The ECB's Peter Praet – the board member in charge of setting economic policy debates – has given an astonishing interview to Brian Blackstone at The Wall Street Journal, opening the floodgates for bond purchases. It is clear that the slide towards deflation and Euroland's fizzling recovery have caused a revolt at long last. The ECB's Latin (plus) majority simply refuses to accept Bundesbank orders any more.

"If our mandate is at risk we are going to take all the measures that we think we should take to fulfil that mandate. That's a very clear signal," said Mr Praet. "For some decisions it's easier than others [to gain consensus]. One thing is clear: the Governing Council has been able to decide. That's really the message."

So there you have it. This had to happen since deflation in southern Europe is causing debt dynamics to go berserk, defeating any of the alleged gains from the rest of EMU policy. Nations have to protect themselves. "That is a radical change of position for the ECB and a very welcome one in our view," said Ken Wattret from BNP Paribas.

Quite so. But that is not the end of the story, of course. Today we have an FT oped piece by IFO grizzly bear Hans Werner Sinn castigating the ECB for cutting rates at all last week. We have Bild Zeitung firing off tabloid anathemas over the destruction of German savings by an Italian-controlled ECB. We had the Bundesbank's Andreas Dombret saying this morning that the ECB's near zero rates are posing "risks for financial stability" in Germany.

Europe's peoples are what they are. That is precisely why we Euro-sceptics have always argued that forcing the pace of EU integration is a very dangerous thing to do. As for the looming civil war within EMU over monetary policy, there is an easy solution. Germany can politely withdraw from the euro, and the South can politely agree that this would on balance be an understandable action. Everybody could be on best behaviour, seeking to demonstrate to the world that matters are under control.

Just takes a little statesmanship. Not that difficult.

They state that it is “committed to ensuring that Member States, that are not able to meet the stability criteria of the Maastricht Treaty, have the option to temporarily leave the euro area.” Meanwhile, on European policy, the CDU/CSU and SPD have agreed that there will be no future pooling of sovereign debt or a transfer union in the eurozone.

And here's a news flash: They aren’t socialists or capitalists. They’re criminals. The Fed's decision to continue buying $85 billion worth of toxic banking assets and US debt per month means the money-printing factory has just gone into high gear. Not only can you say goodbye to your paper-based savings and retirement, but the Fed just guaranteed $9 gas and $3,800 gold.

Every month in 2013, the Fed has been increasing its balance sheet by $85 billion, consisting of $40 billion in mortgage-backed securities and $45 billion in 10-30 year treasuries. The Fed is on pace to monetize roughly half of the US budget deficit in 2013. Putting it all together, the Fed's balance sheet will increase to $4 trillion on December 25, 2013. A total increase of $1.17 trillion in one year!

The foundation and the safety of our monetary, banking and financial systems has never been less sound. Never. And while the media may try and convince you otherwise, I hope you have gained the ammunition to see the truth and make some decisions about how you will prepare for the inevitable math of the future. You don’t have to be an optimist to make money, and you don’t have to be a pessimist to protect it. You need to be a realist.

The outcome of the in-depth review will be published next spring. The decision has drawn cross-party criticism in Germany, with CSU General Secretary Alexander Dobrindt warning that, “You don't strengthen Europe by weakening Germany” and CDU General Secretary Hermann Gröhe adding, “Our export strength is the corner stone of our prosperity.” Meanwhile, Ulrich Grillo, President of the Federation of German Industries (BDI) said, “We should be proud of this slap on the wrist.”

The European Commission has also warned of macroeconomic imbalances in 15 other EU member states – including France, Italy and Spain. However, none of these countries, including Germany, faces an immediate risk of fines.

More substantial evidence can be found in the diversification of reserves held by many nations. The euro now makes up about a fourth of all currency reserves. One set of observers has long held that the ideal replacement for the dollar is a hybrid currency issued by the IMF called SDRs (Special Drawing Rights). The IMF describes the SDR thus:

“The SDR is an international reserve asset, created by the IMF in 1969 to supplement its member countries’ official reserves. Its value is based on a basket of four key international currencies, and SDRs can be exchanged for freely usable currencies.”

The four currencies are the US dollar, the euro, the Japanese yen and the British pound. China is widely seen as working toward floating the renminbi (that is, no longer pegging it to the dollar) so it could be included in the SDR currency.

“We have made good progress, but we have farther to go to regain the ground lost in the crisis and the recession,” the nominee for chair of the US Federal Reserve will say, according to prepared testimony. “Unemployment is down from a peak of 10 per cent, but at 7.3 per cent in October, it is still too high, reflecting a labour market and economy performing far short of their potential,” she will say.

