I just returned from Libya for the first time in over a year, and the situation is deteriorating. Libya should have showcased how the Arab Spring turned dictatorships into democracies. That's what many, myself included, expected after Moammar Gadhafi's brutal regime fell and a wave of good feeling swept across Libya. But too little was done to assist the transition - and we are now seeing the alarming consequences.

There are two, or depending how you count, four competing governments in the country now - the internationally recognized government in the east, an Islamist leaning government in Tripoli, the UN-backed unification government, and ISIS, which governs a growing amount of territory. In parts of Libya that are still safe, security is maintained by competing militias connected in a tenuous set of alliances.

Given this patchwork of governments and militias, Libya is tense, on the verge of implosion. Events while I was there are illuminating. On February 17, the country celebrated five years since the revolution that freed Libya from 42 years of Gadhafi's rule. Thousands were in the streets for what should have been a joyous anniversary, but Libyans I spoke with felt disillusionment not hope. And with good reason.

Two days later, the United States hit an ISIS compound in Sabratha, a town about 40 miles west of Tripoli, killing 41 militants. The mayor of Sabratha lauded the airstrike, claiming his government had no knowledge of ISIS's presence. Three days later, hundreds of other ISIS fighters - whom he also says he did not know about - stormed Sabratha, raising a black flag over the center of town.

There was a time when the German chancellor and the head of the European Central Bank had nice things to say about each other. Mario Draghi spoke of a "good working relationship," while Angela Merkel noted "broad agreement." Draghi, said Merkel, is extremely supportive "when it comes to European competitiveness."

These days, though, meetings between the two most powerful politicians in the euro zone are often no different than their face-to-face at the most recent summit in Brussels. She observed that his forced policy of cheap money is endangering the business model of Germany's Sparkassen savings banks and retirement insurance companies. He snarled back that the sectors would simply have to adapt, just as the American financial sector has.

The alienation between Germany and the ECB has reached a new level. Back in deutsche mark times, Europeans often joked that the Germans "may not believe in God, but they believe in the Bundesbank," as Germany's central bank is called. Today, though, when it comes to relations between the ECB and the German population, people are more likely to speak of "parallel universes."

ECB head Draghi doesn't understand why he is getting so much resistance from the country that has profited from the euro more than any other. Yet Germans blame Draghi for miniscule yields on savings accounts and life/retirement insurance policies. Frustration is growing. Draghi has pushed the prime rate down to zero and now even charges commercial banks a fee for parking their money at the ECB. He has also bought almost €2 trillion worth of bonds from euro-zone member states, making the ECB one of the largest state creditors of all time.

During his most recent appearance before the Frankfurt reporter pool, he went even further. The idea of pumping money directly into the economy, he said, was a "very interesting concept," with a helicopter to distribute the money across the country if necessary, as economists have half-jokingly recommended. Doing so is seen as a way of boosting the economy. German money being thrown out of a helicopter: It would be difficult to find a more fitting image to show people that the money they have set aside for retirement may soon be worth very little.

To see the tension, all you have to do is look at the current accounts of Germany and its biggest European counterparts – France, Spain and Italy. The current account is the less well- known, but more comprehensive, measure of the economic health of a nation, bringing together its exports and imports, the interest it pays to and receives from others, and even its foreign aid. Running a positive current account balance is, to a point, better than running a deficit.

Since the creation of the euro, Germany has run a pretty much consistent positive current account balance. Germany is better off to the tune of about €1.8 trillion (£1.5 trillion) since 2000. But if you add together the current account balances of France, Spain and Italy over the same time, they are collectively nearly €1.2 trillion in the red. The contrasting current account positions of Germany and the larger debtor European nations is the story of something never tried before; a currency union pre-dating a political union, and the mechanism used to sponsor it.

Sluggish domestic German economics have been supplanted by an export sector boosted by a depressed euro, while those who would have found themselves in trouble have been able to borrow increasingly larger sums at artificially low interest rates.

