Now, with Europe facing its biggest security challenge since the end of the cold war, the multinational base is on the front line — lying closer to Russia than any other Nato command centre. A high-tech operations room is being built, the base is doubling in size to 400 officers and it is racing to achieve high readiness by mid-2016. “Things have changed dramatically,” says General Niemann.

Public opinion in Germany has also changed dramatically. Since the end of the cold war voters have been wary of military engagement, distrusting politicians’ calls for greater German participation in foreign missions such as Afghanistan, often because of ingrained fears over military adventurism born of the country’s Nazi past. Just before the Ukraine crisis erupted last March, Germans responded sceptically to an appeal from Joachim Gauck, the president, to stop using history as a “shield”.

But the Russian threat to European stability has galvanised backing for a more active military. A recent YouGov poll showed 49 per cent support for increased defence spending, versus 36 per cent against. Christian Mölling of the Berlin-based SWP think-tank says: “We didn’t really understand about sending expeditions to other parts of the world. But this is the old narrative about the defence of our homeland.”

After limiting defence spending for 25 years, Berlin will boost the military budget by 6 per cent over the next five years, starting with a €1.2 billion increase next year to €34.2 billion. “The Kremlin’s behaviour has put the importance of the Nato defensive alliance before our eyes. We thought for years we would not need to defend our borders, but now the facts show otherwise,” says Henning Otte, parliamentary defence spokesman for chancellor Angela Merkel’s ruling CDU/CSU bloc.

General Niemann, whose service began in the cold war, says Germans are ready for the new challenge. “I have no doubt about it. There is no question of history [stopping us]. This is not Germany post-1945 any more. We have enjoyed the solidarity of our partners during the cold war and now our partners deserve our solidarity.”

A long-running dispute over Iran's nuclear programme has heightened tensions between Tehran and the West, but a deal on Tuesday could bring down diplomatic barriers. Failure, though, could see the crisis turn much worse. It's in many ways a make-or-break moment, but either way a deal on 31 March does not mean the crisis is over by a long shot. The date was set as the deadline for a framework deal, which will pave the way for a full agreement on all technical details by 30 June.

One of the major obstacles has been disagreement over the duration of a deal, with the sides reported to have agreed to 10 years on the most sensitive aspects of Iran's nuclear work. It is unclear what will follow when the accord expires. While a deal might defuse the stand-off between Iran and world powers, Israel has warned it could fuel a nuclear arms race in the Middle East.

Under this scenario, countries such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia could seek to equip themselves with nuclear weapons before Iran gets a chance to. There are also strong opponents to a deal in both Iran and the US. In Iran, hardliners have denounced what they see is a humiliating compromise over a national right to enrichment, while in Washington members of Congress have threatened to oppose a final deal.

Iran says the international community is displaying double standards by not doing anything about its arch-foe Israel, which is widely believed to have a nuclear arsenal - though Israel has neither confirmed nor denied this. Israel however, like nuclear-armed India and Pakistan, is not a signatory to the NPT.

Naqdi’s comments were made public as Iran and six world powers prepared Tuesday to issue a general statement agreeing to continue nuclear negotiations in a new phase aimed at reaching a comprehensive accord by the end of June. In 2014, Naqdi said Iran was stepping up efforts to arm West Bank Palestinians for battle against Israel, adding the move would lead to Israel’s annihilation, Iran’s Fars news agency reported. “Arming the West Bank has started and weapons will be supplied to the people of this region,” Naqdi said.

“The Zionists should know that the next war won’t be confined to the present borders and the Mujahedeen will push them back,” he added. Naqdi claimed that much of Hamas’s arsenal, training and technical knowhow in the summer conflict with Israel was supplied by Iran. The Basij is a religious volunteer force established in 1979 by the country’s revolutionary leaders, and has served as a moral police and to suppress dissent.

The use of the new technology by Israel was brought up in discussions regarding a possible attack on Tehran’s nuclear facilities, the report claimed. Such a move would send Iran “back to the stone age,” the British paper said. This kind of bomb would operate based on the nonlethal technology of gamma rays, the report explained. The outburst of energy would “fry” electric devices and currents around the source of the explosion.

