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.

"There was money moving that included taxpayer US dollars, through non-profit organizations. And there were various liberal groups in the United States that were raising millions to fund a campaign called V15 against Prime Minister Netanyahu," McLaughlin said. He noted an effort to oust Netanyahu was guided by former Obama political operative Jeremy Bird and that V15, or Victory 15, ads hurt Netanyahu in the polls. McLaughlin said the Israeli leader rebounded after delivering a speech to Congress early this month, prompting more critical ads.

V15 was viewed as part of a broader campaign to oust Netanyahu. The group was linked to Washington-based nonprofit OneVoice Movement, which reportedly received $350,000 in State Department grants. Money to OneVoice stopped flowing in November, officials said, before the Israeli elections. "There were people in the United States that were organizing them to vote in one party so they would help the left-of-center candidate, Herzog, that the Obama administration favored," he added.

Already tense relations between Obama and Netanyahu escalated this week after Netanyahu's pre-election promise to not allow a Palestinian state. He later backed down after White House criticism, though Obama suggested in an interview released Saturday he wouldn't brush off the comments. "They were running an ACORN, Obama Organizing for America-type campaign over there with the digital ads, the billboards, the phones. They were targeting Israeli voters," Representative Lee Zeldin (Republican for New York) said Saturday on Fox News' "Justice with Judge Jeanine."

"I think the president, Tuesday night, felt like he lost," said Zeldin, who along with Senator Ted Cruz (Republican for Texas) has questioned the Obama administration over OneVoice's funding and nonprofit status.

Barack Obama’s promise to transform America was too modest. He is transforming the whole world before our eyes. Do you see it yet? Against the backdrop of the tsunami of trouble he has unleashed, Obama’s pledge to “reassess” America’s relationship with Israel cannot be taken lightly. Already paving the way for an Iranian nuke, he is hinting he’ll also let the other anti-Semites at Turtle Bay have their way. That could mean American support for punitive Security Council resolutions or for Palestinian statehood initiatives. It could mean both, or something worse.

Whatever form the punishment takes, it will aim to teach Bibi Netanyahu never again to upstage him. And to teach Israeli voters never again to elect somebody Obama doesn’t like. Apologists and wishful thinkers, including some Jews, insist Obama real­izes that the special relationship between Israel and the United States must prevail and that allowing too much daylight between friends will encourage enemies. Those people are slow learners, or, more dangerously, deny-ists.

If Obama’s six years in office teach us anything, it is that he is impervious to appeals to good sense. Quite the contrary. Even respectful suggestions from supporters that he behave in the traditions of American presidents fill him with angry determination to do it his way. For Israel, the consequences will be intended. Those who make excuses for Obama’s policy failures — naive, bad advice, bad luck — have not come to grips with his dark impulses and deep-seated rage.

His visceral dislike for Netanyahu is genuine, but also serves as a convenient fig leaf for his visceral dislike of Israel. The fact that it’s personal with Netanyahu doesn’t explain six years of trying to bully Israelis into signing a suicide pact with Muslims bent on destroying them. Netanyahu’s only sin is that he puts his nation’s security first and refuses to knuckle under to Obama’s endless demands for unilateral concessions.

That refusal is now the excuse to act against Israel. Consider that, for all the upheaval around the world, the president rarely has a cross word for, let alone an open dispute with, any other foreign leader. Most troubling is Obama’s bended-knee deference to Iran’s Supreme Leader, which has been repaid with “Death to America” and “Death to Israel” demonstrations in Tehran and expanded Iranian military action in other countries.

Netanyahu said last week that if he were to be re-elected, a Palestinian state would not be established on his watch. Plain and simple, loud and clear. This simple, pure truth was the case for all his predecessors as well – all the prime ministers, peace lovers and justice seekers from the center and the left, who gave false promises. But who thought to admit it before him? Who had the courage to reveal the truth? The latest of these deceivers was Zionist Union leader Isaac Herzog: His daring plan included five years of negotiations. The public rewarded him for that.

After all, one had to deceive the Americans, bluff the Europeans and cheat the Palestinians, fudge things for the Mideast Quartet and lie to some Israelis. One also had to play for time, to build settlements and get rid of every possible Palestinian partner – Yasser Arafat, who was too strong; President Mahmoud Abbas, who is too weak; and Hamas, which is too extreme. One has to play for time, so the Palestinians become more extreme and everyone understands that there’s no one to talk to.

Now comes the man who is considered a bluffer, and only he tells the fateful, historic truth: there will be no Palestinian state. Not during his term, which now seems eternal. And not after it, because by then it will be too late. The end of negotiations, the end of games. No more shuttle diplomacy, Quartets, emissaries, processes, outlines, mediators and plans. That’s it; it will not happen. It had no chance from the very beginning. In Israel, there was not one single prime minister – including the two Nobel Peace Prize laureates – who intended for one second to let a Palestinian state be established. But the bluff of the century was convenient for everyone. Now Netanyahu has put an end to it.

If Israel had played its cards openly from the outset, as Netanyahu has done now, perhaps we would be in a different place, a better place. Now Benjamin Netanyahu has come and put an end to all this. We must be grateful to him for this. History will remember that he was the first Israeli prime minister to speak the truth.

He is not alone. Investors across corporate bond markets are finding it harder to buy and sell company debt. And some investors are beginning to fear that the lack of liquidity will be the spark that ignites the next crisis in financial markets.

Liquidity is generally taken to mean the ease with which an investor can quickly buy or sell a security without moving its price. As regulation of banks tightens, the liquidity, particularly of European and US credit markets, has evaporated, prompting a host of regulators and central banks to sound warnings about the difficult trading environment.

A rate hike by the US Federal Reserve, which would be the first since 2006, could trigger turmoil. Given the bond market is much larger than the equity market, and investors have piled into fixed income in recent years, fears are growing that when credit investors attempt to sell bonds en masse, the illiquidity in the market has the potential to cause a crisis of a similar magnitude to the credit crunch.

Perhaps the most arresting warning came last November, when the International Capital Market Association (ICMA) surveyed investors, analysts and traders of European corporate bonds and concluded that the common fear was that a “meltdown” of global credit markets had become unavoidable.

The geopolitical importance was immediately evident from the US's negative reaction to the UK's announcement this week that it would join the AIIB. And very shortly afterwards France, Germany and Italy also defied the US and announced they might join. In the Pacific region, one of America's closest allies, Australia, says she is considering joining too along with New Zealand. The list of US allies seeking to join is growing. From a geopolitical point of view China and Russia have completely outmanoeuvred the US, splitting both NATO and America's Pacific alliances right down the middle.

This is much more important than political commentators generally realise. We must appreciate that anything China does is planned well in advance. The more one thinks about it, the creation of the AIIB is a masterstroke of tactical genius. The outstanding issue now is China and Russia will need to come up with a credible plan to make their currencies a slam-dunk replacement for the dollar. We know that gold may be involved because the SCO members have been accumulating bullion; but before we get there China must manage a deliberate deflation of her credit bubble, which will be a delicate and dangerous task.

Unlike the welfare-driven economies in the west, China has sufficient political authority and internal control to survive a rapid deflation of bank credit. When this inevitably happens the economic consequences for the west will be very serious. Japan and the Eurozone are already facing economic dislocation, and despite over-optimistic employment numbers, the US economy is faltering as well. The last thing America and the dollar needs is a deflationary shock from China.

The silver lining for us all is a peace dividend: it is becoming less likely that America will persist with a call to arms, because support from her allies is melting away leaving her on her own.