Reportedly, there were representatives from Nasdaq, Citigroup, Visa, Fidelity, Fiserv and Pfizer in the room, and Chain also claims to be partnering with Capital One, State Street, and First Data. This “revolutionary” technology is intended to completely change the way that we use money, and it would represent a major step toward a cashless society.

But if this new digital cash system is going to be so good for society, why was it unveiled during a secret meeting for Wall Street bankers? Is there something more going on here than we are being told? None of us probably would have ever heard about this secret meeting if it was not for a report in Bloomberg.

So it is not just Michael Snyder from The Economic Collapse Blog that is referring to this gathering as a “secret meeting”. This is actually how it was described by Bloomberg. And I think that there is a very good reason why this meeting was held in secret, because many in the general public would definitely be alarmed by this giant step toward a cashless society.

Why this is so alarming is because we are seeing other major moves toward a cashless system all over the planet. In Sweden, 95 percent of all retail transactions are already cashless, and ATM machines are being removed by the hundreds. In Denmark, government officials actually have a stated goal of “eradicating cash” by the year 2030. And in Norway, the biggest bank in the country has publicly called for the complete elimination of all cash.

The global push toward a cashless society is only going to intensify, because banks and governments both tend to really like the idea of such a system. In addition, the potential for tyranny would be absolutely off the charts. Hopefully people can understand where this is going. Paper money is a very important component of our freedom, and if it is taken away from us that will open the door for all sorts of abuse.

It doesn’t take a whole lot of imagination to see where all of this is going. And for those of us that understand what time it is, this is a clear indication that it is getting late in the game.

While they do not recommend a vote either way, peers say trade deals between the EU and non-EU states take between four and nine years on average. Leave campaigners argue a UK-EU Treaty should be wrapped up in two years.

If the UK voted to leave in the referendum on 23 June, it would not mean an immediate exit from the EU. It would open up a two-year window of negotiation allowed under EU rules, which could be extended, but only if all remaining member states agreed.

The cross-party committee warned that negotiations for withdrawal and to establish a new relationship with the EU would take longer than the two years allowed under Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty.

MJ: Dr Neu: “the USA is locating an entire brigade of its soldiers in the east of Europe. They are supposed to rotate between different States. How do you rate this project?”

AN: “According to media reports the transfer is supposed to take place in early 2017 to 2018. That is, if Russia is so provocative as the Americans claim, it rather surprises me that they can let it go till February 2017. Given such a big Russian threat, as suggested by the Americans, I would have thought that it would have to be more immediate.

That shows me that Russian aggression is not the basis, but that they are propounding a risk that isn't there. They are trying to generate Russophobia in Europe. In a statement by the Defense Department in Washington, this redeployment was a reaction to the ‘aggressive course Russia is on.’ That sounds like an argument straight out of the Cold War.”

The European Commission is expected to propose on Wednesday that an emergency scheme to distribute 160,000 people around the bloc following the massive influx last summer be put on a permanent footing, with a quota system of allocations that kick in if there is another vast wave of migrants that overwhelms a country.

The new plan comes despite the temporary scheme having proved a flop. It was approved against the wishes of Poland, Slovakia, Romania and Hungary in September, and so far, 1,441 people have been moved. “Einstein defined insanity as doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results,” remarked one diplomat.

“It’s a really huge figure,” said one stunned official who had seen the plans. “The fine really is very high.” Hungary, for example, has offered no places but was allocated a quota of 1,294 – leaving it with a potential bill of €323 million.

The fact that Germany - the powerhouse of the project - is mooting one so close to the referendum on whether Britain stays or goes is seen as madness by politicians fighting to keep the UK within the group. Now a white paper has been drawn up by Berlin. Media reports suggest that the Germans wanted to keep its proposals secret until after the June 23 plebiscite but it has now been leaked.

The paper outlines steps to "gradually co-ordinate Europe's patchwork of national militaries and launch permanent cooperation under common structures among the member states." The initiatives proposed include strengthening cyberwarfare abilities and relaxing Germany's self-imposed restrictions about deploying troops in peacetime within the country. This was brought in after 1945 when Nazism was crushed and Germans turned away from militarism.

Moscow’s suspicions of such a move will be compounded by Juncker’s specific statement that forming such a body would make clear to Russia that the EU is “serious about upholding the value of the European Union”.

The Senate passed “The Bipartisan Budget Act of 2015” with a vote held in the early morning hours of Friday, October 30. Obama signed it on Monday, November 2. At the close business on October 30, 2015, the total federal debt was $18,152,981,685,747.52.

By the close of business on April 28, 2016 — the latest date for which the Treasury has published the number — the total federal debt was $19,186,207,744,589.55.

That is an increase of $1,033,226,058,842.03.

Lesser consumption of animal products is necessary to save the world from the worst impacts of climate change, according to a UN report. A global shift towards a vegan diet is vital to save the world from hunger, fuel poverty and the worst impacts of climate change, a UN report said today.

As the global population surges towards a predicted 9.1 billion people by 2050, western tastes for diets rich in meat and dairy products are unsustainable, says the report from United Nations Environment Programme’s (UNEP) international panel of sustainable resource management.

Professor Edgar Hertwich, the lead author of the report, said: “Animal products cause more damage than [producing] construction minerals such as sand or cement, plastics or metals. Biomass and crops for animals are as damaging as [burning] fossil fuels.” The recommendation follows advice last year that a vegetarian diet was better for the planet from Lord Nicholas Stern, former adviser to the Labour government on the economics of climate change. Dr Rajendra Pachauri, chair of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), has also urged people to observe one meat-free day a week to curb carbon emissions.

Yet for all of its diverse and essential properties, the genetic code is static. For some reason unknown to scientists, approximately 3 billion years ago it simply stopped growing. Instead of expanding to encode new combinations of amino acids, and potentially new life, it stagnated at its current size and function. But a new study published today in the journal Science Advances offers an explanation for the genetic code’s mysterious evolutionary limit.

A team of geneticists from the Institute for Research in Biomedicine and the Centre for Genomic Regulation discovered that several billion years ago, the genetic code reached a point of self-preservation.

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.