Arguing that NATO aggression against Russia required the “complete destruction of the enemy,” Sivkov went on to depict a chilling scenario. “Geologists believe that the Yellowstone supervolcano could explode at any moment. There are signs of growing activity there. Therefore it suffices to push the relatively small, for example the impact of the munition megaton class to initiate an eruption. The consequences will be catastrophic for the United States – a country just disappears,” he said.

A Yellowstone supervolcano eruption would kill millions of people in the initial blast and bury much of the United States in volcanic ash. According to some experts, it could cause the end of the world. The last time a supervolcano exploded in Siberia, 85 per cent of all land species and 95 per cent of all ocean dwellers were completely wiped out.

“Another vulnerable area of the United States from the geophysical point of view, is the San Andreas fault – 1300 kilometers between the Pacific and North American plates … a detonation of a nuclear weapon there can trigger catastrophic events like a coast-scale tsunami which can completely destroy the infrastructure of the United States,” he wrote.

While it would be unthinkable for anyone inside the Kremlin to take Sivkov’s comments seriously, his rhetoric illustrates how fraught tensions are between Moscow and Washington.

For example, almost two million Palestinians who have long been settled in Jordan, and have for decades enjoyed Jordanian citizenship, are routinely counted as "refugees" by UNRWA, and the State Department supports it. This, in spite of the fact that, under United States law, a person who has citizenship in the country where they reside, and enjoys the protection of that state, cannot lawfully be eligible for refugee status. How can State justify this contradiction?

Here is a second example: Another two million Palestinians who are already settled in the West Bank [sic] and Gaza, and who by their own account lived in the declared Palestinian state as its citizens, under a Palestinian government, are registered as "refugees" by UNRWA. By American legal standards, these Palestinians are "firmly settled" and therefore ineligible for "refugee" status. And according to American policy reaffirmed by three Presidents, these Palestinians already reside in their own future state, the place where Palestinian refugees are meant to be settled. Yet the State Department supports UNRWA's decision to count two million Palestinians well established in the West Bank and Gaza as "refugees" too.

Here is a third example: Under US laws and regulations, only an individual who was personally displaced, or is a spouse or underage dependent of such an individual, can be eligible for refugee status or derivative refugee status. Grandchildren and great-grandchildren are specifically not entitled to inherit refugee status merely because their ancestor was a refugee. But under UNRWA practices, any descendant of a male refugee, no matter how many generations and decades have passed is automatically entitled to be counted as a "refugee." In fact, 95% of today's UNRWA "refugees" were not even alive when Israel was born in 1948, were never personally displaced by Israel's creation, and are listed by UNRWA as "refugees" only because of this peculiar practice of inheriting refugee status as a birthright.

Amazingly, the State Department defends all this. The sad reality is that the United States Department of State does not want such simple reforms. State has chosen instead to act as UNRWA's patron and the protector of its mission, perpetuating and expanding the refugee issue as a source of conflict against Israel.

This development may be welcomed by an administration that has sought to extract the United States from Middle East wars. But the Arab initiatives — under-resourced and with questionable objectives — are as likely to compound as resolve the region’s wars, and they ultimately may undermine US interests.

In Yemen, the Saudis and like-minded nations are attempting to turn back an offensive by an alliance of dissident Yemeni forces and ethnic Houthis, a Shiite sect that has received weapons and training from Iran. The Saudis are probably correct in claiming that Iran is attempting to replace a Saudi-friendly government with another Iranian client militia; the Houthis share the ideology of Lebanon’s Hezbollah. But it’s not clear how the military campaign, which so far has consisted of bombing and naval shelling, will turn back the forces now besieging the southern port of Aden — much less accomplish the announced aims of restoring the previous government in Yemen and forcing the Houthis to disarm.

For more than a half-century, it has been the role of the United States to provide the leadership and military muscle that its Arab allies could not muster on their own. In Yemen, the Obama administration could have used air assets to turn back the Houthis before they overthrew the previous government; instead, intent on striking a deal with Iran, the White House at first indicated it could accept the Houthi takeover.

