The digs have been taking place under the Dome of the Chain, believed to have been built over 1300 years ago. For eight months, the dome - which has a diameter of 14 meters - has been surrounded by a metal fence and black cloth, which hide whatever activity has been going on there from outside inspection. The Muslim Waqf religious authority has claimed the activity is simply a refurbishing of the structure, but refuses adamantly to let Jews or tourists near.

Jewish activists made various attempts to enter the Dome, but met with no success. In the end, the Our Temple Mount news outlet found an Arab who was willing to take photos inside the compound in return for a handsome fee. The man said that it appears the Waqf has already completed its digs and is now covering the dig with dirt.

Our Temple Mount notes that according to Jewish tradition, the place where the Dome of the Chain is located is the spot upon which the sacrificial Altar stood in Temple times. Temple activists said that the Muslim digs are intended to erase the Jewish connection to the Temple Mount.

See photo's at http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/142187

"The fact is that the US-Israel relationship is good," he said. "We see it on a military level. We see it in other areas. Congress voted 90 percent for every resolution that dealt with Israel, whether it was support for the war in Gaza or sanctions on Iran." Hoenlein noted that the support for Israel goes beyond Congress. "The American people are supportive of Israel in record numbers," he pointed out, but added that this should not be taken for granted.

"One of the issues we hear more and more is that the relationship with Israel costs American blood and treasure," said Hoenlein. "We can't take the American people's support for granted. We have to emphasize the positives in the relationship. I think with the United States there has been an overriding fundamental commitment that has remained strong throughout," he added. "One of the measures for the Arab countries is the strength of the US-Israel relationship. When they see that commitment's strong then they have more confidence that their commitments from the United States will be honored as well."

He pointed out that Europe is not an alternative for the US-Israel relationship and added that "the United States is not giving up on the Middle East. You'd be surprised how many friends there are of Israel and the Jewish people, but they need to be reached out to. There are friends in the strangest of places but none as consistent as America."

There is only one foreign state that matters to Mubarak and that's America, which had bankrolled his regime for 30 years and pays for Egypt's armed forces. And the message from Washington? Shockingly, it's all over the place. President Obama and his Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, began by saying Mubarak should stay. Then they said he should take heed of the protests. When that yielded nothing, they said he should consider going. He disagreed. Finally, they insisted he should step aside.

Unfortunately, the special ambassador they dispatched to Cairo, former envoy to Egypt Frank Wisner, has not been kept up to date about their changes of mind. After meeting Mubarak last week, Wisner said: 'The President must stay in office to steer those changes. I believe President Mubarak's continued leadership is crucial - it's his chance to write his own legacy.'

The truth is, America is terrified that the demise of their reliable stooge Mubarak might lead to the installation of an Islamic government in Egypt, which in turn might result in restrictions on the Suez Canal, putting western economies in crisis, and a reduction in Israel's security. Intelligent American analysts recognise it's transparently cynical to demand democracy in Egypt while at the same time preventing Islamic parties, such as the Muslim Brotherhood, taking part in any election. But what if the Muslims - like Hamas in Palestine - seek power in order to establish an Islamic state which is not democratic?

Why does the US - and Britain as its cheerleaders - need to interfere abroad at all? Because, like us, it is addicted to growth. It wants its economy to become bigger and its citizens richer. It needs to sell more goods in order to consume more. America (and ourselves) can't do that without freedom of trade and a continuing supply of raw materials, including oil. With Britain's enthusiastic co-operation - no matter what government was in power, Tory or Labour - the US fixed this by backing Arab leaders keen to deal with us while enriching and entrenching in power their own families.

This trusted old racket is now coming to an end. You can't keep peons down for ever. We'll have to get used to the idea.

The study also shows that, despite concerns about online safety, one in eight young people is in contact with strangers when on the web and often lies about their appearance, age and background.

Researchers for children's charity Kidscape assessed the online activities of 2,300 11-18-year-olds from across the UK and found that 45 per cent said they were sometimes happier online than in their real lives. The report - Virtual Lives: It is more than a game, it is your life - lays bare the attitudes of children today to the internet and includes revealing insights into how they feel when they are on the web.

