This is the conclusion drawn by a year-long project to work out the basic features of future German foreign policy, with the participation of the head of the foreign ministry's Policy Planning Staff. The document contends that, because the United States is showing signs of weakening, Germany, currently a "policy shaping power in waiting," should develop stronger global activities to become a leading power.

This does not merely mean taking on "troublemaker" countries - such as Iran and Venezuela - but also finding the appropriate means for handling emerging countries, not unconditionally prepared to surrender to the Western leadership. This could also be achieved with the assistance of cooperative techniques - patterned along the lines of Bonn's Ostpolitik during the 1970s ("transformation through convergence").

The members of the project take it for granted that German global policy must also [include] military means - "including combat missions." These results are included in a paper jointly published by the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP) and the German Marshall Fund of the United States (GMF).

The analysis is based on the assessment that today's Germany is "more powerful and influential" than "any democratic Germany in history." In fact, for some time Germany has openly laid claim to the "role of leader" of the EU - a hegemonic claim, which both friends and foes of Berlin's hegemony currently more or less openly acknowledge. "Germany's growth in power opens new opportunities for influence," according to the strategy paper, "That is cause for a re-evaluation of its international relations."

The proposal came after allegations arose that the United States government had monitored German chancellor Angela Merkel's cell phone since 2002, while eavesdropping activities are also said to have been run out of the US Embassy in Berlin as well as in about 80 other embassies and consulates around the world.

State-backed communications firm Deutsche Telekom is said to be behind the national Internet proposal and has urged other local firms to join in. “If the Americans eavesdropped on cellphones in Germany, they broke German law on German soil,” said German Interior Minister Hans-Peter Friedrich, as quoted by the Bild am Sonntag newspaper on Sunday.

Telecom and Internet experts Reuters spoke to however believed that Deutsche Telekom and the German state would face an uphill challenge in creating its own Internet. "It is internationally without precedent that the internet traffic of a developed country bypasses the servers of another country," said Torsten Gerpott, a professor of business and telecoms at the University of Duisburg-Essen.

According to Reuters, an alternative solution would be for European leaders to beef up a new data-privacy law, which has been in the works for almost two years. A new, greatly toughened version of the law, was backed by the European Parliament on Monday, but it will still require agreement by member states. Deutsche Telekom's executive in charge of data privacy and legal affairs, Thomas Kremer, said the new law could help: "Of course customers need to be able to use any web services they like, anywhere in the world. But we need to make this safer."

The Federal Reserve liquidity coverage ratio proposal, approved unanimously at a meeting in Washington, goes further than the Basel III measure adopted in January and calls for earlier implementation than the EU.

The US plan, most stringent for the biggest banks, is looking at implementation by 2017 – two years ahead of Basel's deadline. "The proposed rule would, for the first time in the United States, put in place a quantitative liquidity requirement that would foster a more resilient and safer financial system," Fed chairman Ben Bernanke said before the vote.

The Basel Committee on Banking Supervision in January agreed on a liquidity coverage ratio, meant to ensure banks can survive a 30-day credit squeeze without the kind of government aid that was required after the 2008 crisis.

The financial storm clouds are gathering, ominously darkening the horizon. Though the financial media and the organs of state propaganda continue forecasting blue skies of recovery and rising corporate profits, the factual evidence belies this rosy forecast: internal measures of financial and economic activity are weakening across the globe as the state-central bank solutions to all ills - massive increases in credit creation, leverage and deficit spending - have failed to address any of the structural causes of the 2008 Global Financial Meltdown.

This failure to address the causes of 2008 Global Financial Meltdown is disastrous in and of itself - but the status quo has magnified the coming disaster by scaling up the very causes of the 2008 Global Financial Meltdown: excessive credit expansion, misallocation of capital on a grand scale, an opaque shadow banking system constructed of excessive leverage and a dependence on phantom collateral, ie risks and assets that are systemically mispriced to skim stupendous profits for financiers, bankers and their political enablers.

This is what I have called doing more of what has failed spectacularly.

The next global financial storm is already gathering on the horizon. Doing more of what failed spectacularly will not save the day a second time, as the scale required to create yet more phantom collateral and more asset bubbles will collapse the system. Intellectual, moral and financial bankruptcy all go hand in hand. There isn't just one storm gathering on the horizon - there are three, each adding force and fury to the other two.

These leaks have merely confirmed what many of us already knew about the NSA’s widespread spying and surveillance activities. Snowden’s role like other high profile whistleblowers is certainly questionable considering his bizarre past with the CIA and other government entities but what is not questionable is the fact that the NSA is nothing more than the real life version of 1984’s Big Brother.

The NSA is literally collecting information on everyone be they inside of America or outside of America and new reports suggest that this even includes allied leaders. This has sparked an increasing amount of anger both domestically in America but in many places around the world.

