Though there were similar incidents from Hamburg to Helsinki, the authorities at first played down the assaults, lest they prove inconvenient for Angela Merkel’s policy of mass asylum for refugees. That delay has now cost Cologne’s police chief his job. But the German government still seems more concerned about policing restless natives — most recently through a deal with Facebook and Google to restrict anti-immigrant postings — than with policing migration. Just last week Merkel rejected a proposal to cap refugee admissions (which topped one million last year) at 200,000 in 2016.

The underlying controversy here is not a new one. For decades conservatives on both sides of the Atlantic have warned that Europe’s generous immigration policies, often pursued in defiance of ordinary Europeans’ wishes, threaten to destabilize the continent. The conservatives have made important points about the difficulty of assimilation, the threat of radicalization, and the likelihood of Paris-style and Cologne-style violence in European cities.

But they have also trafficked in more apocalyptic predictions — fears of a “Eurabia,” of mass Islamification — that are somewhat harder to credit. Until recently, Europe’s assimilation challenge looked unpleasant but not insurmountable, and the likelihood of Yugoslavian-style balkanization relatively remote. With the current migration, though, we’re in uncharted territory.

“The biggest movements are ahead: Africa’s population will double in the coming decades,” he told Bild am Sonntag, adding: “In the Sahara up to one million people have died trying to escape.” The European Commission, he added, has lost a significant amount of authority thanks to the crisis. “The protection of external borders is not working. Schengen has collapsed. A fair distribution of refugees has not taken place,” he said.

He said that in the digital age we live in, more people than ever know about the prosperity of Western nations thus making it more likely they will try to travel here.

The Federal College for Security Studies (BAKS), for example, accuses Moscow of "neo-imperial aggression" against Eastern Europe and calls for a revival of the "nuclear deterrence" strategy. According to BAKS, the idea of a nuclear weapons-free world should be considered as "unrealistic" - after all, "disarmament is not the primary raison d'être of a nuclear weapon."

The government-affiliated German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP) sees it similarly, and opposes particularly a general ban on nuclear weapons, proposed by a United Nations working group. Such a "nuclear arms ban treaty" would be in contradiction to NATO's role as a "nuclear alliance," SWP claims. It would, however, be "conceivable" to strengthen the" linkage between conventional and nuclear capacities" and the "inclusion" of nuclear arms "in exercise scenarios."

The US will continue its push at Pentagon reform with a focus on tech development and ties with Silicon Valley. Meanwhile, the Pentagon is keeping an eye on continuing mergers within the defense industry while striving to streamline the foreign military sales process.

In the Mideast, Sunni-Shiite cross-currents will continue to roil the region: The Saudis may send special forces into Syria; a Saudi-led coalition has been battling Houthis in Yemen; Egypt is engaged in Libya and the Sinai; an Islamic counter-terror coalition of Islamic nations was announced in December, but details remain sketchy.

Meanwhile, major weapon acquisitions continue, including Rafale fighter aircraft sales to Egypt and Qatar and a possible Eurofighter Typhoon buy by Kuwait. Across Europe, numerous military programs and industry moves are in progress, driven by strategic and economic forces. In the Asia-Pacific region, China’s aggressive military expansion and territorial claims across the South China Sea and along its border with India continue to set the agenda.

In Taiwan, a new party is expected to win presidential elections in Taiwan this month, unseating a more China-friendly government, while the nation’s Navy is moving ahead on a design program for attack submarines. North Korea, after recently announcing it tested a hydrogen bomb, continues to pursue a nuclear-armed ballistic missile force. India will revive, or make milestone decisions on, procurement of air-independent propulsion submarines, an advanced medium combat aircraft and the indigenous Future Infantry Combat Vehicle.

According to the laws of the States, the military fleet the country needs to have is no less than 11 active aircraft carriers, but in recent years their number was reduced to ten. It happened once in 2013, the US Congress approved a reduction in the number of military ships in this category to 10 after the ship "USS Enterprise" was decommissioned after 50 years of service.

The discrepancy will remain until the final commissioning of the new aircraft carrier "Gerald R Ford". Originally it was planned that the ship will go into service with the US Navy in 2016, but the Commission informed the lower house of Congress last year that the ship will be ready for operation no earlier than 2021. By the way, the cost has already reached $14 billion, 6 years before entry of the ship into operation.

Well, guess what? Now, you suddenly may have a mental disorder, at least according to scientists at the University of Northern Colorado who conducted a case study about the obsession of eating healthy. This new eating disorder is called orthorexia nervosa (ON) and is said to be driven by a fear of being unhealthy and disgust for low-quality food.

