Mthuli Ncube, Chief Economist and Vice President of the African Development Bank (AfDB), saw the threat of a food price spike casting a shadow over an otherwise positive growth outlook for Africa that will outpace much of the rest of the world. Certainly, there is a lot of reason to worry," Ncube told Reuters, recalling a food and fuel prices squeeze in 2008 that touched off social unrest and food riots in several African nations and also directly affected the continent's growth.

"It is a threat ... if they (the food prices) keep rising, again we will have social upheaval that will threaten economic growth in Africa," Ncube said in an interview on the sidelines of a youth employment promotion event in Johannesburg. Another global food price spike would squeeze both net food importers in Africa and combine with the euro zone crisis in Europe and a slowdown in China's growth to negatively impact African exporters of oil and other commodities.

Corn prices have soared more than 50% during the past six weeks as the crops continue to shrivel in relentless dry heat throughout the Midwest. They jumped another 3% Monday to a record high of $8.17 per bushel on the Chicago Board of Trade. As the drought continues to spread, and grain prices keep climbing, consumers may be squeezed at the grocery store, since higher corn and soybean prices lead to higher prices for beef, chicken, vegetable oil and other staples. The price spike in grains is trickling down to meat, nearly doubling the cost of restaurant staples like tenderloin.

What a week for Spain. The Madrid Stock Exchange crashed, there was bad news of growing mountains of debt from across the country and the risk premiums Spain has to pay to borrow money are rising rapidly, reaching 7.4 percent last Tuesday - a level that already forced three other euro countries to resort to the bailout fund. Last Thursday, European Central Bank (ECB) President Mario Draghi felt compelled to restore calm by promising to do "whatever it takes" to preserve the euro, which apparently means printing as much money as possible. The euro recovered and Spain's borrowing costs fell slightly, but perhaps it's only a respite.

And what has Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy done? He hasn't given a television address or uttered so much as an explanatory or reassuring word to Europe or his people. Instead [Mr] Rajoy, 57, has disappeared into his office at the Moncloa Palace on the outskirts of the capital Madrid. Some say that he spends his time there staring helplessly and powerlessly at charts. He meets with business leaders like Siemens CEO Peter Löscher in rooms decorated with modern art, and he has even met with Spanish trade union leaders for the first time, though it was after they had already spoken off the record with German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Others say that [Mr] Rajoy is irritating his European partners with hectic phone calls.

This behavior doesn't inspire confidence. It seems more like a declaration of political bankruptcy.

"Europe's problems are chronic and may not end in a few months, though they keep delivering sudden outbreaks of harsh pain that cast dark shadows over the global economy," said Tang, now chairman of China Everbright Group. The crisis in the eurozone has been further intensified by a surge in Spain's borrowing costs, beyond levels that forced Greece, Portugal, Ireland and Cyprus to seek bailouts. It came only days after Madrid agreed to borrow up to €100 billion to prop up its shaky banks last Friday. Moreover, EU officials said Greece was too far off its reform targets to be saved by its second bailout package, agreed just five months ago.

European officials often pointed to the Greek debt crisis as an example. In June 2010, Moody's downgraded Greek government bonds by four notches to "junk" status, just as the situation there seemed to be easing after international lenders had pledged €110 billion (about $135 billion) to help the country. A badly-timed downgrade can trigger sudden shifts in investors' risk perception and sharply dented investors' already fragile confidence, experts said.

Some rating decisions also smack of more political factors than economic ones. Last December, when Standard & Poor's threatened to downgrade 15 members of the eurozone, France's central bank governor Christian Noyer accused the rating agency of giving more weight to political than economic factors, and "once again" getting its timing wrong.

According to daily newspaper Israel HaYom, Liss screened a video clearly showing thousands of human skeletons in what appears to be a mass grave. Liss "told the amazed audience that the film had been shot in a spacious, underground cavern in the area of the Mercy Gate [Sha'ar Harachamim in Hebrew, a sealed gate in the wall of the Old City, opposite the Mount of Olives, ed], near the eastern wall of the Temple Mount, but just outside it," the newspaper reported.

Liss raised the possibility that the skeletons were the remains of 6,000 Jews, mostly women and children, killed on the Temple Mount when the Romans destroyed the Second Temple. The massacre is described in the writings of Josephus Flavius, who defected from the Jewish to the Roman side and witnessed the destruction.

The movie shows Liss entering the cave, followed by a lighting technician and cameraman. The three first pass through a narrow passage and then enter the cave with the skeletal remains. As soon as Liss left the cave, Antiquities Authority (IAA) staff resealed the entrance to it, he said.

