Turkish officials claimed on Tuesday night they had passed all the 72 benchmarks requested by the EU hours before the European Commission is expected to recommend giving visa-free travel rights to Turkey for 75 million people on Wednesday. Lifting travel restrictions was part of a grand bargain with Ankara to halt the flow of Syrian migrants.

Plans are also underway to grant free travel to another 52 million people from Ukraine, Kosovo and Georgia under a radical loosening of European border policy. They will be able to access the Schengen zone (which does not include Britain) for 90 days for tourism or 180 days on business.

The EU operates visa waiver schemes with more than sixty countries worldwide. But EU officials admit there is no way of systematically identifying the estimated 250,000 people a year who exceed their stay in Europe after being legally granted entry. Some of those who enter legally on a tourist visa destroy or alter their paperwork, an EU analysis admits, making it hard to establish their true identity.

Their analysis, published in the BMJ on Tuesday, shows that "medical errors" in hospitals and other health care facilities are incredibly common and may now be the third leading cause of death in the United States - claiming 251,000 lives every year, more than respiratory disease, accidents, stroke and Alzheimer's.

Martin Makary, a professor of surgery at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine who led the research, said in an interview that the category includes everything from bad doctors to more systemic issues such as communication breakdowns when patients are handed off from one department to another. "It boils down to people dying from the care that they receive rather than the disease for which they are seeing care," Makary said.

To confuse the two is both geographically and historically obtuse. European civilisation existed long before the coming of the EU, and will continue long after this episode in Europe’s history is, hopefully, over. On the European mainland it has always been well understood that the whole purpose of European integration was political, and that economic integration was simply a means to a political end.

In Britain, and perhaps also in the US, that has been much less well understood, particularly within the business community, who sometimes find it hard to grasp that politics can trump economics. The fact that the objective has always been political does not mean that it is in any way disreputable.

Indeed, the most compelling original objective was highly commendable. It was, bluntly, to eliminate the threat to Europe and the wider world from a recrudescence of German militarism, by placing the German tiger in a European cage. Whether or not membership of the EU has had much to do with it, that objective has been achieved: there is no longer a threat from German militarism.

In fact, it is being reported that the quake could be felt all the way over in Miller, Missouri, which is 267 miles away. The New Madrid fault seismic zone is six times larger than the more famous San Andreas fault zone in California, and it covers portions of Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Missouri, Arkansas, Kentucky, Tennessee and Mississippi. Scientists tell us that the New Madrid fault is about 30 years overdue for a major event, and because of the nature of the Earth’s crust in that part of the country, a major earthquake would do significant damage all the way to the east coast.

A big Hollywood blockbuster was named after the San Andreas fault, but the truth is that the New Madrid fault has the potential to do vastly more damage. That is why what happened in a remote section of western Kentucky very early this morning was so alarming… Quite often, there are “foreshocks” that warn us that a major earthquake is coming to a particular area, and many are wondering if this event qualifies. Most Americans don’t tend to think of the middle of the country as an area that is in danger from earthquakes, but the truth is that some of the worst earthquakes in US history have taken place along the New Madrid fault.

The New Madrid seismic zone of southeast Missouri and adjacent States is the most seismically active in North America east of the Rockies. During the winter of 1811-1812 three very large earthquakes devastated the area and were felt throughout most of the nation. They occurred a few weeks apart on December 16, January 23, and February 7. Hundreds of aftershocks, some severely damaging by themselves, continued for years.

Those earthquakes in 1811 and 1812 tore thousands of very deep fissures in the ground, they caused the Mississippi River to actually run backwards in some places, and they caused sidewalks to crack in Washington DC and church bells to ring in Boston. In our time, the US Geological Survey has admitted that the New Madrid fault zone has the “potential for larger and more powerful quakes than previously thought“, and we have seen the number of significant earthquakes in the middle part of the country more than quintuple in recent years.

If a magnitude 7 or magnitude 8 earthquake were to strike along the New Madrid fault today, the damage that would be done would be absolutely unimaginable because of the nature of the Earth’s crust in this region. According to the Missouri Department of Natural Resources, earthquakes along the New Madrid fault “shake and damage an area approximately 20 times larger than earthquakes in California”…

Since World War Two Britain has had this special relationship with the US during which the UK has been treated like a colonial possession by its American overlord. Obama’s unprecedented intervention into the EU referendum campaign reveals how worried the Remain camp are at the possibility of ordinary people rejecting membership of the EU. The banksters in the City of London, in whose interests the Cameron government serves, have cranked up Project Fear and are using large amounts of black propaganda to panic people into voting yes to EU membership.

