The amateur video, hosted and translated by the Arabic media watchdog MEMRI, shows a preacher conducting a sermon at the Houthi al-Hashoosh Mosque, leading the crowd in an impassioned cry against Israel, the United States and Jews.

“Our belief in Allah will increase after today. We will triumph over their deceit and their arrogance. Allah is with us,” the preacher said. “Death to America. Death to Israel. Curse upon the Jews. Victory to Islam. Allahu Akbar,” the worshipers recited en masse. Then a terrorist roaming among the mosque’s patrons detonated himself, causing a scene of mass panic.

In an online statement, the previously unknown Sana’a branch of the jihadist group [ISIS] warned that the bombings were “just the tip of the iceberg.”

The prayer book features the voices of female writers and language more reflective of the LGBT experience. But the volume also signals a return to gendered language for God in Reform liturgy, including a version of the iconic High Holidays prayer Avinu Malkeinu that refers to God as both “Loving Father” and “Compassionate Mother.”

Its title, roughly translated as “sanctuary of the soul,” also refers to the portable sanctuary, or mishkan, that the ancient Israelites carried with them during their desert wanderings. As of last week, 127,000 copies had been preordered by approximately 180 congregations. The first edition of 250,000 copies will be available in June.

“It is spiritual, it weaves the voices of both men and women and contemporary language along with the traditional prayers,” Rabbi Denise Eger, the CCAR’s newly installed president, told JTA. “But it also gives voice and framework to our anxieties and our deep questions about God and meaning and the world in language that the contemporary ear and heart and mind understand.”

Rabbi Hara Person, the publisher of CCAR Press and executive editor of the new machzor, says worshippers should feel free to explore the new volume to find what speaks to them. “We’re saying, yes, absolutely you don’t need to be on the same page as everyone else,” she said. “You don’t need to be on the same page as the rabbi and the cantor. If you find something that inspires you, that moves you, that speaks to you, go for it. That’s fine, especially on the High Holidays, when we’re supposed to be reflecting, meditating.”

Speaking to The Independent, the chief executive of Monsanto conceded that the company had failed to appreciate public concerns over GM technology when it was introduced nearly 20 years ago. And he also said that the company had suffered by making “the wrong call” when it failed to rebrand itself in the aftermath of the botched launch of GM in Europe.

But Hugh Grant claimed that unless public attitudes towards biotechnology changed it would be impossible to feed the world’s growing population and called for a more nuanced debate on the potential uses for GM technology in the developing world. “There never had been a lot of trust in companies, particularly not big companies and certainly not big American companies,” he said.

“We were so far removed from that supermarket shelf, that was never something we gave a lot of thought to. We never thought about our place in the food chain. I think as an agricultural community in general – and Monsanto in particular – there is so much more to do to explain where food comes from and how it is produced and how much more we’re going to have to make.”

Mr Grant added that he was also frustrated that the anti-GM lobby had failed to adequately answer the question of how to feed more people with finite land without using new technology. “The thing that often frustrates me in the debate is that there is never an alternative... The other side of this is still pretty empty.”

“I’m not allowed to use the word ‘progress’,” he said. “I’d be sacked if I called it ‘progress’.”

“Why?”

“Because it would imply that the culture that was there already needed improvement.”

“But it does. If you keep a girl in education, she won’t be married off at 12, which means her chances of getting Aids and dying young are reduced. Her country will become more civilised once it has more educated women. That’s what I call progress.”

“Obviously, that’s true,” winced the professor, “it’s just not OK to say so.”

To find inconvenient facts suppressed in one leading university may be regarded as censorship. To have an entire society silenced looks like something worse, and far more sinister.

You have to hand it to the former head of the Equalities and Human Rights Commission. It takes guts to tell a story in which your own side, who fancy themselves supremely virtuous, emerge as the baddies. The trouble is that, even as the Equalities Commission worked hard to prevent racial stereotypes, a troubling proportion of them, as Phillips concedes ruefully, turn out to be accurate.

These are statistics laid out by his programme: a third of London pickpockets are Romanian (how Fagin would have loved them!); black people are six times as likely to be jailed for robbery; the Chinese are tops at people-trafficking; when it comes to drug dealing, Afro-Caribbeans are pathetic amateurs compared to the Colombians; meanwhile, white idiots are the national champs of alcohol-fuelled crime. Phillips and a Muslim former senior Met officer agreed that the police’s reluctance to use racial profiling arose from an attitude which was basically: “OK, maybe you’d catch more criminals, but they might think we’re a bit racist.”