The administration now is offering intelligence support to the Saudi intervention. That will neither ensure its success nor bring about the negotiated settlement that is Yemen’s best option. The war that rages there could soon merge into a regional war between Iran and Saudi Arabia and their allies — a conflict that flourishes in the vacuum created by US retreat.

Greece came in for further criticism this weekend, when it emerged that the Greek Energy Minister Panagiotis Lafazanis is to fly to Moscow on March 30 to negotiate lower gas prices for his country and find ways of increasing Greek exports to the Russian Federation, despite the EU sanctions over Ukraine.

Meanwhile, Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras is expected to travel to Moscow next week to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin in a move that has left German politicians apoplectic with rage with the chairman of the Bundestag [German parliament] European Committee Gunther Krichbaum accusing Greece of “frittering away valuable time and trust”. He added: “Instead of asking for help from his comrades in Russia, Prime Minister Tsipras should finally put forward concrete and dependable reform proposals.”

“Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras is carrying out a very risky strategy,” Manfred Weber, the leader of the conservative EPP group in the European Parliament, told Der Spiegel. “His flirting with Russia makes a constructive solution with Europe in these financial questions difficult.”

Greece on Friday sent its creditors a long-awaited list of reforms with a pledge to produce a small budget surplus this year in the hope that it will unlock badly needed cash.

With stock prices rushing far ahead of economic reality over the last six or so years, more experts in the financial markets are coming to the same conclusion — even if they don’t fully understand how it’s being rigged or the consequences. Ed Yardeni, a longtime Wall Street guru who isn’t one of the clowns of the bunch, said flat out last week that the market was being propped up. “These markets are all rigged, and I don’t say that critically. I just say that factually,” he asserted on CNBC. Yardeni’s claim is the most basic one: that the Federal Reserve won’t do anything that will upset Wall Street and, in fact, is doing all it can to help the stock market.

Okay, so the markets are rigged. Basically everyone now agrees on that. But should we care? America was built on capitalism and free and fair markets. Today’s markets aren’t fair. In fact, they are unfair because they are putting lots of money into the pockets of a small number of Americans. The bigger problem is this: If stock prices are artificially inflated, nobody can tell what a company is really worth. And banks are going to be hesitant to lend money to companies with fuzzy valuations.

In the second such test on the health of the industry, the Bank has asked seven lenders to spell out the damage that would be done by a global nightmare scenario designed by central bank officials, with help from the International Monetary Fund and other financial authorities. Last year’s test, which focused on a property crisis in the UK, found that Royal Bank of Scotland and Lloyds Banking Group would have come close to falling short of the capital requirements. Both had raised money or improved their balance sheets by the time the results were published in December.

As well as showing that their capital ratios could withstand a global shock, the banks are also expected to reassure the regulators that they could continue lending to British households and businesses. The stress test envisages a 10 percent rise in demand for borrowing between this year and 2019, the outer limit of the scenario.

Mark Carney, the Governor of the Bank of England, said: “By assessing the resilience of the UK banking system against a major external shock, we will improve further our ability to identify vulnerabilities and we will ensure that banks have plans in place to address a wider range of possible stresses.” The tests are not forecasts, but rather a worst-case scenario of what the banks could face.

French Bishop Jean-Michel Faure, himself consecrated only two weeks ago by the Holocaust-denying British Bishop Richard Williamson, said the new group rejected Pope Francis and what it called his "new religion" and would not engage in a dialogue with Rome until the Vatican turned back the clock. Williamson and Faure, who were both excommunicated from the Roman Catholic Church when the former made the latter a bishop without Vatican approval, are ex-members of a larger dissenting group that has been a thorn in Rome's side for years.

Their splinter movement is tiny - Faure did not give an estimate of followers - but the fact they plan to consecrate bishops is important because it means their schism can continue as a rebel form of Catholicism. "We follow the popes of the past, not the current one," Faure, 73, told reporters on Saturday at Santa Cruz Monastery in Nova Friburgo, in the mountain jungle 140 km (87 miles) inland from Rio de Janeiro. The prior of the monastery, Thomas Aquinas, explained the split simply: "The Pope is less Catholic than us."

