The US sees the AIIB as a rival to the World Bank, and as a lever for Beijing to extend its influence in the region. The White House has also said it hopes the UK will use "its voice to push for adoption of high standards". Countries have until 31 March to decide whether to seek membership of the AIIB. As well as the UK, other nations backing the venture include New Zealand, Germany, Italy and France.

Mrs Lagarde, speaking at the opening of the China Development Forum in Beijing, also said she believed that the World Bank would co-operate with the AIIB, China established the Asian lending institution in 2014 and has put up most of its initial $50 billion (£33.5 billion) in capital.

The teller disappears for a few minutes, leaving you waiting. When she returns she tells you that you can collect your money in a few days as they don’t have it on hand at the moment. Slightly irritated because of the inconvenience, you head home. But as you pull into your driveway later there’s an unexpected surprise waiting for you: two police officers would like to have a word with you about your intended withdrawal earlier.

If this sounds far-fetched, think again. Because it could very well become a reality in the 'Land of the Free' if the Justice Department gets its way. Earlier this week, a senior official from the Justice Department spoke to a group of bankers about the need for them to rat out their customers to the police. What a lot of people don’t realize is that banks are already unpaid government spies. Federal regulations in the Land of the Free REQUIRE banks to file ‘suspicious activity reports’ or SARs on their customers. And it’s not optional.

Banks have minimum quotas of SARs they need to fill out and submit to the federal government. If they don’t file enough SARs, they can be fined. They can lose their banking charter. And yes, bank executives and directors can even be imprisoned for noncompliance. This is the nature of the financial system in the Land of the Free.

The US government took over Fannie and Freddie in 2008, eventually injecting $187.5 billion in bailout money into the two. But Fannie and Freddie last month reported weak earnings for the fourth quarter. Fannie recorded net income of $1.3 billion, compared with $6.5 billion in the same quarter a year earlier. Freddie posted a profit of $227 million, down from $8.6 billion. The disappointing results were mainly due to the accounting treatment of the companies’ derivatives as well as fewer one-time items to bolster income.

For non-residents (mainly tourists) the limit will drop from 15,000 to 10,000 euros. Also, starting next year, banks will have to notify authorities of any income or withdrawals of more than 10,000 euros per month.

Restrictions apply to suitcases with money or goods of value like gold.

Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow... Yesterday the French cash limit was 3,000 euros. Today the cash limit is 1,000 euros. Tomorrow (not in the literal sense as timing is uncertain), cash transactions will be restricted to 100 euros, then banned altogether.

The same applies everywhere, including the US. Want to buy a candy bar? The government will want to know where the purchase was made, how much you paid, and where you got the money to buy the candy bar. Digital currencies will soon be mandatory.

The whiff of blackmail has incensed Europe’s politicians. Mr Tsipras has a chance to calm things down in two meetings with Angela Merkel, Germany’s chancellor — the first this week on the fringes of a European summit in Brussels, and the second in Berlin on March 23rd for what should be some hard talking between the European Union’s most powerful leader and its biggest troublemaker. Instead of stirring up resentment, Mr Tsipras should focus on the urgent task at hand: forging a deal.

Just now the Greek government seems to prefer lobbing incendiary political gibes instead. The defence minister has threatened to flood Europe with migrants, including jihadists. The justice minister has demanded that Germany pay €160 billion ($170 billion) in war reparations and warned Greece might seize the buildings of the Goethe Institute and even German holiday homes if the money is not handed over.

And Mr Tsipras has brought forward to early April a trip to Moscow to see Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin. His hoped-for message is as clear as it is crude: Mr Putin might be only too happy to help a fellow Orthodox country that dislikes sanctions on Russia. Clearly, Greece believes that it can use threats like Russia to his advantage. History provides a precedent: it was to fend off Soviet encroachment that America, under President Truman, provided aid to Greece in the aftermath of the second world war. Today, too, for Greece to fall under Russia’s spell is the last thing that NATO and the EU wants.

Mr Tsipras is playing a dangerous game. By feeding Greeks’ well-developed sense of victimhood (and the historical claims against Germany have some legitimacy), he is fanning flames that could soon burn out of control. Although opinion polls consistently show that a majority of Greeks want to remain in the euro, there is no better way to change their minds than to tell them that their EU partners treat them with injustice and contempt.

Mario Monti – who was dubbed “Super Mario” for saving the country from collapse at the height of the eurozone debt crisis – said France’s “unease” with the single currency had already created tensions between Europe’s two largest economies. “In the last few years we have seen France receding in terms of actual economic performance, in terms of complying with all the European rules, and above all in terms of its domestic public opinion – which is turning more and more against Europe,” he told The Telegraph.

France's strained relationship with Brussels has been borne out through its persistent defiance of EU budget targets and the rise of Marine Le Pen’s far-right Front National party, “France is the big problem of the European Union because the whole construct has been leveraged on the foundation of a solid Franco-German entente. If it isn’t there then there is a poor destiny for Europe,” said Mr Monti. “We’ve seen that the strong axis is no longer so strong.”