The psychologists conducting the study argue that healthy eating can become dangerous if one becomes fixated on the types of ingredients in food, how the food is cooked, and what materials are used to prepare it. Those “suffering” from orthorexia may take extra time to prepare their food and carefully consider what they are willing to eat.

In this day and age, 90% of grocery store shelves, at least in the United States, are filled with processed foods, most of which are scientifically engineered to create physical and psychological dependency. Mega-portion processed meals have lead to spiking rates of diabetes, heart disease, cancer, and obesity. Shouldn’t conscientious effort to prepare and eat healthy foods be called sensible and smart instead of potentially dangerous?

New figures released disclosed the scale of the violence in the city on New Year's Eve, which showed 30 more sexual assaults than were previously reported. Cologne Police said that 379 offences were committed on that night, of which 150 were sexual assaults.

"Those in focus of criminal police investigations are mostly people from North African countries," police said in a statement. "The majority of them are asylum-seekers and people who are in Germany illegally." Questions are being asked about why it took more than a week for the authorities to acknowledge that asylum-seekers are among the suspects in the attacks, amid claims of a cover-up.

And asylum-seekers are still flooding into Europe. The German interior ministry believes another 1 million will attempt to cross Turkey to Europe this year, according to Spiegel.

The expert said that many heads of state and government of the EU states considered Merkel’s handling of the migrant crisis to be erroneous. "In all probability, she will either have to change her policy or step down as the chancellor," the expert added. According to him, the scandalous New Year attacks in Cologne have taken the already hard situation in the European Union almost to a deadlock.

"What’s happened can mark the beginning of the end to the career of Angela Merkel who used to have such a great influence in Europe," Bernd Rigert said. "The attacks on women in Cologne are strengthening the positions of politicians who are opposed to the policy of receiving refugees. It is a hard time for the chancellor," Rigert emphasized. Even prior to the Cologne attacks, it was clear the European Union was unlikely to work out a common migrant policy.

Angela Merkel has also come under serious internal political pressure. It is obvious that Merkel will be unable to live up to her promise given to the Christian Social Union party to decrease the number of migrants in the country. "She can no longer rely on the European solidarity," the Deutsche Welle expert stressed.

In the United States momentum is gaining in the presidential race where the primary topics of discussion are issues of foreign policy. However, all applicants' attention is focused on Russia, the Middle East and Southeast Asia, and Europe has very little emphasis. In this regard, European countries are beginning to rethink the transatlantic partnership and common purpose.

Also, in recent years more doubt in the world has been caused by the US leadership. EG notes that the current crisis in relations between the US and Europe is of a very serious and systemic nature. So to overcome this it will be very difficult, and given that Americans today are busy with other things, it is almost impossible.

Moreover, the relations between the US and Europe are not only staggered, but also relations within the European Union itself. The migration crisis has shown how easily European leaders are ready to abandon the main principle of the EU - open borders. And while the borders between European countries remain open, the question of restrictions is being discussed at the highest level.

Despite protests from Washington, the UK joined the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, which was created by the Chinese to compete with the American-Japanese Asian Development Bank. The British, venturing in the conflict with the United States, are trying by all means to maintain London as the leading global financial centre. And without good relations with China, this would be extremely difficult in the foreseeable future to achieve.

The experts believe that in 2016 the contradictions between European countries and the USA will affect the position of the West on the Ukrainian crisis, including the anti-Russian sanctions. But transatlantic relations will no longer be a priority both for Europe and for America.

A standoff between the rival Koreas has deepened since last week's test, the North's fourth. Seoul on Monday continued anti-Pyongyang propaganda broadcasts across the border and announced that it will further limit the entry of South Koreans to a jointly run factory park in North Korea.

Outside North Korea, Kim faces widespread condemnation and threats of heavy sanctions over the North's disputed claim of a hydrogen bomb test. Internally, however, Kim's massive propaganda apparatus has looked to link the test to Kim's leadership so as to glorify him and portray the test as necessary to combat a US-led attempt to topple the North's authoritarian system.

"If the enemy provokes, retaliate speedily and accurately without hesitation," Han told commanders of the Army's Missile Command during his field inspection on Saturday, according to the ministry. The visit was made as part of a series of military counteractions South Korea took after the North claimed to have successfully conducted a hydrogen bomb test on Wednesday.

Two days after the test, South Korea resumed its loudspeaker broadcasts critical of North Korea along the inter-Korean border in psychological warfare designed to agitate front-line North Korean soldiers. In response, North Korea began its own such broadcasts, but also began deploying troops toward the border with South Korea. A lot of troops.