When we sleep, our brain replays the day's activities. The pattern of brain activity exhibited by mice when they explore a new area during the day, for example, will reappear, speeded up, while the animal sleeps. This is thought to be the brain practising an activity - an essential part of learning. People who miss out on sleep do not learn as well as those who get a good night's rest, and when the replay process is disrupted in mice, so too is their ability to remember what they learned the previous day.

Karim Benchenane and his colleagues at the Industrial Physics and Chemistry Higher Educational Institution in Paris, France, hijacked this process to create new memories in sleeping mice. The team targeted the rodents' place cells - neurons that fire in response to being in or thinking about a specific place. These cells are thought to help us form internal maps, and their discoverers won a Nobel prize last year.

These modifications could be for better or worse, says Frank. "There are a few ways of thinking about this – there's the medical application, and there's the more Orwellian application, where the government gets inside people's heads and starts to control them," he says. "It's unbelievably hard to do any of this, so I'm not deeply worried about it, but it's not impossible that it could happen."

Every nuclear power is spending lavishly to upgrade its atomic arsenal. Russia’s defence budget has grown by over 50% since 2007, and fully a third of it is devoted to nuclear weapons: twice the share of, say, France. China, long a nuclear minnow, is adding to its stocks and investing heavily in submarines and mobile missile batteries. Pakistan is amassing dozens of battlefield nukes to make up for its inferiority to India in conventional forces.

North Korea is thought to be capable of adding a warhead a year to its stock of around ten, and is working on missiles that can strike the west coast of the United States. Even the Nobel peace laureate in the White House has asked Congress for almost $350 billion to undertake a decade-long programme of modernisation of America’s arsenal.

Worst of all is the instability. During much of the cold war the two superpowers, anxious to avoid Armageddon, were willing to tolerate the status quo. Today the ground is shifting under everyone’s feet. Some countries want nuclear weapons to prop up a tottering state.

Pakistan insists its weapons are safe, but the outside world cannot shake the fear that they may fall into the hands of Islamist terrorists, or even religious zealots within its own armed forces. When history catches up with North Korea’s Kim dynasty, as sooner or later it must, nobody knows what will happen to its nukes — whether they might be inherited, sold, eliminated or, in a last futile gesture, detonated.

Others want nuclear weapons not to freeze the status quo, but to change it. Russia has started to wield nuclear threats as an offensive weapon in its strategy of intimidation. Its military exercises routinely stage dummy nuclear attacks on such capitals as Warsaw and Stockholm. Mr Putin’s speeches contain veiled nuclear threats. Dmitry Kiselev, one of the Kremlin’s mouthpieces, has declared with relish that Russian nuclear forces could turn America into “radioactive ash”.

Iran, for its part, wants to deliver an emphatic message: even if its diplomats compromise over the nuclear programme in the interests of ridding the country of sanctions, General Suleimani and his comrades will ensure that the Shia Islamic Republic remains a rising power, determined to reshape the entire Middle East in its own image. As the general himself told the official media in Tehran: “Today we see signs of the Islamic Revolution being exported throughout the region - from Bahrain to Iraq and from Syria to Yemen and North Africa.”

And that is precisely what Mr Netanyahu and the Sunni rulers of the Gulf most fear. They believe that a nuclear deal between Iran and America would herald a fundamental change in the balance of power in the Middle East. In particular, they think that an agreement to settle the nuclear issue would implicitly convey American acceptance of Iran’s domination of swathes of the region.

Already, Iranian tentacles spread far and wide. In Lebanon, the Islamic Republic has more direct influence than any other foreign power, thanks to its umbilical relationship with Hizbollah, the radical Shia movement. In Syria, General Suleimani has quietly masterminded Bashar al-Assad’s struggle to stay in power, deploying thousands of troops from the Revolutionary Guard and Hizbollah. In Iraq, General Suleimani is commanding the struggle on the ground against Isil, reinforcing his country’s ironclad alliance with the Shia-led government in Baghdad.

And in Yemen, Shia rebels have taken over the capital, Sana’a, with the benefit of Iranian weapons and support. All this has led Iranian officials to boast that four Arab capitals - Beirut, Damascus, Baghdad and Sana’a - are under their de facto control. If this could take place in the teeth of sanctions and Iran’s bitter rivalry with America, then what might happen if a nuclear deal sweeps away the embargo and brings the superpower’s enmity to an end?

The war special interests in the United States along with its co-conspirators plan to wage across the planet encompasses not only the Middle East and North Africa, but also Russia, China, and beyond. It threatens the lives, peace, and prosperity of all on Earth. If it is not exposed, and the special interests driving it not undermined, uprooted, and purged from humanity, none will escape the dark days that inevitably lie ahead.