In many respects it has suited everyone. But what makes you strong eventually makes you weak. Huge amounts of Spanish, Italian, French, Portuguese, Greek and Irish creditor risk now sits within creditor nations, primarily Germany and the Netherlands. Far from talk of Brexit, if there is a route to euro destruction, this recycling money back to the debtor nations of Germany’s current account will be the cause.

The physicist's opinions have been revealed after the 1942 letter he wrote while at Princeton University emerged at auction for £30,000. It was sent to the university's president, Dr Frank Kingdon, who shared Einstein's concerns. It was never meant for public eyes as at the time of writing America had been giving Einstein shelter from fascist persecution in Nazi Germany.

The scientist thought the government's inaction had led to the consolidation of fascism in Europe and that American financiers tacitly encouraged the growth of the Far Right. Einstein, recognized as one of the most important minds in the twentieth century, was angered by America's relationship with Spanish dictator Francisco Franco after the country's civil war; the fact it had a diplomat in Vichy France - the French state which collaborated with the Nazis - and its treatment of Soviet Russia.

He wrote: "You can imagine how the new crimes committed by the Nazis in France make me suffer, crimes assisted to by the 'fascist' Vichy-traitors. I cannot, however, make up my mind to approach Washington on the matter. My reason is a sad one indeed and I wish to explain it to you so that you may understand my negative attitude: Why did Washington help to strangulate Loyalist Spain?

"Why has it an official representative in fascist France? Why does it not recognize a French Government in Exile? Why does it flirt with Franco-Spain? Why is there no really serious effort to assist Russia in her dire need? Because it is a government controlled to a large degree by financiers the mentality of whom is near to the fascist frame of mind." Einstein, who died aged 78 in 1955, wrote his broadside on September 3, 1942, nine years after the US had taken him in as a refugee.

Joe Maddalena, president of Profiles in History, said: "These letters provide a unique perspective on Albert Einstein, the greatest mind of the 20th century. Einstein didn't comment publicly about politics. He was very much on-message while living in America and was not critical of the country that had taken him in. But here he was saying that Washington was corrupted by financiers. Hitler was on the verge to taking over the world and Einstein was disappointed in America for not recognising what was going on."

For months, the North African country has seen a secret build-up of American, British, French and Italian agents and officers, while reconnaissance and armed drones controlled from Sigonella in Sicily have conducted surveillance missions and air strikes in Libya.

Last week, the EU and US moved forward with the installation of their puppet regime in Tripoli. The designated government leader, Fayiz as-Sarraj, left his exile in Tunisia on Wednesday by ship and arrived in the Libyan capital at the head of a nine-member-strong government delegation. As-Sarraj is a front man built up by German UN negotiator Martin Kobler, and has been tasked with demanding an official military intervention at the United Nations as soon as possible against ISIS forces in Libya.

As-Sarraj, a 54-year old architect from Tripoli, has been dispatched to form a so-called government of national unity. He has returned to a deeply-divided and ruined country, in which at least two governments and five militias are conducting a bloody civil war. As-Sarraj can at most rely on the half-hearted support of a section of the internationally recognised parliament which is currently located in Tobruk in the east of the country.

“Following consultations with Russia, we have agreed to hold a meeting of the NATO-Russia Council at Ambassadorial level,” the bloc said in a statement released on Friday. “This meeting will take place in the next two weeks at the NATO headquarters in Brussels,” it added.

“The NATO-Russia Council [NRC] will discuss the crisis in and around Ukraine and the need to fully implement the Minsk Agreements. We will discuss military activities, with particular focus on transparency and risk reduction. We will also address the security situation in Afghanistan, including regional terrorist threats.”

NATO decided to break off all contact with Russia in 2014, when Viktor Yanukovych was ousted as Ukraine’s president during the Euromaidan riots. The last NRC meeting was held in June of 2014. “This meeting is the continuation of our political dialogue … At the same time, there will be no return to business as usual until Russia again respects international law,” the statement said.

