“We see the security situation as very serious, though we have no immediate intelligence on planned attacks in Germany,” the head of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, Hans-Georg Maassen, told Die Welt newspaper in a comprehensive interview released on Sunday. His office acts as Germany’s main counter-intelligence and homeland security agency reporting to the Interior Ministry.

“Islamic State [IS, previously ISIS/ISIL] is willing to carry out attacks on Germany and German interests,” he said, adding that in IS propaganda German cities are placed next to Paris, London and Brussels – all previous targets of large terror attacks. The homeland security chief said airports and railway stations, as well as large-scale public events such as open air fests, were the most likely targets for potential attacks. In addition, Maassen stressed that “we’ve seen many times that those [German nationals] who returned from Syria had links to planning attacks in Germany.”

Earlier on Sunday, local media cited security service estimates that up to 800 Germans had traveled to Syria in order to fight alongside IS, with about 150 of them having returned back in 2015. In addition, nearly 1,100 individuals with “Islamist and terrorist” views have been joined by 8,650 Salafists, and these numbers are growing “practically every day,” Maassen said.

Although the threat posed by jihadists is severe, Germany has not seen any large-scale terror attacks so far due to the “successful work of its security services,” he noted.

This is down from the World Bank’s forecast in January of 2.9 percent and well below the 4 percent growth seen just before the crisis. However, he was more upbeat about Britain's prospects if it left the European Union, suggesting the country could thrive after a Brexit. The chief economist indicated that Britain could be better off outside the EU if it forged new trade ties and cemented old ones.

Speaking in a personal capacity, Mr Basu said “short-term turbulence” could lead to “improved exports” in the long run. “You would probably see a short-term fall in exports from the UK, a weakening in the pound, but that should then cause a pick-up in exports in the medium term,” he said.

While Mr Basu said the world was not facing a 2008-style crash, he warned that the “dull, throbbing slowdown” was likely to continue amid diminishing central bank firepower and resistance to reforms. He said the oil price glut would depress prices for some time, with Brent prices likely to remain close to $40 a barrel until at least the end of the decade. “The mood is sombre,” he said in an interview. “The policy challenges are actually bigger than people make out.”

According to the settlement, Wells Fargo “admits, acknowledges, and accepts responsibility” for having from 2001 to 2008 falsely certified that many of its home loans qualified for Federal Housing Administration insurance, reports Reuters. Wells Fargo also admitted to having from 2002 to 2010 failed to file timely reports on several thousand loans that had material defects or were badly underwritten, a process that Kurt Lofrano, a former Wells Fargo vice president, was responsible for supervising.

The intentional deception by this corrupt bank led to an insurmountable debt liability for American taxpayers as the FHA was forced to pay out insurance claims on all the defective loans. As Reuters reports, Friday’s settlement is a reproach for “years of reckless underwriting” at Wells Fargo, US Attorney Preet Bharara in Manhattan said in a statement.

“While Wells Fargo enjoyed huge profits from its FHA loan business, the government was left holding the bag when the bad loans went bust,” Bharara added. However, Bharara’s words ring hollow when looking at the bank’s punishment. For robbing the public through defrauding the US government, not one single Wells Fargo employee will face criminal charges. The bank was merely ordered to pay a $1.2 billion fine. This is barely a slap on the wrist considering the turmoil that ensued from such criminal practices.

This punishment is also a kick in the teeth to the American public who are the ones who suffer most from these megabanks fleecing the country through irresponsible and fraudulent actions only to be ‘quantitatively eased’ back into profitable standing.

In 2013 President Obama appointed Wally Brewster Ambassador to the Caribbean nation of 10 million people. Mr Brewster, a top LGBT fundraiser for the President, took up residence with his husband, Bob Satawake. Both men had been gay rights activists back in the US.

They have brought a reforming zeal to the Dominican Republic. This week the New York Times ran a profile of Mr Brewster, painting him as a benevolent tutor in human rights for a benighted, largely-Catholic nation. It closed with a note of gratitude to the ambassador from a young gay man: “I have no words to thank you for being here and giving me and my lover hope to fight and stay together.”

What was missing in the flattering profile is a long list of complaints in the local media about the bullying tactics used by Mr Brewster to promote LGBT rights, ranging from outright threats to creating and funding local organisations.

In a recent public statement the Catholic bishops of the Dominican Republic complained bitterly that LGBT pressure from the American Embassy is eroding the country’s sovereignty. As the bishops point out, so sensitive are the Dominicans to foreign meddling that non-interference is written into the country’s constitution. The bishops have insisted that the Dominican government lodge an official protest against the American ambassador’s high-handed attempts at a cultural revolution. It can’t come too soon.

As the cost of labor has soared, the manufacturing base is now migrating to cheap-labor countries like Vietnam, leaving less work in Chinese cities for migrant laborers. With few options left, they’ve started to return to their villages. This leaves China with massive challenges, just when its debt-burdened economy can least afford them.