The Unheeded Warning

It was in 2007, in the New Yorker, that veteran journalist Seymour Hersh published his lengthy, prophetic report, “The Redirection: Is the Administration’s new policy benefitting our enemies in the war on terrorism?” Within it, Washington, Riyadh, and Tel Aviv were exposed amidst a criminal conspiracy to use sectarian extremists in a proxy war against Iran and its allies in Syria and Lebanon. The impending conflict was described as “cataclysmic.”

The report stated explicitly that: “To undermine Iran, which is predominantly Shiite, the Bush Administration has decided, in effect, to reconfigure its priorities in the Middle East. In Lebanon, the Administration has cooperated with Saudi Arabia’s government, which is Sunni, in clandestine operations that are intended to weaken Hezbollah, the Shiite organization that is backed by Iran. The US has also taken part in clandestine operations aimed at Iran and its ally Syria. A by-product of these activities has been the bolstering of Sunni extremist groups that espouse a militant vision of Islam and are hostile to America and sympathetic to Al Qaeda.”

On the edge of Karachi, on an earthquake-prone seafront vulnerable to tsunamis and not far from where al-Qaeda militants nearly hijacked a Pakistan navy vessel last fall, China is constructing two large nuclear reactors for energy-starved Pakistan. The new reactors, utilizing a cutting-edge design not yet in use anywhere in the world, will each provide 1,100 megawatts to Pakistan’s national energy grid. They are being built next to a much smaller 1970s-era reactor on a popular beach where fishermen still build wooden boats by hand.

But the new ACP-1000 reactors will also stand less than 20 miles from downtown Karachi, a dense and rapidly growing metropolis of about 20 million residents. Now, in a rare public challenge to the Islamabad government’s nuclear ambitions, some Pakistanis are pushing back. Of all places to locate a reactor, they argue, who could possibly make a case for this one?

“You are talking about a city one-third the population of the United Kingdom,” said Abdul Sattar Pirzada, a Karachi lawyer who is seeking to get the project halted. “If there would be an accident, this would cripple Karachi, and if you cripple Karachi, you cripple Pakistan.” Some US diplomatic officials have also expressed concern about the initiative, in particular about China’s role in providing nuclear technology to Pakistan. “The risks are there. You cannot discount them, but you prepare for them,” said Khawaja Asif, Pakistan’s water, power and defense minister. “We are a nuclear power, so don’t underestimate us.”

Musadaq Malik, a Sharif adviser on energy issues, counters that a country that trusts its military to possess nuclear weapons can also trust its government to maintain a Chinese nuclear power plant. “We may look irresponsible, but we are not that irresponsible,” Malik said. “We have engineers, we have scientists, we have our security apparatus… Like other nations, we have done all of this before, reasonably well.”

No-one would think that what happened last week at Austria’s failed Hypo Alpe-Adria Bank International falls into quite the same category; we are meant to be in the recovery phase of the latest global banking crisis, so this is more about re-setting the system than again bringing it to its knees, right?

Well, make up your own mind. I suspect neither financial markets nor policymakers have yet caught onto the full significance of the latest turn of events. In a nutshell, the Austrian government has had enough of funding the bank’s losses, and announced plans to “bail-in” external creditors to the tune of €7.6 billion instead. Essentially, what the Austrian government is doing is cutting loose an entire region, rather in the way the federal authorities in the US allowed Detroit to go bust a number of years ago.

It’s a mini-Greece going off in the heartlands of Europe.

Without the funding, Greece will go bust later this month forcing the recession-ravaged and highly indebted country out of the EU’s single currency. Greece’s borders with Turkey is the EU’s frontline against illegal immigration and European measures to stop extremists travelling to and from Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil) bases in Syria and Iraq.

Panos Kammenos, the Greek defence minister, warned that if the eurozone allowed Greece to go bust it would give EU travel papers to illegal immigrants crossing its borders or the 10,000 currently held in detention centres. "If they deal a blow to Greece, then they should know the the migrants will get papers to go to Berlin,” he said.

"If Europe leaves us in the crisis, we will flood it with migrants, and it will be even worse for Berlin if in that wave of millions of economic migrants there will be some jihadists of the Islamic State too.” Mr Kammenos, who is the leader of the Right-wing Independent Greeks party which is in coalition with Greece’s ruling far-Left Syriza government, said that the EU’s passport free “Schengen” travel zone left the eurozone vulnerable.

The boost in German-Iran trade – and a late-February pro-Iran business event sponsored by the Hannover chamber of industry and commerce – triggered a public rebuke from Israel. “Obviously the organizing body aims to enhance trade relations with Iran, but now is not the time for such initiatives – both because of the fact that the international sanctions are still in place and because of the sensitive stage of the current negotiations between the E3+3 [China, France, Germany, the Russian Federation, the United Kingdom, and the United States] and Iran,” a spokeswoman for Israel’s embassy told The Jerusalem Post.

