The food would not come free. Instead, the items would be scanned as you walked towards the exit and the total cost charged to your mobile device, with loyalty points added automatically. "The same could be true anywhere you see humans clustering to pay," said futurologist Peter Cochrane. "Technology has the ability to change all that."

Those who feel uneasy at the thought of paying for their morning coffee by waving their debit or credit card over a card reader should brace themselves for a new era in payment technology. Experts warn that in the coming years debit and credit cards not to mention the collection of dog-eared loyalty cards in your wallet will give way to a new generation of contactless payments, from mobile transactions to digital jewellery.

Mr Cochrane predicted that by 2015 contactless technology will have become a mainstream payment system.

The IMF and the EU could have easily bailed out Cyprus without any trouble whatsoever, but they purposely decided not to do that. Instead, they decided that this would be a great time to test the idea of a "wealth tax". The government of Cyprus was given two options by the IMF and the EU - either they could confiscate money from private bank accounts or they could leave the eurozone. Apparently this was presented as a "take it or leave it" proposition, and many are using the world "blackmail" to describe what has happened.

Sadly, this decision is going to set a very ominous precedent for the future and it is going to have ripple effects far beyond Cyprus. After the banksters steal money from bank accounts in Cyprus they will start doing it everywhere. If this "bank robbery" goes well, it will only be a matter of time before depositors in nations such as Greece, Italy, Spain and Portugal are asked to take "haircuts" as well. And what will happen one day when the US financial system collapses? Will US bank accounts also be hit with a "one time" wealth tax? That is very frightening to think about.

• All the ingredients of a self-fulfilling crisis are now in place:

It will be individually rational to withdraw deposits from local banks to avoid the remote probability of a confiscatory tax.

• As depositors learn what others do and proceed to withdraw funds, a bank run will occur.

• The banking system will collapse, requiring a Cyprus-style programme that will tax whatever is left in deposits, thus justifying the withdrawals.

This would probably be the end of the euro.

First, that the savings of ordinary people should be protected, up to a high threshold - or 100,000 euros in the European Union for example. And that financial institutions which lend to banks by buying their bonds should incur losses when banks are bailed out: bondholders should, to use the jargon, be bailed in, as part of resolution plans.

So what is seen by many as profoundly shocking about the terms of the rescue of Cyprus by the rest of the eurozone and the International Monetary Fund is that both of these principles have been broken.

Open Bank Resolution (OBR) is Finance Minister Bill English’s favoured option dealing with a major bank failure. If a bank fails under OBR, all depositors will have their savings reduced overnight to fund the bank’s bail out. “Bill English is proposing a Cyprus-style solution for managing bank failure here in New Zealand – a solution that will see small depositors lose some of their savings to fund big bank bailouts,” said Green Party Co-leader Dr Russel Norman.

“The Reserve Bank is in the final stages of implementing a system of managing bank failure called Open Bank Resolution. The scheme will put all bank depositors on the hook for bailing out their bank. Depositors will overnight have their savings shaved by the amount needed to keep the bank afloat.”

“While the details are still to be finalised, nearly all depositors will see their savings reduced by the same proportions.” Bill English is wrong to assume everyday people are able to judge the soundness of their bank. Not even sophisticated investors like Merrill Lynch saw the global financial crisis coming.

He said the 19 destroyers and frigates currently in service are not enough to deploy warships to the Falklands and Persian Gulf and maintain escort duties for the Reaction Group. Mr Clarke said for every ship deployed the Navy needs at least another two because one will be on its way back from its tour and another will be in refit or training.

As a result of the shortages, said Mr Clarke, Britain faces having to ask France or America to plug the gaps by providing Air Defence escorts. His analysis was produced for Major General Julian Thompson who commanded 3 Commando Brigade in the Falklands brigade.

“The Royal Navy has been emaciated. It is no longer a fleet. It is a flotilla. Britain is disarming when many countries around the world are rearming. The consequence is that we will lose lives, lose operational capabilities and we will be a shadow of our former selves” said Mr Clarke.

Argentina's president met the Pope at a private audience in the Vatican, a day before his papacy is formally inaugurated, becoming the first foreign head of state to meet him. "I asked for his intervention to promote dialogue between the two sides and to avoid problems that could arise from the British militarisation of the South Atlantic," she said at a press conference in Rome.

