The Libyan Air Force said the 20 soldiers arrived at the airbase on Monday, but left soon after local commanders asked them to go because they had no right to be at the base “without prior coordination with protection force base.”

British voters’ appetite for leaving the European Union is gathering momentum, putting the prospect of Brexit on a knife edge, a new poll has found. As David Cameron prepares to travel to Brussels for a crucial European summit to discuss his renegotiation plans, a poll has found that the British public is now evenly split about the prospect of a British exit from the EU.

It came as the EU referendum bill last night passed through the House of Lords, meaning that Mr Cameron could potentially hold his vote in June next year. According to the ICM poll for the Vote Leave campaign, when undecided voters are excluded, 50 per cent of voters would choose “Brexit”.

Meanwhile, Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, on Monday said that “multiculturalism is a lie” as she pledged to reduce the number of migrants entering Germany. “Whoever seeks refuge with us, must respect our laws and traditions and must learn German,” she said. “Multiculturalism creates parallel societies, Multiculturalism is a lie.”

European countries are facing record numbers of refugees and other migrants entering Greece illegally from Turkey. Dutch State Secretary for Security and Justice Klaas Dijkhoff said the protesters had crossed a line.

"Finding shelter for asylum seekers poses difficult questions but there is a limit when it comes to expressing your opinion," he said on Dutch TV.

"The line is crossed when you barge in yelling and rioting. That's not appropriate in a discussion and, thankfully, we have seen that it went much quieter in other places and a solution was found. This is not ok." The migration crisis is expected to dominate a meeting of EU leaders on Thursday.

That’s been the question on everyone’s lips since the closure last week – or “shuttering”, to use the technical term – of the Third Avenue Focused Credit Fund, one of a number of funds set up to chase yield in a world of poor to non-existent rates of return. Two other smaller US funds have also since taken action to prevent investors removing their money. It’s all eerily reminiscent of the events leading up to the credit crunch of seven years ago.

By promoting “search for yield”, the low interest rate environment has sucked investors into all manner of high-risk assets, including a plethora of funds specialising in high yield corporate debt. These funds have been hoovering up the stuff as fast as the investment bankers could manufacture it.

A major beneficiary was the American shale boom, whose estimated $350 billion-plus of investment over the past six years was substantially financed in these markets. With the collapse in oil prices has come a reckoning. At least 18 of the newcomers have filed for bankruptcy so far this year, and many others are now struggling with debt servicing costs.

Barclays predicts that the default rate for speculative-grade companies – increasingly made up of oil and gas firms – will double over the next year. Standard & Poor’s recently warned that an astonishing 50 percent of US energy junk bonds are at risk of default, or $180 billion in total. If we extrapolate this out to the $2 trillion of debt sold globally by energy and mining companies since 2010, the numbers begin to look strikingly similar to the sub-prime mortgage lending that front-ran the financial crisis. Of the $2 trillion of mortgage lending that became distressed, $800 billion was sub-prime and $1.2 trillion Alt-A.

High yield debt markets have also helped fund the explosive growth of mergers and acquisitions in recent years, particularly in pharmaceuticals and telecoms. Some of this also shows signs of distress. So, is Third Avenue the long dreaded popper that will finally puncture the post-crisis asset bubble, all puffed up by years of ultra-low interest rates and relentless central bank money printing?

Where this index stands not only gives you a glimpse into how healthy the global economy is, it also tells you how strong economic growth will be in the future. Unfortunately, it’s looking worse than ever before.

This week the Baltic Dry Index fell by 4.7%, down to 484 points, which is the lowest level we’ve seen in 30 years. Or put another way, demand for the raw materials that are the building blocks of the modern world, hasn’t been this low since Reagan was president. For the most part, this recent decline can be attributed to China’s floundering economy, which was once the largest driver of global economic growth.

Contrary to what you hear on the news, the global economy is not recovering. Our politicians and talking heads are like dogs chasing cars. They chase the highs and lows of the boom-bust cycle and inform us accordingly, but they ignore the fact that the economy is getting worse with each cycle. They’re missing the bigger picture. The Baltic Dry Index tells us the truth however. We’ve entered a period of long-term decline that could last for years.

Members of the church call themselves Pastafarians and believe that the world was created by an airborne spaghetti and meatballs-based being; although its own website notes that some followers consider it to be a satirical organisation.

The official notice was published online in New Zealand's government gazette. Registrar-general Jeff Montgomery says his decision was based purely on whether the organisation upholds or promotes religious beliefs, or philosophical or humanitarian convictions. "No judgement is made on the validity of those beliefs or convictions," he tells Stuff.co.nz website.

The church's lead official, or Top Ramen, prefers to remain anonymous, but tells Radio New Zealand that the next step is to nominate a marriage celebrant for approval. "We are a bona fide church, and our people do like to get married, some of them several times," she says, adding that Pastafarian wedding attire can range from pirate outfits to the traditional colander headgear. "We can wear the pirate gear, we can wear the pasta gear, we're quite flexible."

And the Fed isn’t alone. Central banks all over the world have been utilizing the same strategy of inflating their currency, and providing near zero interest rates. That’s because everybody wants to stay competitive by keeping their exports cheap. They’ve been racing to the bottom for years, but now it appears that the bottom has finally been reached.