“In addition one should not forget that Iran was and remains a country which supports, finances and executes murderous terrorism around the globe, including its military support of the Syrian regime and Hezbollah,” she added. “Iran is a country where human rights are trampled and where currently an International Holocaust Cartoon competition is held, and provides an opportunity for Holocaust deniers to present their vicious and outrageous ‘art,’ distorting the memory of one of the most tragic events in human history,” she continued.

For months, Breedlove has been commenting on Russian activities in eastern Ukraine, speaking of troop advances on the border, the amassing of munitions and alleged columns of Russian tanks. Over and over again, Breedlove's numbers have been significantly higher than those in the possession of America's NATO allies in Europe. As such, he is playing directly into the hands of the hardliners in the US Congress and in NATO.

The German government is alarmed. Are the Americans trying to thwart European efforts at mediation led by Chancellor Angela Merkel? Sources in the Chancellery have referred to Breedlove's comments as "dangerous propaganda." Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier even found it necessary recently to bring up Breedlove's comments with NATO General Secretary Jens Stoltenberg.

But Breedlove hasn't been the only source of friction. Europeans have also begun to see others as hindrances in their search for a diplomatic solution to the Ukraine conflict. First and foremost among them is Victoria Nuland, head of European affairs at the US State Department. She and others would like to see Washington deliver arms to Ukraine and are supported by Congressional Republicans as well as many powerful Democrats.

Indeed, US President Barack Obama seems almost isolated. He has thrown his support behind Merkel's diplomatic efforts for the time being, but he has also done little to quiet those who would seek to increase tensions with Russia and deliver weapons to Ukraine. Sources in Washington say that Breedlove's bellicose comments are first cleared with the White House and the Pentagon. The general, they say, has the role of the "super hawk," whose role is that of increasing the pressure on America's more reserved trans-Atlantic partners.

The Bank of International Settlements calculates the public sector debt of the G7 countries has grown by 40 percentage points to 120 percent of GDP since the crisis began. Consultants McKinsey found that not one developed economy (and only five emerging markets) have managed to reduce their debt to GDP ratios in the “real economy”, which includes both household and government debt. When taken together, total debt has grown by $57 trillion since 2007, far outpacing global growth.

The explosion in public debt levels has come about as countries have been unable to "inflate away" their liabilities - a high rate of inflation helps to erode debt piles over time in real terms. Instead, a global deflationary spiral has increased the amount of money countries owe and the interest they pay to service these debts.

China's debt has quadrupled since 2007, rising to $28 trillion from just $7 trillion before the crisis. At 282 percent of its economic output, China’s debt as a share of economic output is now larger than the United States, and is only surpassed by Japan. With the global indebtedness reaching its highest level in 200 years, the IMF has warned the world will need defaults, a savings tax and higher inflation to finally clear the way for recovery.

"Growth in Saudi Arabia has been dramatic and, based on previous orders, these numbers are not going to slow down” said Benny Moores, a senior analyst for IHS Aerospace, Defense and Security. According to broader figures in the report however, Saudi Arabia is not alone in its escalation of arms purchases. The Middle East as a region has become the largest destination for American firepower.

“When we look at the likely export addressable opportunities at a global level for the defense industry, five of the 10 leading countries are from the Middle East,” Moores said. “The Middle East is the biggest regional market and there are $110 billion in opportunities in the coming decade."

Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union party backs the plan of Gabriel, leader of the Social Democrats, to address human rights in the talks but are worried about “letting down reliable partners” over the tank sale, CDU lawmaker Joachim Pfeiffer said in an interview late Friday in Riyadh. Gabriel told reporters in Riyadh on Sunday that Merkel opposes selling the Leopard to Saudi Arabia and that German parliamentarians must defer to her.

Pressure on Germany to rethink its stance on selling the Leopards will probably grow as tensions in the Persian Gulf persist with the Islamic State threat and as Merkel seeks to underpin the stability of the Saudi kingdom. Islamic State leaders can’t be beaten by “appealing to morals,” CDU parliamentary caucus leader Volker Kauder said in a March 7 interview in Leipziger Volkszeitung newspaper, calling on Merkel to reconsider military policy to Saudi Arabia.

Reports have said the Iranians were attempting to develop cruise missiles, but this is the first time they have unveiled such weapons publicly. Iranian websites that reported the introduction presented photographs of a display of a number of static Soumars and a short video of a launch of one of them from a military vehicle.

In 2005 senior officials in Kiev confirmed that Ukraine in 2001 had sold a dozen Kh-55 missiles to Iran. Ukraine held the missiles after the Soviet Union disintegrated. Since the missiles were delivered, the Iranians have been trying to reverse-engineer the Kh-55 to produce a local version.

