The PA and the Jewish State are mutually convenient bedfellows in their opposition to Hamas, which has conducted a campaign of terror against Israel and seeks to destabilize the West Bank. While the PA officially remains Hamas' so-called "governing partner" in the Palestinian territories, new accusations that Hamas' efforts are guided by its Turkey-based commander Salah al-Aruri have exposed the growing and violent rift between the two groups.

Now, the PA has gone on record as accusing al-Aruri of planning multiple attacks that have been foiled recently by Israel, resulting in the arrest of dozens of Hamas operatives in the West Bank. Those arrests, likely coordinated with PA security services who themselves allegedly foiled a planned coup by Hamas in the West Bank this summer, may have included the cell which, it was revealed on Thursday, had been planning to assassinate Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman in August in an RPG missile attack.

“The officials accused Turkey as well as Qatar — the current home of Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal — of enabling Hamas to operate freely within their territories to carry out attacks against Israel and undermine the Palestinian Authority,” Friday’s Times of Israel revealed. “The officials added that several Hamas operatives connected to the recently uncovered network were also being held in PA detention facilities.”

But with each passing year the number of Americans jumping on board “the safety net” continues to grow rapidly, and a lot of these people should be able to take care of themselves. Today, the American people collectively receive more money from the government than they pay in taxes. And remember, the federal government uses our money to build roads, inspect our food and fund the military as well. So what does this say about our economy? Could it survive without all of these debt-fueled transfer payments? And what does this say about our society? At one time, our nation was known for our Protestant work ethic. What would our forefathers say about us today?

In order to have a middle class, you have got to have middle class jobs, and those are disappearing from our system very rapidly. As a result, the number of people that are financially independent continues to drop. So what will the future look like? Will the government eventually have to take care of almost all of us?

"In the modern world extremism is being used as a geopolitical instrument and for remaking spheres of influence. We see what tragic consequences the wave of so-called colour revolutions led to," Mr Putin said at a meeting of Russia's Security Council. "For us this is a lesson and a warning. We should do everything necessary so that nothing similar ever happens in Russia," he added.

The "coloured revolutions" were a series of popular uprisings that toppled governments in former Soviet republics including Ukraine, Georgia, and Kyrgyzstan in the 2000s. A similar uprising overthrew Viktor Yanukovych, the pro-Russian president of Ukraine, in February. The Kremlin described the uprising as a Western-backed coup and responded by annexing the Ukrainian region of Crimea and backing a secessionist uprising in the east of Ukraine.

The resulting war has killed more than 4,000 people to date and plunged relations between Russia and the West to their lowest point since the end of the Cold War. Nearly 1,000 people have been killed in the fighting there since a ceasefire came into effect in September, equivalent to 13 people per day, the United Nations said on Thursday.

She told her audience of over 600 on Tuesday: “They’re alien and abhorrent to the vast majority of Arabs – Muslims and Christians. And they should make every Arab across this region seethe. Because they're an attack on our values as a people and on our collective story. This is their version of the Arab world’s story, their plot, their narrative, their heroes, and the rest of the world is listening and watching."

Queen Rania added that Arabs and Muslims should use social media to portray a positive picture of the region and religion. "We must create a new narrative and broadcast it to the world. Because if we don’t decide what our identity is and what our legacy will be, the extremists will do it for us.”

She concluded: "We either develop our region, or we let others dismantle it – find solutions to the challenges, or watch the challenges avalanche; harness the tools to drive the Arab world forward in the 21st century, or let others use those tools to drag us back to the Dark Ages."

It started with Deutsche Skatbank, a division of VR-Bank Altenburger Land. The small bank was the trial balloon in imposing the Wrath of Draghi on savers and businesses. Effective November 1, those with over €500,000 on deposit earn a “negative interest rate” of 0.25%. In less euphemistic terms, they get to pay 0.25% per year on those deposits for the privilege of giving their money to the bank.

“Punishment interest” is what Germans call this with Teutonic precision. The ECB came up with it. In June, it started charging a “negative interest rate” of 0.1% on reserves. In September, it doubled that rate to 0.2%. “There will be no direct impact on your savings,” the ECB announced at the time. “Only banks that deposit money in certain accounts at the ECB have to pay.” It even asked rhetorically: “But why punish savers and reward borrowers?” And it added helpfully: “This behavior is not specific to the ECB; it applies to all central banks”

Some US banks, including Bank of New York Mellon, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase, along with the Swiss bank Credit Suisse and British bank HSBC have also told some clients that punishment interest – they probably didn’t use that term – was going to hit their euro deposits. The writing has been on the wall. On November 5, another banker gave an interview, the most revealing yet. Asoka Wöhrmann, Chief Investment Officer at Deutsche Bank’s asset management division, told the Welt that people “should finally stop saving more and more, and think about spending the money.” The Draghi solution: flog savers until their mood improves.

