But the bottom line is that the electoral math makes it almost impossible for Herzog to form a government. Netanyahu’s natural coalition is there in place even if the negotiations will likely be long and difficult as the various parties barter in the competition for Cabinet posts.

What will also remain unchanged are the tense relations between the White House and the Israeli government. President Obama may have been counting on Netanyahu being defeated but, like it or not, the prime minister will not only get a fourth term but be there after the US president leaves office in January 2017.

The announcement on Tuesday by Germany, France and Italy that they would follow Britain and join the Chinese-led venture delivered a stinging rebuke to Washington from some of its closest allies. It also called into question whether the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, which grew out of a multination conference in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, in 1944 and established an economic pecking order that lasted 70 years, will find their influence diminished.

The announcement by Germany, Europe’s largest economy, came only six days after Secretary of State John Kerry asked his German counterpart, Frank Walter-Steinmeier, to resist the Chinese overtures until the Chinese agreed to a number of conditions about transparency and governing of the new entity. But Germany came to the same conclusion that Britain did: China is such a large export and investment market for it that it cannot afford to stay on the sidelines.

American officials have fumed that China never approached the Group of 7 — the consortium of economic powers that the United States has led — but rather decided to pick off individual members, setting a deadline of the end of March for them to decide whether to join the new organization, the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, which many refer to by its initials, the AIIB.

China, in turn, has long chafed at the idea that the World Bank’s president is traditionally an American, and that France appoints the head of the IMF. “This has been a power struggle,” one senior European official said. “And we have moved from the world of 1945.”

Speaking on Tuesday in Washington, Treasury Secretary Jacob J Lew said it was “urgent that we address prior unmet commitments, which have grown to levels that raise significant questions about US credibility and leadership in the multilateral system.” Failure to do so, he added, could “result in a loss of US shareholding at a time when new players are challenging US leadership in the multilateral system.”

However, he said no elected government would be able to do so, suggesting that Greece will be left with an enormous debt overhang for some time. Mr Brazier is a senior figure at the Bank, as its executive director for financial stability strategy and risk and a member of the Financial Policy Committee, which tries to ensure financial stability in the UK.

"I think there are numbers for the primary surplus Greece could run, in principle, that would deliver the repayment of debt over some horizon," Mr Brazier told MPs on the Treasury Select Committee. "Is the political pain involved in running that sort of primary surplus tolerable? I find it difficult to believe."

Greece's current debt repayment schedule on its bail-out extends to 2054. Its politicians have clashed with Europe's core over a potential Greek haircut and relaxations of austerity conditions. Should a deal to extend loans to Greece fail to materialise, its Syriza-led government could default, leading to the country being thrown out of the eurozone.

Thus, Israel's official rabbis have apparently, if only indirectly, provided tacit approval for the entry of Jews and Jewish Israelis into the al Aqsa mosque compound in occupied East Jerusalem. The change was done only to the Hebrew version of the sign – the English sign remains as it was.

Yehuda Glick, head of the Temple Mount Heritage Foundation, reportedly welcomed the sign change and said that “the revolution is at its height. Today we advanced another milimeter in the process” of encouraging Jews to enter the al Aqsa mosque compound. Clashes between Israeli police and Palestinian Muslim worshippers in the al Aqsa mosque erupted in the second half of last year, following daily invasions of the mosque compound by Israeli settlers and right-wing politicians.

But, in an astonishing twist, senior members of the SPD, which shares power with Mrs Merkel, yesterday disagreed. Gesine Schwan said: ‘I think it would be good for us Germans to sweep up after ourselves in terms of our history. It is about recognising that we have committed serious wrongs in Greece.’

‘The government’s legal case isn’t convincing. It leaves a bad impression that Germany doesn’t want to face up to its responsibilities.’ Ralf Stegner, SPD deputy leader, said: ‘We should not link the question of compensation with the current debate on the euro crisis. But I am of the opinion that we need to discuss compensation regardless.’ Green party parliamentary group leader Anton Hofreiter said: ‘Neither morally nor legally is this chapter complete.’ About 250,000 Greeks died during the brutal Nazi occupation.

Mrs Merkel’s spokesman said the question was ‘legally and politically closed’. But Eberhard Rondholz, a historian who has studied the issue, told the Financial Times: ‘The government view is false. This issue is not closed – it is very much open.’

Heuser repeated a question attributed to Henry Kissinger, the German-born former US secretary of state, about which country served as the locus of European power. "'What is Europe’s phone number?' I think we can give Henry Kissinger a very solid answer now. The number is in Berlin," Heuser said.

The UN envoy to Afghanistan acknowledged that the IS could potentially unite minor Islamist groups in the country under a new command. Moscow has rushed to voice concern with the IS broadening its geographical activities into Afghanistan and spreading radical Islam further to the north into other Central Asian states.

The US administration does realize the dangers of leaving Afghanistan all alone against the growing terror threat and might slow the process of withdrawing the remaining troops, the Associated Press reported on Saturday. With 10,000 American troops currently deployed to Afghanistan, Washington intended to decrease this number to 5,500 by the end of 2015 and withdraw all the troops completely by the end of Barack Obama’s second presidential term in 2016.

The Central African Republic has been rocked by sectarian violence over the past year, and the army relies on UN peacekeepers to stabilize the country. Both the Christian militia and Muslim rebels have agreed to lay down their arms, but splinter groups of fighters continue to clash.

The EU mission aims to advise the country's military on reforms to make it "professional, democratically controlled and ethnically representative."

