'At the moment I can say that we are not aware of any plan to attack the Vatican or the [Pope],' he added in the interview, published on the magazine's website on Monday. Giani has a force of some 130 agents protecting most of the Vatican and the Pope, with the help of the more ceremonial Swiss Guard. The Italian police guard the exterior, as well as St Peter's Square. Twenty of his agents, Giani explained, have specialist anti-terror training and guard the Pope when he's abroad.

He told Polizia Moderna: 'Twenty Vatican bodyguards have received special training that makes them suitable also ready to use in anti-terrorist actions. Some of them accompany the Pope during his international travels.' The security operation at the Vatican is aided by a command and control centre that Giani says has a 'high level' of technology, along with thousands of surveillance cameras.

Last month, in a video showing the beheading of 21 Egyptian Coptic Christians in Libya, one of the killers said: 'Safety for you crusaders is something you can only wish for ... We will conquer Rome, by the will of Allah.'

A formal announcement will be made on Thursday when the NPC opens. China has seen several years of double-digit defence spending increases. It is the world's second-highest military spender, but remains far behind the US. Last year, China's defence spending rose 12.2% to $130 billion (£85 billion). In comparison, for the fiscal year 2016 US President Barack Obama has requested a budget of $585 billion.

China says the spending is required to modernise the People's Liberation Army - the world's largest standing military. It is pouring investment into hi-tech equipment such as submarines and stealth jets, reports the BBC's Martin Patience in Beijing. It has also been investing in naval forces, including an aircraft carrier. Recent media reports that a second was being built were swiftly deleted.

China's neighbours are closely watching its military investment. In recent years Beijing has taken a more assertive stance on maritime territorial disputes with both Japan and South East Asian nations, leading to a rise in regional tensions. In response, Japan has begun increasing its military budget, as has India - which has a disputed land border with China.

Most people love ready meals, however; three billion were eaten in Britain in 2012 and they make up the biggest sector of the country's £70 billion annual retail food budget. Processed food is everywhere, despite numerous news stories warning of the dangers. In the past few days headlines, taken from my book, highlighted the risks of eating bagged salad: the greenery can be as much as ten days old and have been submerged up to eight hours in tap water heavy with chlorine, to inhibit bacteria. Citric, tartaric and other fruit acids are also painted on to the leaves to keep them looking fresh. It sounds revolting but it does not stop millions from buying bagged leaves.

The key to the success of processed food is simple: it is not only quick and simple but reliable. As one 'food technology executive' or ready-meal scientist told me: 'Our objective is to see that the consumer gets the same taste experience every time.' This means the ingredients must be identical and that demands mass production; food preparation on an industrial scale, so that it barely looks like food at all. In fact, food manufacturers, the companies that supply ready meals to supermarkets, carry out little or no preparation of raw ingredients. Instead, they buy treated ingredients, mainly frozen or dried, from a range of other companies and cook them. The convenience food chain that supplies the consumer is made up of many links, which often cross continents. The supermarkets sub-contract work to the food manufacturers, who get various food processing plants to do the work for them.

When an ITV investigation on the Tonight programme analysed a typical supermarket 'British lamb hotpot' ready meal, it discovered the ingredients were from ten countries and included New Zealand lamb, Israeli carrots, Argentine beef bones and Majorcan potatoes. Irish authorities were equally shocked to discover that a pizza bearing the label 'country of origin Ireland' in fact contained 35 ingredients that had passed through 60 countries during preparation and packaging.

Their thousands of employees work long, demanding shifts of 12 hours or more, behind walls with no windows. We are told that is to guard the secret recipes from industrial espionage, but if you could peep in, you might understand the immense economies of scale: half a million kebabs processed in one day, or ten tons of chicken tikka, is nothing unusual for a busy plant. The workers tend to be young. They have to be, to withstand the conditions in these usually bone-chillingly cold factories. Typically, 90 per cent of the workers come from Eastern Europe and the Baltic states. There is no chat or camaraderie in these places: to protect their hearing from the din of the gargantuan machinery, they must wear earplugs. The smells are nauseating; a stench of fat in the snack factories, the pungent reek of flesh in the meat plants.

