It seems incomprehensible in the US, but Icelanders did just that.

Icelanders forced their entire government to resign after a banking fraud scandal, overthrowing the ruling party and creating a citizen’s group tasked with writing a new constitution that offered a solution to prevent corporate greed from destroying the country.

The constitution of Iceland was scrapped and is being rewritten by private citizens; using a crowd-sourcing technique via social media channels such as Facebook and Twitter. These events have been going on since 2008, yet there’s been no word from the US mainstream media about any of them. In fact, all of the events that unfolded were recorded by international journalists, overseas news bureaus, citizen journalists and bloggers. This has created current accusations of an intentional cover up of the story by mainstream US news sources.

An “iReport” on CNN, written by a private citizen in May 2012, has questioned the reasons why this revolution has not been widely covered in the US, suggesting that perhaps the mainstream media is controlled by large corporate interests and thus has been unwilling to report on Iceland’s activities.

As Iceland struggles to regain its footing with a new government, US citizens may or may not be able to look to Iceland as an example of perfect democracy in action. The real question, though, is why weren’t US citizens given the information about the ousting of the Icelandic government and the jailing of the unscrupulous bankers? Are journalists in control of the mainstream media or is there some truth to accusations that big business may, in fact, be strong-arming reporters to keep quiet about world events that could inspire similar actions here in the US?

They were accused of hiding the fact that a Qatari investor bought a stake in the firm with money lent - illegally - by the bank itself. Kaupthing collapsed in 2008 under the weight of huge debts.

For years, Kaupthing and other Icelandic banks had aggressively pursued overseas expansion plans, but when they went into administration, they brought the country's economy to its knees. Just a few weeks before the collapse, Kaupthing announced that Sheikh Mohammed Bin Khalifa Bin Hamad al-Thani had bought a 5.1% stake during the financial crisis in 2008.

Hreidar Mar Sigurdsson, the former chief executive, received five and a half years, while Sigurdur Einarsson, former chairman of the board, was sentenced to five years in jail. These are the heaviest sentences for financial fraud in Iceland's history.

The fast day of the 10th of the Hebrew month of Tevet, which begins at dawn on Friday and ends when the stars come out, commences in Jerusalem at 4:55 am and concludes at 5:00 pm with Kiddush for Friday night. It is the only fast kept even if it falls on a Friday, because it marks the beginning of the process of Jerusalem's destruction, while other fasts are moved back to Thursday when they occur on a Friday. Considered a minor fast, it does not begin at night to last 25 hours, as do Yom Kippur and the Ninth of Av, nor does it include prohibitions other than food and drink, as they do.

The Tenth of Tevet is one of four fast days that mourn the destruction of the Holy Temple, and it marks the day in which the Babylonians under Nebuchadnezzar began the siege of Jerusalem. It took Nebuchadnezzar 30 months to breach Jerusalem's thick stone walls, but he finally succeeded on the 17th day of the Hebrew month of Tammuz, in the year 586 BCE, on which date the second fast was declared.

Only one month later, on Tisha B'Av - the Ninth of Av - the first Holy Temple was destroyed, and the Jewish People were sent out into exile to Babylonia for the next 70 years. The prophet Jeremiah wrote Lamentations to memorialize the tragedy.

In Jerusalem, a power outage has affected more than half the city. In Kiryat Moshe, Merkaz Harav Yeshiva opened its dormitory and dining room to stranded families who reached the entrance of the city, where the yeshiva is located, but could not get to their destination.

Many more drivers were stuck on the roads in the city overnight, without food and water, after attempting to reach the city to see the snow. The Jerusalem municipality is continuing with the rescue operations that began Thursday night and have so far saved over 2,000 people. The IDF and the Border Police are assisting in the operation.

The Israeli police have released a particularly strong warning to drivers in affected areas against going out in blizzard conditions. Police have warned residents across the country to avoid leaving their homes for any reason during the snowfall.

The comments came at an event organized by female students of the College for Professional Applied Sciences. In response to the supposed "earthquake attack," Radwan called for a general national enlistment to the military, and to support the mosque by having fixed presence at the site.

Radwan said through repeated Jewish access to the Temple Mount, as well as "excavations and criminal acts," the Israeli "occupation" has "arrived at the stage of accustoming Palestinians, Arabs and Muslim to accept the existing reality so as to implement their goals to destroy the mosque and build the supposed Temple."

The minister blamed peace talks and security arrangements between Israel and the Palestinian Authority (PA) as providing cover for the "criminal acts" on the Temple Mount. Regardless of Hamas's fantastic scenarios, Israel is facing a real earthquake danger. In October, the Home Front Minister MK Gilad Erdan (Likud) warned that a major earthquake is looming that could potentially kill 7,000 Israelis.