Given China’s size, “the demise” of its economic-growth model has “huge implications for the global economy,” according to the Financial Times. For the wealthy Chinese, buying a home in the US or Canada has been an effective way to launder some money and get their wealth out of harm’s way. In the trophy markets on the US West Coast and in the Canadian cities of Vancouver and Toronto, rumors of a massive influx of Chinese money have swirled with growing intensity for years. In Vancouver, 33% of sales are to Chinese investors, according to new estimates of National Bank.

In Winner-Take-All Politics, Jacob S Hacker and Paul Pierson explained how political elites have enabled and propelled plutocracy. Now in American Amnesia, they trace the economic and political history of the United States over the last century and show how a viable mixed economy has long been the dominant engine of America’s prosperity.

Like every other prospering democracy, the United States developed a mixed economy that channeled the spirit of capitalism into strong growth and healthy social development. In this bargain, government and business were as much partners as rivals. Public investments in education, science, transportation, and technology laid the foundation for broadly based prosperity. Programs of economic security and progressive taxation provided a floor of protection and business focused on the pursuit of profit — and government addressed needs business could not.

The mixed economy was the most important social innovation of the twentieth century. It spread a previously unimaginable level of broad prosperity. It enabled steep increases in education, health, longevity, and economic security. And yet, extraordinarily, it is anathema to many current economic and political elites. And as the advocates of anti-government free market fundamentalist have gained power, they are hell-bent on scrapping the instrument of nearly a century of unprecedented economic and social progress. In American Amnesia, Hacker and Pierson explain how — and why they must be stopped.

Imogen Wilson, the smiley 22-year old vice president for academic affairs at Edinburgh University’s Student Association (now there’s a mouthful), found herself the subject of a vote by fellow students when she stuck her arm in the air during a council meeting, after someone wrongly accused her of not responding to an open letter. That gesture was deemed ‘inappropriate’ as, according to rules and regulations drawn up by people so prissy they make Hyacinth Bucket look like a swinger, “disagreements should only be evident through the course of normal debate.”

Ms Wilson said that safe space rules were “becoming a tool for the hard left to use when they disagree with people.” Her fellow students voted in favour of her staying in the meeting – though incredibly, 18 of them were precious enough to want her out.

Still, I shouldn’t say much more unless the special little snowflakes read this and accuse me of violating their right to be special little snowflakes. I’m big enough and ugly enough to know by now that the defining characteristic of this supposedly tolerant generation is to not tolerate those they don’t agree with. Block them. No platform them. Create a petition to ban them. I disapprove of what you say, and I will defend to the death my right to not hear you say it!

But when people talk of certainty and safety, they also refer to matters economic. That is my subject today. It is true that if we were to leave the EU the immediate situation post-departure is more uncertain than if we remained. But that is trivial. In practice, there would probably be little immediate difference. What the supporters of Remain are really arguing, though, is that we cannot be sure how things would develop over the succeeding years, including the terms of our trading relationships.

This is true. Yet the idea that a vote to stay means that things will stay the same is an illusion because the EU is changing and the world is changing, too. In several key ways the EU could evolve, paraphrasing the words of Japan’s emperor at the end of the Second World War, “not necessarily to the UK’s advantage”. Most importantly, for the euro to survive, banking, fiscal and political union will be needed between members. The UK would be an outsider – but still inside the EU. How this would work is impossible to know.

In helping us to make up our minds about the institutional arrangements with which we may best face an uncertain future, for all the things that we don’t know, we do know this: we functioned perfectly well as an independent country before we joined the EU; our economic position has strengthened since then; most of the world does not belong to the EU, and does not wish to; the EU’s economic record is poor because it has made misguided decisions.

Most importantly, whatever the future throws at us, if we were outside the EU, we would have the power to respond in our interests. If leaving the EU is a leap in the dark, then staying in is a leap in the dark with both legs shackled together and our arms tied behind our back.

He called for a new, tougher approach to integration and the abandonment of “the failed policy of multiculturalism". The survey had made “one truly terrifying” conclusion that “Muslims who have separatist views about how they want to live in Britain are far more likely to support terrorism than those who do not”, added Mr Phillips, who ran the EHRC until 2012 and was previously in charge of the Commission for Racial Equality.

And political parties should no longer turn a “blind eye to appalling misdemeanours in return for votes from community leaders – so-called silence-for-votes deals which created havoc in Rotherham and Rochdale and contributed to the grooming scandals in those towns”, suggested Mr Phillips.

He told the Daily Mail: “We have ‘understood’ too much, and challenged too little – and in doing so are in danger of sacrificing a generation of young British people to values that are antithetical to the beliefs of most of us, including many Muslims. In my view, we have to adopt a far more muscular approach to integration than ever, replacing the failed policy of multiculturalism.”

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.