The facilities for microwave meals are worse; the air thick with the scent of tomato sauce and the starchy, sticky béchamel (white sauce) with its fragrance of regurgitated baby milk. A ready-meal factory can be churning out 250,000 portions a day, using 60 or 70 different ingredients, combining ten assembly lines. That means that when problems arise, millions of packets on the supermarket shelves could be affected. The food and drink industry now uses more than 150 GM enzymes, but you won't see them listed on the labels. The European Commission is aware of this, but has granted them 'Generally Regarded As Safe' status: one recent Euro report stated that GM 'might lead to enzymes not present in nature so far'. To the ready-meal scientists, this might sound like a recipe for cheaper foods and bigger profits. But to the people who are buying these products, unaware of what they are putting on their plates, it is more like the plot of a sci-fi horror movie.

The Army, Royal Air Force and Royal Navy have all suffered cutbacks to the extent that they are no longer able to undertake the kind of missions that Britain has historically supported. Now, General Raymond Odierno, the Chief of Staff of the US army, who has fought alongside British forces in several conflicts, including the recent campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan, has become the latest senior officer to express his concerns in public, telling The Daily Telegraph when I met him in Washington last week that he is “very concerned” about the impact the cuts are having.

His comments, moreover, came after President Barack Obama had taken issue with David Cameron when he visited the White House in January. He warned the Prime Minister of the dangers of allowing British defence expenditure to fall below the 2 per cent of GDP threshold required by our Nato membership. For there are growing fears that cuts will jeopardise a central tenet of the post-Second World War transatlantic alliance – namely, that Britain can be counted upon to provide military hardware to US-led campaigns in defence of Western interests.

Whether it is dealing with Iraq’s Saddam Hussein, or preventing Afghanistan from becoming a haven for Islamist terror groups, it has been a long-standing assumption of US military planning that Britain would deploy a combat force in excess of 10,000 men, as well as the fighter aircraft and naval vessels.

And yet, while the Coalition shows little concern for the damage inflicted on Britain’s military capabilities, it remains committed to ring-fencing the foreign aid budget to 0.7 per cent of GDP, with the result that much-needed resources are being squandered overseas that could usefully be spent on strengthening the nation’s defences. For example, following the Coalition’s decision to scrap the RAF’s Nimrod maritime patrol aircraft, we no longer have the ability to track the activities of Russian nuclear attack submarines in the North Sea. A simple, cost-effective replacement would be to purchase the Boeing P8 Poseidon, with similar capabilities, which the RAF estimates would cost around £200 million a year – a reasonable investment, you might think, given the state of tensions between London and Moscow.

By coincidence, £200 million is exactly the same amount of money Britain donates to India in foreign aid each year. As a result of its generosity, Britain cannot afford the P8; India, on the other hand, has a fleet of the aircraft to protect its own territorial waters.

In a speech last week outlining security threats Ursula von der Leyen, defence minister, said: “To our east we see in Russia an actor who is eager to return to the power politics of yesteryear. Without unity and resolve among Europeans, we have no chance against this.” Germany’s response to the Ukraine crisis will include strengthening tank forces. The defence minister is restoring an inactive German tank battalion to service, reversing plans to reduce Germany’s contingent of Leopard 2 combat tanks.

Ms von der Leyen said the decision was being made “in light of the changed security environment since 2014”. The restored tank battalion will be based at Bergen in Lower Saxony and is intended to contribute to the flexibility and reaction speed of Nato forces.

While Germany has played an increasingly active military role in recent years, taking part in Nato-led missions in Kosovo and Afghanistan, the experience has done little to sway public scepticism. Polls conducted last year show about 60 per cent of Germans oppose military engagements abroad.

"I am confident that it will put in place the necessary measures, set up a more efficient tax system and in the end honour its commitments. You have to give a little bit of time to a newly elected government," he told the Sunday paper. "To govern is to face reality." Mr Schaeuble added that his Greek counterpart, Yanis Varoufakis, despite their policy clashes, had "behaved most properly with me" and had "the right to as much respect as everyone else".

