Only Britain and Ireland have opt-outs from the 28-nation EU's common visa policy and the European Commission must decide by April 12 whether to demand visas from countries who have similar requirements in place for one or more EU state. Washington and Ottawa both demand entry visas from Romanians and Bulgarians, whose states joined the EU in 2007.

The United States also excludes Croatians, Cypriots and Poles from a visa waiver scheme offered to other EU citizens. "A political debate and decision is obviously needed on such an important issue. But there is a real risk that the EU would move towards visas for the two (Americans and Canadians)," an EU source said.

It’s a surreal experience: for a few days the world is turned upside down, the minority is suddenly the majority. Everywhere you look, lesbians are smiling, drinking, dancing, kissing. There are a few men around – staff working the event and guys who have been dragged along by lesbian friends – but they are hard to spot. It’s basically entirely queer women in attendance.

The feeling of permissiveness is compounded by the desert scenery: it looks like there has been some sort of gaypocalypse, and all the straight men and women have died out. I can’t lie, it’s nice being in a predominantly female space for a few days. There’s a feeling of comfortable camaraderie; a sense of suddenly being a first-class citizen.

Today it’s estimated that almost half the population of Palm Springs are gay, and it has the highest per capita gay population in the US, if not the world. Corporations have finally woken up to the profit margins of the margins, and the Dinah has become a lot more attractive to brands. Bacardi, Bud Lite, Smirnoff and Barefoot Wines are all big sponsors this year. While it’s normally irritating to get relentlessly advertised to, in this case it’s a sign of progress. You’re not a real human until you’re recognized by corporate America.

“We had some individuals that shouted fire in a crowded theater room; to me there is nothing as reckless as that,” he told reporters in the capital, Nairobi. “If one made such horrendous statements, you can cause a run, some crisis. Indeed the bank was under serious pressure.”

Chase Bank on Wednesday sought to assure customers that it was operating normally as a flurry of comments on social-media sites speculated on the financial health of the company. Rumors on the safety of deposits and investments mounted following the resignation of Chairman Zafrullah Khan and Managing Director Duncan Kabui, and concern over a qualified opinion expressed by auditors on earnings that had been restated to show a surge in loans to employees and directors.

“Rumors have been rife on social media which is turning out to be a pre-eminent early warning system,” Aly-Khan Satchu, chief executive officer of Rich Management, an adviser to companies and wealthy individuals, said in response to emailed questions.

He added that after agreeing to be an expert witness on drug-safety trials for parents' lawyers, he had received and studied thousands of documents relating to the case which he believed the public had a right to see. He said he has seen a "steady accumulation of evidence" from scientists worldwide that the measles, mumps and rubella jab is causing brain damage in certain children.

But he added: "There are very powerful people in positions of great authority in Britain and elsewhere who have staked their reputations and careers on the safety of MMR and they are willing to do almost anything to protect themselves." His warning follows reports that the Government is this week planning to announce the addition of a jab against pneumococcal meningitis for babies, probably from next April. It is also considering flu jabs for under-twos - not to protect the children, but adults they may infect.

Admiral Harry Harris is proposing a muscular US response to China's island-building that may include launching aircraft and conducting military operations within 12 miles of these man-made islands, as part of an effort to stop what he has called the "Great Wall of Sand" before it extends within 140 miles from the Philippines' capital, sources say.

Harris and his US Pacific Command have been waging a persistent campaign in public and in private over the past several months to raise the profile of China's land grab, accusing China outright in February of militarizing the South China Sea.

But the Obama administration, with just nine months left in office, is looking to work with China on a host of other issues from nuclear non-proliferation to an ambitious trade agenda, experts say, and would prefer not to rock the South China Sea boat, even going so far as to muzzle Harris and other military leaders in the run-up to a security summit.

America wasn't the world's first democracy, but for a long time, it was its proudest. No other country spoke as passionately or confidently about its system of government. If things continue as they have in this primary election, those days will be numbered.

Much of the blame lies squarely in the Republican camp. More than merely an embarrassment for the party of Abraham Lincoln, it is also a stain on the entire nation. Just over two weeks ago supporters of presidential hopeful Ted Cruz published an old photo of Melania Trump, once a model and now the wife of Republican candidate Donald Trump, in which she posed naked for the camera. It was accompanied by the sardonic caption, "Meet Melania Trump. Your next first lady." In retaliation, Trump shared a collage of photos portraying Cruz's wife as rather unattractive and Trump's wife as quite good looking. The line preceding it read, "A picture is worth a thousand words."

America is currently experiencing not only political but also moral bankruptcy. Dirty tricks are not new in US election campaigns, but the new lows to which the candidates are currently stooping are unprecedented.

Attempts to block Trump's nomination at the Republican National Convention in July won't help either. Trump already has too many votes and his millions of voters would feel justifiably betrayed. Trump himself has already predicted "riots." The Republicans have no choice but to make fools of themselves with Trump as their candidate in the general election.

Xavier Rolet added that the “UK leaving the European Union is the end of the European Union”. In an interview with The Daily Telegraph, Mr Rolet, one of 200 business leaders to sign a high-profile letter in February supporting the campaign for the UK to remain in Europe, said such a prospect would be “devastating.”