Under Catholic law, Williamson and Faure are excommunicated from the Church but remain validly consecrated bishops. That means they can ordain priests into their schismatic group and claim to be Catholic, albeit without Vatican approval. By contrast, women supposedly made priests by dissident Catholic bishops are not validly ordained because Catholic law reserves the priesthood only for men.

At the same time as events are proceeding toward the prospect of a possible redesign of the Middle East, whether consensual or not, we are already witnessing an event the likes of which the region has not seen in decades. A number of Arab countries intend to assemble a large and powerful Arab military force and, for the first time, Israel is not alarmed. Not only is Israel not alarmed, it is actually ecstatic.

For generations, Israel’s defense strategy was based on a desire to be able to fend off any Arab coalition of forces rather than just individual Arab countries. But now that such a coalition is coming together, Israel sees it as an indivisible element of its own defense policy. Even if no one is inviting Israel to take part, it’s already among the coalition’s first stakeholders.

This week Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the Iran-Lausanne-Yemen axis a danger to humanity. But Saudi Arabia did not need Netanyahu’s latest slogan in order to recognize the threat.

The clinic, opening this week in tony Friendship Heights, specializes in the abortion pill and will be unique for its advertising. Its unabashed approach also reflects a new push to destigmatize the nation’s most controversial medical procedure by talking about it openly and unapologetically.

Plagued by political setbacks in recent years, abortion-rights activists are now seeking to normalize abortion, to put a human face — and in some cases, even a positive spin — on the procedure. At Carafem, staff members plan to greet clients with warm teas, comfortable robes and a matter-of-fact attitude. “We don’t want to talk in hushed tones,” said Carafem president Christopher Purdy. “We use the A-word.”

“It was important for us to try to present an upgraded, almost spa-like feel,” said Melissa S Grant, vice president of health services for the clinic. If the project is successful, Purdy says, he hopes to expand his model to other states. “It’s fresh, it’s modern, it’s clean, it’s caring,” he said. “That’s the brand we’re trying to create.”

On Thursday, Indiana governor Mike Pence signed the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) into law, and some celebrities, politicians, and journalists – including Miley Cyrus, Ashton Kutcher, and Hillary Clinton, just to name a few – are absolutely outraged. They say the law is a license to discriminate against gay people, which is simply not true.

However, they’re making that perception a reality in people’s minds by repeating that exact mantra often and everywhere they can. So calmer, wiser voices are speaking up to clarify just what this is all about. There are primers on RFRA all over the place, for those interested in knowing the truth behind the blowup. Here’s the Weekly Standard: “Is the Religious Freedom Restoration Act really a license to discriminate against gay people?”

No. Stanford law professor Michael McConnell, a former appellate court judge, tells THE WEEKLY STANDARD in an email: “In the decades that states have had RFRA statutes, no business has been given the right to discriminate against gay customers, or anyone else.”

It’s actually the opposite. It’s a protection of individuals, business owners, others, from being discriminated against for conducting their business according to their beliefs.

Murray, a Democrat who is openly gay, issued his ban via executive order over the weekend, and Inslee issued his Monday afternoon. “I find Indiana’s new law disturbing, particularly at a time when more and more states and people in America are embracing civil rights for everyone," Inslee said in a statement. "Washington will join other states and cities in opposing this law and I will impose an administration-wide ban on state-funded travel to Indiana."

Murray says the law doesn't reflect Seattle residents’ values. He also has told all city departments to review their contracts to see whether Seattle is doing business with any company whose headquarters is in Indiana. “Seattleites know that discrimination has no place in our city,” he said in a statement. “That’s just equality 101.” The primary concern is that the law might allow a business to discriminate against gay residents, such as a baker being allowed refuse an order from a gay couple for a wedding cake.

But state lawmakers and Republican Governor Mike Pence have been defending and trying to explain the Religious Freedom Restoration Act ever since the governor signed it into law on Thursday. They note that then-President Bill Clinton in 1993 signed similar federal legislation into law, and 19 other states also have similar policies. However, the Indiana law differs in several ways, primarily in that it allows a business to assert a right to "the free exercise of religion."