It was an abrupt change in tone for Mr Schaeuble, who has repeatedly exchanged jibes with Mr Varoufakis since the Greek election in January brought in an anti-austerity government. Ahead of Friday’s crucial parliamentary vote in Germany, where MPs voted overwhelmingly to extend Greece’s existing financial aid programme until June, Mr Schaeuble had warned that Greece would not receive "a single euro" until it meets the pledges of its existing €240 billion (£174 billion) bail-out programme.

Where different economies share a currency, it has always been necessary for the more prosperous to make transfer payments to the less prosperous, partially to support political stability and partially to at least provide some cushion to the inevitable economic under-performance of the latter. Some 30 per cent of US Federal spending goes on transfer payments to the less successful parts of the US.

Even within the UK, transfer payments from London and the South East to Scotland, Northern Ireland, Wales, the North East, etc run in aggregate at around £80 billion a year. But Germany’s reply to transfer payments remains “not a Pfennig”. Germany’s smug response is that the other economies of Europe should make themselves competitive and efficient like Germany. Austerity measures, however, not only produce the problems of not only ballooning unemployment, particularly youth unemployment, but also worsen the debt ratios.

It is particularly surprising that Germany, of all countries, either fails to understand or ignores the lessons of the twentieth century. The over-harsh reparations of the Treaty of Versailles [May 7th, 1919], over which Keynes resigned from helping the UK Government, led to the economic hardship and political instability which accommodated Hitler’s rise to power.

Rabbi Glick told JewishPress.com that he regularly leads tour groups up to the Temple Mount, and not being allowed up prevented him from earning a living. Rabbi Yehuda Glick took the police to court and sued for damages. On Sunday the court decided in Glick’s favor.

But the bigger victory was the court’s criticism of the police’s actions towards Jews on the Temple Mount and the explicit ruling that the police must ensure that Jews be able to pray on the Jewish people’s holiest site. The police may choose to appeal both the financial award and the ruling, but the question remains, until the appeal, will the police respect the court’s ruling and ensure that Jews can pray on the Temple Mount?

By way of background, genetically engineered foods have been linked to obesity, cancer, liver failure, infertility and all sorts of other diseases. And genetically-engineered meat isn’t even tested for human safety. A leading risk expert says that genetically modified foods could wipe out the global ecosystem. But government agencies like the FDA go to great lengths to cover up the potential health damage from genetically modified foods, and to keep the consumer in the dark about what they’re really eating.

An indicator was a quiet announcement in the press last summer that the Gates Foundation had awarded a US$5.6 million grant to Cornell University to “depolarize” the debate over GM foods. That’s their word. The grant founded a new institute, the Cornell Alliance for Science. “Our goal is to depolarize the GMO debate and engage with potential partners who may share common values around poverty reduction and sustainable agriculture, but may not be well informed about the potential biotechnology has for solving major agricultural challenges,” said project leader Sarah Evanega, senior associate director of International Programs in Cornell’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences (CALS).

Got it?

The Gates Foundation is paying biotech scientists and advocates at Cornell to help them convince the ignorant and brainwashed public, who “may not be well informed,” that they are ignorant and brainwashed. “Improving agricultural biotechnology communications is a challenge that must be met if innovations developed in public sector institutions like Cornell are ever to reach farmers in their fields,” added Kathryn J Boor, the Ronald P Lynch Dean of CALS. It’s kind of like depolarizing an armed conflict by giving one side more weapons.

The statist fearmongers will have you believe that “privatizing” anything would result in mass chaos and a Mad Max scenario of warlords and rampant crime. But they are wrong. “Since we’ve been in there, an independent crime study that they’ve had done [indicates] we’ve reduced the crime by 61%” in just 20 months, says James Alexander, Director of Operations for SEAL.

