US Pentagon chief Chuck Hagel has assured Gulf states that the agreement struck between major powers and Iran on November 24 will not affect the presence of some 35,000 US troops in the region. But in a speech at the Manama Dialogue security forum in Bahrain, Saudi Assistant Foreign Minister Nizar Madani said "Gulf countries should no longer depend on others to ensure their safety."

The oil-rich monarchies "must unite under one political entity in order to face internal and external challenges," said the minister. Riyadh has called for an enhanced union with fellow Gulf Cooperation Council states Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, which together account for 40 percent of the world's oil reserves and a quarter of its natural gas.

"All countries have realised that blind dependence on a foreign power is no longer acceptable. GCC countries must decide their own futures," said Madani.

"Relations between Hamas and Iran have resumed," senior official Mahmud al-Zahar told reporters at a Monday news conference in Gaza. Ties had been "affected by the Syria situation, and Hamas has withdrawn from Syria so that it can't be identified with this or that side," he said. "We've confirmed we are not interfering in the Syrian case, or in any other Arab country."

Shia Iran had long supported the Sunni Hamas against Israel, which is viewed as a common enemy. But exiled Hamas chief Khaled Meshaal left his base in Damascus after the Syrian civil war broke out in 2011, criticizing President Bashar al-Assad, a key ally of Iran, and moving to the Sunni Gulf state of Qatar.

But the Hamas leader made remarks in October of this year supporting the Assad regime and calling for an end in sectarian fighting at a Jerusalem conference. The move was subsequently slammed by powerful rebel group Army of Islam, who denounced Hamas's ties with the Assad ally and claimed that they were trying to restore funding to Gaza by exploiting their position on the conflict. Media reports indicate that the constant switching of sides has led to a huge decrease in Hamas's funding - especially from Iran.

Too much fluid can cause heart failure and too little leads to kidney problems. The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) said doctors and nurses needed better drip training. Patients' groups said the scale of the problem was "staggering". Thousands of people each year need a drip in hospital. But NICE warns that staff are putting lives in danger due to a lack of education in managing intravenous drips.

It has developed new guidelines for the NHS in England and Wales. Dr Mike Stroud, a gastroenterology consultant at Southampton University Hospitals NHS Trust, who developed the guidelines, said: "Doctors and other health professionals are not well educated in terms of what a patient needs and that is astonishing really. This needs to change."

According to the regulator, it qualifies as a limited and controlled release under section 50A of the Gene Technology Act 2000 (the Act). PaxVax is seeking approval to conduct the clinical trial of a genetically modified live bacterial vaccine against cholera. Once underway the trial is expected to be completed within one year, with trial sites selected from local government areas (LGAs) in Queensland, South Australia, Victoria and Western Australia.

In her recent book The Drugs Don’t Work, Davies explains that seven decades ago western doctors started using antimicrobials such as penicillin on a large scale to combat infections. Since then, we have all become accustomed to relying – unthinkingly – on these wonder drugs. But although they have transformed our lives, there is a catch. Since the drugs are so widely used – if not abused – the bacteria they fight are now mutating and becoming resistant.

The drugs companies, meanwhile, are not creating new antimicrobial medicines that could beat the bugs. As a result, we are moving towards a world where, within a generation, the drugs simply may not work any more. Modern medicine could lose the ability to combat many illnesses or infections. This sounds so horrifying it seems hard to imagine, and most people (myself included) rarely ponder this issue at all. But the problem is not merely theoretical. Davies calculates that about 25,000 people a year are already dying from drug-resistant bacteria in Europe – and the toll is similar in the US. “That is almost the same number as die in road traffic accidents,” she points out.

The only thing more startling than this is just how little response it has sparked among governments and voters. The figures that Davies is citing are hardly a dark secret: data are routinely being published on health websites. And Davies could hardly be described as a maverick – she has written her book while sitting in Whitehall, at the very heart of British government. Even from that elevated position, the vivacious, no-nonsense Davies admits that she is finding it extraordinarily difficult to get people to care.

Eugene Fama, who shares this year’s 8 million crown ($1.2 million) prize with Robert Shiller and Lars Peter Hansen, said on Saturday that highly indebted governments in the United States and Europe posed a constant threat to the global economy.

“There may come a point where the financial markets say none of their debt is credible anymore and they can’t finance themselves,” he told Reuters in the snow-covered Swedish capital, where he will receive his prize on Tuesday.

"If there is another recession, it is going to be worldwide." Fama, who has been called the father of modern finance and shared the economics prize for research into market prices and asset bubbles, played down this week's strong US labor market data. "I am not reassured at all," he said.

On June 28th, a Vatican cleric, along with a former Secret Service agent, and a financial broker were all arrested by Italian police and charged with fraud and corruption. The three were suspected of smuggling $24 million by private plane across the border from Switzerland. The banks became so fearful of being tarnished by the Vatican that some have even closed down their accounts for the Embassies of the Vatican. HSBC did cease doing business with the Embassy of the Vatican, and other large banks are considering the same.

In March 2012, JP Morgan closed the bank accounts it held for the Vatican because the documentation provided was not thorough. Vatican was asking JPM to move money all around the world for it via wire transfers but the basic Know Your Customer data could not be obtained. When JPM would say, “we need to answer to the regulators on these wire transactions” the Vatican Bank would push back and say, “We answer to God,” according to a bank manager at a large European bank.