One told researchers: 'It's easier to be who you want to be, because nobody knows you and if you don't like the situation you can just exit and it is over.' Another said: 'You can say anything online. You can talk to people that you don't normally speak to and you can edit your pictures so you look better. It is as if you are a completely different person.'

Psychotherapist Peter Bradley, who is also deputy director of Kidscape, said that the desire for so many to adopt a different identity online was a cause for concern because the children were being divorced from reality.

The Fed's "QE2" risks accelerating the demise of the dollar-based currency system, perhaps leading to an unstable tripod with the euro and yuan, or a hybrid gold standard, or a multi-metal "bancor" along lines proposed by John Maynard Keynes in the 1940s.

China's commerce ministry fired an irate broadside against Washington on Monday. "The continued and drastic US dollar depreciation recently has led countries including Japan, South Korea, and Thailand to intervene in the currency market, intensifying a 'currency war'. In the mid-term, the US dollar will continue to weaken and gaming between major currencies will escalate," it said.

David Bloom, currency chief at HSBC, said the root problem is lack of underlying demand in the global economy, leaving Western economies trapped near stalling speed. "There are no policy levers left. Countries are having to tighten fiscal policy, and interest rates are already near zero. The last resort is a weaker currency, so everybody is trying to do it," he said.

The innocent bystanders caught in the crossfire of Fed policy are poor countries such as India, where primary goods make up 60 per cent of the price index and food inflation is now running at 14 per cent. It is hard to gauge the impact of a falling dollar on commodities, but the pattern in mid-2008 was that it led to oil, metal, and grain price rises with multiple leverage. The core victims were the poorest food-importing countries in Africa and South Asia. Tell them that QE2 brings good news.

So the question that Ben Bernanke and his colleagues should ask themselves is whether they have thought through the global ramifications of their actions, and how the strategic consequences might rebound against America itself.

Foreign investment has driven a 38 per cent appreciation of Brazil's real against the dollar in two years and a flood of cheap Chinese imports has damaged the country's manufacturing base. But Mr Geithner said that when "countries with large surpluses" allow their currencies to "reflect fundamentals" the upward pressure on the real will fall, aiding Brazilian exports.

He did not name China but his comments come days after a Treasury Department report said the yuan remains "substantially undervalued" and that China had made "insufficient" progress in allowing it to rise. "Investors around the world see Brazil growing at a faster pace and offering higher rates of return relative to other major economies," Mr Geithner said in a speech in Sao Paulo.

His comments suggest that the US and Brazilian governments are ready to forge closer links which could see them jointly pressure China on the value of the yuan. President Barack Obama is due to visit Brazil in March, with Dilma Rousseff, his Brazilian counterpart, making an official visit to China the following month.

The term "currency war" was coined last year by Guido Mantega, Brazil's Finance Minister.

The documents, stretching back two decades, reveal an Egyptian commitment to research and development of WMDs, the acronym for weapons of mass destruction that thrust itself into the common lexicon during the Iraq war. They also reveal that Cairo is interested in nuclear and radiological weapons, though the extent of that interest is far from clear.

The US has long known about but tolerated this because of Egypt's central role in both the Middle East peace talks and counterterrorism. To quote one congressional expert on arms proliferation, "If they were any other Arab state, we would be all over them every day on these issues." At the same time, US, Israeli and Russian officials have expressed concerns that the Egyptian weapons programs - particularly its missile expertise - has the potential to destabilize the relative peace that has reigned in the Middle East for several decades. Despite these concerns, the officials say, Egypt has continued to work on many of these programs.

Egyptians have defended its development of WMDs as a necessary counterbalance to Israel's weapons capabilities, which are daunting even to the first Arab state to sign a peace treaty with the Jewish state. With an estimated 200 nuclear warheads - bigger than Great Britain's arsenal - and 100 medium-range missiles, Israel is in a world of diminishing nuclear programs, a regional superpower - at least.

NBC News obtained a US Customs Service account of a debriefing of an Egyptian-American spy, Abdel Kadr Helmy. Helmy, who was jailed in the 1980s for trying to obtain various missile technologies including Pershing-II guidance packages - said in the interviews that Egypt had an active nuclear weapons development program that included sending uranium to Pakistan for enrichment to bomb-grade levels. He also said that an Egyptian Brigadier General, Ahmad Nashet, ran both the civilian nuclear establishment in Cairo as well as the nascent bomb program.