Over 70 communities in Harris County and most of the major management districts have contracted with SEAL. They’re less expensive, better at crime prevention, they do not target citizens for revenue, and, best of all, each officer is personally accountable for his or her actions. Law enforcement is a product that we are forced to buy. When any product is not subject to the forces of consumer demand, there is no way of changing it. It is time we applied the fundamental lesson of competition to our supposed protectors.

Most people are unable to pay court costs to get their property back, and in many cases the law enforcement agencies are allowed to keep most, if not all, of any cash taken. Some police are advocating to use civil forfeiture in the form of “highway interdiction” as a way of raising revenue for cash-strapped municipalities, and in fact, many departments are purposefully targeting citizens who own property they desire. One officer actually referred to it as “pennies from heaven”.

The new payment revolution I’m talking about is called NFC. NFC stands for Near Field Communication. In its early form, NFC was used by the military to prevent “friendly fire” accidents. The technology was declassified in the mid-1990s. An NFC chip is essentially a tiny radio transmitter – about the size of a ladybug. It’s inactive, until it receives a signal from another NFC-enabled device. The technology operates in a two-way manner, so that information can be passed in both directions. NFC-ready devices must come within a few inches of each other to transfer data.

NFC isn’t a technology that might or might not work. It’s already working. In fact, you might already be using it without even knowing it. If you’ve ever used a “smart card” to unlock a door… or if you have a car with a remote “keyless entry” system... you’re using NFC. But now, this technology is being adapted by banks, payment processing firms, credit card companies, and retailers and merchants across America to completely transform the way we pay for things. In short, with NFC technology our wallets will be replaced by smartphones.

Consumers simply store their credit or debit card information on their NFC-enabled mobile device, such as a smartphone. In 2014, by the way, more than 275 million smartphones – including the brand new iPhone 6 – were made with NFC chips (and more than four times as many… over 1.2 BILLION phones will contain these chips by 2018, according to research firm IHS Technology). This will happen in just 3 years. Once your data is stored on your phone, you will never need to swipe a debit or credit card again. Just wave your mobile phone near a reader and you will be able to purchase practically anything.

The resulting rising urban populations combined with poverty, government mismanagement and other factors combined to trigger the unrest that led to the civil war. The conflict has since escalated into a complex war involving extremist Islamic groups including ISIS and forces from other nations including the US.

The drought, which scientists say was likely made worse by climate change, destroyed much of the agriculture in the north of the country, driving farmers into cities.

An estimated 200,000 people have now been killed and an estimated nine million Syrians have fled their homes since the outbreak of the war. Dr Richard Seager, a climate scientist at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University in New York, said: ‘We're not saying the drought caused the war. We’re saying that added to all the other stressors, it helped kick things over the threshold into open conflict.’

[Emma Bonino writes]: "When I am asked whether Europe is still a relevant ‘protagonist’ in the modern world, I always answer that there is no doubt about it. For a long time now, the continent has been shaken by financial crises, internal security strategy crises – including wars – and instability within its borders, which definitely make it a protagonist in world affairs.

Since 2008, the economic and political measures taken by EU member countries have aimed at ‘renationalising’ their interests, with the exception of actions implemented by Mario Draghi, the president of the European Central Bank. Consequently, Europe has abandoned the pursuit of a common foreign policy and has reverted to inter-governmental practices that prioritise national interests. The dilemma is clear: either the European Union is a global power and is recognised as such, or Europe will be represented by others in crucial debates.

In this context, what is emerging is that Germany is increasingly taking on a new role. This process began with the bizarre designation in 2006 of a group of countries to negotiate with Iran, known as 3+3, or more commonly, outside Europe, as 5+1: the five permanent members of the Security Council (the United States, Russia, China, the United Kingdom, France) plus Germany.

Since then Berlin has taken on a leading role, not only in the European context but also in many international affairs, often on behalf of the European Union. To sum up: the European Union works jointly to the extent that this is possible. After that there is a level at which decisions – and responsibilities – are taken by those with the power to do so. That is the scheme practised in today’s Europe. It is time for other Europeans to sit up and take notice."