Horrifically, Italian real GDP is still 9.1 percent short of its pre-recession peak - as analysis by RBS points out, its output is now back to the level it last was in 2000. Britain’s GDP is roughly a quarter larger than it was then. Italy had previously spent the pre-recession years quasi-stagnating while the rest of the world was booming; its performance has thus diverged dramatically from much of the rest of the developed world.

It gets worse: a combination of no growth and disinflationary pressures means that Italy’s national debt is increasing as a share of its national income. An analysis from Fathom Consulting highlights the fragile nature of Italy’s debt dynamics. Even if growth were miraculously to return to the 1.5 percent a year rate seen in the 30 years prior to the crisis, Italy would also need 2.3 percent inflation to stabilise its national debt.

More realistically, GDP will probably continue to flatline - and for the time being at least, eurozone inflation will remain low, partly as a result of the European Central Bank’s one-size-fits-all monetary policy. The result is hideously predictable: debt as share of the economy will keep on rising and will eventually asphyxiate the economy.

A heavily Jewish section of Paris was looted and attacked as crowds shouted “Gas the Jews,” in what correctly has been called a pogrom. Multiple synagogues and Jewish centers in Paris and elsewhere in France were firebombed, and neo-Nazi salutes were center stage.

In Berlin protesters shouted “Jew, cowardly pig, come out and fight.”

While in Frankfurt they carried signs such as “The Jews are Beasts” and the Star of David is “The Star of the Devil.”

In the Hague, Netherlands, crowds chanted “death to all Jews,” shocking local officials.

In England, particularly London, there have been over 100 anti-Semitic incidents, and anti-Israel protesters pushed The Protocols of the Elders of Zion anti-Semitic tract.

And it was not just overseas. In Miami, protesters chanted “Jews, remember Khaybar, the army of Muhammed is returning,” commemorating an Islamic war victory.

Now, compare that to the fact that each year, 23,000 Americans die from antibiotic-resistant infections, and another 2 million get sick. That's the equivalent of nearly eight 9/11's per year. But our government isn't doing a thing about it. Each year, Big Agriculture feeds millions and millions of pounds of antibiotics to factory-farm animals, all to slightly increase their profits by plumping up their meat.

In 2011 alone, nearly 30 million pounds of antibiotics were purchased by Big Agriculture, to promote growth in the animals, and to reduce the spread of disease in the horrific factory-farm conditions. That 30 million pounds is a staggering four times the amount of antibiotics that were prescribed to humans that year. These are otherwise healthy animals, but they're getting dosed daily with low-levels of antibiotics anyway.

As a result, this widespread and unnecessary use of antibiotics in factory-farm animals is creating a major public health crisis here in the US by breeding antibiotic-resistant infections caused by bacteria referred to in the media as superbugs.

'We fired the first interceptor. It missed. Second interceptor. It missed. This is very rare. I was in shock.' The defence system has been highly effective in the current round of violence between Israel and Hamas militants in the Gaza Strip - Israeli officials say it has a success rate as high as 90 percent.

The commander explains that with 'just four seconds' until the missile landed the military warned emergency services to be on standby.

'Suddenly, Iron Dome (which calculates wind speeds, among other things) shows a major wind coming from the east, a strong wind that … sends the missile into the sea. We were all stunned. I stood up and shouted, "There is a God!," he said. "I witnessed this miracle with my own eyes. It was not told or reported to me. I saw the hand of God send that missile into the sea".'

Founded by leftwing activist Billy Wimsatt, the group is a secretive digital gathering of writers, opinion leaders, activists and political hands who share information, ideas and strategy via a closed Google group. The group’s existence was discovered by Media Trackers through an open records request filed with a University of Wisconsin professor who happened to be a member of the network.

Dozens of members of the leftwing network have contributed columns to The Huffington Post, and others have written opinion pieces for several other publications. The full extent of the network’s activity and effectiveness at amplifying and coordinating left-leaning messaging campaigns has yet to be fully explored.

Saturday night in Inverness. Outside a McDonald's restaurant, a scuffle between two men breaks out. Three police officers arrive to intervene. So far, so mundane. Except that strapped around the hips of each of the policemen approaching the brawl is a holstered Glock 17 semi-automatic pistol.

