Worldwide, investors have yanked $34 billion out of equity funds this year and put $75 billion into bonds. In the US, stock funds, including both exchange-traded funds and mutual funds, squeaked out a miniscule $4 billion net inflow this year, while fixed income-focused managers collected a monster $86 billion, according to EPFR. Burned by two bubbles in the last decade and facing the second global financial crisis in three years, investors simply don't have the risk appetite for stocks.

Investors tried to embrace equities in the first part of the year, but began to pull money out during the summer as the debt ceiling debate domestically flared up and fears of a Greek bailout grew. Ironically, a huge rally on Wall Street Tuesday erased all of last week's loss in a single day as strong housing data rallied financial stocks. It also snapped back above the 50-day moving average. If the rally holds, it would mean investors pulled the most money out of stocks since August at exactly the wrong time.

"Currently the world economy stands at a very dangerous juncture," Lagarde told a roundtable on Africa's economic future in the Nigerian city of Lagos. She said the IMF's revised global growth forecast expected in January looked to be lower than the previous one in September, which was four percent, already down from June's outlook.

"And what's more, there are downside risks on the horizon that are really threatening the recovery process that had started" after the 2008-09 global financial crisis, she said. The IMF has said Europe's worsening economy and financial market turmoil meant it will revise downwards its predictions for global growth contained in its World Economic Outlook report published three months ago.

Early this month, the UN cut its 2012 world growth forecast to 2.6 percent from 3.6 percent, warning that the global economy is "teetering on the brink of a major downturn". Lagarde said on Monday during meetings with Nigerian officials that the European debt crisis posed a risk for "all economies of the world".

Nigeria has long been held back by corruption and mismanagement despite its vast oil wealth. Most of its population lives on less than $2 per day and electricity blackouts occur daily, while the country's mainly Muslim north has been hit by scores of deadly attacks attributed to Islamist group Boko Haram.

The UN said earlier this month that more than 5,000 people had been killed across Syria since protests against President Bashar al-Assad erupted in March. Damascus says it is fighting "armed terrorist gangs", who want to destabilise the country. In violence on Monday, activists said as many as 110 people may have died in fighting across the country - including 60-70 army deserters apparently gunned down by machine-gun fire close to a village called Kafr Oued in Idlib province.

Activist groups reported fresh violence in this town on Tuesday, with the Local Co-ordination Committees saying 25 people had died there by heavy machine-gun fire and shelling. Another 34 people died in Idlib province, 14 in Homs, four in Zabadani and Jebeh close to Damascus, three in Hama and two each in Deraa and Aleppo, the group said - bringing the total toll to 84. Another activist group reported the same toll.

Meanwhile, Syria's air and naval forces conducted live-fire manoeuvres aimed at testing their readiness to repulse "any aggression against the homeland," the official Sana news agency reported. Syrian opposition sources said the army was intensifying its campaign in Idlib ahead of the expected deployment of observers who will monitor the Syrian government's implementation of an Arab League peace initiative.

Editors at the journals Science and Nature say they will not agree to the redactions until they are assured the data will be accessible to researchers. A spokesman for US health authorities said such a system was being prepared. At least one set of scientists have already rewritten their paper in light of the recommendation, Science reports. Albert Osterhaus told Science his team "completely disagreed" with the recommendation of the panel, the National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity (NSABB).

But Mr Osterhaus, who believes the information should be made widely available, said an editorial explaining his team's "genuflection" to the panel is a condition of the paper's publication in Science. A second research team at the University of Wisconsin, Madison is also reluctantly submitting a revised paper to Nature, a university spokesman confirmed to Science.

While bird flu is deadly, its reach has been limited because it is not transmissible between humans. However, the flu virus was altered in the new studies to be passed easily between ferrets. This problem was recognised in the early days of atomic physics, with scientists well aware that research into nuclear fission could be used for "good or ill"

But Uruguayan President Jose Mujica also stated his country would never impose a maritime blockade of the British overseas territory. The UK has asked Uruguay, which proposed the move, to explain itself. The Mercosur decision is the latest in a series by Latin American regional bodies designed to show solidarity with Argentina, which has long claimed sovereignty over the Falkland Islands, which it calls Las Malvinas.