The signing was accompanied with little to no acknowledgment outside of the White House, but initial reports on the order quickly caused the public to speak out over what some equated to creating an Oval Office kill switch for the Web. Immediately after last week’s signing, the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) said the order allowed the DHS "the authority to seize private facilities when necessary, effectively shutting down or limiting civilian communications."

“When Congress tried to pass SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) this year, which included provisions that were argued to grossly regulate the Internet, protests nationwide played a massive part in killing the legislation. This should have been done by Congress, so there could have been proper debate about it. This is not authority that should be granted by executive order.”

White House spokesperson Hayden adds to the Post, “Mobile phones, the Internet, and social media are all now integral to the communications landscape,” concreting still the allegations that this order could be used as a kill switch to any of the millions upon millions of handheld and desktop devices across the country.

Dubbed ‘Songdo’, the city will rest upon a wholly man made island in the Yellow sea and will incorporate just about every aspect of an Orwellian ‘super state’ imaginable. Millions of wireless sensors and microchips will be embedded throughout the sprawling city-scape. ‘Smart appliances’ such as refrigerators that let you know when you’re running low on certain foods and bathroom mirrors that inform you of your physical health will be evident in every home. Songdo will also prominently feature ‘telepresence’ technology which translates to giant video screens everywhere.

Telepresence is a ‘Skype’ like innovation developed by Cisco that allows folks to make convenient video calls to any one else with the same set up in their home or office. Boasting other such innovations like street lights that automatically adjust to the number of people out on the street as well as an advanced ‘central hub’ that monitors almost every aspect of the city in real-time, Songdo is surely the first city of its kind with others like it such as the PlanIT Valley in Portugal just over the horizon.

Orwellian cities of the future are certainly not a new concept in the realm of science fiction. In every example of a functional (or is it ‘non-functional’) dystopic model, citizens are treated like cattle as their every move is both tracked and recorded.

“We have to be strong and proud enough to say: What any other person on the face of this earth can do on the Temple Mount – which is to pray there – is denied to Jews. It’s unbelievable. It staggers the imagination,” he said. “Maybe there should also be a process of preparing Jews how to go up to the mountain,” he added. “You don’t just go up to the mountain, there’s a halakhic process. But we have to demand our rights, otherwise they’re laughing at us that we were able to give that up.”

Rabbi Gold noted that Tisha B’Av does not only remember the destruction of the First and Second Temples many years ago, because “there is destruction of the mountain taking place right now. They are digging and digging with heavy equipment against the law. They’re digging up all of Jewish history. They want to erase every trace of our ancestors on that mountain. It’s the biggest act of highway robbery in the world.

“They’re destroying our archaeological proof because they say there was never a First Temple or a Second Temple, and we remain silent,” he said. “Making this march around the city and going to stand right beneath the Temple Mount, our cry to our government should be: It’s our mountain. They must stop all of the destruction taking place. We should be mourning what is taking place every day on that mountain.”

"RBS is one of the banks tied up in Libor. We'll have our day in that particular spotlight as well," Mr Hester told the Guardian. He did not know the size of the fine but said that the investigation by the Financial Services Authority was "in process". The Telegraph understands that any possible fine is likely to be significant.

Mr Hester added that he believes the rate-rigging scandal was bad for the entire industry. "Even though when all the Libor [fines] are out most of it is going to be around the wrongdoings of a handful of people at a number of banks," Mr Hester said. "Those wrongdoings taint a whole industry beyond the handful of people and that makes it a huge problem."

RBS is due to reveal first-half results on Friday that are expected to show the lender made a £1.2 billion pre-tax loss. It is also believed to have paid £25 million to just one businessman who was mis-sold products intended to protect against interest rate rises.

In the words of one commentator, ‘think of what this means about keeping your money in your local bank?’ Or in the words of another: ‘Essentially, ELA represents the ECB passing the risk back to the sovereign. That could be the trigger for potential default…’

Some think that Greece’s departure may be a good thing. The arguments are familiar enough: first, [Mrs] Merkel and her allies want Greece out ‘pour encourager les autres’. Secondly, a number of prominent economists (eg, Nouriel Roubini) believe Greece will benefit from leaving now rather than later. With Greece gone, a deal can probably be done between [Mrs] Merkel and [Mr] Hollande over Eurobonds or (minimally at least) ‘project bonds’. The latter would be construed as a victory for the anti-austerity camp. Until recently, that is certainly what I had thought.

As Martin Wolf and others have noted, Greece’s disorderly departure will in all likelihood shatter faith in the Eurozone forever. Given the slow motion bank run in Spain, a Greek bank run will almost certainly trigger massive flight from the single currency. We shall not return to the comfortable prosperity of post-war Europe soon or even later — in all probability, that world has now died.