margaret Roberts, served as MP for Finchley, north London, from 1959 to 1992. Having been education secretary, she successfully challenged former prime minister Edward Heath for her party's leadership in 1975 and won general elections in 1979, 1983 and 1987. Lady Thatcher's government privatised several state-owned industries. She was also in power when the UK went to war with Argentina over the Falkland Islands in 1982.

In a statement on the Downing Street Twitter feed, Mr Cameron said: "It was with great sadness that I learned of Lady Thatcher's death. We've lost a great leader, a great prime minister and a great Briton." A Buckingham Palace spokesman said: "The Queen was sad to hear the news of the death of Baroness Thatcher. Her Majesty will be sending a private message of sympathy to the family."

London Mayor Boris Johnson tweeted: "Very sad to hear of death of Baroness Thatcher. Her memory will live long after the world has forgotten the grey suits of today's politics."

UK Independence Party leader Nigel Farage called Lady Thatcher a "great inspiration", adding: "Whether you loved her or hated her nobody could deny that she was a great patriot, who believed passionately in this country and her people. A towering figure in recent British and political history has passed from the stage. Our thoughts and prayers are with her family."

However, Kurt Campbell, the former head of the State department in Asia, said there are signs that a relationship once described by Chairman Mao to be "as close as lips and teeth" is wearing thin. "There is a subtle shift in Chinese foreign policy. Over the short to medium term, that has the potential to affect the calculus in north east Asia," Mr Campbell said at a forum at John Hopkins university.

"You have seen it at the United Nations (Security Council). We have seen it in our private discussions and you see it in statements in Beijing," he added. Mr Campbell, who left the State department in February to found his own consultancy firm, was one of the architects of the US diplomatic and military "pivot" towards Asia.

He added that North Korean officials have noticed the change of mood in Beijing. "I do not think that subtle shift can be lost on Pyongyang," he said. "They need a close relationship with China for every conceivable reason. It's not in their strategic interest to alienate every country that surrounds them."

And now, courtesy of the Aviationist, we learn that the Pentagon has escalated once more in an ongoing cat and mouse game with North Korea, of who blinks first, and dispatched several B-1 ("Bone") Lancer strategic long-range bombers to Andersen Air Force Base in Guam.

What is different this time, however, is that unlike the previous very public and widely trumpeted reciprocal escalation steps, this particular deployment has been kept secret from the public (at least the broader public), "a fact that could be the sign that the US is not only making symbolic moves (as the above mentioned ones), but it is preparing for the worst scenario: an attack on North Korea."

Perhaps to Kim Jong-un the military escalation to nuclear war is only one big joke, but to the US it is increasingly appearing very serious. And perhaps this is precisely what the Pentagon wanted all along?

In coming months, though, the mild-mannered academic from Hamburg may prove a far greater threat to the future of the European project than many more strident Euro-sceptics. The 50-year-old’s breakaway political party is the first to challenge the previously unassailable orthodoxy that Germany must stay in the eurozone. And his newly-formed movement, the Alternative For Germany, is hoping in general elections this September to tap into the 25 per cent of voters who say they could envisage Germany without the euro.

His party is a direct threat to the fragile coalition of Chancellor Angela Merkel, who has largely underwritten the eurozone’s future by shouldering the bulk of bail-out costs for southern Europe. But after successive bail-outs of the likes of Greece and Cyprus – and little in the way of gratitude from the recipients, who have branded the Germans as “Nazis” for insisting that their generosity is accompanied by economic reform – the patience of many Germans has run out.

The eurozone is now promoting strife, not unity, says Mr Lucke – and so it is time to quit.