Britain has held them since the 1830s and says their future is not negotiable. The two countries fought a brief but bloody war over the islands in 1982. The Falklands flag is flown by 25 boats, mostly fishing vessels. Mr Mujica said: "We hold nothing against the UK. But we have a lot in favour of Argentina."

However, the president of the Falklands Chamber of Commerce, Roger Spink, told the BBC that they were a small community, and felt increasingly under blockade. "If we were Palestine, the European Union would be up in arms," he said. Last week the Foreign Office called on Uruguay's ambassador in London to explain the move.

The English Channel has suddenly become wider, deeper and foggier once again. The London-based Daily Telegraph newspaper has warned its readers against what it calls Berlin's blatant effort to dominate Europe and already sees "a new era of Anglo-German antagonism" on the horizon - again characterized by two leaders who are bound together in their sincere dislike for each other, like past leaders of the two countries: Helmut Kohl and Margaret Thatcher, or Gerhard Schroder and Tony Blair.

Reverend Peter Mullen, the Anglican chaplain to the London Stock Exchange, where he is not popular for his crude views, goes even further. According to Mullen, Germans tried to achieve hegemony in Europe by military force in 1870, 1914 and 1939, and now Merkel is trying to do the same with the weapons of the financial system.

North Korea's first successful test of a nuclear weapon in October 2006 was a watershed moment for the communist state, the result of decades of work dating back to at least the early 1950s. Today the country's tiny arsenal - estimated to consist of perhaps a half-dozen bombs - is both a matter of immense pride and an insurance policy for a regime that sees itself threatened by much larger countries, including the United States.

US intelligence and military officials are not expecting dramatic changes in the country's nuclear posture, regardless of whether the younger Kim emerges as absolute leader or shares power with members of the military elite. But government officials and security experts acknowledge that the transition period will be a time of uncertainty and increased risks. They also say that North Korea's new leaders will not be easily persuaded to bargain away such a hard-won asset.

"Everything is quiet now, but at the first sign of instability, the immediate question is going to be who's really in control of the nukes," said Victor D Cha, senior adviser and Korea Chair for the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think-tank.

In the security realm, "there's really no situation worse than this: to have the most opaque regime with nuclear weapons and without a clear leader," Cha said. "It doesn't get more dangerous than that."

When BofA, the largest US bank, plunged through $5, it ignited a late-day decline in the sector and the broader market, which fell 1 percent. More than 29 million shares of the stock traded, accounting for about 5.4 percent of the day's total trading. The bank's woes underscore the headwinds buffeting the financial sector on both sides of the Atlantic. Comments from Mario Draghi, president of the European Central Bank, weighed on sentiment after he said the economic outlook contained substantial downside risks, adding that 2012 would be a difficult year for banks.

Already insolvent it will become ungovernable bringing about, for Americans and those who depend on the United States violent and destructive economic, financial, monetary, geopolitical and social shocks. If the United States today is already very different from the "super-power" of 2006, the year the first GEAB was published, announcing the global systemic crisis and the end of the all-powerful US, the changes we anticipate for the 2012-2016 period are even more important, and will radically transform the country's institutional system, its social fabric and its economic and financial weight.

Thus, according to LEAP/E2020, the 2012 election year, which opens against the backdrop of economic and social depression, complete paralysis of the federal system, strong rejection of the traditional two-party system and a growing questioning of the relevance of the Constitution, inaugurates a crucial period in the history of the United States. Over the next four years, the country will be subjected to political, economic, financial and social upheaval such as it has not known since the end of the Civil War which, by an accident of history, started exactly 150 years ago in 1861. During this period, the US will be simultaneously insolvent and ungovernable, turning that which was the "flagship" of the world in recent decades into a "drunken boat".