At first glance the frozen bundles could be mistaken for conventional joints of meat. But as Ib Pedersen, a Danish pig farmer, lifts them carefully out of the freezer it becomes apparent they are in fact whole piglets - some horribly deformed, with growths or other abnormalities, others stunted. This is the result, Pedersen claims, of feeding the animals a diet containing genetically modified (GM) ingredients. Or more specifically, he believes, feed made from GM soya and sprayed with the controversial herbicide glyphosate.

Pedersen, who produces 13,000 pigs a year and supplies Europe's largest pork company Danish Crown, says he became so alarmed at the apparent levels of deformity, sickness, deaths, and poor productivity he was witnessing in his animals that he decided to experiment by changing their diet from GM to non-GM feed. The results, he says, were remarkable: "When using GM feed I saw symptoms of bloat, stomach ulcers, high rates of diarrhoea, pigs born with the deformities ... but when I switched [to non GM feed] these problems went away, some within a matter of days."

The farmer says that not only has the switch in diet improved the visible health of the pigs, it has made the farm more profitable, with less medicine use and higher productivity. "Less abortions, more piglets born in each litter, and breeding animals living longer." He also maintains that man hours have been reduced, with less cleaning needed and fewer complications with the animals.

GMOs are used to help plants be resistant to herbicides and pesticides, but it's done by taking DNA from a bacteria or a virus, which is inserted into the seed. GMOs are commonly found in corn, soy, canola and sugar. Governor Dannel Malloy held a ceremonial bill signing in Fairfield on Wednesday to commemorate a bill that requires certain foods intended for humans to be clearly marked that it is entirely or partially genetically engineered.

"People need to demand GMO labeling," Malloy said. "Some companies are doing this and we need to move in that direction."

A cargo of 59,100 tons was turned away on Tuesday in the eastern Chinese province of Zhejiang after quarantine officials found MIR 162 - an insect-resistant GMO strain which the country’s agriculture ministry has yet to warrant, Reuters cited an official as saying.

China, the world’s second largest corn consumer, has refused 180,000 tons of grain since mid-November. Observers believe it has less to do with the corn and more to do with other trade quarrels between the two countries. "It is really causing big trouble and it seems to be related to bilateral trade conflicts," a domestic corn trader told Reuters.

ABC News reported in 2011:

“Questions persisted for decades about the ability of the Mark 1 to handle the immense pressures that would result if the reactor lost cooling power, and today that design is being put to the ultimate test in Japan. Five of the six reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi plant, which has been wracked since Friday’s earthquake with explosions and radiation leaks, are Mark 1s.

‘The problems we identified in 1975 were that, in doing the design of the containment, they did not take into account the dynamic loads that could be experienced with a loss of coolant,’ Bridenbaugh told ABC News in an interview. ‘The impact loads the containment would receive by this very rapid release of energy could tear the containment apart and create an uncontrolled release’.”

The New York Times reported that other government officials warned about the dangers inherent in GE’s Mark 1 design:

“In 1972, Stephen H Hanauer, then a safety official with the Atomic Energy Commission, recommended that the Mark 1 system be discontinued because it presented unacceptable safety risks. Among the concerns cited was the smaller containment design, which was more susceptible to explosion and rupture from a buildup in hydrogen — a situation that may have unfolded at the Fukushima Daiichi plant.”

In addition, the Mark 1 included an absolutely insane design element: storing huge quantities of radioactive fuel rods 100 feet up in the air. Indeed, the fuel pools have caught fires several times, and now constitute an enormous danger. As we noted last year, the spent fuel pool at Fukushima reactor number 3 is in a heap of rubble.

Unit 3... It’s too radioactive for Tepco to even get a look at what’s going on in the reactor pools at units 1 through 3, and they have no idea how to do it. Indeed, the technology does not even exist to approach those reactors, as the high radiation levels quickly destroy even robots.

Postscript: Unfortunately, there are 23 virtually-identical GE Mark 1 reactors in the US.

The title of Dr Lucy Jones’ lecture this week to the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco was titled “Imagine America without Los Angeles.” As KCAL9′s Dave Bryan reports, Jones, a Science Advisor for Risk Reduction at the US Geological Survey, says when the “Big One” hits Southern California, the damage could be much greater, and could last much longer, than most of us ever imagined.

“Loss of shelter, loss of schools, loss of jobs and emotional hardship. We are risking the ends of our cities,” she said during the presentation. According to a USGS study called the “Shakeout Report,” when a high-magnitude earthquake rocks the San Andreas fault, the damage will go far beyond the collapsed buildings and freeways seen in the 1994 Northridge earthquake.