The area where Egypt excels is in missile development. The FIS report noted: "By 1990, Egypt's missile forces were armed with a regiment each of Soviet Scud-B (with a range of 300 kilometers) and Frog 7 (70 km) transporter-erector-launchers and also a certain quantity of Sakr 80 and Sakr 365 Egyptian-Iraqi-North Korean short-range missiles. It is technically possible to fit the Scud and Frog warheads with chemical weapons."

At the heart of the concern is intelligence indicating that Egypt has quietly carried out research and development on weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear, chemical, biological and missile technology. The research and development has continued virtually without pause over the past three decades, according to interviews with US officials and a review of intelligence and other government documents by NBC News.

Specifically, the intelligence indicates that Egypt has carried out experiments in plutonium reprocessing and uranium enrichment, helped jump-start Saddam Hussein's missile and chemical weapons programs in Iraq, and worked with Kim Jong Il on North Korea's missile program. "If we found another country doing what they've done, we would have been all over them," said a former US intelligence official, speaking on condition of anonymity.

These foods provide 35 per cent of our calories, most of our minerals, vitamins, and anti-oxidants, and the foundations of gastronomy. Yet the bees are dying - or being killed - at a disturbing pace. The story of "colony collapse disorder" (CCD) is already well-known to readers of The Daily Telegraph. Some keep hives at home and have experienced this mystery plague, and doubtless have strong views on whether it is caused by parasites, or a virus, or use of pesticides that play havoc with the nervous system of young bees, or a synergy of destructive forces coming together.

The bee crisis has been treated as a niche concern until now, but as the UN's index of food prices hits an all time-high in real terms (not just nominal) and grain shortages trigger revolutions in the Middle East, it is becoming urgent to know whether the plight of the honey bee risks further exhausting our already thin margin of food global security.

The agri-business lender Rabobank said the numbers of US bee colonies failing to survive each winter has risen to 30-35 per cent from an historical norm of 10 per cent. The rate is 20 per cent or higher in much of Europe, and the same pattern is emerging in Latin America and Asia. Albert Einstein, who liked to make bold claims (often wrong), famously said that "if the bee disappeared off the surface of the globe, man would have only four years to live".

Analysts did not expect the general strike, the third by the opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) since Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina took office in early 2009, to bring forward the date of the 2013 general election.

But it is a large-scale challenge by the BNP, emboldened by its success at municipal polls, and adds to the woes of Hasina's government, already struggling with discontent over high prices, lacking public services as well as the crash in the stock market, a main source of income for many in this impoverished country. At least five people were injured, two seriously, in clashes between protesters and police outside the BNP's central office in Dhaka, a Reuters reporter at the scene said.

In December, food inflation hit 11 percent, its highest level in three years, and analysts warned rising global food prices may drive the index higher. Angry investors took to the streets of the capital on Sunday after the stock exchange suffered another dramatic fall, the latest of a series of collapses that forced halts in trading several times last month.

Several hours of shelling and machine gun fire subsided at around 11 am (4:00 am British time), creating an uneasy peace in the 4.6 square km (two square mile) contested area around the 11th-century Preah Vihear temple claimed by both Southeast Asian neighbours.

Both sides blame the other for sparking clashes that have killed at least two Thais and three Cambodians since Friday and unleashed nationalist passions in Bangkok, energising "yellow shirt" protesters demanding Thailand's government step down. Reasons behind the fighting remain murky. Some analysts reckon hawkish Thai generals and nationalist allies may be trying to topple Thailand's government or even create a pretext to stage another coup and cancel elections expected this year.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said in a statement he was "deeply concerned" and urged both sides to cease fire and find a "lasting solution" to the dispute, echoing a similar statement from Washington over the weekend. The dispute threatens to worsen long-running hostility between Thai political factions ahead of the expected general election this year.

"The prime minister has left a lot of people cold this past few weeks," David Pemberthy, editor in chief of online newspaper The Punch, wrote on Friday. By contrast, Queensland Premier Anna Bligh, a direct descendant of Captain William Bligh of Bounty mutiny fame, has won widespread praise for her management of the disasters and could be the only politician to reap any political benefits.

