Still, White House officials acknowledged there were no guarantees Russia's economic woes and another round of sanctions would compel Vladimir Putin to curtail aggressive actions in Ukraine. The Russian economy has been in a downward spiral for months, but Putin has managed to maintain political support at home.

Russia analysts say it's unlikely Putin will shift his calculus on Ukraine solely because of sour economic indicators or another round of sanctions. But Matthew Rojanksy, a scholar at the Wilson Center, said that if the currency crisis starts hurting the Russian public's ability to buy food or heat homes, Putin could be forced to act in order to stem a political crisis.

"The logic is not that Putin is going to be persuaded suddenly that he's wrong," Rojanksy said. "What is going to happen is the ground is going to shift under Putin."

“There is no doubt that the inscription is one of the most important artifacts ever found in relation to the Bible,” Eran Arie, curator of Israelite and Persian periods at the Israel Museum, wrote in the exhibit catalog.

The breaks in the stone neither obstruct nor obscure the “bytdvd,” or House of David, inscription, which remains “absolutely intact and clear,” said Ira Spar, professor of history and ancient studies at Ramapo College in New Jersey and a research Assyriologist at the Metropolitan Museum. Epigraphers and biblical historians agree almost unanimously that the letters “bytdvd” refer to the House of King David, according to Spar.

And Hanukkah is focused on a particular location: what is today called the Temple Mount, the peak of the Moriah mountain where the great Temples stood for nearly 1000 years. Hanukkah was the liberation movement of the People of Israel, the grass-roots effort of a nation seeking to throw off the yoke of foreign culture that strove to erase the very roots of Jewish civilization.

Could it be that we need the spirit of the Maccabees today? Look what is happening on the Temple Mount, the very place that our ancestors fought for and wrested from foreign control. It is time that we awaken to the calling of the Maccabees. The time has come for the Jewish people to do more than just lighting candles and exchanging presents.

We must prepare to ascend to our destiny on Mount Moriah, and wrest it from the hands of those who so clearly seek our annihilation. Like our Maccabean ancestors, we must once again light the candles of the menorah on that holy mountain, and thereby illuminate the whole world with the light of love and knowledge. That is our true destiny, and the real meaning of Hanukkah.

"The problem is that Lerner didn't follow the right procedural course in challenging it, a Commonwealth Court panel found in a ruling issued [recently]. And so, the state judges determined, he's stuck with that unfounded tax tab," PennLive.com reported. Initially, the report said, Lerner tried to address the appeals process without a lawyer - a near-impossibility these days for most people because of the overly bureaucratic tax system - after the city filed a complaint against him in 2009. Then, city officials alleged that he owed more than $200,000 in unpaid business privilege, wage and net profit taxes for the years 2003 and 2006. However, the figure was not based on any factual information.

As further reported by PennLive.com:

Philadelphia has a policy of sending out tax delinquency notices with fictional "jeopardy assessments." Those assessments are not based on any actual tax determination, and are set deliberately high to induce the targeted taxpayer to contact the city's revenue department to determine the true amount of tax owed, Judge Mary Hannah Leavitt wrote in the Commonwealth Court opinion on the Lerner case.

When an attorney whom Lerner eventually retained asked Reynolds whether the jeopardy assessment "is just something you make up to scare the taxpayers to come in," Reynolds responded, "Basically, yes."

Nicholas Kristof notes at the New York Times that inequality in the US is worse than it was in apartheid South Africa: The net worth of the average black household in the United States is $6,314, compared with $110,500 for the average white household, according to 2011 census data. The gap has worsened in the last decade, and the United States now has a greater wealth gap by race than South Africa did during apartheid. (Whites in America on average own almost 18 times as much as blacks; in South Africa in 1970, the ratio was about 15 times.)

Indeed, economist and inequality expert Thomas Piketty notes that – according to an important measure – inequality in America today is the worst in world history: For those who work for a living, the level of inequality in the US – writes Piketty – is “… probably higher than in any other society at any time in the past, anywhere in the world …”

In other words, there might have been some squalid country in the distant past where the disparity between people without any job and the king was higher than between a jobless American and the top fatcat in the US. But the spread between the American worker and the American oligarch is the greatest in world history. Indeed, inequality in America has become so extreme that the “99% versus the 1%” meme is grossly inaccurate … because it’s really the .01% versus the 99.99%.

The cause of America’s runaway inequality? The Wall Street Journal notes: Many aspects of the recovery, and the Federal Reserve’s stimulus policies, have benefited the rich over others.

The 20 page instruction leaflet for party members was produced in November 1937 by the Heimatwerk organisation of the Saxony branch of the Nazi Party. The Heimatwerk was formed the previous year and billed itself as the promoter of 'Saxon Germanic culture as a shining example of true Germanness.' It was never intended for publication but distributed to party functionaries to see that the population buckled down to the new way of doing things.

The Nazi guide to Christmas starts off by telling followers that 'no festival is as German as Christmas' and then gives instructions about how many baubles should be placed on the tree. The swastika is 'firmly recommended' to replace a fairy or an angel at the top. Because Nazism viewed organised religion as a competitor - and therefore an enemy - of the movement, its disciples were told that it wasn't really a Christian celebration at all.

The manuscript goes on: 'The festival has been introduced against the wishes of the Church. Priests had to reinterpret it in a Christian light, in their favour, later on. The deep mystery of the German Christmas can only be understood by those who feel its originality and authenticity.'