And they say while the Northridge quake directly affected about a half a million people, a maximum credible earthquake on the San Andreas fault could affect 10 million Californians.

In other words, Representative Rice wants to take President Obama to court for not faithfully executing the laws. "President Obama has adopted a practice of picking and choosing which laws he wants to enforce. In most cases, his laws of choice conveniently coincide with his Administration’s political agenda. Our Founding Fathers created the Executive Branch to implement and enforce the laws written by Congress and vested this power in the President.

"However, President Obama has chosen to ignore some of the laws written by Congress and implemented by preceding Presidents," Rice wrote in a letter to fellow House members to ask them to co-sponsor this resolution. "This resolution allows the House of Representatives to bring legal action against the Executive Branch and challenge recent actions, inactions, and policies."

But the Duke has suddenly dropped from first place to fourth. Two Chinese men came out of nowhere to occupy first and second place. Neither of them appeared in the top 250 UK property investors last year.

Top of the tree is Wang Jianlin, China's richest man (according to Forbes). He claims to be the first Chinese citizen to own a private jet and loves his £21 million Sunseeker yacht so much he decided to buy the whole company this year. He also splashed £700 million on One Nine Elms, part of the South Bank regeneration project that includes Battersea Power Station. Jianlin plans to build Europe's tallest residential tower (670ft) and a luxury hotel on the site.

At number two, Henry Cheng Kar-Shun and family. In June last year Cheng took full control of the Greenwich Peninsula scheme: 10,000 new homes, a 3.5m sq ft commercial district and public facilities. Cheng is the son of Cheng Yu-Tung, a titan of post-war Hong Kong commerce. At the end of 2012 he became chairman of the family property company, New World Development, whose UK interests include stakes in The Knightsbridge, a high-end regeneration scheme, and the social housing specialist Pinnacle Regeneration Group.

And it's the same story in residential: 64% of Mayfair homes over £2 million were bought by overseas buyers last year. Why? Three key reasons: the pound has stayed low making London property fantastic value for many foreign currency buyers. The land itself is so valuable that it's a safe investment in turbulent times. And it's a good way for the super-rich, who already have massive US dollar holdings, to diversify their investments.

Speaking at the London School of Economics, where he teaches, Professor Pissarides will say: “The euro should either be dismantled in an orderly way or the leading members should do the necessary as fast as possible to make it growth and employment-friendly. We will get nowhere plodding along with the current line of ad hoc decision-making and inconsistent debt-relief policies. The policies pursued now to steady the euro are costing Europe jobs and they are creating a lost generation of educated young people. This is not what the founding fathers promised.”

The Cypriot-British economist, who won the Nobel prize in 2010, is speaking days after Christine Lagarde, the head of the International Monetary Fund, insisted the crisis in the eurozone was not yet over. Unemployment within the single currency area now stands at 12.1 per cent, meaning more than 19 million people are out of work

Some economists argue Europe cannot enact the policies needed to boost growth and create jobs due to the huge variations in economies across the region. German taxpayers are unwilling to pay out to help crumbling economies such as Greece or Spain while even France now faces financial crisis.

The agreement is expected to begin with a Cyprus-style “bail-in” process in which major depositors in failing banks are tapped first in an effort to support the lender. Then, if more cash is needed, national resolution funds would be used. And if further funds are needed, these would be pooled from across the region over the next five to 10 years, forming the basis of a common fund.

“We will have a European fund as far as I’m concerned, but there will be, especially in the first years, some national responsibility,” said Dijsselbloem. “And if that causes a problem then we will have the ESM [European Stability Mechanism] according to the agreed rules. So, I think the outlines of how this will work are becoming more and more clear,” he added.

In the wake of the global financial crisis, European finance ministers have been working on a plan on what do with failed banks in what is seen as a key part of a banking union. The banking union establishes new rules for bank supervision and dealing with bank failures to avoid government bailouts. It follows over three years of turmoil in the euro zone following bailouts for Greece, Ireland, Portugal and Cyprus.

Boehner became speaker in January 2011, after the Republicans won a majority of the House of Representatives in the 2010 elections. He cut his first spending deal with President Barack Obama on March 1, 2011, and that deal took effect after March 4, 2011 when the continuing resolution then funding the government expired. Since then, the federal government has been funded under legislation approved by the Republican-controlled House that Boehner leads.

At the close of business on March 4, 2011, the federal debt was $14,182,627,184,881.03, according to the US Treasury. As of the close of business on December 10, 2013, it was $17,234,005,998,603.93. That means that under federal spending deals negotiated during Boehner's speakership and approved by a Republican-majority House that Boehner leads, the federal debt has increased $3,051,378,813,722.90.