“I think this would be a geopolitical event that would reverberate way beyond the European Union. I think it would be devastating to the economy of the United Kingdom, and would not be good for anyone with their headquarters in the European Union.

The man who wants to explain the psyche of Germany's foreign intelligence service sips a cappuccino and talks about the abduction of German tourists in the Sahara Desert a few years ago. A crisis committee was meeting at the Foreign Ministry in Berlin, and agents at the Federal Intelligence Service (BND) in Pullach, outside Munich, were trying to figure out how to get information about the kidnappers. Human lives were at stake, the pressure considerable.

The French intelligence services had good sources in the region, but they had been unwilling to share their information with the Germans, so the BND decided to spy on the French to get it. This was how it came to be that the Germans spied on a government agency in a friendly country, one they treated as being among of their closest political allies. Friendly? Allied? In the man with the cappuccino's work, the two were mutually exclusive terms.

A senior BND official at the time, he prefers to keep his name a secret. He recounts the episode to explain why an intelligence service sometimes finds it necessary to spy on one of its partners - and how it could happen that the BND spied on so many institutions in Europe. The intelligence business, he says, is based primarily on suspicion.

It took only a few hours after three bombs had exploded in Brussels and 35 people had been killed for politicians and experts to begin calling for better cooperation among intelligence services in Europe.

The IMF said policy choices in the world's second largest economy would also have "increasing implications for global financial stability" in the coming years as the country opens up its bond and equity markets. The fund said emerging market economies such as China, India, Brazil and Russia had driven more than half of global growth over the past 15 years.

Stronger trade ties and financial linkages meant spillovers from these countries had become "the norm, not the exception", increasing the risk that future shocks could send powerful reverberations around the globe. The IMF calculated that emerging market spillovers now accounted for a third of the fluctuations seen in equity and currency markets in advanced nations.

Highlighting last summer's massive stock market sell-off after China devalued its currency, the IMF noted that Chinese growth had an "increasing" and "significant" impact on global equity prices. "The impact of shocks to China's fundamentals on global financial markets is expected to grow stronger and wider over time," the Fund said in a pre-released chapter of its Financial Stability report.

This does not mean we are on the cusp of recession or racing headlong towards some imminent reckoning, but we are probably in the final innings of this epic asset boom. Didier Saint-Georges, from fund manager Carmignac, says the “massive and indiscriminate equity market rally” since February’s panic-lows is a false dawn driven by short-covering, telling us little about the world’s deformed economic, financial, and political landscape.

Corporate earnings peaked at $1.845 trillion (£1.3 trillion) in the second quarter of 2015, and recessions typically start five to seven quarters after the peak. "We will not be dancing on the volcano like so many others," said Saint-Georges. What is clear is that the Fed and fellow central banks can do precious little to reverse a chronic decline in productivity. In this respect, we have reached the limits of central bank action.

1 - A man-made virus wipes out life on our planet

Astronomer Royal Martin Rees made a gloomy bet in 2003 that by 2020, one million people would have died in a single instance of ‘bio-terror - or bio-error’. He still believes the risk of both ‘bio-terror’ and ‘bio-error’ is real. Rees said, 'My concern is not only organized terrorist groups, but individual weirdos with the mindset of the people who now design computer viruses.’

2 - A nuclear war erupts in the Middle East

Sadly, this remains the most likely scenario - with several influential thinkers having said that recent confrontations between nuclear-armed states mean nuclear war is more likely now than ever. In 2015, the hands of the ‘Doomsday Clock’ - maintained by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists - were moved two minutes closer to midnight, due in part to the threat of nuclear weapons. They remained there this year.

3 - A supervolcano erupts

Could a supervolcano really plunge the Earth into darkness - and change our climate forever? Answer: yes. The huge ‘supervolcano’ thought to lurk under Yellowstone Park will blanket the USA in ash when it finally erupts. The eruption will be so catastrophic it will change the world’s climate.

4 - A solar storm blasts the Earth

A ‘super solar storm’ could burn out power stations, cut water supplies, leave millions hungry, and leave satellites dead in the skies. In 2012, solar scientist Pete Riley, said that the probability of a ‘super solar storm’ hitting Earth in the next ten years was ‘around 12%’. Experts fear that a storm could burn out electrical grids around the world.

5 -Killer robots take over

It’s a familiar scenario from science fiction - but could killer robots actually pose a threat to humankind? Answer: yes, but probably not in the way Hollywood imagines. Human Rights Watch warn that Terminator-style robots - which can ‘decide’ to kill - will be feasible in decades. Human Rights watch has claimed that several governments are working on the technology.

It is part of a $21 million plan which is backed by the Boyalife group in collaboration with South Korean company Sooam Biotech Research Foundation. Xu Xiaochun, CEO of Boyalife, said: “Everything in the supermarket looks good – it’s almost all shiny, good-looking, and uniformly shaped. For animals, we weren’t able to do that in the past. But with our cloning factory, we choose to do so now.

"The technology is already there. If this is allowed. I don't think there are other companies better than Boyalife that make better technology.” While ethical questions are bound to rise, the US’s Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has said that “meat and milk from cow, pig, and goat clones and the offspring of any animal clones are as safe as food we eat every day.”