Tragically and unforgivably, that same attitude led to the death of eight-year-old Victoria Climbie. Multiple explanations were offered by experts for the child’s 128 separate injuries. Any explanation would do, except the real one, which is that her Ivory Coast guardians were cruel, superstitious brutes. As Phillips admits, pretty much everyone who could have saved Victoria “was walking on eggshells”. Thus, the creed of multiculturalism, which was designed to promote racial equality, caused a little girl to be murdered because white people were too embarrassed to accuse her black torturers. Marvellous, eh?

Back then, Glezos was a resistance fighter. Today, the soon-to-be 93-year-old is a member of the European Parliament for the Greek governing party Syriza. Sitting in his Brussels office on the third floor of the Willy Brandt Building, he is telling the story of his fight against the Nazis of old and about his current fight against the Germans of today.

Glezos knows what it can mean when Germans strive for predominance in Europe and says that's what is happening again now. This time, though, it isn't soldiers who have a chokehold on Greece, he says, but business leaders and politicians. "German capital dominates Europe and it profits from the misery in Greece," Glezos says. "But we don't need your money." In his eyes, the German present is directly connected to its horrible past, though he emphasizes that he doesn't mean the German people but the country's ruling classes. Germany for him is once again an aggressor today: "Its relationship with Greece is comparable to that between a tyrant and his slaves."

Glezos says that he is reminded of a text written by Joseph Goebbels in which the Nazi propaganda minister reflects about a future Europe under German leadership. It's called "The Year 2000." "Goebbels was only wrong by 10 years," Glezos says, adding that in 2010, in the financial crisis, German dominance began. For a long time, it was primarily the Germans who obsessed about their country's Nazi past, but recently, other countries in Europe have joined them. Chancellor Angela Merkel with a Hitler moustache, German tanks heading south: There has been a flood of such caricatures in Greece, Spain, Britain, Poland, Italy and Portugal in recent weeks and years. And Nazi symbols have become de rigueur at anti-austerity demonstrations.

People have even begun talking about the "Fourth Reich," a reference to the Third Reich of Adolf Hitler. That may sound absurd given that today's Germany is a successful democracy without a trace of national-socialism - and that no one would actually associate Merkel with Nazism. But further reflection on the word "Reich," or empire, may not be entirely out of place. The term refers to a dominion, with a central power exerting control over many different peoples. According to this definition, would it be wrong to speak of a German Reich in the economic realm?

Sending weapons to the Kiev government would not mean involvement in a new war for America, claimed US Representative Eliot Engel (Democrat for New York), a Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, who sponsored the document. “The people of Ukraine are not looking for American troops," Engel said. "They are just looking for the weapons.”

According to Engel, “this war poses the greatest threat to European security since World War II, and we shouldn’t take it lightly, and we shouldn’t be idle, and we shouldn’t sit back, and we shouldn’t let other countries tell us what to do.” It comes as the White House is unwilling to make any radical moves on Ukraine, and follows German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s efforts to persuade Obama to commit to Ukraine’s truce plan during her February visit to the US.

Back in September, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko requested Congress to authorize a delivery of US military equipment to the Ukrainian government. So far, Obama has only signed off on non-lethal aid and sanctions against Russia – which Kiev and Washington claim is involved in the conflict, despite giving no evidence to support the notion.

The Nestlé Water Bottling Plant in Sacramento is the target of a major press conference on Tuesday, March 17, by a water coalition that claims the company is draining up to 80 million gallons of water a year from Sacramento aquifers during the drought. The coalition, the ‘crunch nestle alliance’, says that City Hall has made this use of the water supply possible through a “corporate welfare giveaway,” according to a press advisory. A coalition of environmentalists, Native Americans and other concerned people announced the press conference will take place at March 17 at 5 pm at new Sacramento City Hall, 915 I Street, Sacramento.

The coalition will release details of a protest on Friday, March 20, at the South Sacramento Nestlé plant designed to “shut down” the facility. The coalition is calling on Nestlé to pay rates commensurate with their enormous profit, or voluntarily close down. “The coalition is protesting Nestlé’s virtually unlimited use of water – up to 80 million gallons a year drawn from local aquifers – while Sacramentans (like other Californians) who use a mere 7 to 10 percent of total water used in the State of California, have had severe restrictions and limitations forced upon them,” according to the coalition.

