Angela Merkel's country faces having to pay an extra £2.44 billion a year to the annual EU budget once Britain has left. Fears for the future of the EU have prompted German government officials to propose that Britain is offered “constructive exit negotiations”. The aim is of making the UK an “associated partner country” of the EU, according to German newspaper Die Welt today.

Hungarian Prime Minister, Viktor Orban, warned that Europe needs to change its ways. “Brussels must hear the voice of the people, this is the biggest lesson from this decision," he told public radio. “But Europe is strong only if it can give answers to major issues such as immigration that would strengthen Europe itself and not weaken it. The EU failed to give these answers."

Another critic of the EU, the leader of Poland's ruling party, said that the UK referendum result shows the need for reform of the EU. “The conclusion is obvious. We need a new European treaty," said Jaroslaw Kaczynski, who heads the Law and Justice party. “We need a positive reaction, and not persistent movement in the same direction, a direction which has led to crisis," he added.

Tensions are rising across the EU, with Denmark, France, Italy, the Netherlands, and Sweden all facing demands for referendums over Europe. In a statement, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said: "There is no point beating about the bush: today is a watershed for Europe, it is a watershed for the European unification process."

There are times, not very often, when you can feel history being made. An archduke falls, a wall comes down, a plane hits a building, and in that moment you can feel the ground shifting beneath your feet. When those initial results came in from Sunderland and Newcastle in the early hours of yesterday morning, I could barely believe it. Even now, to write the words 'Britain has voted to leave the EU' feels extraordinary, like a leap into some alternative reality.

For once, all the cliches are justified. This was not merely an electoral earthquake. It was a popular revolt by vast swathes of England and Wales against the political, financial and cultural elite, whose complacent assumptions have been simply blown away. Indeed, for once it really is impossible to exaggerate the significance of the moment. What happened was undoubtedly the most dramatic, the most shocking and even the most revolutionary event in our modern history. We will live with the consequences for the rest of our lives.

Every rule of politics has been broken. Barely a year after winning a stunning majority, the Prime Minister has gone, a broken man. The Tory Party, plunged into a three-month leadership battle, has been divided almost beyond repair, while Labour's leaders have been exposed as almost comically unpopular and out of touch.

MPs who campaigned for Remain were warned to respect the will of the people last night amid fears they could try to frustrate the Brexit result. Some on the In side have called for sympathetic members on all benches – Tory, Labour, Lib Dem and SNP – to use their overwhelming majority in the Commons to keep Britain in the single market.

They want to sign the UK up to a Norway-style relationship with the EU that would bring full access to the single market on the same terms as now, but would result in Britain having to accept continued freedom of movement. Former Tory MP Matthew Parris today said the single market had not been on the ballot paper, stoking concern among Brexiteers the Commons could refuse to pass the necessary laws.

Out campaigners have warned that such a move would spark a constitutional crisis because it would counter the spirit of a pro-Brexit referendum result and ignore public concerns over EU immigration. Some legal experts point out that the referendum is not legally binding – meaning MPs could in theory ignore it, no matter how politically difficult. The closeness of the result – 52 per cent in favour of Leave – could also give some MPs the excuse to call for not complying with the result.

The Commons is overwhelmingly pro-EU, with just over 70 per cent of members having campaigned for Remain. A slight majority of Tory MPs were pro-Remain, along with almost all Labour, SNP and Lib Dem MPs.

On the same day President Barack Obama announced his controversial transgender school bathroom policy last month, a somewhat more sinister mandate was finalized by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) with consequences for health care providers, insurance companies, and American taxpayers.

The rule contains an explicit definition of gender identity that states a person can claim to be male, female, neither, both, or some combination of the two, said Roger Severino, director of the DeVos Center for Religion and Civil Society at the Heritage Foundation. “It’s now federal policy that you could be both male and female in some combination,” he said. “That’s a pretty radical statement, and impossible to know what it really means.”

If a medical doctor, based on biological evidence, sees a male patient, but the patient claims to be a female, the doctor must treat the patient as a female. Failure to do so could leave the doctor vulnerable to lawsuits, lost federal funding, and federal investigation by the Office of Civil Rights, the HHS arm implementing this policy.

As Europe's most powerful leader and the head of Europe's largest economy, Merkel must now lead negotiations on new terms for the UK's relations with the EU, including the access of British companies to the biggest single market in the world. Speaking to journalists in Berlin, the German chancellor said the EU was strong enough to find the "right answers," adding that the aim of future talks should be to ensure bilateral relations with Britain are "close and based on cooperation."

While other EU chiefs have said the UK must begin the exit process as soon as possible, Merkel made no such appeal. She said she would keep the interests of German citizens and German businesses in mind during any talks. Merkel and other European leaders must now determine how hard a line they want to take during upcoming Brexit negotiations. On the one hand, too harsh a response would also be a detriment to Britain's European trading partners, while being too soft could embolden other Euroskeptics to call for their own national referenda.

Martin Schulz, the president of the European Parliament and a German social democrat, said he would deliberate with Merkel on "how we can avoid a chain reaction" in which other EU states followed Britain's lead out of the bloc. "That'll have consequences and I don't believe other countries will be encouraged to follow that dangerous path," Schulz said.

