David Cameron's plan to give the public a vote on membership of the European Union could be defeated within weeks after Labour peers tabled dozens of outlandish amendments that could halt its progress in Parliament. More than 50 amendments were tabled for the committee stage of the EU Referendum Bill, including holding a petition of a million voters, posing the questions in Cornish and giving prisoners the vote, the Telegraph has learnt.

As a private member’s Bill, it has a limited time to pass through Parliament. It can only be debated on Fridays and must be approved by both houses by February 28. Conservatives said the amendments amounted to a plot conducted on behalf of Ed Miliband to “talk the Bill to death”. That would save the Labour leader, who has refused to set out a clear position on the EU referendum, from being portrayed as anti-democratic.

The warships are traveling on a mission that will span three months. The Iranian media outlet reported that aboard the ships were 30 or so navy academy cadets who were taking part in training exercises, as part of the overall military mission, AP said. The specifics of the military mission and the ports of call — if there were any – were not mentioned in the report.

But Iran is trying to bolster its image of a strong naval power, AP said. As part of that effort, the nation’s deployed several warships off the coast of Africa in recent months to fight pirates near the Gulf of Aden and to protect ships sailing for commercial reasons.

Sailing warships to the Atlantic is a first, and it comes less than two years after Iran vowed to do just that. In 2012, the nation vowed it would have warships placed in international waters near the coast of the United States within a few years.

Researchers from the US and China — including the University of California, Irvine and Peking University — found emissions from Chinese factories are blowing across the Pacific Ocean and exacerbating poor air quality along the West Coast. The study also says some of this exported pollution is a result of US and European business decisions to buy goods made in Chinese factories instead of relying on domestic sources.

“We’ve outsourced our manufacturing and much of our pollution, but some of it is blowing back across the Pacific to haunt us,” UC Irvine Earth System scientist Steve Davis, a study coauthor, said in a prepared statement. “Given the complaints about how Chinese pollution is corrupting other countries’ air, this paper shows that there may be plenty of blame to go around.”

An ambitious task to be sure, especially for the very people who have benefited the most from the record wealth transfer of the past 5 years. Still, while these true Robin Hoods of the modern gilded age are desperate for a few minutes of humanitarian TV exposure, or at least a soundbite or two, their advice to the peasants out there is quite clear: don't get too close.

And just to make sure the appropriate distance of at least a few hundred meters to every member of the great unwashed class they are "saving" is maintained, here is the hotel in which the bleeding heart Davos billionaires are staying: a $170 million fortress surrounded by barbed wire, security cameras, motion sensors and even its own helipad. Oh, and for those dignitaries of the non-private sector staying here, guess who is picking up the bill dear taxpayers?

About two-thirds of the state is experiencing “extreme drought” at the moment, and Governor Jerry Brown says that it is “not likely to rain for several weeks”. Unfortunately for California, the truth is that the weather in the western half of the country is simply returning to historical norms. Scientists tell us that the 20th century was the wettest century in the western half of the United States in 1,000 years, and that extremely dry conditions are normally what we should expect for most areas from the Pacific Ocean to the Mississippi River.

If long-term conditions truly are “returning to normal”, then the state of California could be heading for a water crisis of unprecedented magnitude. But it is not just the state of California that should be concerned. The reality of the matter is that the produce grown in California feeds the rest of the nation. The state produces 99 percent of the artichokes grown in the US, 44 percent of asparagus, a fifth of cabbage, two-thirds of carrots, half of bell peppers, 89 percent of cauliflower, 94 percent of broccoli, and 95 percent of celery.

Leafy greens? California’s got the market cornered: 90 percent of the leaf lettuce we consume, along with 83 percent of Romaine lettuce and 83 percent of fresh spinach, come from the big state on the left side of the map. California also cranks a third of the total fresh tomatoes consumed in the US — and 95 percent of ones destined for cans and other processing purposes.

As for fruit, I get that 86 percent of lemons and a quarter of oranges come from there; its sunny climate makes it perfect for citrus, and lemons store relatively well. Ninety percent of avocados? Fine. But 84 percent of peaches, 88 percent of fresh strawberries, and 97 percent of fresh plums? Come on. Surely the other 49 states can do better. In other words, the rest of us are extremely dependent on the fruits and vegetables that the state of California grows for us.