"Today more than ever, Nasrallah is willing to take risks with Israel that could get out of hand, instead of being perceived by Israel as weak," a senior defense official told the daily. As such, Hezbollah has become more brazen in its open readiness to attack Israel, military sources stated. According to several IDF reports, Hezbollah terrorists have begun openly patrolling up and down the border - sometimes in civilian clothing, sometimes wearing Lebanese Army uniforms - and documenting on camera what happens each day on the border fence and documenting "engineering work."

Foreign sources have stated that Hezbollah terrorists have begun openly walking through Shi'ite villages in Lebanon as well - despite the patrol of Lebanese Army soldiers and UNIFIL peacekeepers. The organization has become involved in a drug smuggling trade between Lebanon and Israel as well, in order to perform useful reconnaissance for future battles with Israel. "Nothing has been done in southern Lebanon, and probably on the Gaza border, without the organization knowing it," a senior military source in the Northern Command told Walla!.

The IDF is preparing for the possibility of another war, attempting to match the IDF's strength to intel gathered on Hezbollah's firepower. But it is also prepared for specific scenarios - including the likelihood of Hezbollah's special forces, consisting of 100-200 terrorists, raiding communities near the Lebanese border fence and occupying them for short periods. The group has changed tactics to be more on the offensive, the source added.

If necessary, a war against Hezbollah will be costly - to the tune of 1.5 billion shekels ($378 million) per day of fighting, security forces say. Thus, Israel's political system will be forced to decide - and soon - whether to choose increased deterrence or wait until war along the borders to prevent the most casualties and crippling economic damage.

Earlier that day he was praised as “the greatest” in a letter from the Bluegrass state’s most famous resident, boxer Muhammad Ali, read by Louisville’s Mayor Greg Fischer as Mr Ali was too ill to attend. The Prince of Wales told the invited audience: "We are standing at a moment of substantial transition where we face the dual challenges of a world view and an economic system that seem to have enormous shortcomings, together with an environmental crisis - including that of climate change - which threatens to engulf us all."

The royal tour comes amid news that Britain’s Supreme Court will rule next week on whether a number of the Prince’s letters to several governmental department officials should be made public. There has been a long-running legal dispute over the publication of the “black spider memos,” taking their name from the Prince’s distinctive handwriting, following a number of Freedom of Information Requests to view the correspondence.

The particle accelerator, which will be restarted this week, has already found the Higgs boson – the God Particle – which is thought to give mass to other particles. Now scientists at Cern in Switzerland believe they might find miniature black holes which would reveal the existence of a parallel universe.

And if the holes are found at a certain energy, it could prove the controversial theory of ‘rainbow gravity’ which suggests that the universe stretches back into time infinitely with no singular point where it started, and no Big Bang. The theory was postulated to reconcile Einstein’s theory of general relativity – which deals with very large objects, and quantum mechanics – which looks at the tiniest building blocks of the universe. It takes its name from a suggestion that gravity's effect on the cosmos is felt differently by varying wavelengths of light.

“These sinkholes are a direct result of the inappropriate mismanagement of water resources in the region,” said Bromberg, who believes that the total number of sinkholes has grown to over 3,000. Just ten years ago roughly 1,000 sinkholes had been reported, according to Smithsonian magazine. Since the 1950s Israel and Jordan have diverted the flow of the Jordan River, turning a once powerful flow into a trickle, full of sediment.

As a result, the Dead Sea is 800 million cubic meters short of water each year, and its level has fallen 40 meters. As it recedes, it leaves behind salty deposits. While initially, these are firm, over the following years, the salt is dissolved, by rain, groundwater and river flows, creating a cavity underneath the ground. These cavities can collapse any time, creating deadly sinkholes. Several sinkholes can merge together, producing giant, gaping craters.

Widely used by farms and home gardeners, little is known about its presence in the US food supply as the federal government does not regularly test for it. Sold since the 1970s, glyphosate has increased in usage ten times in the last 20 years, thanks in large part to the rise in genetically modified (GMO) crops, especially soy and corn. Such plants were engineered to resist Roundup, meaning glyphosate will kill unwanted plants (weeds) but not the GMO food crops. Last year, for every acre of active farmland in the United States, three-quarters of a pound of Roundup was applied.