The development may add to fears that workers in poorer countries are most in danger of being displaced by automation, with analysis by Citi and the Oxford Martin School, a research and policy unit of the UK university, published earlier this year suggesting that more than 75 per cent of jobs in China are at a “high risk” of computerisation.

Mirae Asset Management, an Asia-focused house with $75 billion of assets, predicts that China’s robot army will expand at a compound annual growth rate of 35 per cent until 2020.

Given that the International Federation of Robotics estimates that China had 260,000 industrial robots last year, Rahul Chadha, chief investment officer of Mirae, says: “Using the rule thumb that one industrial robot replaces four to five workers, this suggests that robots have rendered more than 1 million people jobless.” This figure is set to rise sharply in the coming years.

Until now, it has been against Facebook's rules for publishers to post paid articles on their pages, which also appear in your News Feed. But after pressure from publishers, Facebook has agreed to allow sponsored posts on pages, the Wall Street Journal reported today.

Publishers that wish to post sponsored content must have pages that have been verified by Facebook, and will be required to "tag" the brand that paid for the post. "For a long time, for media companies, Facebook has been primarily about distribution," Dan Rose, the company's vice president of partnerships, told the Journal. "But we're increasingly trying to help partners make money. And this is something they've been asking for a lot."

They've been asking because readers typically respond better to these ads than traditionals and banners — and are significantly more expensive as a result. (Vox Media, which owns The Verge, makes a variety of native advertisements, and they constitute the majority of its revenues.) In a blog post, Facebook said the new policy applies to text, photos, videos, Instant Articles, links, 360 videos, and Live videos. It's considered promotional if it "specifically mentions or features a third party product, brand, or sponsor."

Today's move feels inevitable, and for publishers, it's significant. (Expect to see a lot of live video series sponsored by advertisers.) The question for regular people is how they'll feel about seeing yet another ad format in the News Feed. We're about to find out.

The government hopes to increase the number of foreign tourists by using the system to prevent crime and relieve users from the necessity of carrying cash or credit cards. It aims to realize the system by the 2020 Tokyo Olympic and Paralympic Games.

The experiment will have inbound tourists register their fingerprints and other data, such as credit card information, at airports and elsewhere. Tourists would then be able to conduct tax exemption procedures and make purchases after verifying their identities by placing two fingers on special devices installed at stores.

The Inns and Hotels Law requires foreign tourists to show their passports when they check into ryokan inns or hotels. The government plans to substitute fingerprint authentication for that requirement.

Merkel is no longer the European leader. They’ve turned their backs to her. From Scandinavia to the Balkans. For ten years, Angela Merkel and Berlin have, through the help of the banks, determined which way the wind blows in Europe. This is now coming to an end. All throughout the Greek bailout, the euro bailout, the austerity measures: Merkel and her secretary of the treasury, Wolfgang Schäuble, with his goal of a “Black Zero”, have always set the tone. And Europe followed them.

The Germans had the money and therefore, they called the shots. There were times when the others followed begrudgingly, sometimes despondently, but for the most part, they were obedient. What Merkel wanted, she got. Even as some European countries grumbled, and even as Schäuble put his foot down and tightened the German purse strings, other countries gave in to Merkel.

But now the money is gone. It’s no longer a question of who’s able to bailout Greece; rather, how big the haircut might have to be. When there’s no more money to be distributed, then Germany is no longer allowed to sit at the head of the table. For Merkel, the threads are now starting to unravel. German dominance is starting to give way. Berlin is no longer in the center. It’s being pushed to the outer edge.

This pushed productivity below pre-crisis levels, and all but erased the gains seen at the start of last year. Measures of productivity indicate how much the economy can grow without generating too much inflation. If productivity slips, it means companies make less profit and stint on wage increases, thus hitting people's living standards.