The United States already lost an unbelievable amount of credibility following the Obama regime’s debacle with Syria but now they have little to no credibility due to the sheer breadth and scope of the NSA's spying operations.

For all we know these NSA revelations might have been staged as a way to ruin America’s credibility before it is destroyed either economically or militarily much like how Germany was brought down during World War 2. After all, wealth is rapidly flowing out of America and into Asian countries as America’s usefulness as a global power rapidly wanes. But either way, there is no place for an unethical institution like the NSA to exist anywhere in the world.

Is it really better for us to think that things have gone so far with the post-9/11 idea that any spying that can be done should be done and that nobody thought to inform President Obama about tapping the phone of one of the most important American allies?

The White House spokesman, Jay Carney, kept repeating that Mr Obama ordered a review of surveillance policy a few months ago, but he would not confirm whether that includes the tapping of the cellphone of Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, or the collection of data on tens of millions of calls in France, Spain and elsewhere.

It’s unlikely that Mr Obama would have ordered any review if Edward Snowden’s leaks had not revealed the vacuum-cleaner approach to electronic spying. Mr Carney left no expectation that the internal reviews will produce any significant public accounting — only that the White House might have “a little more detail” when they are completed.

Yu’s comments, made in a speech at a forum to promote relations with Taiwan, were reported by the official Xinhua News Agency on October 26. Yu is ranked fourth in the seven-strong Politburo Standing Committee headed by party chief and President Xi Jinping.

Premier Li Keqiang has pledged to cut the state’s role in the economy, change the financial and fiscal systems, and overhaul land and household registration rules to sustain growth. Analysts surveyed by Bloomberg News this month said policies flowing from the meeting, called the third plenum, will reduce the odds of a severe slowdown and help China become a high-income country by 2030.

The meeting “will focus on studying comprehensive and deep reform,” Yu was quoted as saying in Xinhua’s report. “The depth and strength of the reforms will be unprecedented and will promote profound changes in every area of the economy and society.” The report didn’t refer to any policies or measures.

The country disclosed the fleet - one of its most secretive military programs - for the first time in four decades as a sign of its growing strength and confidence. In a ceremony yesterday, seamen performed a number of displays on the nuclear-armed submarines off the coast of Qingdao in east China's Shandong province.

The country's PLA (People's Liberation Army) is devoting increasing resources to its naval forces to safeguard its maritime interests and assert its territorial claims. However, the US has expressed concern over China's military developments - particularly since the country started operating within America's exclusive economic zone in June.

Russian soldiers used T 72 Tanks and Infantry Combat Vehicles also known as the BMP which were originally made in Russia and currently used by the Indian Army. Russian Army Lieutenant General Alexey V Zovizion and Indian Army General Officer Commanding, 10 Corps Lieutenant General N S Ghei oversaw the exercise. Exercise GangNeva, saw both Indian and Russian mechanized troops capture a notional rebel strong point by fire assault of attack helicopters, tanks and BMPs.

“If they don’t do what needs to be done, if they keep skimping on costs and manipulating information, they can never be trusted,” Niigata Prefecture Governor Hirohiko Izumida told Reuters on Monday, adding that these limitations need to be overcome before the plant is restarted.

Izumida suggested that TEPCO should be fully stripped of responsibility for decommissioning the destroyed Fukushima reactors, and the company subjected to a taxpayer-funded bankruptcy program. Presently, the company remains primarily concerned with funding the process, along with the frequently-occurring and very immediate issue of contaminated water leaking rather than overall nuclear safety.

The decommissioning of the wrecked Fukushima Daiichi plant itself will be a long and arduous process – expected to take 30 years – and has already sparked controversy in the country.

At least seven people died in Germany while there were four deaths in Britain and fatalities in the Netherlands, Denmark and France as the storm brought down trees, blew roofs off houses and turned over trucks, causing chaos across much of the region. In Germany, falling trees killed several drivers, at least one man drowned and a 66-year-old woman died when a wall collapsed on her, German media reported.

The storm had barrelled in overnight, with gusts of up to 99 mph, leaving a trail of damage across parts of southern Britain, before heading eastwards into mainland Europe. Some 486,000 properties in Britain were left without power, UK Power Networks said, in one of the worst storms to hit England since the 1987 "Great Storm", which killed 18 people and felled around 15 million trees. By mid-afternoon, 115,000 properties were still without power.

While the Reactor 4 building itself did not suffer a meltdown, it did suffer a hydrogen explosion, is now tipping and sinking and has zero ability to withstand another seismic event.

The Japan Times explained: To remove the rods, TEPCO has erected a 273-ton mobile crane above the building that will be operated remotely from a separate room. Spent fuel rods will be pulled from the racks they are stored in and inserted one by one into a heavy steel chamber while the assemblies are still under water. Once the chamber is removed from the pool and lowered to the ground, it will be transported to another pool in an undamaged building on the site for storage.

