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.

Germany has led much of Europe with ‘Energiewende’ or the renewable energy transition. Germany’s headlong pursuit of an all-renewable energy future has, however, left the county in desperate need of affordable energy. German consumers already pay the highest electricity prices in Europe, and practically overnight the country has seen a dramatic about-face when it comes to energy policy. Electricity is now a luxury good in Germany.

The latest report predicts that the renewable energy surcharge added to every consumer’s electricity bill will increase from 5.3 cents to between 6.2 and 6.5 cents per kilowatt hour — a 20-percent price hike. These prices have taken their toll upon the middle class, creating chaotic supply challenges and have directly contributed to nationwide job losses. Massive subsidies for renewable energy are harming the economy, imposing significant regressive costs on poor and working class energy consumers.

In order to move the program forward, Germany’s leadership is now grappling to balance renewable energy subsidies with affordable energy. In an unexpected move, Germany approved its first coal-fired power plant in eight years, which is now up and running. The German energy company Steag says its 725-megawatt coal plant is just the beginning of coal’s German comeback, as the country has actually approved a total of ten new hard-coal plants. These facilities are scheduled to come online in the next two years, boosting the country’s coal capacity by 33 percent.

Unlike environmentalists in America who seem driven to squash any further development of hydrocarbons, Germans have been far more practical, suggesting that ultimately environmental goals must take a backseat to the economy.

Jang Sung-taek, Kim Jong-un’s uncle and a powerbroker behind the scenes, was dramatically stripped of his official position and executed in early December. The motivations behind this decision remain predictably hazy, with some claiming that the purge came in response to Jang’s attempts to monopolize the country’s coal export business.

Either way, the string of executions surrounding Jang and his inner circle has opened a power vacuum where once there was a staunch supporter of Kim Jong-un. In the aftermath of these events, it wouldn’t be surprising to see the young leader default to the time-tested strategy of military brinkmanship as: A) a way to shore up support within the armed forces, or B) a reflection of the fact that military hardliners are now in the ascendance in North Korean politics.

According to one unnamed senior South Korean government official, the odds of a North Korean military attack are “100%” and it will happen sometime before April.

The nation has barely got over celebrating the birth of Jesus, while Easter, where Christians remember the crucifixion and resurrection, does not fall until April 20. The decision to put Easter egg products on shelves has triggered a backlash from shoppers on Twitter and other social network sites.

The Waitrose at the Membury Services on the M4 is offering an Easter collection which includes ‘Malt-Easters’, Cadbury Crème Eggs and the new Cadbury ‘Egg n Spoon’ packs. One Twitter user commented: ‘Sad really. We’ve barely got his birth out of the way and we’re already preparing to celebrate his death.’

The Next boss is part of a group of more than 50 European business leaders backing calls from think tank Open Europe to reform the EU ahead of a referendum in the UK, which is scheduled for 2017. Lord Wolfson is close to George Osborne, the Chancellor, and has already backed the Government's attempts to renegotiate Britain’s role in the EU.

However, leading business organisations such as the CBI have stressed the importance to Britain’s economy of the country remaining part of the EU. Speaking to BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, Lord Wolfson said: “The question about whether we stay in or out depends on whether it changes enough.”

The Next boss said that the EU was an “enormous advantage to business” and Britain’s future role on the continent is “enormously important” for the “everyday life of everybody”. But he added: “I think the most important thing is the principal – what is the EU there for. Is it a vehicle for greater freedom in Europe – free movement of capital, free movement of good, free movement of services, free movement of people?”

“Or is it a government of governments, a government above governments, a government without democratic licence, but the right to interfere in every aspect of our lives? I think that is what it is becoming. I think over the last thirty years it has slowly changed itself and become ever more hungry for power.”

Borrowers who have failed to pay down their mortgages when interest rates have been at record low levels now face being overwhelmed by "perilous levels of debt" when the inevitable hike comes. Gillian Guy, chief executive of Citizens Advice, warned of a "financial ticking timebomb": "The rising cost of energy, food and travel has been absorbing any spare income people may have. This means that in some cases there is little or nothing left to cope with larger mortgage repayments."

According to a new report from an influential thinktank, the Resolution Foundation, even in the most optimistic scenario – in which interest rates rise slowly to 3% by 2018 and economic growth is strong and well-distributed between the rich and poor – 1.12 million homeowners will be spending more than half of their take-home pay on mortgage repayments – this is a widely accepted indicator of over-indebtedness.

If the Bank of England were to raise interest rates more quickly, to 5% by 2018, and growth continues to be slow, around two million households would be plunged into financial trouble – and around half of these would be families with children.

The thinktank's analysis, based on official Office for Budget Responsibility projections, warns: "Far from being resolved, Britain's personal debt problem remains a cause for real concern. While record low interest rates have reduced current repayment costs, fewer people than we hoped have used this breathing space to pay off their debts."

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.