In fact, the United States ends 2011 in a state of weakness unmatched since the Civil War. They practice no significant leadership at international level. The confrontation between geopolitical blocs is sharpening and they find themselves confronted by almost all the world's major players: China, Russia, Brazil (and in general almost all of South America) and now Euroland. Meanwhile, they cannot control unemployment where the true rate stagnates at around 20% against the backdrop of an unabated and unprecedented reduction in the labour force (which has now fallen to its 2001 level).

According to the academy's enrollment records, only three of 4,300 cadets identified themselves as pagans, followers of an ancient religion that generally does not worship a single god and considers all things in nature interconnected. Still, the academy this year dedicated an $80,000 outdoor worship center - a small Stonehenge-like circle of boulders with propane fire pit - high on a hill for the handful of current or future cadets whose religions fall under the broad category of "Earth-based." Those include pagans, Wiccans, druids, witches and followers of Native American faiths.

Witches in the Air Force? Chaplain Major Darren Duncan, branch chief of cadet faith communities at the academy, sighs. A punch line waiting to happen, and he's heard all the broom jokes. "We're here to accommodate all religions, period," Duncan says. The building of the Cadet Chapel Falcon Circle on the hilltop, he says, is no different from the past conversion of chapel rooms into worship spaces that serve this year's 11 Muslim, 16 Buddhist and 10 Hindu cadets. There are also 43 self-identified atheist cadets whose beliefs, or lack of them, Duncan says are also to be respected.

The two-week drill ended on Friday and was held at the IAF Uvda Base near Eilat. The Italians arrived in Israel with the Eurofighter and the IAF participated with its F-16 and F-15 fighter jets. The exercise in Sardinia in November made worldwide headlines since it was held as Israeli politicians began to speak openly about the possibility of launching unilateral military action to stop Iran.

On the sidelines of the recent exercise, a number of officers from foreign air forces traveled to Uvda to watch the maneuvers and discuss potential future joint training sessions with the IAF. The IAF is planning on holding a large-scale international drill in Israel in 2013. Italian Air Force Brigadier General Enzo Vecciarelli said the drill was not connected to current events like a possible Israeli strike against Iran.

"The IAF is one of the best air forces in the world and we try to share knowledge with one another," Vecciarelli said. "We are here just for the training and it is not connected at all to Iran." Briadier General Hagai Topolansky, head of the IAF's Air Division, said Israel was looking to increase its training with foreign air forces and expressed hope that joint maneuvers would resume soon with Turkey. "We were friends for many years and I believe that we will be able to return to holding joint maneuvers and hope that the diplomatic conditions will allow that to happen," he said.

Nine hundred and 57 people were killed and 49 still missing, according to the national disaster agency, with most of the casualties in the cities of Cagayan de Oro and Iligan in the Mindanao region. Aquino held meetings with officials in the two cities worst hit by water, mud and logs that swept down mountains as residents in riverside and coastal villages slept in the early hours of Saturday.

"First priority is to relocate to areas that no longer pose a danger to them," Aquino said at a meeting with officials in Cagayan de Oro, as he vowed action to prevent another tragedy of the same magnitude. The disaster agency said more than 338,000 people in 13 provinces were affected by the disaster, with nearly 43,000 still in evacuation centres.

More than 10,000 houses were damaged by Typhoon Washi and the flash floods, of which nearly a third were totally ruined. Many schools, roads and bridges were badly damaged. Aquino's spokesman, Ricky Carandang, said the declaration of a national calamity would allow the government to gain access to more funds for relief and rehabilitation.

A proposal to lend 200 billion euros (168 billion pounds) to the IMF to enable it to bail out countries in trouble floundered after George Osborne told his fellow European finance ministers that Britain would not contribute its 25 billion pounds share. The chancellor's refusal, which had been widely expected, came as the European Central Bank warned that contagion from the debt crisis could afflict other eurozone countries and even spread across the globe. The central bank's financial stability review said tensions had now reached the "systemic crisis proportions" seen at the time of the Lehman Brothers collapse in 2008 - partly because of the failure of politicians to act in time.