Over the last few months we have been repeatedly lectured and warned that to vote for leaving the EU would undermine the UK economy and cost thousands of jobs and lower living standards. The list of well meaning lecturers ranges from Mark Carney, the Governor of the Bank of England to the Confederation of British Industry and the Institute of Directors.

The British ruling class and its puppet masters in Washington are clearly worried by the British people having the temerity to say no to a transnational organisation that does not represent their interests but those of the multi-national corporations and too big to fail banks.

The Canal+ journalist who used the pseudonym Said Ramzi (Ramzy) carried out his investigations over a six-month period. The complete documentary entitled ‘Allah's Soldiers’ will be released later on Monday. The intrepid journalist gave interviews about his mission to the AFP news agency and Telerama magazine.

Ramzi describes himself as a Muslim “of the same generation as the killers,” who carried out the deadly Paris attacks in November 2015. “I am a Muslim. Each new attack impacts my personal life because it complicates the issues around racism and integration,” he told Telerama. Security forces eventually managed to bust the group. They made several arrests and Ramzi’s mission was over.

Reports from the country reveal Kim Jong-un has built a replica of the South Korean presidential palace to train his troops for an invasion as tensions escalate. And with America pledged to defend the South in case of attack, the West faces a war that will cost $1 billion to fight and cause $1 trillion worth of damage.

Special forces would invade first in a series of predawn airdrops and shore landings, sabotaging power stations, communication networks and bridges in order to "paralyse the population". Then "the largest artillery force in the world" would pound the South Korean capital Seoul with shells at a rate of 500,000 per hour — leaving its people only 45 seconds to take cover.

An arsenal of 600 chemically-armed missiles would cripple airports, making escape impossible; while 100 more trained on Japan would slow the arrival of US reinforcements. "As wars go," writes Mr Cha, "this would be the most unforgiving battle conditions that could be imagined." It would take South Korea and its American allies several days to neutralise the enemy artillery, his book reveals, leaving hundreds of thousands dead.

The total bill to taxpayers: $1.3 billion in benefits to "unaccompanied children," more than double what the federal government spent in 2010, according to an analysis of the administration's programs for illegal minors from the Center for Immigration Studies. The average Social Security retirement benefit is $14,772.

What's more, the administration is also spending heavily on a program with the United Nations to help the illegal minors avoid the dangerous trip by declaring them refugees and handing them a plane ticket to the US where, once here, they get special legal status.

It said that most of the undocumented minors do not qualify for refugee status or are even in any danger in their native countries. Instead, they are seeking to unify with their family members, commonly parents in the United States illegally.

Like many financially distressed governments around the globe — think Greece, for example — Puerto Rico has been faced with demands from creditors and their consultants that the island undertake drastic spending cuts to create surpluses large enough to meet debt obligations. The Padilla government has resisted these proposals. Garcia Padilla insists the US territory needs relief from debt payments.

A default would ratchet up pressure on the US Congress to find a legislative solution for Puerto Rico, which enters a key stretch in its fiscal saga, owing another $1.9 billion of debt on July 1, including about $777 million in general obligation debt backed by its constitution.

Today, however, the long-term commitment of the United States is increasingly questioned, and Europe’s security environment has seen fundamental changes in the recent past. In light of the US turn toward the Asia-Pacific and the acceleration of instability in Europe’s Eastern and Southern neighborhoods, Germany has taken the lead in reviving enhanced European security cooperation and integration. Cooperative efforts are necessary in times of economic turmoil and the West’s relative decline on the global stage.

The creation of a European army is a long way off, but it is a strategic necessity to implement important steps to pave the way toward it now. Greater European security capabilities would enable the EU to carry out tasks that the United States is unlikely to take on in the future. In contrast to the early 2000s, Washington is now actively encouraging this process. In addition, greater military capabilities would make the EU more attractive as a US partner.

Germany’s role in enhanced European cooperation is to foster leadership as part of a responsible multilateral framework that allows smaller EU member states to boost their security efforts. Germany has the responsibility to generate basic capabilities that both the EU and NATO can deploy. The process toward a European army that would focus primarily on the EU’s Eastern and Southern neighborhoods is not just another altruistic call for more Europe. It is a strategic necessity.