The largest of these quakes reached a magnitude of 5.1 off the coast of El Hierro - the smallest island in the Canaries - and the island is said to have swelled by three inches. If the volcano was to erupt, the force could push masses of rock to the surface and subsequently create a new island or islet in the Canary chain. It would also mean all 10,000 residents on the 107 square mile stretch of land would need to be evacuated.

El Hierro itself was formed after three volcanic eruptions 100 million years ago and is topped by a volcano more than 6,000ft high. According to Involcan, the Volcanological Institute of the Canaries, over 550 earthquakes were reported and monitored between Monday and Christmas Day on Wednesday.

Under the Canary Islands lies an area of magma which is able to break through to the surface when the African Plate - on which the islands sit - shifts. Most of the islands are still volcanically active and there has been speculation that a smaller, previously undetected fault line also runs through the chain.

Eldad’s remarks come in the wake of the publication of the contents of a secret report by the State Comptroller regarding the enforcement, or lack thereof, of the law at the Temple Mount. The report was not made public in Israel because of concerns that doing so would result in violence. However, a New York-based Jewish website got its hands on the report and published it last week.

The report reveals some disturbing truths about the methods taken by the Waqf to remove any ties that the Jewish people have to the Temple Mount and how Israeli institutions cooperated with these actions.

Eldad told Arutz Sheva that the contents of the report, as they were published by the American website, indicate how much the government failed when it abandoned the Temple Mount and left it in the hands of the Waqf which was appointed by the Jordanian government. The Waqf, which was left in charge of the Temple Mount after Israel liberated it during the 1967 Six Day War, consistently destroys Jewish antiquities on the compound in a direct violation of a ruling by the Supreme Court.

"Jordan rejects Israel's installation of surveillance cameras on December 8 to monitor waqf officials and worshippers, particularly women," Information Minister Mohammad Momani told state news agency Petra.

"Jordan does not accept that Israel has set up a police station inside the compound. It is a flagrant military violation of the freedom of worshippers as well as an interference in the affairs of the Jordanian Islamic waqf [Islamic endowment],” he argued."Jordan will not stop efforts to prevent Israel from imposing a new status quo in Jerusalem,” Momani said.

Police have had to deal with many recent security disturbances at the Temple Mount as Muslim worshipers attack Jewish visitors. The attacks follow incitement from Muslim leaders, including calls to physically prevent Jews from visiting the holy site. Israel arrested a Hamas-linked terror cell that carried out attacks at the site in March, and in September, a wing of Fatah announced that it, too, plans to attack Israelis over Jewish visits to the Temple Mount.

Last week, Jordan’s parliament adopted a bill stating that violence against Israel is not a terrorist act.

Imagine the furore if German Chancellor Angela Merkel decided to visit a German war memorial that honored members of the SS and their role in the Second World War. It would immediately result in an avalanche of protest by the governments and citizens of those countries, which endured crimes of unspeakable barbarism at the hands of this fascist military organization – and understandably so.

The outrage expressed by China and South Korea over the recent visit to the Yasukini shrine in Tokyo honoring Japan’s 2.5 million Second World War dead – including mass murders and convicted war criminals – by Japan’s Prime Minister ShinzoAbe has to be viewed in the same context. It belongs in the same category as a German Chancellor paying homage to the SS.

Due to the attention given in the West to the European theater of the Second World War, the extent of the atrocities and war crimes committed by the Japanese armed forces during their occupation of South East Asia and China has never really been appreciated outside the region. The most notorious of those atrocities took place in December 1937, when the Japanese Imperial Army marched into Nanking – the then capital of the Republic of China – and proceeded to slaughter 300,000 of the city’s 600,000 residents over a six-week period.

Ann Furedi, of BPAS [British Pregnancy Advisory Service], said the law does not prevent women from choosing a termination on the grounds of gender and she even compared it to abortion after rape. Mrs Furedi's comments come weeks after it was disclosed that the CPS [Crown Prosecution Service] had decided not to prosecute two doctors who were exposed by a Daily Telegraph investigation arranging terminations purely because the unborn baby was a girl.

A group of 50 MPs, drawn from across the party divide, then wrote to this newspaper warning that the decision was a “step back in the fight for gender equality” and effectively changes the law without proper authority. Jeremy Hunt, the Health Secretary, has written to the Attorney General pressing for a full explanation.