“For these reasons, the Federal Reserve is using its monetary policy tools to promote a more robust recovery. A strong recovery will ultimately enable the Fed to reduce its monetary accommodation and reliance on unconventional policy tools such as asset purchases.”

Prescribing Statins to millions more healthy people would make only a minimal difference to their average lifespan but risk exposing thousands to harmful side effects, a leading doctor has claimed. Dr Aseem Malhotra, a cardiology specialist registrar at Croydon University Hospital, said he would be "disturbed" if Britain followed America in changing prescription guidelines to widen use of Statins.

There is "no doubt" that the cholesterol-lowering drugs reduce the likelihood of heart attacks and strokes in people with heart disease, he said, but the potential benefits of medicating millions more who are at low risk could be dramatically outweighed by the associated harms. Side effects experienced by up to one in five patients include severe muscle aches, memory disturbance, sexual dysfunction, cataracts and diabetes.

Writing in the New York Times Dr John D Abramson, who co-wrote the BMJ review, and Dr Rita F Redberg said wider use of statins "will benefit the pharmaceutical industry more than anyone else". "Instead of converting millions of people into statin customers, we should be focusing on the real factors that undeniably reduce the risk of heart disease: healthy diets, exercise and avoiding smoking."

Violence against Christian worshippers and other religious minorities by fanatics has become a “global crisis” and is the gravest challenge facing the world this century, Baroness Warsi will say. “A mass exodus is taking place, on a Biblical scale. In some places, there is a real danger that Christianity will become extinct,” she will say at a speech at Georgetown University in Washington.

In the new year, Lady Warsi, the Minister for Faith who sits in the Cabinet, will host an international summit to draw up a plan to end the violence against Christians - particularly in the countries where the faith was born. Writing for Telegraph.co.uk, Lady Warsi highlights the bombing of All Saints Church in Pakistan in September, killing 85 congregants, and the gun attack on a Coptic wedding party in Egypt as the latest outrages by militants who have turned “religion upon religion, sect upon sect”.

“There are parts of the world today where to be a Christian is to put your life in danger,” she writes. “From continent to continent, Christians are facing discrimination, ostracism, torture, even murder, simply for the faith they follow. Christian populations are plummeting and the religion is being driven out of some of its historic heartlands. In Iraq, the Christian community has fallen from 1.2 million in 1990 to 200,000 today. In Syria, the horrific bloodshed has masked the haemorrhaging of its Christian population,” she says.

Terrorists are subjecting Christians in the Middle East to “collective punishment” for American foreign policy. Worshippers are now regarded as newcomers and agents of the West, despite having lived there for centuries.

The United States District Court for the District of Columbia rejected the agency’s arguments that its protocols surrounding an Internet kill switch were exempt from public disclosure and ordered the agency to release the records in 30 days. However, the court left the door open for the agency to appeal the ruling.

The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) is seeking “Standard Operating Procedure 303,” also known as the “Internet kill switch” from Homeland Security. The protocols govern shutting down wireless networks to prevent the remote detonation of bombs.

The broad government power to shut down communications networks worries civil libertarians. However, the agency argues the protocols must be kept secret to protect national interests and the safety of individuals.

About 30 percent of small franchises and 12 percent of other small businesses say they are cutting work hours – or swapping full-time for part-time workers – because of the law, according to a poll sponsored by business groups.

The moves are part of a bid to control health-care expenses, and they are a sign of how the Affordable Care Act (ACA), which was designed to greatly expand the number of Americans who have health insurance, could be having some unintended consequences in the job market.

A key Obamacare incentive is an “employer mandate” that asks businesses to sponsor health insurance (or pay a penalty) if they have more than 50 full-time employees. It defines a full-time worker as one serving 30 or more hours per week. So a firm can avoid the mandate by having fewer than 50 people working full-time.

White House and State Department officials are behind the blocking of the four-year Chilcot inquiry, which the UK’s Cabinet Office has been criticized for halting. The newspaper saw drafts of the report earlier this year which challenged the official story of the UK’s entry into the Iraq war, mainly related to exchanges with then-PM Tony Blair and former president George W Bush.

A diplomatic source quoted by the independent said that the US is “highly possessive when documents relate to the presence of the President or anyone close to him,” according to the daily. While Blair is involved in talks with Bush in the report, the US government believes that “this is not Tony Blair’s or the UK government’s property to disclose,” the source added.

