The astonishing move came as the Prime Minister, David Cameron, confronted the Chinese leader Xi Jinping at a meeting in Washington, pleading for action to slow the flood of Chinese steel exports reaching Europe. The imminent demise of the Port Talbot steelworks and Tata’s wider steel operations in Britain has mushroomed within days into a full-blown national drama, calling into question the Government’s whole approach to China.

The Chinese ministry of commerce said in a terse statement that it was slapping anti-dumping tariffs of 14.4 percent to 46.3 percent on companies from the EU, South Korea, and Japan, claiming that China had suffered “substantial damage” from trade abuses. In a macabre twist, the measures target the Tata plant in Port Talbot, which produces the specialist flat-rolled electrical steel used in transformers. A tiny amount is exported to China.

“If this is not a trade war, I don’t know what is,” said Gareth Stace, director of UK Steel. “We’re literally drowning in a flood of Chinese imports globally. We’re certainly not seeing a flood of European steel into China.” China’s share of global steel output has risen from 10 percent to 50 percent over the last twelve years, with the single province of Hebei now producing twenty times as much as Britain. China’s excess capacity is 400 million tonnes, double the size of the entire EU steel industry.

They are citing the continent's growing refugee crisis as the perfect excuse to execute the unprecedented military operation, which would comprise of a "civil-police-military mission" to kick out illegal immigrants.

But critics have dismissed the idea for a “bridging mission” using a joint military force along the EU border as "an excuse" to rush an EU Army in through the back door. They added that once such a force is established, there is a possibility it would never be disbanded.

Austria and its Balkans neighbours are calling for the creation of an EU military force, which would be deployed to Europe's external borders to help kick out migrants. But, critics on social media attacked the proposed military force as "an excuse" and "manipulative of a crisis". Others said the proposal served as a warning about the consequences of staying with Brussels ahead of the EU referendum.

The data in the so-called Panama Papers, “provides rare insights into a world that can only exist in the shadows. It proves how a global industry led by major banks, legal firms, and asset management companies secretly manages the estates of the world’s rich and famous: from politicians, FIFA officials, fraudsters and drug smugglers, to celebrities and professional athletes,” the German newspaper wrote.

The information in the leak covers the activities of the Mossack Fonseca firm over a period from the 1970s to spring 2016. “The Panama Papers include approximately 11.5 million documents – more than the combined total of the Wikileaks Cablegate, Offshore Leaks, Lux Leaks, and Swiss Leaks,” SZ said.

The leak claims to expose the offshore holdings of 12 current and former world leaders and provides data on the financial activities of 128 other politicians and public officials from different countries.

Australia’s tax authorities said on Monday that they are investigating more than 800 clients of Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca, which specialises in setting up offshore companies in tax havens. The documents demonstrate that as much as $2 billion has been shuffled through banks and offshore companies said to be linked to associates and friends of Vladimir Putin, the Russian president.

Sigmundur Davio Gunnlaugsson, Iceland’s prime minister, is also facing allegations that he used an offshore vehicle to hide millions of dollars of investments in the country’s banks. Michael Cranston, Australia’s deputy tax commissioner, said on Monday that the Australian Tax Office had recently received data in relation to a Panamanian law firm containing the names of more than 800 Australian residents, and was “already taking action” in some cases.

Robert Barrington of Transparency International UK said: “The Panama Papers seem to confirm the evidence from elsewhere that the world’s corrupt elite are gaming the international financial system to launder and protect their stolen wealth.”

Colonel Richard Kemp told the Telegraph it is an "absolute certainty" that the UK would have to give troops towards an EU army that would undermine Nato and be very costly yet act like a "paper tiger". The move could even end Britain's ability to defend the Falkland Islands because decisions would have to be agreed by EU member states and could never win consensus, warned Colonel Richard, who is backing Brexit.

Colonel Richard Kemp said: “An EU army is inevitable. As the EU has declared, it is moving to ever closer union, it intendeds to become a fully fledged superstate. That's the plan. An EU army is a key part of that because it will be seen as both part of binding together an EU superstate and saving costs on duplication and overlaps.

“For Britain it would be catastrophic. Whatever the Prime Minister might say about not becoming part of ever closer union we will. We would essentially be giving up our right to sovereign self-defence. Control of the EU army would not rest with us but in a collective EU decision." He said an EU army will emerge “within 10 years” or “maybe even within five” and warned it would undermine Nato.

The Prime Minister warned that the dangers of Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil) getting hold of nuclear material was “only too real”. Mr Cameron on Friday met world leaders, including the presidents of America, France and China, to plan how they would react to such an attack.