However, Mrs Furedi – whose charity carries out more than a quarter of abortions in England and Wales, argued that if doctors believe going ahead with the pregnancy would damage the mental health of the mother, the abortion is within the law.

This practice has dire ramifications for human health, two experts warn, as the abundance of antibiotics in the food chain has resulted in drug-resistant bacteria that can leave people vulnerable to infections and other illnesses.

“Antimicrobial resistance is a critical threat to public health,” Aidan Hollis and Ziana Ahmed wrote in The New England Journal of Medicine. “The value of antibiotics for human health is immeasurable.” But, “the main use of this invaluable resource is rather disappointing: approximately 80% of antibiotics in the United States are consumed in agriculture and aquaculture,” they wrote.

“Modern medicine relies on antibiotics to kill off bacterial infections,” Hollis told Homeland Security News Wire. “This is incredibly important. Without effective antibiotics, any surgery — even minor ones — will become extremely risky. Cancer therapies, similarly, are dependent on the availability of effective antimicrobials. Ordinary infections will kill otherwise healthy people.” He added: “The real value of antibiotics is saving people from dying. Everything else is trivial.”

One child had a Body Mass Index (BMI) measurement of 35 - the equivalent of a six-foot man weighing 19st. (266lbs). It comes as an increasing number of parents give in to their children's cravings for unhealthy food - a phenomenon known as 'killing with kindness'. In the past year alone, five British children have been taken from their families because of overfeeding, according to a survey by the Sunday Express.

Britain's child obesity epidemic - which has seen hospitals deal with nearly 1,000 children in the past three years - is now thought to cost the NHS around £4.2 billion every year, according to estimates put forward by the Royal College of Paediatrics. Alarmingly, children as young as ten months old have been admitted to hospital because they are dangerously overweight, according to figures released in October.

The unidentified, morbidly-obese Year 6 pupil was the most extreme case recorded of six similarly-aged pupils all weighing in at more than 19 stone, the figures released to the Sunday Mercury show. Almost 50 children in Birmingham weighed in at more than 16 stone by the age of 11, according to the figures, which raise fresh fears about the scale of childhood obesity.

The statistic were compiled by the Health and Social Care information centre, and obtained by a Freedom of Information request. One quarter of year six children - typically aged 10 or 11 - are now classed as obese, while one in 10 children starting primary school is obese.

Financial campaigners have questioned whether investigations into LIBOR would confirm the presence of cartel like activity in currencies other than Japanese Yen, to which previous fines levelled against RBS, UBS, Barclays and ICAP relate.

LIBOR is set in 16 currencies. The top 5 traded currencies by volume being USD, Euro, JPY, Stirling, and AUD. With 16 globally traded LIBOR currencies, even 18 months after the first Barclays fine of June 2012, according to regulators only evidence of Yen manipulation has been uncovered. All of the UK and EU based charges against largely UK and EU banks have been curiously restricted to Japanese Yen LIBOR.

Despite beings the world’s number 1 traded currency, we are yet to see prosecution for US LIBOR manipulation, nor US trading banks.

“An advisory role has been entrusted to McKinsey & Company for the development — in close collaboration with the heads of the relevant offices — of an integrated plan to render the organization of means of communication within the Holy See more functional, effective and modern,” the Holy See press office announced December 19.

“The consultancy project will aim to provide the Commission with the information needed to make appropriate recommendations to the Pope,” the press office’s communiqué noted. The Vatican has six different communications departments: the press office; a television station; a radio broadcaster; a newspaper; an Internet office; and a communications council, which exercises an academic and policy-making role.

In addition to its communications makeover, the Holy See announced it is hiring Dutch-based KPMG to “align the accounting procedures of all agencies of the Holy See with international standards.” The hire of KPMG, a “global network of professional firms providing audit, tax and advisory services,” comes in the midst of ongoing financial reform at the Vatican, and is the latest in a series of external hires.

“We have undertaken ensuring that those chemicals are safely loaded onto Dutch and Norwegian container ships and safely transported while in Syrian waters. In other words, we will convoy these vessels,” Mikhail Ulyanov, head of the foreign ministry’s security and disarmament department, told RIA Novosti.