Mr Putin made his proposal at a meeting with the Belarussian and Kazakh presidents which highlighted the challenges facing the Russian-led Eurasian Economic Union following the fall in global oil prices and the decline of the Russian rouble. "The time has come to start thinking about forming a currency union," Mr Putin said after the talks in the Kazakh capital Astana with Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenko and Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev.

Khamenei told a crowd in Tehran that Iran would not capitulate to Western demands. When the crowd started shouting, “Death to America,” the ayatollah responded: “Of course yes, death to America, because America is the original source of this pressure. They insist on putting pressure on our dear people’s economy,” he said, referring to economic sanctions aimed at halting Iran’s nuclear program. “What is their goal? Their goal is to put the people against the system,” he said. “The politics of America is to create insecurity,” he added, referring both to US pressure on Iran and elsewhere in the region.

Khamenei’s comments contrasted with those of Iranian President Hassan Rohani, who said “achieving a deal is possible” by the March 31 target date for a preliminary accord. Kerry was more circumspect, as he spoke to reporters after six days of negotiations in the Swiss city of Lausanne. The talks, made “substantial progress,” he said, but “important gaps remain. We have an opportunity to get this right,” Kerry said, as he urged Iran to make “fundamental decisions” that prove to the world it has no interest in atomic weapons.

But France, which raised last minute objections to an interim agreement reached with Iran in 2013, could threaten a deal again. It is particularly opposed to providing Iran with quick relief from international sanctions and wants a longer timeframe for restrictions on Iran’s nuclear activity. “France wants an agreement, but a robust agreement,” French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius told French radio. “That is to say, an accord that really guarantees that Iran can obviously have access to the civil nuclear (program). But to the atomic bomb? No.”

“You reach a tipping point,” said Daniel C Kurtzer, a former American ambassador to Israel and Egypt. “It’s the culmination of six and a half years of frustration, including some direct hits at the president’s prestige and the office of the presidency.” The aggressiveness underlines a calculation by Mr Obama that an international accord with Iran to rein in its nuclear program is within reach despite Mr Netanyahu’s adamant opposition, and that there is little value in being more conciliatory toward him.

In a congratulatory call to Mr Netanyahu on Thursday that Mr Obama waited two days to place, the president chided the prime minister for his pre-election declaration that no Palestinian state would be established on his watch. Although Mr Netanyahu has since tried to backtrack on those comments, Mr Obama said that they had nonetheless forced his administration to reassess certain aspects of its policy toward Israel, according to a White House official.

This is not the only intelligence assessment, and in the Pentagon’s intelligence report Iran and Hezbollah do appear as threats yet one cannot but raise an eyebrow in the face of the NIA assessment, especially after Clapper’s public statements about Iran’s advanced capability to develop a nuclear bomb.

The explanation for the change in direction lies in the report itself, which praises Iran for its part in the war again Sunni terror organizations, ie the Islamic State, and for aiding countries like Iraq that are fighting it. Concerning Iran, Washington’s approach distinguishes between the war on terror and the atom, thus eliminating one of the pillars on which Israel bases its persuasion campaign against the Iranian atom.

Nor is the United States very concerned about the fact that Iran is equipping Iraq with advanced Fajr-5 missiles (of the sort fired at Israel from the Gaza Strip) and Fatah-110 missiles to help the Iraqis fight against the Islamic State — also known as ISIS or ISIL — in the city of Tikrit. “We are following Iran’s supply of arms to Iraq,” was the laconic response from the State Department. “Following” is short for “we know about it and agree,” and Washington knows that Iran is supplying not only missiles but also training, armaments, funding, command and communications systems to the Iraqi army and to Shi’ite militias that are operating under Iranian direction and command.

Even without a signed agreement, Iran is an integral and active part of the international coalition woven together by United States President Barack Obama. It is attacking Islamic State targets from the air, with the knowledge of the coalition forces and apparently there is also indirect coordination via Iraq between the Western forces and Iran’s in order to avoid combat encounters in the skies of Iraq.

The indirect military cooperation between Iran and the United States in the war against the Islamic State is not the only taboo that was broken during this past year in the course of the negotiations on the Iranian nuclear program in parallel to the Islamic State’s conquests in Iraq and Syria. The existence of direct dialogues between representatives of the United States and of Iran, such as those between Secretary of State John Kerry and Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, or between American Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz – a nuclear physicist – and Ali Akbar Salehi, Iranian representative to the Atomic Energy Organization, in Lausanne are already taken for granted, as though there had not been a complete severance of ties between the two countries for more than 35 years.

Supporters and naysayers alike have attempted to blow the speech off as an election ploy, but the White House said it warranted a "reassessment" by the US of its role. To counter the fallout from his comments, Netanyahu launched a US counter-offensive by stressing his support for the two-state solution to MSNBC, a liberal television channel known to be supportive of President Barack Obama.