Footage has reportedly emerged showing Isil using drones and the threat was deemed so serious that – in a highly unusual move – world leaders were asked to take part in war games to plan how they would respond.

One scenario, mapped out by US officials and presented at the special Nuclear Security Summit session in Washington DC, spelt out the danger in remarkable detail. It imagined radioactive material had been taken from a medical facility by “insiders” and sold to extremists through the internet’s secretive “dark web”.

This is something the former head of the Bank of England admitted one month ago when Mervyn King said that Europe's economic depression is the result of "deliberate" policy choices made by EU elites. It is also what AIG Banque strategist Bernard Connolly said back in 2008 when laying out "What Europe Wants".

To use global issues as excuses to extend its power:

• environmental issues: increase control over member countries; advance idea of global governance

• terrorism: use excuse for greater control over police and judicial issues; increase extent of surveillance

• global financial crisis: kill two birds (free market; Anglo-Saxon economies) with one stone (Europe-wide regulator; attempts at global financial governance)

• EMU: create a crisis to force introduction of “European economic government”

This morning we got another confirmation of how supernational organizations "plan" European crises in advance to further their goals, when Wikileaks published the transcript of a teleconference that took place on March 19, 2016 between the top two IMF officials in charge of managing the Greek debt crisis - Poul Thomsen, the head of the IMF's European Department, and Delia Velkouleskou, the IMF Mission Chief for Greece.

In the transcript, the IMF staffers are caught on tape planning to tell Germany the organization would abandon the troika if the IMF and the commission fail to reach an agreement on Greek debt relief.

More to the point, the IMF officials say that a threat of an imminent financial catastrophe, as the Guardian puts it, is needed to force other players into accepting its measures such as cutting Greek pensions and working conditions, or as Bloomberg puts it, "considering a plan to cause a credit event in Greece and destabilize Europe."

Since the passage of emergency powers in May 1968, this basic principle has been continuously undermined. Nonetheless, a large-scale deployment of heavily armed soldiers on the streets of Germany, along the lines of operations currently being carried out in France and other countries, remains legally prohibited.

Not only right-wing politicians, but also the German army (Bundeswehr) itself is agitating for a constitutional amendment permitting the domestic deployment of the armed forces in cases of “threats from terrorism.” What this means can currently be seen in France. Just as the “war against terror” has served as the justification for one regime-change war after another, the “threat of terrorism” provides a blank check for the establishment of a police state.

The attacks by terrorist Islamists serve merely as the pretext for the militarisation of domestic policy. The real target is resistance and opposition from the working class. The ruling elites have seized on every opportunity for decades to do away with the legal hurdles preventing the deployment of the military against their own population.

The Federal Border Guard, which was previously only responsible for controlling the country’s borders, has been expanded into a federal police force, unifying military and police capabilities. Its role stretches from patrolling the external borders, to deployments against demonstrators, intelligence agency work and criminal prosecutions.

Attorney General Loretta Lynch acknowledged Wednesday that there have been discussions within the Department of Justice about possibly pursuing civil action against so-called climate change deniers. "This matter has been discussed. We have received information about it and have referred it to the FBI to consider whether or not it meets the criteria for which we could take action on," Lynch said at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Justice Department operations.

Referring huge questions of science to a federal judge for adjudication is bad enough. That's what Judge John Jones did - a self-referral - in the 2005 Dover trial. From his Harrisburg, Philadelphia, courtroom, Jones took it on himself to decide the age-old question of whether nature gives evidence of design. "Referring" matters of scientific debate to the FBI takes the presumption of Judge Jones to a whole new and more sinister level.

As I've said before, one hesitates to give ideas to censors operating in other areas of scientific disagreement. But Darwinists are not shy about using power to silence dissent, nor do they lack inventiveness in seeking new ways to do so. It would be surprising if schemes like this haven't crossed their minds.

In the article, Unintended Consequences of Invoking the “Natural” in Breastfeeding Promotion, Jessica Martucci and Anne Barnhill, Medical Ethics and Health Policy researchers at Penn Medicine, wrote:

"Building on this critical work, we are concerned about breastfeeding promotion that praises breastfeeding as the ‘natural’ way to feed infants. This messaging plays into a powerful perspective that ‘natural’ approaches to health are better… Promoting breastfeeding as ‘natural’ may be ethically problematic, and, even more troublingly, it may bolster this belief that ‘natural’ approaches are presumptively healthier."