The floods and cyclone destroyed crops and infrastructure across northeastern Australia, particularly in Queensland, where at least 35 people were killed, 30,000 houses inundated and roads, bridges and rail lines wiped out. Parliament resumes next week and Gillard, who relies on three independents and one Green lawmaker to ensure her Labour party government's one-seat majority, faces a fight over her plan to impose a temporary tax to cover the damage bill.

It is a fight Gillard needs to win to show she can effectively run the government, and to head off faint complaints within her own party over her leadership and her inability to lift Labor's fortunes in opinion surveys. The proposed temporary "floods tax" on middle to high income-earners has produced a firestorm of protest on radio phone-in shows and its passage is set to be a major test of her political character.

The central bank moved 5 billion pounds ($854 million) of cash into the financial system as depositors gained access to their savings. The regulator, which has $36 billion in reserves and guarantees deposits, used military cargo planes to bring in the funds, Governor Farouk El-Okdah said yesterday on state-run television.

The central bank published on its website a list of more than 200 bank branches resuming operations today between 10:00 am and 1:30 pm. Customers are allowed to withdraw up to 50,000 Egyptian pounds and $10,000 a day. Egypt's stock exchange will remain shut until at least February 8, communications manager Hisham Turk said in a telephone interview today.

The government plans to sell 15 billion pounds in treasury bills tomorrow after canceling last week's auction as protests against Mubarak intensified. Yields on Egypt's bills may surge about 30 percent, said Shahinaz Foda, the head of treasury at BNP Paribas Egypt. Credit Agricole CIB expects the pound to slump 20 percent in the "short term." The currency's three month non-deliverable forwards rose to a record last week, suggesting the currency may fall more than 7 percent against the dollar.

The government announced that the transition had begun with a meeting between Vice President Omar Suleiman and two representatives of the Muslim Brotherhood, the outlawed Islamist group the Egyptian government has sought to repress for many years as a threat to stability. They met as part of a group of about 50 prominent Egyptians and opposition figures, including officials of the small, recognized opposition parties, as well as a handful of young people who helped start the protest movement.

"We did not come out with results," said Mohamed Morsy, a Brotherhood leader who attended, while others explained that the Brotherhood had attended only to reiterate its demands and show openness to dialogue. The standoff over the meeting underscored the conflicting narratives about the next chapter of the revolt that has shaken Egypt and the wider Arab world.

More than 100,000 turned out again on Sunday in the capital's central Tahrir Square - more than expected as the work week resumed here. And some of the movement's young organizers, who were busy meeting to organize their many small groups into a unified structure, said they were considering more large-scale demonstrations in other cities, strikes or acts of civil disobedience like surrounding the state television headquarters.

Many of the protesters who gathered in Tahrir Square, the epicenter of the protests, vented anger at reports that the United States was supporting the idea of a negotiated transition undertaken by Mr Suleiman while Mr Mubarak remained in power. "The extremists aren't here in Egypt, but they will be if the United States persists!" said Noha El Sharakawy, a 52-year-old pharmacist with dual citizenship in both countries.

Infrastructures Minister Uzi Landau wants the government to back loans so financing can be obtained to develop the Tamar field, off Israel's coast in the Mediterranean Sea, a spokesman said. Landau also favors exempting the field's developers from a proposed windfall tax. "We have to do everything to improve Israel's energy security," Landau told Israel Radio on Sunday. "It is Israel's obligation to remove as soon as possible every obstacle" to developing Tamar, he said.

Landau's spokesman, Chen Ben-Lulu, said the goal was to have gas from Tamar flowing into Israel by 2013. The explosion in Egypt on Saturday "just proves" the need to do so, he added. "We want energy independence and to achieve it as soon as possible," Ben-Lulu said.

The explosion in Egypt's northern Sinai Peninsula on Saturday came amid a popular uprising against longtime Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. The blast set off a massive fire that was contained by shutting off the flow of gas to Jordan and Israel. Egypt's natural gas company said the fire was caused by a gas leak, but local officials said an explosive device was detonated inside the terminal.