Today Janet Yellen announced that the Fed would raise interest rates by a paltry .25%, in the hopes that such a small increase won’t scare investors and bring volatility to the markets. This is the first time rates have been raised since June of 2006, which is an extremely long period of time to go without a rate hike. Yellen admitted that rates would remain low for the foreseeable future, but would be raised incrementally as time goes on. She further added at a press conference that “We’ve worried about the fact that with interest rates at zero, we have less scope to respond to negative shocks.”

Or in other words, the Fed is shooting blanks. They can’t inflate the currency any more without bursting our bubble economy. On the other hand, they know that raising rates will cause the bubble to deflate, since easy money is the only thing supporting it. They’ve been stuck between a rock and a hard place for a long time, and they’ve just decided to take on the rock.

Brace yourselves. The easy money train has made its last stop, and history’s biggest credit expansion has reached its peak. There’s only one direction this economy could go from here, and that’s down.

Getting economies "back to normal" was always the hope during that remarkable time when the financial system was in danger of going bust. The financial crisis - a banking crisis which so damaged confidence and put the world in "risk-off" mode - more fundamentally damaged the global economy than many initially predicted. Paying off debts - deleveraging - and not taking on more risk became the order of the day for governments that had over-borrowed and banks, businesses and consumers that had become drunk on easy credit.

Global implications:

Rising US interest rates could mean higher debt repayments for emerging market governments and businesses - as the amount owed is denominated in dollars. And with higher interest rates in America, investment capital will be encouraged across the Atlantic and away from Asia in the hunt for better returns.

That could affect Europe as well. On the upside, the stronger dollar which has followed the rise might be good for European and Asian economies as it means exports to America are cheaper. The UK economy is strengthening, as is America's. Mr Carney has made it clear, in a way similar to the Federal Reserve, that when a rate rise comes it will be small and any subsequent increases will be gradual.

Homeowners with mortgages will need to factor in higher payments. Savers who have seen years of very low interest rates are likely to heave a sigh of relief as, finally, the world starts approaching economic normality.

Now it looks like the plans are not just formalising, but going further than anyone thought possible, with documents outlining what an EU army would look like, including the ability to take control of national borders without the consent of the government of the nation in question.

In theory, this would mean that EU army members could seize border controls, or lack thereof, from countries like the United Kingdom without the permission of the country’s leaders or elected representatives. According to the Times, the proposals for a 2,500-strong border and coast guard force could see armed personnel first deployed to areas like Greece or the Balkans.

Almost 18 months ago, UKIP’s leader, Nigel Farage, warned of the plans for an EU army in a big, pre-European Parliamentary Elections debate with then Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg. Mr Clegg lost both televised debates in 2014, notably calling Mr Farage’s warning a “dangerous fantasy”. He said: “The idea there’s going to be a European air force, a European army, it is simply not true. This is a dangerous fantasy… it is not going to happen”.

The Times also reports that a major European summit, due to be dominated by UK Prime Minister David Cameron’s “renegotiation” demands to halt a British exit from the EU, will instead now focus on the plans for the EU army. The plans include the statement: “In urgent situations, the agency must be able to step in to ensure action is taken on the ground even where that member state considers there is no need for additional intervention”.

Moscow has identified more than 2,900 of its citizens suspected of joining ISIS and other radical Islamist groups, and is actively hunting them down both at home and abroad. In Syria Mr Putin's warplanes and feared Spetsnaz special forces troops are tracking and killing Russian-born jihadis to prevent them from returning home and carrying out terrorist atrocities.

So far they have taken out 198 radicalised jihadis in a matter of months, whilst a further 214 have fled back to Russia where they have been "put under close control" of the security services. Of the survivors, 80 are already behind bars after being convicted of terrorist offences, whilst a further 41 have been arrested and are awaiting trial.

Meanwhile, the authorities in Moscow are prosecuting more than a thousand ISIS sympathisers, recruiters and financiers in a huge bid to wipe their evil scourge from the country's history books. In contrast it emerged yesterday that overwhelmed British security services are allowing our homegrown jihadis to leave freely, deciding it is safer to get them out of the country than keep tabs on them.

“Most of the victims were slaughtered and most of the wounded [had suffered] machete cuts,” said Mustapha Karimbe, a civilian who has been helping the Nigerian military fight Boko Haram. The attacks on the three villages – Warwara, Mangari and Bura-Shika – happened on Saturday. All of the villages are located in the state of Borno, near Buratai, which is the hometown of Nigeria’s highest military.

The Nigeria-based Boko Haram terrorist group has killed more people than Islamic State (IS, previously ISIS/ISIL), claiming 6,644 lives compared to 6,073 killed by IS, revealed the Global Terrorism Index recently published by the Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP). The Nigerian jihadists pledged allegiance to IS in March 2015.

This latest attack comes as Boko Haram fighters have intensified their attacks on Buratai and nearby settlements. Attackers usually come into a village and raid it. Last week Boko Haram brutally killed 14 people in the village of Kamuya, which is the hometown of the mother of Nigeria’s army chief and burned it down.