"We want a dialogue and that's why we asked the pope to intervene so that the dialogue is successful." She referred to the diplomatic confrontation as "the question of the Malvinas", noting that Pope John Paul II had mediated in a conflict between Argentina and Chile in 1978. Her remarks were the latest expression of the vociferous campaign against British ownership of the Falklands.

The government proposed to nationalize the private pensions, which would provide it with much of the cash it needs to meet debt payments and avoid a second default this decade.

The move came as wealthy nations unveiled fresh steps to fight the credit crunch. The US Federal Reserve said it would bolster money-market funds, which have faced withdrawals, by lending as much as $540 billion to the industry. France said it would inject $14 billion into six banks on condition they agree to increase their lending. In a sign banks were a little more willing to lend to each other, the London interbank offered rate, a benchmark for many business and consumer loans, again declined.

Argentine President Cristina Kirchner said the move to take over the private pension system was aimed at protecting investors from losses resulting from global market turmoil. Funds in the system, which is parallel to a government pension system, are administered by financial firms. The private system has about $30 billion in assets and generates about $5 billion in new contributions each year.

While no one knows for sure what the government would do with the private system, economists said nationalization would let the government raid new pension contributions to cover short-term debts due in coming years.

Two: Hector Monsegur, one of the leaders of the LulzSac hacker movement, was identified and arrested last year by the FBI. Although he practiced good computer security and used an anonymous relay service to protect his identity, he slipped up.

And three: Paula Broadwell,who had an affair with CIA director David Petraeus, similarly took extensive precautions to hide her identity. She never logged in to her anonymous e-mail service from her home network. Instead, she used hotel and other public networks when she e-mailed him. The FBI correlated hotel registration data from several different hotels - and hers was the common name.

The Internet is a surveillance state. Whether we admit it to ourselves or not, and whether we like it or not, we're being tracked all the time. Google tracks us, both on its pages and on other pages it has access to. Facebook does the same; it even tracks non-Facebook users. Apple tracks us on our iPhones and iPads. One reporter used a tool called Collusion to track who was tracking him; 105 companies tracked his Internet use during one 36-hour period.

Increasingly, what we do on the Internet is being combined with other data about us. Unmasking Broadwell's identity involved correlating her Internet activity with her hotel stays. Everything we do now involves computers, and computers produce data as a natural by-product. Everything is now being saved and correlated, and many big-data companies make money by building up intimate profiles of our lives from a variety of sources.

Venables is quoted by the Anglican Communion News Service: “I have been with him on many occasions, and he always makes me sit next to him and invariably makes me take part and often do what he as cardinal should have done. He is consistently humble and wise, outstandingly gifted yet a common man. He is no fool and speaks out very quietly yet clearly when necessary.”

Most intriguingly — given the ecumenical difficulties Pope Benedict XVI’s decision to set up a separate ordinariate for Anglicans has created — Venables reports that then-Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio reached out to him at that very occasion. According to Venables, Bergoglio made it clear that he values the place of Anglicans in the church universal.

“He called me to have breakfast with him one morning and told me very clearly that the Ordinariate was quite unnecessary and that the church needs us as Anglicans.” The Anglican bishop added, “I consider this to be an inspired appointment not because he is a close and personal friend, but because of who he is in Christ. Pray for him.”

And in a positive report on the website of the Council for a Parliament of the World’s Religion, board member Leo D Lefebvre, is convinced that “Pope Francis promises to be a forceful spokesperson for the poor, an eager and attentive partner in interreligious conversations, and a leader who reaches out to the entire world.”

Since 2009, they have at least been required to make disclosures about how large those amounts are, but the disclosures leave out some things and — amazingly enough — in some cases do not seem to add up. The international accounting rules are different. They also allow some assets to vanish, but not nearly as many. As a result, it is virtually impossible to confidently declare how a particular European bank compares in size with an American bank.

Much of that will change when first-quarter financial statements start coming off the printing presses in a few weeks. For the first time, European and American banks are supposed to have comparable disclosures regarding assets. Their balance sheets will still be radically different, but for those who care, the comparison will be possible.

It is interesting that the big banks like to have financial statements that make them look smaller than they are, and vigorously dispute the idea there is a financial advantage to being big. Perhaps they protest too much.