A Colorado blogger also snapped a picture in a Safeway store referencing a nationwide shortage of specialty and organic eggs. And it seems that supplies of certain kinds of organic produce may also be temporarily limited. Jon Steffy, of Organicproducegeek.com says demand during diet season, which he calls "resolution season", is amplified. "So I think we notice it more as demand continues to grow for wholesome organic food," he said.

Experts say the primary reasons for the shortages are weather and demand. So if your favorite organic produce is in short demand right now, some good bets for availability and decent prices are winter squash and dark leafy greens.

Abe was speaking on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland on Wednesday. His comments were provided by Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga after the Financial Times said Abe had told reporters that China and Japan were in a "similar situation" to Britain and Germany before 1914, whose close economic ties had not prevented the conflict.

He also said China's steady rise in military spending was a major source of regional instability, the newspaper reported. Suga said earlier in the day that Abe's comments should by no means be interpreted to mean that war between the two Asian giants was possible, noting that Abe had said dialogue and the rule of law, not armed forces and threats, were needed for peace and prosperity in Asia.

Sino-Japanese ties, long plagued by what Beijing sees as Japan's failure to atone for its occupation of parts of China in the 1930s and 1940s, have worsened recently due to a territorial row, Tokyo's mistrust of Beijing's military buildup and Abe's December visit to a shrine that critics say glorifies Japan's wartime past.

George Osborne now believes the EU needs to improve competitiveness in order to curb the relentless decline of Europe. He might as well be telling a firestorm to stop burning a forest. The reality is the EU has been engineering its own decline from its very outset and there is no appetite for the sort of reforms Mr Osborne demands. Indeed the trend is going in the opposite direction: federalism.

There’s no shortage of evidence for this claim. EU Commissioner and Vice President Viviane Reding recently stated that the EU will put federalism on the agenda in the lead up to the European elections in May. Her confession that the EU needs to become a ‘United States of Europe’ exposes the growing chasm between British interests and the utopian fantasies of the cabal in Brussels.

The Spinelli Group, an EU initiative founded by the leader of the Euro-liberals and former Belgian Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt, has already published its Federal Treaty for the EU. This is a detailed proposal to replace the existing treaties with ‘a fundamental law for the European Union’, with negotiations starting after the European elections.

An EU-funded group, European Alternatives Ltd, has also drafted a manifesto for a federal Europe, which calls for a universal basic income, a ban on fracking, and an increase in VAT to fund welfare spending. This is precisely why the idea of EU reform is little more than a futile hope, employed by David Cameron’s circle of advisers to delay the date of the inevitable referendum. The EU is strongly committed to an ever-closer union and an eventual superstate.

As we previously noted, instead of crushing credit creation, the PBOC's [People's Bank of China] liquidity rationing has forced distressed companies into high-interest-cost products in the shadow-banking world. Investors on the other side of "troubled shadow banking products" had assumed that 'someone' would bail them out but this evening Reuters reports that ICBC [Industrial and Commercial Bank of China] has confirmed that it will not rescue holders of the "Credit Equals Gold #1 Collective Trust Product", due to mature January 31st with $492 million outstanding.

The anxiety from contagion concerns of the first shadow-banking default has pushed the Shanghai Composite back near 2,000 for the first time since July - and to its narrowest spread to the S&P 500 in almost 8 years.

As Michael Pettis, Jim Chanos, Zero Hedge (numerous times), and now George Soros have explained. Simply put - "There is an unresolved self-contradiction in China’s current policies: restarting the furnaces also reignites exponential debt growth, which cannot be sustained for much longer than a couple of years."

The "eerie resemblances" - as Soros previously noted - to the US in 2008 have profound consequences for China and the world - nowhere is that more dangerously exposed (just as in the US) than in the Chinese shadow banking sector as explained above.

It seems BofAML [Bank of America Merrill Lynch] is now beginning to get concerned, noting that over 60% of market participants expect repo rates to rise if a trust product defaults and based on the analysis below, they think there is a high probability for CEQ1 to default on 31 January, ie no full redemption of principal and back-coupon on the day.

Crucially, with the stratospheric leverage ratios now engaged in such products, BofAML warns trust companies must answer some serious questions: will they stand back behind every trust investment or will they have to default on some or potentially many of them? BofAML believes the question needs an answer because investors and Trusts can’t have their cake and eat it too.