The authors are especially concerned that promoting natural practices such as breastfeeding will harm vaccination rates, since many parents who follow natural parenting practices also delay or decline vaccines for their children. They also cite other examples of the "fallacy" that natural choices are intrinsically better, including the rejection of GMO foods, the preference for organic over conventionally grown foods and concerns over water fluoridation.

Apparently the risk of giving the impression that natural choices can ever be positive choices is so great, that the authors conclude that the word natural should not be used in a positive context even if it means undermining breastfeeding.

I recall when the CBI issued a similar bald assertion about their own survey, only to be tripped up by the eagle-eyed Brexit media, and the Director-General had to resign, admitting guilt for manipulation of a survey’s results; or for the gilt of the EU, indeed. Here is what some leading Brexiteers have had to say, for real.

Lord Blackwell, the much-respected Chairman of Lloyds-HBOS Bank, said that a Brexit would only hit business investment ‘in the short term, but there are many reasons why the UK is likely to remain an attractive global location whatever the outcome. I don’t agree that remaining in the EU without a significant change in the current arrangements is ultimately sustainable from a political and constitutional perspective, nor do I believe there is a compelling economic argument to overcome those reasons… but in the end our global competitiveness outside the EU must be a primary concern’.

Lord Bamford of JCB pointed out that in 1980 the 28 countries of the EU represented 30 per cent of Gross World Product, but by 2014 it had fallen to 17 per cent. He continued: ‘We hear a lot about the risks of leaving the EU, but we do not hear enough about the risks of staying in … We are over-regulated now but will it become even more onerous? … We need to look outward to where the growth is – or leave us free to do so.’

Lopez is the California director of Students for Trump. Working from his dorm at Westmont College, he helps marshal the thousands of students who are pounding out phone calls, taping up fliers and blanketing Twitter, Instagram and Snapchat in an effort to persuade their peers that Donald Trump is the man.

Although vastly outnumbered nationwide by left-leaning classmates chanting "Feel the Bern," the youngest supporters of the GOP front-runner say they are similarly inspired by the hope of a radically different future and eager to support a leader who strikes them as anti-establishment and willing to speak his mind.

People like Peter Vandermeersch, the Belgian editor-in-chief of Dutch newspaper NRC-Handelsblad, and Belgian writer David Van Reybrouck, both accomplished intellectuals, argued that Belgium must have done something terrible to deserve this. Their line of reasoning: The terrorists’ fury must be a reaction to their inhumane treatment at the hands of the West. So, we blame ourselves in order to remain blameless. Safer to blame our own societies and socioeconomic conditions than to blame the religious and cultural concepts with which terrorists poison their own minds.

Muslim integration into European societies is successful when Muslims are willing to give up the mental confinement of their home countries — countries, let’s not forget, which they left in search of a better life. For as long as they refuse to adapt to a European state of mind, they will perpetuate resentment and a culture of violence.

What did “we” do to “them”? We opened up our cities, our houses, our wallets. And in our secular temples of progress — our metro stations and airports and theaters — their sons are killing themselves, and taking our sons and daughters with them. There is nothing for which we need to apologize. “Occidentophobia” originated in the Muslim community. We need to demand they abandon it.

The changes, announced by the Finance Ministry last week, include raising the so-called parcel tax that is currently imposed on foreign retail products that e-commerce firms ship into China.

Moreover, such goods sent directly to consumers will now be treated as imports and will be subject to tariffs and value-added and consumption taxes, whose rates vary depending on the type and value of goods. The ministry said the changes, which become effective April 8, are intended to put foreign and domestic products on an equal footing.

Industry analysts said the move seems designed to give a boost to “made-in-China” products and could dent a small, but growing, market for foreign goods sold by Alibaba Group Holding Ltd, JD.com Inc and other e-commerce players.

As late as eight years ago, an argument between Armenian and Greek monks at Jerusalem’s Church of the Holy Sepulcher led to a brawl, requiring the intervention of Israeli riot police. Things are changing. Mark L Movsesian, co-director of the Tradition Project at the St John’s Center for Law and Religion, speculates that the dire emergency facing Christians of the Middle East, in which Islamists are targeting Christians without regard to denomination, is part of the reason the three principal Christian communities that maintain the Church of the Holy Sepulcher have come together to finally address the need to repair the Edicule.

“The new situation reflects in part what Pope Francis has called the ‘ecumenism of blood,'” says Movsesian. “The persecution of Mideast Christians does not respect confessional boundaries. When ISIS is slaughtering your people, disputes about lamps do not seem so vital.”