Under normal circumstances, such an operation would take little more than three months, but TEPCO is hoping to complete the complicated task within fiscal 2014. A chorus of voices has been sounding alarm over the never-been-done-at-this-scale plan to manually remove the 400 tons of spent fuel by TEPCO, who so far has been responsible for mishap after mishap in the ongoing crisis at the crippled nuclear plant.

As long-time anti-nuclear activist Harvey Wasserman explained, the spent fuel rods must be kept cool at all times. If exposed to air, their zirconium alloy cladding will ignite, the rods will burn and huge quantities of radiation will be emitted. Should the rods touch each other, or should they crumble into a big enough pile, an explosion is possible. “In the worst-case scenario,” RT adds, the pool could come crashing to the ground, dumping the rods together into a pile that could fission and cause an explosion many times worse than in March 2011.

Wasserman says that given the gravity of the situation, the eyes of the world should be upon Fukushima: “This is a question that transcends being anti-nuclear. The fate of the earth is at stake here and the whole world must be watching every move at that site from now on. With 11,000 fuel rods scattered around the place, as a ceaseless flow of contaminated water poisoning our oceans, our very survival is on the line.”

His efforts to reassure President François Hollande of France and Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany seem to have been as incomplete as the explanations the administration has given to the American public about the agency’s excessive domestic surveillance.

The German government learned this week that the newsmagazine Der Spiegel had new evidence (presumably via information leaked by Edward Snowden) that the NSA had monitored Ms Merkel’s cellphone. On Monday, Le Monde reported that the agency had gathered data on more than 70 million phone calls and messages inside France within one 30-day period, suggesting a surveillance program that went well beyond any legitimate tracking of international terrorists.

Such surveillance undermines the trust of allies and their willingness to share the kind of confidential information needed to thwart terrorism and other threats. When the NSA violates French or German law, law enforcement agencies in those nations cooperate with the agency at their own risk. There is also the more subtle damage done by the feeling that the United States plays by its own rules and respects neither the sovereignty nor the political sensibilities of some of its closest democratic allies.

It's a prime site, a diplomat's dream. Is there any better location for an embassy than Berlin's Pariser Platz? It's just a few paces from here to the Reichstag. When the American ambassador steps out the door, he looks directly onto the Brandenburg Gate. When the US ambassador receives high-ranking visitors, they often take a stroll out to the roof terrace, which offers a breathtaking view of the Reichstag and Tiergarten park. Even the Chancellery can be glimpsed. This is the political heart of the republic, where billion-euro budgets are negotiated, laws are formulated and soldiers are sent to war. It's an ideal location for diplomats - and for spies.

The mere suspicion that one of Merkel's cell phones was being monitored by the NSA has led in the past week to serious tensions between Berlin and Washington. Last Wednesday Merkel placed a strongly worded phone call to US President Barack Obama. Sixty-two percent of Germans approve of her harsh reaction, according to a survey by polling institute YouGov. A quarter think it was too mild. In a gesture of displeasure usually reserved for rogue states, German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle summoned the new US ambassador, John Emerson, for a meeting at the Foreign Ministry.

The NSA affair has shaken the certainties of German politics. Even Merkel's CDU, long a loyal friend of Washington, is now openly questioning the trans-Atlantic free trade agreement. At the Chancellery it's now being said that if the US government doesn't take greater pains to clarify the situation, certain conclusions will be drawn and talks over the agreement could potentially be put on hold.

"Spying between friends, that's just not done," said Merkel on Thursday at a European Union summit in Brussels. "Now trust has to be rebuilt."

A high-ranking official with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has declared in an interview with PBS that the age of antibiotics has come to an end. 'For a long time, there have been newspaper stories and covers of magazines that talked about "The end of antibiotics, question mark?"' said Dr Arjun Srinivasan. 'Well, now I would say you can change the title to "The end of antibiotics, period."'

The associate director of the CDC sat down with Frontline over the summer for a lengthy interview about the growing problem of antibacterial resistance. Srinivasan, who is also featured in a Frontline report called 'Hunting the Nightmare Bacteria,' which aired Tuesday, said that both humans and livestock have been overmedicated to such a degree that bacteria are now resistant to antibiotics.

‘We're in the post-antibiotic era,' he said. 'There are patients for whom we have no therapy, and we are literally in a position of having a patient in a bed who has an infection, something that five years ago even we could have treated, but now we can’t.’

With bacteria constantly evolving and developing resistance to conventional antibiotics, doctors have been forced to ‘reach back into the archives’ and ‘dust off’ older, more dangerous cures like colistin. ‘It’s very toxic,’ said Srinivasan. ‘We don’t like to use it. It damages the kidneys. But we’re forced to use it in a lot of instances.’