The potential first default, even if it’s not CEQ1 on 1/31, would be important based on the experience of what happened to the US and Europe; the market has tended to underestimate the initial event.

As Bloomberg's Niraj Shah notes, it's not just the PIIGS [Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece, Spain] we have to worry about (or not), Denmark, Finland, Norway and Poland have been added to the IMF’s [International Monetary Fund] list of countries with the potential to destabilize the global economy.

The inclusion of three Nordic nations for mandatory assessment is the result of a new methodology by the IMF that gives more weight to financial interconnectedness. The UK is the most financially linked nation in the world, followed by Germany. Seven of the top 10 most interconnected financial nations are in the euro-area.

So as the world congratulates itself (most notably Ben Bernanke today), the IMF seems concerned that this could all get worse again very quickly. Think they are all too small to worry about? Remember Lehman?

And the top one per cent of earners are worth £67.3 trillion - almost half (46 per cent) of the world's wealth, according to a report by Oxfam.The 85 richest people in the world now have as much money as the 3.5 billion poorest put together. The combined wealth of people including Bill Gates, Warren Buffet and the Koch Brothers has increased to £1 trillion. And the top one per cent of earners are worth £67.3 trillion - almost half (46 per cent) of the world's wealth, according to a report by Oxfam.

Critics claim the surge in inequality has been driven by 'power grabbing' wealthy elites who harbour close relationships with leading politicians. Winnie Byanyima, chief executive of Oxfam, said: 'It is staggering that in the 21st century, half of the world’s population - that’s three and a half billion people - own no more than a tiny elite whose numbers could all fit comfortably on a double-decker bus.

The findings come as David Cameron and other world leaders fly to Davos, Switzerland, for the World Economics Forum, attended by some of the most influential businesses. Oxfam said the focus of the exclusive gathering – which includes more than 2,500 business leaders, heads of state and other powerful figures – must be the ‘extreme economic inequality’ which is ‘undermining social stability and threatening global security’.

Drug and insurance companies will from later this year be able to buy information on patients – including mental health conditions and diseases such as cancer, as well as smoking and drinking habits – once a single English database of medical data has been created.

Harvested from GP and hospital records, medical data covering the entire population will be uploaded to the repository controlled by a new arms-length NHS information centre, starting in March. Never before has the entire medical history of the nation been digitised and stored in one place.

Advocates say that sharing data will make medical advances easier and ultimately save lives because it will allow researchers to investigate drug side effects or the performance of hospital surgical units by tracking the impact on patients. But privacy experts warn there will be no way for the public to work out who has their medical records or to what use their data will be put. The extracted information will contain NHS numbers, date of birth, postcode, ethnicity and gender.

Unfortunately, NHS England – the commissioning body that now runs the NHS in England – has decided not to include an opt out form with the leaflet and the information in it says you should “speak to your GP practice” if you want to stop your or your family’s confidential medical information being uploaded and passed on.

This is misleading. You do not have to speak with your doctor or book an appointment. The choice to keep your medical records private is completely down to you; all you need do is inform your GP of your choice, which you can do simply by writing a letter or dropping a form into your surgery.

After a series of five moderate earthquakes shook the country in October, experts installed a seismic monitoring system at the Tower of David, one of Jerusalem’s most important — and most visible — historical sites.

The project is Israel’s first attempt to use such technology to determine structural weaknesses in the countless ancient edifices that dot the Holy Land. The efforts, however, have been slowed by authorities’ reticence to publicly declare sites as vulnerable, as well as the explosive geopolitics surrounding ancient Jewish, Christian and Muslim sites at the heart of the Mideast conflict.

“We have to remember that this is the Holy Land,” said Avi Shapira, head of a national steering committee for earthquake preparedness. “We have some responsibility not only to preserve the historical monuments of our personal heritage … but also for the rest of the world.” Most of Israel’s historical sites “have not been checked,” said Shapira. “We have them on the map, but an engineer still hasn’t visited them.”

Israel has been bracing for another major earthquake for years. But those efforts have focused on retrofitting existing schools and hospitals and apartment buildings, and improving standards in new construction.The country is just getting around to surveying its historical sites, and the assessment process has turned out to be sensitive.