Speaking to NPR in an interview broadcast Friday, Netanyahu offered some clarification about the two seemingly contradictory statements. "What I said was that under the present circumstances… it's unachievable because I had laid out very clearly what my conditions were for a two-state solution in the 2009 speech I gave at Bar-Ilan University. And I haven't changed; I haven't retracted that speech, at all.

"I said that the implementation of that vision is not relevant right now," Netanyahu said, citing "the decision of the leadership of the Palestinian Authority last year to forge a pact with Hamas" and recent changes in the Middle East – namely the Syrian civil war and ISIS, but also Iranian control over Gaza.

Netanyahu then referenced the 2005 Israeli disengagement from Gaza Strip, saying "We vacated and we didn't get peace." However, the brave unilateral step undertaken by iconic Israeli leader Arik Sharon occurred long before the Arab Spring and was unrelated to the radicalization of Islam in the region, suggesting Netanyahu was just attempting to placate the Obama administration. "I don't want a one-state solution. But I certainly don't want a zero-state solution, a no-state solution, where Israel's very existence would be jeopardized. And that's what the people of Israel overwhelmingly elected me to do," Netanyahu stressed.

Key differences between Iran and the P5+1 group - made up of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, Britain, China, France, Russia and the US, as well as Germany - include the process of lifting sanctions and the amount of uranium Tehran would be allowed to enrich for its nuclear power plants. "The meeting was to take stock of the situation so as to have a clear, coordinated European position as March 31 nears," an EU foreign affairs spokeswoman told the AFP news agency. Iran denies developing nuclear weapons and says its nuclear ambitions are peaceful.

The US president faces an uphill battle in convincing the hawkish Republic Party, which controls the Congress, to agree on a deal. The United States also has close security and economic links with Iran's arch foes Saudi Arabia and Israel. Hardliners inside Iran are also skeptical of inking a deal with the US which since the 1979 revolution has been hailed as "The Great Satan" for propping up previous oppressive regimes in Iran.

But optimists say a rapprochement between Tehran and Washington would help the US interests in the long-term, noting that Tehran has been able to expand its influence in Iraq and Afghanistan after the US invaded both countries and brought down their rulers. "There is going to be a rise of Iran, no matter which way you cut it," Hillary Mann Leverett, a former advisor on the National Security Council in Washington, told AFP recently. "The question is: can the US work with Iran for the constructive peaceful rise of Iran in a region that works more together, economically, politically and in security terms for the next generation."

The study by Nanyang Technological University (NTU Singapore) and the University of California (UC) Berkeley broke new grounds in the future of remote-controlled drone technology. The backpack consists of a microprocessor and battery pack, which is strapped onto the beetle using organic beeswax - harmless and easily removed.

Six electrodes from the microprocessor are connected to the beetle's optic lobes and flight muscles and wireless signals influence the insect to take off, turn left or right, or even hover in mid-flight. The high-tech backpack cost less than £5 to make with off-the-shelf components.

It’s a good time for companies: in the US, corporate revenues are at their highest point in 40 years. The problem, Tudor points out, is that as profit margins grow, so does income inequality. And income inequality is closely linked to lower life expectancy, literacy and math proficiency, infant mortality, homicides, imprisonment, teenage births, trust among ourselves, obesity, and, finally, social mobility. In these measures, the US is off the charts.

“This gap between the 1 percent and the rest of America, and between the US and the rest of the world, cannot and will not persist,” says the investor. “Historically, these kinds of gaps get closed in one of three ways: by revolution, higher taxes or wars. None are on my bucket list."

Ultimately, Tudor hopes, the free market will take hold and reward the companies that are the most just. “Capitalism has driven just about every great innovation that has made our world a more prosperous, comfortable and inspiring place to live. But capitalism has to be based on justice and morality… and never more so than today with economic divisions large and growing.”

This is not an argument against progress, Tudor emphasizes. “I want that electric car, or the jet packs that we all thought we’d have by now.” But he’s hoping that increased wealth will bring with it a stronger sense of corporate responsibility. “When we begin to put justness on par with profits, we get the most valuable thing in the world. We get back our humanity.”

He said that there was no example for Europe to follow or to give: "We need to build Europe together with all these nations, those who can really understand Europe," said Juncker. He underlined it was important for the EU to concentrate on big issues.

"We need to deepen our economic and monetary union for a very simple reason - the monetary union we have is not optimal. We have an independent central bank, but we do not have a European government, so we need regulations and rules to replace the European government that does not exist," Juncker said. He also mentioned the energy union and digital market as "big issues" the Commission should concentrate on.

Juncker said he was concerned over the EU spending too much on importing gas and oil which threatens the future of industry. "If we could interconnect our networks in Europe, we would be able to save 40 billion euros ($42.97 billion), while today we spend 1 billion euros a day and our electricity prices are 40 percent higher than in the United States," he said.

Juncker said introducing a digital market in Europe would be a source of income for Europe, and lead to the creation of 1.5 or 2 million jobs in the next five years.