Mario Draghi, the ECB president, told MEPs in Brussels that pressure in bond markets in the first quarter would be "really very, very significant, if not unprecedented" as hundreds of billions in debt came up for renewal. Germany had earlier offered Britain an olive branch, with its foreign minister, Guido Westerwelle, insisting that Europe did not have a secret plan to undermine the City of London. But, even as he was speaking, EU finance ministers were holding a fractious conference call during which Osborne indicated he would only countenance extending IMF facilities in a more global G20 setting. The UK could have, at most, given 10 billion pounds rather than the 25 billion pounds bandied about in Brussels.

After the call, Brussels announced that only 150 billion euros had been pledged for the IMF, all from eurozone members. In Beijing the IMF's former managing director, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, castigated the euro area's leaders for their poor leadership and said the zone had only a few weeks to provide solutions. Yet another crisis summit has already been pencilled in for late January. Draghi told the European parliament's economic committee that 230 billion euros of bank bonds, up to 300 billion euros of sovereign bonds and more than 200 billion euros of collateralised debt obligations will all become due in the first three months of 2012.

And what for? All this upheaval for a mess of pottage, a flim-flam treaty? The deal is not a "lousy compromise", said Angela Merkel. Well, actually that is exactly what it is for eurozone politicians searching for a breakthrough.

The Treaty proposals evade the core issue. Did France and Germany really have to cause this rift by throwing in an assault on the City that has precious little do with the EMU crisis? Yes, I suppose they did. Given that Merkozy cannot bring themselves to accept that Europe's debacle stems from the euro itself, from a 30 per cent currency misalignment between from North and South, and from an over-leveraged 23 trillion euros banking bubble that German, French, Dutch, Belgian regulators allowed to happen... given that, yes, I suppose they have to find a scapegoat.

They have to whip up a witchhunt against somebody, so why not Anglo-Saxon bankers? Nasty reflexes are at work. German and French politicians in particular should be very careful about inciting populist hatred against a group that makes such easy prey. We have been there before. No doubt these dramatic events will be uncomfortable for Britain, but this will all be swept away by bigger events before long. The Europols have not begun to work out a viable solution to their deformed and unworkable currency union, and perhaps no such solution exists. The system will lurch from crisis to crisis until it blows up in acrimony.

It is being presented as treachery, Anglo-Saxon perfidy, and the naked pursuit of national self-interest. Let me just point out:

1) The UK never agreed to such a commitment in the first place. The line was written into the December 9 summit communique in an attempt to bounce Britain into handing over the money.

2) The UK does not consider the rescue machinery to be remotely credible as constructed.

3) The eurozone has the means to tackle its own debt crisis, if it is willing to use them. These include fiscal pooling and the mobilisation of the ECB.

As eurozone politicians never tire of reminding us, their aggregate debt levels are lower than those of the UK, US, or Japan. They are right. So get on with it and stop begging. Euroland is of course entitled not to deploy eurobonds or the ECB if these mean a) a breach of the German constitution b) violate the ECB's mandate. But that is entirely their choice. Both the Grundgesetz and the ECB mandate can be changed. It was EMU members who created this dysfunctional currency. They are now trying to shift the consequences of their error onto others rather than taking the minimum steps necessary to fix the problem at root. If they are unwilling to save EMU by serious action - ie fiscal union - they should organize an orderly break-up.

4) The UK is willing to back more funds for the IMF, but only in line with our IMF quota and proportionate to other members around the world.

5) the UK budget deficit is dangerously high, again as critics never tire of pointing out. Eurolanders want it both ways. They bask in their fiscal superiority, yet they demand an external rescue. Excuse us benighted Little Englanders if we cannot quite see things their way.

6) The eurozone rescue does not in any case deal with the cause of the crisis, which is the 30 per cent intra-EMU currency misalignment between North and South.

It merely perpetuates a deformed system that is draining the lifeblood out of half Europe. I always feared that Britain would somehow be blamed for the demise of monetary union. My nightmare is coming true.