The UK has now reached the Government’s controversial target of spending 0.7 per cent of gross national income on international aid, with the total reaching more than £11.2 billion last year. However, analysis of an annual index of global corruption compiled by the respected organisation Transparency International has shown that the recipients of British overseas support included nearly all the countries who have the most serious problems with bribery and abuse of power, The Daily Mail reported.

In 2012 the UK donated £86.8 million to help people in Somalia, ranked the most corrupt nation in the world. There was also £200 million in British aid for Afghanistan, rated third in Transparency International’s list. In many cases the money is channelled via charities and agencies rather than being given directly to the countries’ governments in an attempt to avoid it being pocketed by corrupt officials.

Peter Bone, the Conservative MP for Wellingborough, told The Daily Mail: “I am sure ministers take what precautions they can, but the situation in many of these countries is so bad that there is no way of knowing where the money ends up. It all comes down to this ridiculous artificial target which means we have to send more and more money every time the economy improves, rather than having a real assessment of need.”

Things are wildly different today. A huge chunk of modern-day technology, from hybrid cars to iPhones to flat-screen TVs to radiation screens, use dozens of different metals and alloys. A computer chip typically involves more than 60 different elements that are specifically selected to optimize performance, like europium or dysprosium.

And that's long raised a concern: What would happen if we run short of any of these valuable metals? Say there's a war. Or unrest in a crucial mining region. Or China decides to lock up its strontium deposits. Could we easily come up with substitutes? Or is modern society vulnerable to a materials shortage?

Here's the case for vulnerability: A fascinating recent paper in The Proceedings of the National Academies of Science looks at 62 different metals that are widely used in modern-day industry. For a dozen metals, potential substitutes are either inadequate or flat-out unavailable. And there are no "excellent" substitutes for any of the 62 metals. A shortage of any of them could do some damage.

As cattle trailers that had traveled up to four hours in 95-degree heat began to unload, 15 heifers and steers hobbled down the ramps on August 5, barely able to walk. The reason: The animals had lost their hooves, according to US Department of Agriculture documents reviewed by Reuters. The documents show the 15 animals were destroyed. The next day, the hottest day of the month, two more animals with missing hooves arrived by truck. Again, the animals were destroyed, the documents show.

Merck, in a statement to Reuters, stressed the safety of its product. It said the company investigates all reports of adverse reactions to its drugs, and did so after the deaths near Pasco. Merck declined to identify the names of the third-party investigators or provide more detail on the research findings.

Reports that Zilmax causes lameness in some animals have raised concerns about the tradeoffs associated with a drug that adds up to 33 pounds of marketable meat to a 1,300-pound steer and has helped some feedlots stay in business at a time of punishing industry consolidation.

Some previously staunch supporters of Merck's innovative growth drug are beginning to question the product's safety record. "Maybe we found the point where we pushed the cattle just so hard in the sake of making a buck that we exceeded the biological limits of the cattle," said Abe Turgeon, a prominent livestock nutritionist, who had previously recommended Zilmax to some customers.

A thousand anecdotes proving his humanity have built his public image – everything from his sneaking out at night to feed the poor to his personally telephoning a father mourning his son's premature death. To capture the public's imagination, good deeds trump any amount of words.

Most people really don't care about theological nuances and political subtleties. They care about kindness. My 20-year-old stepson, who hasn't set foot in a church (willingly) in years, quotes Francis at me on an almost daily basis. He's getting his information from Twitter and Pulse, and is the one to tell me that Francis had said an atheist could be a good person, and who told me the Pope had made sandwiches for his Swiss guard when he was hungry.

Sadly, acts of kindness are so rare among public figures, that Francis strikes us as extraordinary. We have come to expect high-profile to mean high-maintenance. To learn that someone in a supreme position can do so much good is positively subversive. Far more so than if the Pope were a socialist.

