The comments from the EU's most senior official and a national European leader contradict Mr Cameron's claim that deeper integration in the eurozone will need treaty change giving Britain leverage to ask for powers to be "repatriated" from Brussels to Westminster.

"The countries of the euro, they've got to change to make their currency work - they need to integrate more, they need to make changes to all their systems more," he said on Sunday. "What that means is they are changing the nature of the organisation to which we belong. And so we are perfectly entitled, and not just entitled but actually enabled because they need changes to ask for changes ourselves."

In September of last year, a report was released stating that Mount Fuji’s magma chamber pressure had risen to a worrisome 1.6 megapascals, which is estimated to be higher than when it last erupted. According to retired professor Masaki Kimura of Ryukyu University, this and other recent phenomena indicate an eruption of Mount Fuji should have taken place in 2011 with a four-year margin of error ending in 2015. However, in the event of a Mount Fuji eruption, many speculate the cost to human life would be low due to the slow moving lava that would likely occur. On the other hand, the cost of damage to public and private property would undoubtedly be immense.

The use of so-called combat drones in fighting insurgency is already fraught with dramatic repercussions, according to a recent paper published by the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP). Restraints imposed by the laws of war are being dismantled. Because wars using drones can be waged without sacrificing one's own soldiers, there is a worldwide threat of an inflation of military interventions.

However, one must especially take into account the continued technological development of drones. With the increased complexity of their capabilities, the human factor will no longer be in command, but merely serve, at best, to confirm or reject suggestions produced by the machine. Under such circumstances, "factual autonomy of human decision making" will no longer be ensured in combat, warns SWP.

The think tank envisages, in light of the continuing barbarization of the use of military force, a new type of arms control for drones. However, the German government is pursuing the path leading in the opposite direction, contemplating acquiring combat drones for the Bundeswehr.

This will probably come as a total shock to most of my Western readers, but at one point, Russia was one of the most heavily armed societies on earth. This was, of course, when we were free under the Tsar. Weapons, from swords and spears to pistols, rifles and shotguns were everywhere, common items. People carried them concealed, they carried them holstered. Fighting knives were a prominent part of many traditional attires and those little tubes criss crossing on the costumes of Cossacks and various Caucasian peoples? Well those are bullet holders for rifles.

The excuse that people will start shooting each other is also plain and silly. So it is our politicians saying that our society is full of incapable adolescents who can never be trusted? Then, please explain how we can trust them or the police, who themselves grew up and came from the same culture?

No it is about power and a total power over the people. There is a lot of desire to bad mouth the Tsar, particularly by the Communists, who claim he was a tyrant, and yet under him we were armed and under the progressives disarmed. Do not be fooled by a belief that progressives, leftists hate guns. Oh, no, they do not. What they hate is guns in the hands of those who are not marching in lock step of their ideology. They hate guns in the hands of those who think for themselves and do not obey without question. They hate guns in those whom they have slated for a barrel to the back of the ear.

So, do not fall for the false promises and do not extinguish the light that is left to allow humanity a measure of self respect.

Putin believes Europe — and the West more broadly — is in decline, and wants to reposition Russia vis-à-vis the main centers of power in the twenty-first century. Moscow’s “European choice” proclaimed by Putin himself in the German parliament in 2001 has been replaced with a focus on Russia’s near neighborhood.

The idea is not to create a new empire, as Hillary Clinton has wrongly suggested — Moscow lacks the material resources, political will, and social drive for that. But the plan is to improve Russia’s bargaining positions with the two real centers of power in Eurasia: the EU in the west and China in the east.

By clearly dissociating Russia from the West — and the response to the Syrian crisis serves as a perfect example — Putin may be aiming to position Moscow to hold inescapable influence as the world scene reshuffles in the coming century. Russia is too weak to be a major power center on its own, but with strategic independence it may try to tip the scales of the global (or at least Eurasian) balance of power as it wants. If so, this is a serious change and the policy implications need to be carefully assessed.

Manufacturing activity in Europe has been contracting month after month, the unemployment rate in the eurozone has hit yet another brand new record high, and the official unemployment rates in both Greece and Spain are now much higher than the peak unemployment rate in the United States during the Great Depression of the 1930s.

The economic situation in Europe is far worse than it was a year ago, and it is going to continue to get worse as austerity continues to take a huge toll on the economies of the eurozone. It would be hard to understate how bad things have gotten – particularly in southern Europe.

The truth is that most of southern Europe is experiencing a full-blown economic depression right now. Sadly, most Americans are paying very little attention to what is going on across the Atlantic. But they should be watching, because this is what happens when nations accumulate too much debt. The United States has the biggest debt burden of all, and eventually what is happening over in Spain, France, Italy, Portugal and Greece is going to happen over here as well.

As the nation's most prominent church, the decision carries huge symbolism. The 106-year-old cathedral has long been a spiritual center for the nation, hosting presidential inaugural services and funerals for Ronald Reagan and Gerald Ford. It draws hundreds of thousands of visitors.

In light of the legality of same-sex marriage in the District of Columbia and now Maryland, the Right Reverend Mariann Edgar Budde, the Episcopal bishop of Washington, decided in December to allow an expansion of the Christian marriage sacrament. The diocese covers the district and four counties in Maryland. The change is allowed under a "local option" granted by the church's General Convention, church leaders said. Each priest in the diocese can then decide whether to perform same-sex unions.

The Very Reverend Gary Hall, the cathedral's dean, said performing same-sex marriages is an opportunity to break down barriers and build a more inclusive community "that reflects the diversity of God's world." Hall is the 10th dean of the cathedral and has been an ordained minister for more than 35 years. He said he began performing same-sex blessings in 1990 when he served at All Saints Church in Pasadena, California.