It's a sight that once would have been unthinkable. In this corner of the Scottish Highlands - an area with one of the lowest crime rates in the UK - the officers showing up to a relatively workaday disturbance are armed. Although every police force has a firearms unit, for decades it has been an article of faith that in the mainland UK, almost uniquely among major industrialised nations, the police do not carry guns as a matter of course.

But with little fanfare at first, a policy of routinely allowing specialist officers to wear sidearms as they walk the streets of Scotland has come into being.

FDIC vice-chairman Thomas Hoenig said they had failed to show "how, in failure, any one of these firms could overcome obstacles to entering bankruptcy without precipitating a financial crisis". "The plans provide no credible or clear path through bankruptcy that doesn't require unrealistic assumptions and direct or indirect public support," Mr Hoening warned. The group comprises JP Morgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Deutsche Bank, Bank of America, Bank of New York Mellon, Barclays, Citigroup, Credit Suisse, Morgan Stanley, State Street and UBS.

Under the Dodd-Frank Act enacted in response to the 2008 financial crisis, the banks must demonstrate a strategy "for rapid and orderly resolution" in the event of bankruptcy or major financial distress. But the submissions by the financial giants fail to adequately prepare a so-called "living will" that could avert disaster, FDIC said. The rule was intended to address the problem of having financial institutions that are "too big to fail" because their demise could wreak havoc on the broader economy.

Among other things, the manual urges Hamas fighters to exploit the IDF's desire to minimize civilian casualties, noting:

"The soldiers and commanders (of the IDF) must limit their use of weapons and tactics that lead to the harm and unnecessary loss of people and [destruction of] civilian facilities. It is difficult for them to get the most use out of their firearms, especially of supporting fire [eg artillery]."

Apart from the use of human shields, the manual also sheds light on Hamas's use of the civilian infrastructure of Gaza to rally support.

Much of Hamas's military infrastructure and hardware is stored in residential homes - usually of its members - complicating the IDF's efforts to reach them in aerial strikes. An expose by Indian NDTV highlighted how terrorists deliberately set up rocket launchpads in heavily-populated residential areas, risking severe collateral damage in the event of an IDF retaliation.

The manual illustrates how even if civilians heed IDF warnings to leave - which Hamas encourages them to ignore - the destruction to homes can be used to their advantage as well: "The destruction of civilian homes: This increases the hatred of the citizens towards the attackers [the IDF] and increases their gathering support around the city defenders resistance forces [ie Hamas]."

Like the tiny handful of other journalists who have defied Hamas orders not to report anything negative about them, the NDTV report was only aired after the news team had left the Gaza Strip and were free from any risk of intimidation or worse at the hands of Hamas's security forces. Now, a France 24 TV journalist - who famously ducked for cover during a live interview when a Hamas rocket was fired right next to him - has also gone on the record to report how the rocket which caught him off guard was launched in a crowded civilian area and right in front of a UN building.

If you want to sink a well in California and pump out as much water as you can, there historically hasn’t been a lot to stop you. Unlike other Western states, California has never regulated groundwater withdrawals. As a result, over the last 150 years, Californians have pumped nearly 160 cubic kilometers of groundwater from the Central Valley, the state’s agricultural heartland. That’s enough water to fill Lake Powell, Lake Mead, and all the Colorado River reservoirs downstream — twice, with some left over. Groundwater withdrawal in the Central Valley was accelerating even before the current drought began in 2011. As much as 20 cubic kilometers of Central Valley groundwater may have been pumped out in just the last three years, according to one estimate. That’s about 12 percent of the last 150 years’ total depletion.

With less water in the aquifer beneath it to hold it up, the soil throughout the Central Valley is sinking. In some places, the land is dropping as much as a foot a year, damaging roads and other infrastructure and exposing communities to increased flood risk. But the missing water wasn’t just holding up the soil; it may have been holding the earth down as well. A study published earlier this year in the journal Nature suggested that the more water gets pumped out of the ground in the Central Valley, the greater the chance of earthquakes on the nearby San Andreas Fault.

It’s no surprise that groundwater pumping can set off earthquakes. A May 2011 quake in Lorca, Spain, which killed nine people and caused extensive damage to historic buildings, is thought to have been sparked by overdrafting of the local aquifer. It would seem the same physical processes operate in California.

California isn’t the only place where people are overdrafting their aquifers, of course. A recent study by the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the University of California, Irvine, found that the drought-plagued Colorado River basin has lost 50 cubic kilometers of groundwater in the last nine years. That’s 17.3 trillion gallons of water.