Japanese media is reporting that the intensity of radiation levels in the nuclear powerplant devastated by the earthquake – and subsequent tidal waves – of March 2011 is now at its highest levels ever. On Friday, Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) reportedly detected the deadly radiation in a duct linking one of the damaged reactor buildings to a 120m tall ventilation pipe.

• The radioactivity has been measured at 25 Sieverts (Sv) per hour.

• A total dose of two Sv is regarded as severe radiation poisoning.

• Six Sv produces a 100 per cent mortality rate after 30 days of suffering.

The move to abolish RIA Novosti and create a news agency to be known as Rossiya Segodnya is the second in two weeks strengthening Putin’s hold on the media as he tries to reassert his authority after protests against his rule. Most Russian media outlets are already loyal to Putin, and opponents get little air time, but the shake-up underlined their importance to Putin keeping power and the Kremlin’s concern about the president’s ratings and image.

The head of the new agency, to be built from the ashes of RIA Novosti, is a conservative news anchor, Dmitry Kiselyov, who once caused outrage by saying the organs of homosexuals should not be used in transplants. “The main focus of … Rossiya Segodnya (Russia Today) is to highlight abroad the state policy and public life of the Russian Federation,” said a decree signed by Putin.

Sergei Ivanov, the head of the presidential administration, told reporters that the changes were intended to save money and improve the state media. But the new organization has strong similarities to APN, a Soviet-era news agency whose role included writing articles about “the social-economic and cultural life of the Soviet people and items reflecting Soviet society’s point of view on important internal and international events”.

However, what is worse that the red-flashing-headlines of record youth (and total) unemployment is, as Bloomberg's Niraj Shah notes, 125 million people in the EU are at risk of poverty or social exclusion. According to Eurostat, that is 24.8% of the population. Almost half of Bulgarians faced economic hardship and Greece had the highest poverty rate in the euro area at 34.6%.

Under the agreement, which is to be signed at the World Bank in Washington, AFP reports that water will be drawn from the Gulf of Aqaba off of Eilat in Israel's south, with some desalinated and distributed to all three members of the agreement, and the rest transferred in 4 pipes to the Dead Sea.

While estimates say the Dead Sea is on pace to dry out by 2050, environmental groups have warned that the Dead Sea's delicate ecosystem could be damaged by a large influx of Red Sea water. In August, Jordan announced a $980 million project to transfer water from the Red Sea to the Dead Sea, which appears to have been a recent impetus to the deal. After the deal is signed, Shalom said "an international tender will be issued for the entire project - building the desalination plant in Aqaba and laying the first of the four pipes."

Shalom praised the announcement as "a breakthrough after many years of efforts. It is nothing less than a historic move." He particularly noted the economic aspects of obtaining cheap water, the environmental aspect of "saving the Dead Sea," and diplomatic aspects of signing a deal as peace talks with the PA are failing by many accounts.

But the judge, who is retiring from the bench next year after decades as a family lawyer and judge, said those who did not feel ready for children should not have them. He said couples had no right to have children, “you only have responsibilities if you have them”.

Sir Paul criticised warring parents’ obsessions with their own “rights” instead of their responsibilities to do the best for their children. His comments came after his Marriage Foundation think-tank published research suggesting children whose parents were not married were twice as likely to suffer a family break-up as those whose parents were married.

The Office for National Statistics reported earlier this year that the proportion of children born to unmarried mothers in England and Wales reached a record 47.5 per cent last year. This means that as many as 346,595 babies were born outside marriage or civil partnerships in England and Wales.

Sir Paul Coleridge, the family division judge, will warn of “yawning public ignorance” about the damaging mental effects on children of conflict between parents, even from birth. It emerged last week that Sir Paul, who is retiring next year, decided to step down because of opposition from within the judiciary to his support for traditional marriage.

He has been placed under investigation and could be officially censured over comments last year criticising the Government for pushing through same-sex marriage legislation rather than tackling a “crisis of family breakdown”. Speaking in London he will call for a new approach to tackling family breakdown with a greater emphasis on helping prevent relationships running into trouble in the first place.

Unfortunately, say critics, what the deal is certain to "deliver" is more pain and suffering for the world's poorest people and farmers at the expense of the world's largest and most powerful nations and corporations.

Anti-poverty groups and food sovereignty advocates across the world were pushing off pronouncements like Azevedo's, saying that the agreement is a failure when it comes to fairness, poverty reduction, environmental protections, and the alleviation of hunger across the globe.

Among those slamming the final deal, director of the World Development Movement (WDM) Nick Dearden said the Bali agreement is designed to serve the interests of "transnational corporations not the world's poor."

John Hilary from‘War on Want’ stated: "There is a rank hypocrisy at the heart of the WTO that cannot be glossed over. The USA and EU continue to channel billions in subsidies to their richest farmers, yet seek to destroy other countries’ right to protect their poorest citizens from starvation. The WTO is an institution that has lost any claim to legitimacy. No amount of spin from Bali can disguise that fact."

Marcus Thomas, the former assistant director of the FBI's Operational Technology Division, told the Post that that sort of creepy spy laptop recording is "mainly" used in terrorism cases or the "most serious" of criminal investigations. That doesn't really make it less crazy (or any better) since the very idea of the FBI being able to watch you through your computer is absolutely disturbing.

The whole Post piece about the FBI's search for a bomb threat suspect is worth reading. Good to know these completely competent folks are watching over us by any means necessary.