“The unveiling of the cruise missile is very surprising,” says Tal Inbar, head of the space and unmanned-aerial-vehicle center at the Fisher Institute for Air and Space Strategic Studies in Herzliya. Inbar says that “it’s much easier to hide a cruise missile. They are smaller and more mobile [and] you can launch them from a variety of platforms on land, from submarines, bombers and even disguised merchant ships.”

It means that China is literally advertising its currency overseas, and it’s making sure that everyone landing at one of the world’s busiest airports sees it. They know that the future belongs to them and they’re flaunting it. And most everyone has assumed that Chinese currency would soon play a larger role in international trade.

But things have moved so rapidly in recent years that now a very large chunk of the financial world actually expects the renminbi to replace the dollar as the primary reserve currency of the planet someday. The following comes from CNBC… ‘The tightly controlled Chinese yuan will eventually supersede the dollar as the top international reserve currency, according to a new poll of institutional investors.

‘The survey of 200 institutional investors – 100 headquartered in mainland China and 100 outside of it – published by State Street and the Economist Intelligence Unit on Thursday found 53 percent of investors think the renminbi will surpass the US dollar as the world’s major reserve currency. Optimism was higher within China, where 62 percent said they saw a redback world on the horizon, compared with 43 percent outside China.’

Black radish extract

Recently spotted on the Radio 4 Food Programme in the ingredients listing on a supermarket Bakewell tart, it acts as an antioxidant by slowing down the staling in the tart that would naturally occur through exposure to air. Effectively, it acts as a preservative, extending the tart’s shelf life. But as it is classed as an ingredient, not an additive, there is no need for an E number.

Tapioca starch

Most savvy consumers don’t like the sound of polyphosphates, chemicals added to cheap meat products (sausages, cooked ham, frankfurters), to help the meat absorb and retain added water. Clean label tapioca starch does the same job, but sounds a whole lot nicer than sodium/potassium/calcium/ or ammonium tetrapolyphosphate, E452.

Carrot concentrate

Don’t imagine that this is something you’d drink on a yoga retreat. Actually, it’s a factory-made, highly-processed substance that won’t be contributing to your five-a-day. It is used as a “clean label” yellow colouring, but neither the word “colour” nor “colouring” need appear on the label. It makes margarines and spread look yellow, like butter; without colouring, they would look grey. Carrot concentrate is sometimes labelled as “mixed carotenes”, which sound as health-enhancing as a wheatgrass shot. Beetroot extract and paprika extract are “clean label” red colourings. Safflower extract produces a cool cappuccino hue.

Roasted barley malt extract

This ingredient, which you’ll often find in breakfast cereals and granary breads, has an aura of health around it. Its true role, however, is as a “clean label” flavour enhancer and colouring, all rolled into one. Added in liquid or powdered form, it brings to the table a slightly sweet, toasted cereal flavour, and an appetising golden-brown tone.

Cultured corn syrup

This “clean label” preservative turns up in “fresh” dips, and other chilled products. It is made by fermenting corn - often genetically modified - with cultures that form organic acids and fermentation products with a bacteria-inhibiting effect. The boon here for the manufacturer is that it counts as an ingredient, not an additive, so it doesn’t need an E number. And the “cultured” bit sounds positively classy.

Rosemary extract

When you see this in your “fresh” potato gnocchi or rustic salami, you’re not looking at a herby aromatic essence, patiently handmade by artisans in Tuscany. In fact, by the time it emerges from its complex extraction process, this brown liquid or powder has no scent or smell of the fresh herb. It is there as an antioxidant (effectively a preservative), to extend the product’s shelf life.

Rice extract

Found in products as diverse as ice cream, savoury snacks, and pizzas, it does the same job as the old guard chemical emulsifiers and stabilisers, such as mono- and diacetyltartaric acid esters of mono-and diglycerides of fatty acids (E472e), and methylcellulose (E461), minus the E numbers. Used as a “dough conditioner” in industrial bakeries to improve water retention and extend the freezer life of baked goods, it also turns up a lot in low-fat foods, to make up for the disagreeable loss of “mouth feel” when fat is removed.

Caramelised sugar syrup

The name evokes images of home-made crème caramel, but this dual purpose ingredient doubles up as a sweet flavouring and brown colouring. It acts as a “clean label” replacement for E150 caramel, which is controversial on health grounds. It adds a golden-baked "brown" taste and appearance to breads that contain little wholemeal flour, gives pre-cooked beige chicken a naturally roasted look, and flavours toffee popcorn and confectionery. Is it really more natural than E150? We just don’t know, because the precise formulation is a trade secret.