Economists warned that further falls in productivity would also push up Government borrowing unless policymakers acted quickly to reverse the slump. “This alarming fall in productivity towards the end of last year reinforces concerns about the prospects for both wage growth and the public finances," said Matthew Whittaker, chief economist at the Resolution Foundation.

"With inflation finally set to start creeping up it's absolutely vital this productivity slump is turned around fast. Otherwise pay and living standards will suffer, and the Chancellor will continue to struggle with stubbornly high deficits.” The Office for Budget Responsibility warned last month that UK living standards may never again grow at the pace seen before the 2008 crash.

Chicago is third on the list of cities experiencing an exodus of millionaires, behind Paris and Rome. The French capital lost a stunning 7,000 millionaires – 6 per cent – over the last year alone, while Rome lost 5,000 or 7 per cent. As we have previously highlighted, increasing wealth inequality combined with the rise of extreme protest movements like ‘Black Lives Matter’ provide a toxic cocktail that virtually guarantees social disorder.

Wealthy elites are also installing panic rooms in their big city apartments due to fears over potential civil unrest and skyrocketing crime. “The world is a very scary place right now, especially for people of means; they feel cornered and threatened,” Tom Gaffney, the president of Gaffco Ballistics, a company which installs safe rooms in New York City, told the NY Times.

Fearing global unrest and the possibility of another major conflict, many members of the elite have also been buying remote property and land in places like New Zealand, according to reports that emerged out of last year’s Davos Economic Forum.

Many of the participating groups are backed by billionaire George Soros. The coalition, calling itself Democracy Awakening, is a three-day activist movement that claims it is “coming together to demand a democracy that works for all of us – a nation where our votes are not denied and money doesn’t buy access and power.”

Groups signed onto Democracy Awakening include a litany of Soros-financed organizations. Those Soros-financed groups include MoveOn, AVAAZ, Campaign for America’s Future, Common Cause, Democracy for America, Democracy 21, Demos, Institute for Policy Studies, People for the American Way, Project Vote, and UHCAN. Weissman’s Public Citizen has also received significant financing from Soros’ Open Society.

But the left is not accustomed to being disobeyed in such a manner, which explains the utterly shocked and stunned reaction from leftists across the country to these two pieces of legislation. While the vicious attacks against Mississippi over their bill are just beginning, the outrage over the “anti-trans” law in North Carolina has reached apocalyptic volumes.

It seems a bit contradictory to go through the herculean effort to doll yourself up to look like some cartoonish caricature of a woman, only to complain that other people are making you feel ridiculous. That’s like covering yourself in red paint and running through a shopping mall nude while yodeling into a megaphone and then reacting with indignation and alarm when people cast sideways glances at you. If you don’t want to feel ridiculous, stop doing ridiculous things. Easy solution. Let’s try that.

Anyway, the next step in this North Carolina “controversy” was inevitable. Dozens of massive corporations began putting pressure on North Carolina to scrap the law. Mayors of major American cities banned travel to the state, prohibiting people from going to a place in order to protest North Carolina’s attempt to prohibit people from going to a place. The federal government got into the extortion game, threatening to pull federal funds if North Carolina continues its unthinkable persecution of men who wear skirts in public. Even the state’s attorney general refuses to defend the law, claiming it’s “unconstitutional.” Predictably, Mississippi is starting to feel a similar backlash.

Now, there’s plenty to be said in support of laws like these, but considering how Christians and conservatives are constantly lectured for their alleged lack of “compassion” and “tolerance” and so on, I think it must be noted that these laws would not be needed if compassion and tolerance, along with humility and prudence, were traits commonly found in the “LGBT community.”

It is the seemingly total lack of kindness, magnanimity, and rationality displayed by many in their camp that necessitates this sort of legislation. If gays would simply respect the beliefs of Christian business owners, and if “transgenders” would simply respect the privacy of women and children, there would be no need for laws forcing the matter. But here we are. And it’s not the fault of Christians and conservatives that we arrived here. On the contrary, it’s the fault of the very people now whining about being persecuted.