Breton, 29, worked as a nurse at Horizons Healthcare Services in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, when she was told that all employees were required to get a flu shot. The Center of Disease Control and Prevention advises that all health care professionals get vaccinated annually. She told her employers that she would not get the vaccine after she explained that there were very limited studies of the effects on pregnant women.

The mother of one submitted letters from her obstetrician and primary care doctor supporting her decision, but she was told that she would be fired on December 17 if she did not receive the vaccine before then. Horizons Healthcare Services spokesman Alan Peterson told CNN affiliate WPVI that it's unconscionable for a health care worker not to be immunized and that pregnant women are more susceptible to the flu.

Breton came to the decision with her family after three miscarriages.

"A reversal of the sun's magnetic field is, literally, a big event," said Nasa’s Dr Tony Phillips. "The domain of the sun's magnetic influence (also known as the 'heliosphere') extends billions of kilometers beyond Pluto. Changes to the field's polarity ripple all the way out to the Voyager probes, on the doorstep of interstellar space."

"At the height of each magnetic flip, the sun goes through periods of more solar activity, during which there are more sunspots, and more eruptive events such as solar flares and coronal mass ejections," said Nasa’s Karen C Fox. "Cosmic rays are also affected," added Dr Phillips. "These are high-energy particles accelerated to nearly light speed by supernova explosions and other violent events in the galaxy."

"What is going wrong with the world is vastly outweighed by what is going right. And the run of depressing news stories can actually blind us to the greatest story of our age: we really are on our way to making poverty history."

Fraser's conservatism is the kind that uplifts. Bruce Anderson's, by contrast, is a real downer. Writing for the Telegraph, he warns that we are on the brink of nuclear catastrophe. With the end of the Cold War there is suddenly nothing to hold radical Islam back; madmen define the course of events. Palestine and Pakistan are ready to blow.

Last year was a year of near-misses. The West nearly went to war in Syria, which would have put us on the side of an alliance that includes the kind of Islamists we've been fighting in Afghanistan. North Korea declared hypothetical war on the United States, or at least to obliterate its capitalist lackeys that run South Korea. All of this was presumably for domestic consumption: Kim Jong-un was still working on building his brand in Pyongyang. China on that occasion did the right thing and urged caution. But over the Senkakus islands it went a little postal itself, threatening to spark World War III for the sake of some fishing huts.

Here's the rub: the peace and democracy that the West has enjoyed since 1945 is not the End of History but an exceptional moment that proves the rule that, for most people throughout most of history, life has been nasty, brutish and short. And our party in Europe may well end soon, too. The self-destructors of the Middle East may wage war on us. China might decide to call in its debts. Russia might try to prove its might with a confrontation.

And the end needn't come from without if the ongoing economic crisis erodes the material comfort that has kept us living in a consumer dream for so long. According to opinion polls, the Front National is likely to sweep the French elections in 2014 thanks to joblessness and immigration. We could be on the verge of witnessing a second Hitler.

Even though the stock market has been setting record high after record high, the amount of anger and frustration boiling just under the surface in our nation grows with each passing day. And now extended unemployment benefits have been cut off for 1.3 million unemployed Americans, and it is being projected that a total of 5 million unemployed Americans will lose their benefits by the end of 2014.

In addition, as I have written about previously, 47 million Americans recently had their food stamp benefits reduced. The conditions for a "perfect storm" are certainly being created. So how much longer will it be until we see all of this anger and frustration boil over in the streets of our major cities? Is America about to reach a breaking point?

Are there any solutions that could get us out of this mess?

Of course there are. But don't hold your breath waiting for any of them to be adopted. In fact, the American people continue to express great support for the very people that got us into this mess in the first place. For example, according to a Gallup survey that was just released, Barack Obama is the most admired man in America by a very wide margin and Hillary Clinton is the most admired woman in America by a very wide margin.

And the mainstream media will continue to tell all of us that "leaders" like Obama, Clinton, Reid, Boehner, McConnell and Pelosi can be trusted to get us out of this mess. If you believe that, there is a bridge that I would like to sell you.