The order to go into battle readiness mode was given to the Northern Fleet, paratroopers and units of the Western military district at 8am Moscow time (05:00 GMT) by the commander-in-chief. Some 38,000 troops, 41 ships, 15 submarines, 110 jets and choppers are taking part in the drills which focus on boosting Russia’s military presence in the Arctic and test how quickly special operations forces can be moved along large distances.

“New military challenges and threats demand further boost of the military capabilities of armed forces and special attention is being paid to the condition of the newly-set-up strategic command in the north,” Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu told journalists on Monday.

The development is thought to reflect a trend for adult or teenage criminals to conceal illegal items such as guns, knives and drugs on young children in a bid to avoid detection. Forces across Britain confirmed they used the power on under-fives on 288 occasions. It has previously emerged that police have used the tactics against children as young as two or three. It included at least two searches where officers cited “reasonable suspicion” that drugs were hidden on the child and three searches for weapons.

Some criminals mistakenly believe that if they force children under 10 - the age of criminal responsibility - to carry illegal items on their behalf that they cannot be prosecuted. In fact, although charges cannot be levelled against the infant, the police are usually able to bring a prosecution against the person who imposed the items upon their child, sibling or friend.

Besides, had any of them bothered to read the actual piece, they would have realised that it is Sir Elton, not Mr Dolce, who is guilty of bigotry and intolerance. Dolce, 56, was merely expressing his personal view. Which is that children need a mother — something that many will agree with.

Predictably a raft of celebrities — headed by Victoria Beckham — grabbed their pitchforks and piled in to support Elton. Courtney Love was so cross — ‘beyond words and emotions’, as she put it — she even threatened to cut up all her D&G goodies (oh, the sacrifice). Of course, none could just quietly disagree with D&G. The point is, the man should be able to express his views without having his reputation — and his business — dragged through the mud.

Free speech is not a box of chocolates: you can’t just choose the ones with the soft centres. For Sir Elton to use his considerable star power to harass a man simply because he fails to conform to a pre-approved, rubber-stamped, vanilla-scented liberal PC agenda is not only outrageous; it’s the worst kind of liberal fascism.

It’s also exactly this sort of attitude that earlier this week prompted Trevor Phillips, former head of the Commission for Racial Equality, to speak out against the ‘intimidation’ and fear which he said had shut down all rational debate on race in Britain. This has had devastating consequences, Phillips said, from the failure to save Victoria Climbie to the child-grooming scandals in Rotherham and Rochdale to the young British Muslims running away to join Islamic State.

The comments will do little to boost belief in the Prime Minister’s EU reform plans ahead of the election on May 7. The UK Independence Party have warned Mr Cameron cannot be trusted to deliver real changes in Britain’s terms of membership ahead of a proposed In/Out referendum by the end of 2017.

Mr Cameron has said his plans to curb immigration from Europe demanded treaty change – which would need the backing of all 28 EU nations. “I have no doubt that we have to help in a limited and rational framework. We have to help David Cameron because he is obviously pro-European. I am sceptical when it comes to changing the treaty,” Mr Tusk told the Guardian.

However he added: “My intuition is that treaty change is close to mission impossible today because it’s not only about rationality, about good argument. We need unanimity between 28 member states, in the European parliament, in 28 national parliaments in the process of ratification. To say that it is a Pandora’s Box is too little.”

The convoy is "a highly visible demonstration of US commitment to its NATO allies and demonstrating NATO's ability to move military forces freely across allied borders in close cooperation," US Army Europe spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Craig Childs, said in a statement.

The troops and vehicles involved will be moving from training exercises conducted as part of Operation Atlantic Resolve in Estonia, Lithuania and Poland, the report said. They'll move through Latvia and the Czech Republic as they make their way to Vilseck, Germany, about a 40 miles drive from the Czech border.

The campaign asks Jewish women (and men) around the world to raise their voices on gender equality this month by describing a specific moment or experience when they realized gender mattered to them as Jews and by noting one thing they can do to advance equality in Judaism.

The campaign kicked off with an animated video titled, "The Click Moment." It’s a thought-provoking jaunt through the Jewish past from Miriam the Prophet to feminist leaders of the 20th century to modern-day tweeters, showing the development of Jewish feminist consciousness.

The conference convened a conversation that cut across denominations, gender, sexual identity, and race, and included elements of visual and performing art, film, media, academia and theology. Nearly 300 participants gathered to educate themselves and commit to agitate for change leading to a more just and inclusive Judaism.

Netanyahu's remarks in an interview with the NRG website - which is owned by casino mogul Sheldon Adelson and tied with the settler newspaper Makor Rishon - were a last-minute attempt to pull right-wing voters away from Habayit Hayehudi. "I think that anyone who moves to establish a Palestinian state and evacuate territory gives territory away to radical Islamist attacks against Israel," Netanyahu said. "The left has buried its head in the sand time after time and ignores this, but we are realistic and understand."

During the interview, Netanyahu declared that if the Zionist Union were to win the elections, "it would attach itself to the international community and do their bidding," including freezing construction in West Bank and East Jerusalem settlements, and cooperate with international initiatives to return Israel's borders to the 1967 lines.

During a visit to the East Jerusalem settlement of Har Homa earlier Monday, Netanyahu warned that if he were not elected, "Hamastan B" would be established in Jerusalem. “If Tzipi [Livni] and Bougie [Isaac Herzog] form a government, Hamastan B will be established here.”