This was part of the Nazi hijacking of Christmas, turning it into a form of pagan worship in which Germanic myth and legends became central to the celebrations. 'Maria is the German mother,' says the manuscript, 'and Jesus Santa Claus is no longer located in the crib, but will be relocated in a cradle to stand for the constant renewal of the German people.'

Thus it was not the Three Wise Men 'but the German workers and peasants who flock to him!' said the guide discovered in the archives of the Institute of Saxon History and Folklore in Dresden. Presents, parents were advised, should be part of a game of hide-and-seek so that the 'entire festival will be celebrated without Christ, but as a Germanic-fertility jubilee.'

Hitler, who was the Messiah to so many Germans, was indeed to become the new God of the German people. A prayer was suggested for the family to say together: 'We spent Christmas in the field, during combat, with the Germans. One was always with us… He is still with us. We greet him!' Him is not meant to be Jesus, but Hitler, the 'Saviour of the Germans.'

Privately, fissures emerged over fears that the UN initiative could inadvertently prop up Syrian President Bashar al Assad. The war continued to rage on Monday, with an al Qaeda-linked rebel group, the Nusra Front, saying it captured two strategic military bases from the Assad regime in Syria’s northwest after three years of failed attempts.

They have been censoring information in the past but now they are mulling the idea of a 'dislike' button. It won't be hard to find some good minders who will disappear information that your Government doesn't approve of. Facebook is far from being aboveboard when it comes to censorship and users can't dislike ads or privacy infringement. If you are not paying for the service then you are the product. You have no say in how Facebook does their business. Your first amendment rights are now privileges that can and will be taken away.

"Carmike Cinemas has canceled the nationwide Christmas Day release of Sony's 'The Interview,' the first theater chain to do so on the day hackers threatened 9/11-like attacks on theaters that showed the movie," reported The Wrap today. Sony pictures has been under siege ever since an elaborate hack stole studio files and emails, some of which have already been released to the great embarrassment of studio executives and Hollywood stars. Natural News hasn't covered any of this because it all seemed so pointless... until today.

Today the hacker group responsible for all this issued a direct terror threat, warning that a 9/11-style attack might take place at any movie theater that dared to show the movie. The threat elevated this entire incident to a whole new level: now it's not just hacking and stealing studio records; it's a direct and unambiguous terror threat against the American public.

The threat, reprinted at TheWrap.com, reads as follows:

“We will clearly show it to you at the very time and places ‘The Interview’ be shown, including the premiere, how bitter fate those who seek fun in terror should be doomed to. Soon all the world will see what an awful movie Sony Pictures Entertainment has made. The world will be full of fear. Remember the 11th of September 2001. We recommend you to keep yourself distant from the places at that time. (If your house is nearby, you'd better leave.) Whatever comes in the coming days is called by the greed of Sony Pictures Entertainment. All the world will denounce the SONY.”

If this message sounds a bit too similar to "all your base are belong to us," that's because the FBI suspects there's a North Korea link behind all this. Regardless of what happens with this Sony hack, the tone is now set: more corporations are going to be targeted by more hackers, and I predict we will one day see an elaborate hack literally destroy a large multinational corporation. The future of cyber security may literally be found in... typewriters. When it comes to cyber security, low tech is the new tech.

A major development finally unfolded on December 3, 2014 when a Member of Parliament rose in the House of Commons "to present a petition, from petitioners in Alberta, British Columbia, Ontario, and particularly in the Ottawa area, calling on the government of Canada to conduct a parliamentary review into the events that occurred in the United States on September 11."

Mainstream media quickly picked up the story, predictably labeling the petition "a call to support a conspiracy theory." Also unsurprisingly, the MP came under fire when she insisted that it was her duty as a Member of Parliament to present the petition to the government, even though she "does not agree with it."

Brinnier, a New York architect whose best friend, World Trade Center construction manager Frank Di Martini, was killed in the North Tower, traveled to Ottawa from Kingston, New York, to make a plea on behalf of all of the 9/11 family members: "I am here today because, like so many other people touched by this unthinkable tragedy, I know that the official story of what happened on that day simply does not add up, and I want the truth."

Later, in the Q&A session with reporters, Brinnier, who is a board member of the New York City Coalition for Accountability Now, reiterated, "To believe that simple office fires could cause the collapse of a 47-story office building — that's impossible." He vowed to continue fighting for the truth about 9/11 "as long as I have breath in my lungs."

These shorthand’s are just some of the 28 online abbreviations that feature in a new report by CNN about teenagers' secret online language. The list, collated by Kelly Wallace with the help of Internet safety expert Katie Greer, also contains slang such as '420' for 'marijuana', 'POS' for 'parent over shoulder' and the phrase every parent dreads their teenager reading '(L)MIRL' for 'let's meet in real life'.

Greer's research has found the majority of teens think their parents are trying to keep tabs on them online, so these acronyms are used to hide certain parts of their conversations. 'Acronyms used for this purpose could potentially raise some red flags for parents,' she warns.

[Go to link for full list]

The GRACE data, presented Tuesday at the American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco, showed those river basins losing about 4 trillion gallons per year — more than state residents use annually, NASA said.

In another finding, NASA said airborne measuring indicates the Sierra Nevada range snowpack was half previous estimates. "The 2014 snowpack was one of the three lowest on record and the worst since 1977, when California's population was half what it is now," Airborne Snow Observatory principal investigator Tom Painter of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory said in the NASA release.

California has been blasted by autumn storms dumping inches of much-needed rain - but that's still not enough to get the Golden State out of its drought. "Recent rains are no reason to let up on our conservation efforts," Felicia Marcus, chair of the State Water Resources Control Board, said recently.