Up against a gathering credit crunch, the Chinese economy will slow to almost stall-speed; the price of Brent crude will sink below $80 a barrel; Germany will slide back into recession; the United Kingdom will remain intact and the internet will begin to Balkanise, leading to a boom in encryption technology but problems for the big global online brands.

What does the future hold for the economy and markets? Normal health and wealth warnings apply. My big prediction is for $80 oil, from which much of the rest of my outlook for the coming year flows. It’s hard to overstate the significance of a much lower oil price – Brent at, say, $80 a barrel, or perhaps lower still – yet this is a surprisingly likely prospect, the implications of which have been largely missed by mainstream economic forecasters.

In Thomas Mann’s metaphysical novel The Magic Mountain, the chief protagonist, Hans Castorp, eventually descends from a life of quiet contemplation and philosophical discussion high up in the Swiss Alpine resort of Davos to the brutal reality and mass slaughter of the First World War. With the centenary year of this catastrophe now upon us, it’s worth remembering just how close to fracture the world always is and just how hard these destructive forces must continually be fought.

The US premise was, Israel should do this as a gesture for peace. It was a curious concept because no such ‘gesture’ was required of the Palestinian Authority (PA). No one required the PA to condemn the killing of Jews. No one demanded that the PA condemn all attacks against Jews. Even as the number of attacks against Jews jumped from 87 in July to 167 in November, no one demanded that the PA condemn such attacks.

But everyone — the US, the EU and the PA — demanded that Israel stick to its release schedule - 26 prisoners every couple of months until all 104 would go free. Jewish bloodshed meant nothing. The ‘gesture’ was a ‘requirement’. Jewish blood is that cheap: the Jews must free killers even as Jews are attacked. But the Arabs must not be pressured, reprimanded or warned, even as they incite against Jews.

Israel seems to be the only country in the West to release unrepentant killers. The US, by contrast, holds 158 ‘detainees’ in Guantanamo Bay who have not killed Americans on US soil. These detainees have never received the benefit of trial in a US court. Some have been tortured. The US has not closed this prison. It won’t close it even as the United Nations wants it closed. The current 158 detainees do not appear to be ‘release-able’ any time soon.

Funny thing about Israel today: it may be the most anti-Jewish country in the world. We’ve got work to do. We are Jews. Israel is our homeland. Israel is the homeland G-d gave to us—and to us alone. It is our only homeland. We have no place else to go. If we don’t protect Israel, no one else will protect it for us. If we want Israel, we will have to fight for it.

Pulling out of the European Convention on Human Rights to give the UK more control over human rights laws was also being considered by the party. The comments suggest the Conservatives will go into the 2015 general election in Britain on a ticket of major reforms to the Human Rights Act. Mr Grayling said the final proposals would emerge shortly. He said: “We have to make our Supreme Court supreme. I do not believe decisions about the way this country is governed - we are a democracy after all - should be taken elsewhere.”

Mr Grayling was speaking after the former head of Britain’s judiciary said European judges are creating a ‘serious problem’ by undermining Parliament’s sovereignty. Lord Judge, who was the Lord Chief Justice until September, has repeatedly stated that the unelected European Court of Human Rights should not impose rulings on the UK.

Infowars continues: While the media has concentrated on the threat such groups pose to February’s Winter Olympics in Sochi, no scrutiny has been given to a warning issued by Saudi Prince Bandar bin Sultan back in August when he told Vladimir Putin that Saudi Arabia would activate the Chechen terrorist groups it controls to target Russia if Moscow refused to abandon its support for Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad.

As we reported at the time, the threat was made during a closed-door meeting between Prince Bandar and Putin at the beginning of August. According to a transcript of the comments made during the meeting by Middle Eastern news agency Al Monitor, Bandar made a series of promises and threats to Putin in return for Moscow withdrawing its support for Assad in Syria.

