For those readers who missed it, the UK is preparing to pull out of almost all areas of "Justice and Home Affairs", the so-called Pillar III of EU jurisdiction. (Pillar I is the single market, and Pillar II is foreign affairs) This is revolutionary. We are withdrawing from 130 directives, covering everything from the European Arrest Warrant, the European Public Prosecutor, to the European justice department (Eurojust).

The withdrawal from the insidious arrest warrant gives me particular pleasure. I covered the legislation as it rolled through the Brussels and Strasbourg machine years ago. We were told categorically that it was to cover terrorist offences only. Then it became "terrorist-related". Then serious crimes. Then the final draft appeared and it included such issues as xenophobia, a term that other parts of the EU machinery had extended to include euroscepticism.

Finally, we discover that it is being used to arrest people who fail to pay parking tickets. Any political magistrate can have you extradited for anything without having to put up evidence. Free speech is not safe, as the criminal witch hunt against the rating agencies in Italy shows all too clearly. Incidentally, Germany simply ignores the warrant. It won't even extradite a member of the SS to Denmark.

Riyadh is one of the main financiers and suppliers of arms to the insurgents, among whom the militant Islamist forces are increasing their influence - not just Islamist militiamen from abroad, but also from local organizations, whose radicalization potential should not be underestimated, according to US experts. If the Assad regime is overthrown, these militiamen would surely "demand their rewards" - observers warn - since they have more combat power than the Free Syrian Army's non-Islamist brigades.

Major media organs in the USA are drawing parallels between Afghanistan in the 1980s - when Islamist militias, with western support, plunged the country into catastrophe, a catastrophe from which it has yet to recover - and today's Syria, which is threatened with a similar development.

His acceptance speech, in which he made a plea for dismembering his native country, received hefty applause from German President Joachim Gauck and other government officials. This diplomatic affront occurred only a few days after the German Foreign Minister and his Chinese counterpart had signed a "Common Declaration," in which Berlin declared its intentions to enhance its "strategic partnership" with Beijing.

On the one hand, this declaration has resulted from the fact that, because of China's economic strength, Germany, for the time being, needs a certain form of cooperation, not only to satisfy the business interests of its enterprises, but also to get support in solving the Euro crisis. On the other hand, the applause for Liao's recent anti-Chinese invectives shows that Berlin still considers Beijing as its rival to be combated, on a long-term basis.

New - pre-term - elections have been scheduled for late November. According to Barcelona, the break with Spain must come, even if it means violating prevailing law. Catalan separatists have been receiving German support for a long time. The German Green Party is in the same European Parliamentary caucus as the secessionist parties. Their umbrella organization has published maps in which the majority of European nations have been broken up into smaller entities - including a nation Catalonia.

According to their map, Germany had annexed Austria, the German-speaking region of Switzerland and several other territories. Cooperation with Catalonia as the "Partner Nation" in 2007, at the prestigious Frankfurt Book Fair, provided the separatists with an appreciable boost. German federal state Baden Wuerttemberg's special cooperation with Catalonia provides economic support for its secessionist efforts - and points to Europe's breakup into an economically successful core and poverty-stricken, hopeless marginalized zones, just as has crystallized under Euro zone pressure.

Modern Berlin presents a more welcoming face, and has become a magnet for tourists and teenagers. Yet while the German capital has deliberately eschewed the trappings of imperial power, the fact is that Berlin is increasingly the de facto capital of the EU. Of course the EU’s main institutions – the commission and the council – are still based in Brussels. But the key decisions are increasingly made in Berlin.

Will Greece have to leave the euro? Ultimately, it will be Germany’s call. Will politicians support further bailouts for southern Europe? The vital debates will take place in the Bundestag in Berlin – not in the European parliament. Who does the International Monetary Fund call about the euro crisis? The most important conversations take place with the German government and the European Central Bank in Frankfurt – not the European Commission.

This shift in power from Brussels to Berlin has been accelerated by the euro crisis. Naturally, the German chancellor Angela Merkel still has to go to summits in Brussels and strike deals. She was there only last week. But the euro crisis means that Ms Merkel is now incomparably the most important leader at the table.

This steady accretion of power to Germany is greeted with ambivalence in Berlin. For obvious historical reasons, postwar Germany has never sought a dominant role within Europe. After reunification, the goal was always said to be “a European Germany, not a German Europe”. That instinct to try to submerge German interests within a general European identity remains powerful. But exasperation with rule-breaking and fiscal incontinence elsewhere in Europe is making the Germans less shy about insisting on the need for a more “German” Europe. The price of German financial assistance is, increasingly, going to be the acceptance of rules and laws designed in Berlin.

That kind of power can lead to arrogance.

The seven, all members of a body called the National Commission for the Forecast and Prevention of Major Risks, were accused of negligence and malpractice in evaluating the danger and keeping the central city informed of the risks.

More than three years later, much of the once-beautiful medieval city is still in ruins and thousands of people have been unable to return to their homes. Defense lawyers said earthquakes could not be predicted and even if they could, nothing could be done to prevent them.

"If an event cannot be foreseen and, more to the point, cannot be avoided, it is hard to understand how there can be any suggestion of a failure to predict the risk," defense lawyer Franco Coppi said before the verdict was delivered.

"The rapid increase of illegal immigration in the past years, growing despair over the ailing economy and a loss of trust in our political leadership have fueled public anger and given way to dangerous populism in the country," says Loukas Tsoukalis, head of Greek think-tank Eliamep.

In September, José Manuel Barroso, the president of the European Commission, included a stark warning in his annual 'state of the union' address, saying that the euro crisis was contributing to the rise in extremism. "Something must happen quick," says Judith Sunderland from Human Rights Watch, who is author of a report called "Hate on the Streets: Xenophobic violence in Greece."

And with austerity budgets, a collapsing health system, political infighting and rising xenophobia all conspiring to allow pest and disease control measures here to slip through the net, the mosquitoes are biting back. Already malaria, a disease eliminated from Greece in 1974, is not just returning with visitors and migrants - as it does from time to time in the rest Europe - but is being transmitted from person to person within Greek borders.

This year's death toll from West Nile Virus, a disease spread by Culex modestus mosquitoes, stood at 16 on October 11. It's a sign of the times that Medecins Sans Frontiers (MSF), a global medical charity more usually associated with the fight to save lives of babies in sub-Saharan Africa, is now working full time in parts of southern Greece.

In a country visited by 16 million tourists a year and where austerity measures mean up to 30 percent of the population is already struggling to access the healthcare they need, keeping infectious bites to a minimum is an economic necessity.