The security robots are autonomous, meaning they operate on their own. They don’t chase a bad guy down or make arrests. “It has a LIDAR (light image detection and ranging) that’s doing a 3D map,” Stephens said. “It will geofence itself and give itself a perimeter within which it will operate. And it moves around within that perimeter freely and it chooses its own path.”

If someone decides to attack the robot, it could get uncomfortable. When first confronted, they let out a loud chirp and notify the control center. The chirps will get louder and louder as the threat persists. “A very, very loud alarm,” said Stephens. “Think of a car alarm but much more intense.” The security robots are now patrolling in the Bay Area. If a would-be burglar persists, Stephens said, “Then, the robot is looking at the video, listening for glass breakage, any loud sound that breaking in would cause. We’ll get the license plate, picture of the vehicle, geotag location, and time.”

The Knightscope K5s are in effect at an undisclosed location in the Silicon Valley. “Unfortunately, I cannot share who it is,” Stephens said. “Soon you will see them everywhere.” The company said the robots will be deployed in outdoor settings, such as corporate campuses, college campuses and open air malls. The makers of the robot said they have a long waiting list of about four dozen companies waiting for a K5. They expect to put many more of these robots in place sometime next year.

How has the immigration debate in the United States become so polarised, so toxic, so unpleasant? That it has cannot be doubted. Barack Obama says he has grown so weary of trying to get Congress to engage seriously that he is going it alone. He's bypassing the legislature and brandishing his big stick - the executive order. It is governance by diktat. And the reaction of his opponents suggests it will spark an atmosphere of retaliation and revenge.

Republicans reacted with fury and said the move would "poison the well" on a number of other issues. Arizona Republican Senator John McCain called it an "illegal power-grab" that "fails to address the root causes of the dysfunction in our immigration system". And Texas Governor Rick Perry, who leads a border state, argued the move would "lead to more illegal immigration, not less".

Ten people have died in the storm in western New York and winter weather is being blamed on at least three other deaths in New Hampshire and Michigan. Most of the deaths were either the result of car crashes or people who had heart attacks shoveling snow. Dozens of truckers remain stranded on the New York State Thruway, a vital highway between western New York and the rest of the state. A 135-mile stretch of the highway remains closed three days after the storm first hit. More than 150 abandoned cars are stuck on the highway, slowing down snow plows that are clearing the lanes.

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said the last of the motorists have finally been rescued from the Thruway today, some 72 hours after they got stuck. Roofs across the region have begun to cave in under the massive snowfall. Five feet of snow on a roof can add weight equivalent to two pickup trucks to a roof. A boy in Lancaster, New York, was hurt when a porch collapsed on him. A house in Alden crashed in on itself because of the snow, though the family inside was not hurt, the Buffalo News reports. About 130 residents of a Buffalo nursing home had to be evacuated after the roof collapsed this afternoon. No one was injured.

The Midwest remained frigid - Chicago saw a low of 20 this morning - but lows were in the high teens and 20s across most of the Midwest, about 10 degrees warmer than Wednesday. Temperatures will continue to warm until Monday, when highs could hit the high 60s in the Northeast. But even good news is bad news in Buffalo. The weekend warm up could bring floods as the snow melts rapidly, fueled by a deluge of rain.

The move followed a shake-up of Ofsted inspections introduced in the wake of the “Trojan Horse” plot in Birmingham to impose hard-line Muslim values in state schools. Schools are now told to place fundamental British values at the heart of the timetable including mutual respect and tolerance of different faiths and beliefs. But the reforms have already been criticised for having a knock-on effect on faith schools and those dominated by pupils of a particular ethnic group.

Last month, it was claimed that a small Christian school in the Home Counties had been penalised after failing to other invite faith leaders, such as imams, in to lead assemblies. Commenting on the latest case, Sir Edward Leigh, the Conservative MP for Gainsborough, said he had written to Nicky Morgan, the Education Secretary, “objecting strenuously to the new so-called 'equality' regulations she is implementing in schools”.

He added: “This is political correctness gone mad. Middle Rasen primary school is an outstanding school by any standards. Multiculturalism is an irrelevance in Lincolnshire with its low number of ethnic minorities, who are already welcomed and well-integrated into our local communities, as they should be.”

Many Israelis were especially stunned by the sense of violation created by the attack, in which two Palestinians armed with cleavers and a gun stormed a synagogue in an Orthodox Jewish neighborhood of West Jerusalem and killed four rabbis: a Briton and three Americans, including a member of two of Orthodox Judaism’s most prominent families.

“This is a battle over Jerusalem,’’ [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu] said in a nationally televised address, insisting that Israelis would never give up their claims to the contested city. Palestinians want East Jerusalem, which is annexed and occupied by Israel, to be the capital of any future Palestinian state.