“We are not going to do this on our own, our Chinese partners will assist us,” he said. “It will be the first time when the military of Russia and China will perform their professional tasks side-by-side in a real-life crisis, not during joint drills.”

The operation to destroy the Syrian government’s arsenal of more than 1,000 metric tons of weapons-grade chemicals is due to take place in two stages. The most dangerous weapons have to be removed from Syria by the end of December and destroyed at sea by April, whereas the rest is slated for destruction by mid-2014.

Here is the mistake I believe will happen: Once consumer price inflation begins, it will not be possible to rein it in, the way Chairman Paul Volcker did in 1980 following the inflation brought by the Iranian Oil Shock of ‘79. The Fed will not want to rein it in, as they will see it as a sign that the economy is improving.

And once inflation reaches double digits — as it did just before Volcker slammed the brakes hard via 22% interest rates — the Federal Reserve under Janet Yellen will not have either the room-to-manoeuvre or the inclination to raise rates to fight inflation. Inflation can easily spiral out of control. I personally have seen it in South America — Chile, Argentina, Brazil. Once that genie is out of the bottle — and once a central bank proves itself unwilling to apply the strong medicine necessary to stop it — inflation will accelerate and blow up.

We are already seeing excessive asset price inflation due to the Federal Reserve’s QE and ZIRP policies: Equities are at historic highs while being completely divorced from fundamentals, bonds are yielding historic lows. Commodities are what you want to keep your eye on. Even as production and manufacturing slow down — as they currently are slowing to a crawl — you will see industrial commodities maintain their prices. Look at copper: $3.34 a pound, even as construction in China, the world’s largest consumer of copper, has virtually stopped.

As to precious metals, the lows we are seeing now are likely the calm before the storm. We are one good shove away from a dollar crash — and 2014 looks like it’ll be the year. The US economy is due for a recession, and the Federal Reserve will have to apply the same medicine of yore, QE. Only this time, it won’t succeed. Time to batten down the hatches, and get ready for a bumpy ride!

The Grocery Manufacturers Association has asked the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to approve their plan, which would mean any food containing GMO corn, sugar and other such ingredients could be sold as “natural.” One advocacy organization, the Environmental Working Group (EWG), blasted the food companies’ proposal.

Scott Faber, vice president of the EWG, called the association’s request “audacious.” “It’s like they’re trying to get the government to say night is day and black is white,” Faber told The New York Times. The request comes as food manufacturers are increasingly under attack from opponents of GM ingredients.

At least 65 lawsuits are pending in various courts aimed at forcing companies to stop using the word “natural” to describe products with GM elements.

David John Marotta, a Wall Street expert and financial advisor and Forbes contributor, said in a note to investors, “Firearms are the last item on the list, but they are on the list. There are some terrible people in this world. And you are safer when your trusted neighbors have firearms.” “I, along with many other economists, agree with many of the concerns expressed in these dire warnings.”

“The growing debt and deficit spending is a tax on those holding dollars. The devaluation in the US dollar risks the dollar's status as the reserve currency of the world. Obamacare was the worst legislation in the past 75 years. Socialism is on the rise and the NSA really is abrogating vast portions of the Constitution. I don't disagree with their concerns,” he wrote.

In his latest note, he said that Americans should have a survival kit to take in case of a financial or natural disaster. It should be filled with items that will help them stay alive for the first 72-hours of a crisis, including firearms.

Yet despite their be-prepared approach, BSA leaders are rooting for the change to be a non-event, comparable to another New Year's Day in 2000 when widespread fears of digital-clock chaos to start the new millennium proved unfounded. "My hope is there will be the same effect this January 1 as the Y2K scare," said Brad Haddock, a BSA national executive board member who chairs the policy implementation committee. "It's business as usual, nothing happens and we move forward."

Some churches are dropping their sponsorship of Scout units because of the new policy and some families are switching to a new conservative alternative called Trail Life USA. But massive defections haven't materialized and most major sponsors, including the Roman Catholic and Mormon churches, are maintaining ties.

The new policy was approved in May, with support from 60 percent of the 1,400 voting members of the BSA's National Council. The vote followed bitter nationwide debate, and was accompanied by an announcement that the BSA would continue to exclude openly gay adults from leadership positions.