Chuck Benbrook says yes, the likely carcinogen is indeed getting into humans via the food supply. He’s a professor at Washington State University’s Center for Sustaining Agriculture and Natural Resources. “When a single pesticide is used that widely,” he said, “people can’t help but be exposed to it.”

Friday’s announcement came from The International Agency for Research on Cancer, a part of the World Health Organization. It said that glyphosate is “probably carcinogenic to humans.” Consumer Reports wrote that because Roundup is used so widely – and also that its health effects are not well understood – it should at least be monitored by the government.

“The Urban Death Project is a compost-based renewal system. At the heart of the project is a three-storey core, within which bodies and high-carbon materials are placed. Over the span of a few months, with the help of aerobic decomposition and microbial activity, the bodies decompose fully, leaving a rich compost. The Urban Death Project is not simply a system for turning our bodies into soil-building material. It is also a space for the contemplation of our place in the natural world, and a ritual to help us say goodbye to our loved ones by connecting us with the cycles of nature.”

The Urban Death Project website describes the project as a 501(c) non-profit, and a fundraising effort is due to launch March 30th on Kickstarter. The donate page explains, "Your gift supports the creation of a meaningful, equitable, and ecological alternative for the care and processing of our deceased."

Another, more disgusting, discovery I have made recently is what they do to “wraps”. I realise Telegraph readers may not necessarily eat wraps (and won’t want to after reading this) but you might be intrigued to know that the first thing the sandwich smearers on the production line do to wraps is slather them in a revolting-looking starchy jelly. It glues the wrap together. More worrying are the deceptions that go hand-in-hand with industrial food production. The packaging on your Beef in Black Bean Sauce might claim that it’s “wok-fried”, but according to Blythman the food makers do precious little cooking of raw food – it comes in frozen or dried from all over the world.

Or consider the benign-sounding "vegetable oil" that our crisps or fish fingers or restaurant chips are fried in. This is in fact a highly refined substance that is subjected to intensive heating, repeatedly, over mutliple days. That punishing treatment produces nasty by-products. In the case of polyunsaturated oil (supposed to be a healthy replacement for saturated fats), the repeated heating builds up gunk called polymers, which form a varnish-like deposit on everything they touch including surfaces and even hair - and polymers are inhaled whenever we breathe in the distinctive-smelling air in fast-food restaurants. (These are what Auberon Waugh with characteristic prescience described as "hamburger gases" 20 years ago.)

An even nastier by-product of heated oil in crisps is acrylamide. This is a nerve poison and crisps and chips are the biggest source of it in our diet. It causes cancer in animals and the US Environmental Protection Agency identifies it as a "probable carcinogen" in humans. Acrylamide passes from crisp-eating mother to baby, with the result that British babies contain five times the acrylamide of their Danish counterparts.

Nearly everything in our consumer society works on this basis of voluntary self-deception. The shampoo I used this morning boasted that it was enriched with “horse chestnut extract”, as if the juice had been hand-squeezed by a maiden in the woods – rather than what it is: sodium laureth sulphate, a hefty industrial detergent. This is the bargain we make in industrialised society. Sell us your dreams, we say to the marketers, and we’ll be happy to buy them. Ours is a world of simulacra. If manufacturers told us what was really in their products and how they were made, we’d be so nauseated we’d never buy them.

When there's money to be made you can bet private companies are working with DHS to turn a quick profit! New alcohol sensing (spying) bracelets like 'Vive' are being marketed as safety devices and also to prevent sexual abuse.

If you also guessed Microsoft is behind this, give yourself another gold star! "Vive is a smart wearable concept with integrated sensors that monitor the wearer’s biometrics related to alcohol consumption and keeps them synced up to their designated party group, so friends know if something’s wrong. It is designed to be desirable to young people, while keeping them safe and connected as they party. Vive amplifies existing social networks, making sure individuals don’t get separated from their group. When things get out of control, Vive makes sure a user is not alone."

Another company profiting from wearable alcohol wrist bracelets calls it a 'WriSTAS.' Pronounced Wrist Ass? Because you'd have to be an ASS to let big brother monitor your alcohol intake and location.