“I can give you a guarantee to protect the Winter Olympics next year,” Bandar allegedly stated, adding, “The Chechen groups that threaten the security of the games are controlled by us.” Bandar made it clear that his position was supported by the US government. This “guarantee” to stop the Chechens from attacking the Sochi Olympics was also obviously a veiled threat that if Russia did not abandon Assad, terrorist attacks would be given the green light.

Given that Russia did not abandon Assad and indeed virtually single-handedly prevented a US military strike on Syria, much to the chagrin of Saudi Arabia which is the primary supplier of anti-Assad rebel jihadists, are we to believe that the Volgograd bombings are evidence of Bandar following through on his threat?

Lebanese President Michel Sleiman revealed the Saudi gift on Lebanese national television Sunday, calling it the largest aid package ever to the country's defense bodies. The Saudi pledge compares with Lebanon's 2012 defense budget, which the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute put at $1.7 billion.

The Saudi move was announced hours after thousands of Lebanese turned out for the funerals of former cabinet minister Mohamad Chatah and some of the other victims killed Friday in a bombing in downtown Beirut. The bomb was believed to have targeted Mr Chatah, an outspoken critic of Hezbollah's dominance of Lebanese affairs and security. No group has claimed responsibility. Saudi Arabia on Friday responded to the assassination by calling for Lebanon to build up the government and armed forces "to stop this tampering with the security of Lebanon and the Lebanese."

Surprisingly, the biggest winner here may be none other than France: "Lebanon would use the Saudi grant to buy "newer and more modern weapons," from France, said Mr Sleiman, an independent who has become increasingly critical of Hezbollah. It followed what he called "decades of unsuccessful efforts to build a credible Lebanese national defense force."

But Germany faces significant economic challenges and risks. The nation's economic power and financial strength may be overstated. German economic strength relies on its export prowess. The assumption is that the country can decouple from the eurozone, increasing its focus on emerging markets. But German exports to European countries account for around 69% of the total exports, including 57% to member states of the EU.

Germany's overall global trade surpluses are reliant on exports to the eurozone. Continued weakness in these troubled countries will affect Germany's economic prospects. Germany's export performance also depends on the value of the euro. High energy prices and increasing problems in emerging markets will exacerbate its problems. A slowdown in Germany's exports will have secondary effects. The recovery in economies like Spain is dependent on exporting intermediate goods to Germany that are then re-exported as part of finished products. Reduction in Germany's exports will decrease economic activity in these countries, in turn, reducing demand for German exports within Europe.

Germany's infrastructure is ageing, needing investment. Energy costs remain high, some 30% above that of the rest of Europe and double that of the US, reducing competitiveness. High natural gas costs — four times the US cost — disadvantage its petrochemical industry. Germany's demographics, with an ageing population, compound its problems.

Germany also remains vulnerable to continuing problems in Europe. The minimum wage and retirement benefit changes also are inconsistent with Chancellor Merkel's austerity and restraint message to many troubled European nations. This will make it difficult for Germany to insist on further sacrifices from these countries. This time, Chancellor Merkel may have been handed a poisoned chalice.

The once-soaring bridges are sagging. Some trains’ switching equipment, once top-of-the-line, haven’t been updated since the time of the Kaisers. Well-engineered canal locks are succumbing to silt and neglect. Germany’s network of roads and railroads is one of the densest and most developed in the world. But the bottlenecks are starting to crimp Germany’s export-driven economy, experts say.

Even maintaining the status quo will require nearly doubling current levels of spending, according to a recent report issued by a government commission. Peter Osse, a shipper in the port of Hamburg, says he increasingly reaches not for a timetable but a prayer book when he makes transportation plans.

“Germany is the second-largest of the world’s exporting nations, but only if our transport system is functioning. If not, our economy will be in a dangerous situation,” said Kurt Bodewig, a former transportation minister who led a federal commission that recently recommended that Germany needs to spend $9.7 billion a year more on infrastructure just to maintain its current network. Merkel’s new coalition agreement increases spending by a fifth that much.