Without permission from Washington, current PM David Cameron will face a politically embarrassing situation by blocking evidence on the US government’s orders not to be included in the Chilcot inquiry. The inquiry’s authors are facing difficult choices because of both the US and UK government’s wish to not disturb the “special relationship” between the two countries. The end report is intended to examine how Blair’s government made decisions about the Iraq war of 2003 and the lessons that can learned for any British government in the future.

Even before it emerged that the National Security Agency had wiretapped her mobile phone, German Chancellor Angela Merkel was calling for the Internet to have something like Airbus - a joint European initiative able to compete with the dominance of American and Chinese high-tech companies, just as Airbus does with the US aerospace giant Boeing.

Currently, the global market for software and online services is firmly in American hands. What's more, American corporations, such as Google, are subject to the Patriot Act, which requires them to allow American intelligence agencies access to their data centers. On the other hand, the equipment that directs traffic on the Internet often comes from China - for example, routers made by Huawei. "No one can be certain that there isn't spying technology built in there as well," warns Norbert Pohlmann, chair of the IT Security Association Germany (TeleTrust).

The new plan would foster more than just German IT start-ups. The simple message politicians and businesses are selling to the general public is that, in the best-case scenario, data shouldn't leave its home country at all, so as not to be susceptible to monitoring or interception by foreign powers.

The development would mark a new low point for the talks with Israel that resumed in July and which officials from both sides have said have made little headway. In an interview with Egyptian CBC television, Abbas suggested the negotiations would continue even if the Palestinian peace delegation sticks to its decision.

"Either we can convince it to return, and we're trying with them, or we form a new delegation," he said. It was unclear from Abbas's interview when the Palestinian negotiators quit, but Abbas said he would need about a week to resume the talks. In a statement to Reuters TV on Wednesday, chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat did not elaborate on the report of his resignation, but said the sessions with Israel were frozen.

"In reality, the negotiations stopped last week in light of the settlement announcements last week," he said. Palestinians want to establish a state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, an area now controlled by Hamas Islamists opposed to Abbas's peace moves, with East Jerusalem as its capital. They argue that Israeli settlements deny them a viable country.

Israel cites historical and biblical links to the West Bank and East Jerusalem, where more than 500,000 Israelis live alongside 2.5 million Palestinians.

The anti-secrecy group published on Wednesday a 95-page excerpt taken from a recent draft of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, or TPP, a NAFTA-like agreement that is expected to encompass nations representing more than 40 percent of the world’s gross domestic product when it is finally approved: the United States, Japan, Mexico, Canada, Australia, Malaysia, Chile, Singapore, Peru, Vietnam, New Zealand and Brunei.

US President Barack Obama and counterparts from 11 other prospective member states have been hammering out the free trade agreement in utmost secrecy for years now, the result of which, according to the White House, would rekindle the economies of all of those involved, including many countries considered to still be emerging.

Previous reports about the rumored contents of the TPP with regards to IP law have raised concern among activists before, with the California-based Electronic Frontier Foundation going as far as to warn that earlier leaked draft text suggested the agreement “would have extensive negative ramifications for users’ freedom of speech, right to privacy and due process and hinder peoples' abilities to innovate,” all of which is being agreed upon without any oversight or observation.

Indeed, the thousands of words released by WikiLeaks this week has concreted those fears and has already caused the likes of the EFF and others to sound an alarm.

“I wanted to show my son where we lived in the Middle East, but I didn’t see Israel on the map; instead it said Jordan,” Adina Golombek, a Jerusalem resident who moved to Israel from Canada last year, told the newspaper.

“Thea Stilton and the Blue Scarab Hunt,” published by Scholastic Inc, is an adventure story of the Thea Sisters, five teen-aged mice, who are invited to Egypt to participate in an archeological excavation. As the story takes place in the Middle East, a map is provided at the beginning of the book. It outlines modern Egypt and its neighboring countries – all except for Israel. While Sudan, Libya, and Saudi Arabia can been seen in the right spots, Israel is fully covered by Jordan with the territories of both states evenly colored in red.

A senior vice president for corporate communications at Scholastic, Kyle Good, has told the Times of Israel that the company is now trying to find out if “this will be corrected” and “the timing of reprints”. “The Geronimo Stilton series is published in Italy and Scholastic translates the books for the US audience,” Good said in an emailed comment. “I’m awaiting a response from the editorial team regarding the timing of reprints and whether this will be corrected. I will get back to you as soon as I have their response.”

Scholastic, founded in Pennsylvania in 1920, is the world’s largest publishing company known for publishing educational materials for children, parents, schools and teachers. It distributes children’s books through its book clubs, teaching resources and popular book fairs held inside many North American schools as well as online.