It's also a lashing out against "the powers that be" in both London and Brussels. The British have followed a patriotic whim. All the flags, the drumming, the pledges and promises of the Brexiteers worked in the end - and that's what makes this day so frightening.

The negative ramifications of a Brexit vote were predictable - and were widely discussed prior to Thursday. But none of the warnings prevented the British from voting to leave. It is no less than an act of deliberate self-mutilation. Britain has now become a little more foreign to us. The British voted against pragmatism and for risk. That's part of what makes this morning so surreal.

The Europe that woke up this morning is a weaker one. It will take years before Britain's exit from the EU is finally completed. Until that time, the Continent faces a period of uncertainty and tumult, as does Britain. Brexit is a democratic decision that cannot be changed. Now Europe needs to learn a lesson from it - it has no other choice.

Mrs Merkel said we are "living in a world of turmoil" as she urged Europe to remain “calm and composed” in the wake of the historic Brexit result. She said: We have to remain calm and composed. We need to make composed analysis and decisions. “We need to make sure that Europe is varied, and as varied as the people of the EU are.”

“Time and time again we are confronted with people that have doubts over the direction that the EU has taken. We have to make sure that people feel that the EU can make a contribution to people’s lives.” Mrs Merkel described the EU as a “unique community of solidarity and values". The German leader confirmed she will meet with the European Council president Donald Tusk, French president Francois Hollande and Italy’s prime minister Matteo Renzi in Berlin on Monday.

And what the Cass Freight Index is telling us about the state of the US economy in 2016 lines up perfectly with all of the other statistics that are clearly indicating that we have now shifted into recession mode. The total amount of stuff that is being bought, sold and shipped around the country by all these various methods has now been declining for 15 months in a row. If it was just one or two months you could say that it was just an anomaly, but how in the world can anyone explain away 15 consecutive months?

Not only that, but the brand new number that just came out for May 2016 is the lowest number that we have seen for the month of May in 6 years. Of course the number for April was the lowest number that we have seen for that month in 6 years too, and the number for March was also the lowest number that we have seen for that month in 6 years. Are you starting to get the picture?

UKIP leader Nigel Farage hailed it as the UK's "independence day" but the Remain camp called it a "catastrophe". The pound fell to its lowest level against the dollar since 1985 as the markets reacted to the results. UKIP leader Nigel Farage - who has campaigned for the past 20 years for Britain to leave the EU - told cheering supporters "this will be a victory for ordinary people, for decent people".

Mr Farage - who predicted a Remain win at the start of the night after polls suggested that would happen - said Thursday 23 June would "go down in history as our independence day". He called on Prime Minister David Cameron, who called the referendum but campaigned passionately for a Remain vote, to quit "immediately".

Labour former Europe Minister Keith Vaz told the BBC the British people had voted with their "emotions" and rejected the advice of experts who had warned about the economic impact of leaving the EU. He said the EU should call an emergency summit to deal with the aftermath of the vote, which he described as "catastrophic for our country, for the rest of Europe and for the rest of the world".

Germany's foreign minister Frank Walter Steinmeier described the referendum result as as "a sad day for Europe and Great Britain". But Leave supporting Tory MP Liam Fox said voters had shown great "courage" by deciding to "change the course of history" for the UK and, he hoped, the rest of Europe. And he called for a "period of calm, a period of reflection, to let it all sink in and to work through what the actual technicalities are," insisting that Mr Cameron must stay on as PM.

Britain would be the first country to leave the EU since its formation - but a leave vote will not immediately mean Britain ceases to be a member of the 28-nation bloc. That process could take a minimum of two years, with Leave campaigners suggesting during the referendum campaign that it should not be completed until 2020 - the date of the next scheduled general election.

He then assured markets and investors around the world that Great Britain's economy will remain strong, and promised UK citizens abroad, as well as EU nationals in Britain, that they will not face any immediate change.

Cameron continued by speaking about his accomplishments and plans for the future. "I am very proud to have been Prime Minister of this country for six years. I have held nothing back." However, he acknowledged that "I think the country requires fresh leadership. I do not think I can be the captain to take the country to its next destination. In my view I think we should have a new prime minister in place by the start of the Conservative conference in October."

Asian stocks dropped by the most in five years. Japan's Nikkei index closed over 8 percent in the red. China's Shanghai composite was down almost 1 percent and Hong Kong's Hang Seng was losing over 4 percent before the closing bell. Futures on the FTSE 100 Index plunged before the start of trade in London. US S&P 500 Index contracts are deep in the red. “Investors are just trying to get out. You sell first and ask questions later.”

“There was a massive miscalculation of risk and now you're seeing all that unwind,” head of investment strategy at Perpetual Ltd in Sydney, Matthew Sherwood, told Bloomberg. Oil fell below $48 per barrel. Gold soared along with US Treasuries as panicked investors sought safe haven from the markets.

“All hell is breaking loose,” Bloomberg quotes Vishnu Varathan, a senior economist in Singapore at Mizuho Bank Ltd as saying. “The only sure [thing] is you buy yen, you buy US Treasuries, you buy gold, you sit tight.”