Criticising David Cameron’s promise to claw back powers from Brussels, Jose Manuel Barroso suggested that his tough line on Europe was an insincere attempt to counter the rise of the UK Independence Party.

He said: ‘Let me say this to all those who rejoice in Europe’s difficulties and who want to roll back our integration and go back to isolation – the pre-integrated Europe of the divisions, the war, the trenches, is not what people desire and deserve. The European continent has never in its history known such a long period of peace as since the creation of the European Community. It is our duty to preserve it and deepen it.’

Starting today, following a 5-0 vote by the FDIC, depositors in foreign US bank branches will officially no longer have recourse to a $250,000 in deposit insurance. The notional amount of deposits at risk: $1 trillion. This is not a new development: the FDIC rule to curb insurance on this category of deposits was proposed earlier this year, and today was the formalization.

Questions do arise: if a major US depository institution does fail domestically, the financial state of their depositors abroad will hardly be the biggest issue. However, a different question emerges: if the US offshore bank branches will no longer be insured by the US, the logical implication is that deposits of foreign banks in the US are not insured either.

Putin will renew an old offer to supply Iran with five of the sophisticated ground-to-air missile systems at a meeting with Iranian President Hassan Rowhani on Friday, Kommersant said, quoting a souce close to the Kremlin. Putin is set to meet Rowhani at a summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation held in Kyrgyzstan on Friday.

Kommersant wrote that Putin would offer to supply Tehran with a modified export version of the S-300 systems called S-300VM Antey-2500. Russia has urged the West to soften sanctions against Iran after the election of Rowhani, a centrist cleric, in June.

Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov confirmed to Kommersant that Putin and Rowhani were expected to discuss "working together in the nuclear energy sphere" and "questions of military technical cooperation" in talks at the summit in Bishkek.

The Prime Minister insisted he would never discuss giving up the overseas territory with Spain without the consent of people living on The Rock. In a message to celebrate Gibraltar’s National Day, told locals that the UK government will ‘stand with you' despite no progress in ending the long-running border disputes.

Tensions have mounted this summer in a dispute over Spanish fisherman accessing Gibraltar waters, which has seen Madrid impose draconian border checks which have caused huge queues. Gibraltar's chief minister accused Spain’s prime minister of behaving like Argentine dictator General Galtieri. The European Commission is due to send a team to the border to examine the delays this month.

Mr Cameron has threatened to take Spain to the European Court of Justice over its imposition of 'politically-motivated' border checks. In a strident video message shown at a National Day event today, the Prime Minister said: ‘Gibraltar has been British for 300 years. Let's keep it that way.’

“It’s called Comet ISON,” said Jim O’Leary of the Maryland Science Center. “That tail can get tens of millions of miles long, so it’s huge,” O’Leary said. But in its middle, it’s just dirt and ice three miles across. “It could be the comet of the century,” O’ Leary said. “That is what some people are calling it, and we’re not that far into the century you know.”

It’s certain to light up the winter sky. That is, unless it doesn’t. They don’t know if the sun will blast it to shreds. “It’s only passing through one diameter away from the sun, 700,000 miles, through the hot corona. That might be enough to blast it apart,” O’Leary said. In that case, it could turn into smaller comets or disappear completely.

The moment of silence at 8:46 am Wednesday marked when the first plane hit the twin towers on a clear, sunny day in 2001. Then, families of the victims started reading aloud the names of those who died. Along with the names of those who died when the hijacked jets crashed into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were read out the names of those killed in the hijacked Flight 93 and the victims of the 1993 trade center bombing.

In a sadly familiar ceremony, friends and relatives of World Trade Center attack victims gathered at the National September 11 Memorial plaza to call out the names of the dead and read messages to their lost loved ones. A bell tolled to mark the moments when four hijacked jets crashed into the twin towers, the Pentagon and a field in the Pennsylvania countryside, and again to mark the moments when the two skyscrapers collapsed.

Steve Rosenberg BBC News, Moscow writes: On the Syria issue, Russia seems to have kept one step ahead of the US. While President Obama has been accused of U-turns and zig-zags, of drawing red lines and being slow to act on them, President Putin has been as solid and unshakable as the Kremlin walls: consistently opposed to a US strike. The Kremlin's not for turning.

What's more, Russia believes that its message has been getting through and that its tough stance has helped dilute international support for US military action. Last week, the UN, the EU and the Vatican all expressed their support for a political solution.

Even if the Russian initiative eventually unravels amid bickering and paralysis in the Security Council, Moscow can still argue that at least it tried to find a peaceful solution.

This week, the chief nuclear officers of around 100 American nuclear power plant reactors are taking a field trip. They are travelling to Japan and then taking a bus to Fukushima. There, dressed in protective suits, they will walk through the ruins left behind by the earthquake of the century, the tsunami of the century and the resulting triple nuclear reactor meltdown that occurred in March 2011.

"I can assure you when they get back from this trip, all of these chief nuclear officers will double their safety precautions," says Dale Klein, who has made the same trip and describes it as "very sobering." Klein, who was head of the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission until 2009, now serves as chair of the Nuclear Reform Monitoring Committee, which advises Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), the company that once ran the Fukushima power plant and is now responsible for cleaning up the site.

In the eyes of industry experts and the Japanese public alike, the company has proved one thing unequivocally - that it is in far over its head in trying to handle the aftermath of the disaster. Klein is generally a polite man, but he recently announced in public exactly what he thinks of the company that hired him. "You do not know what you're doing," Klein told company president Naomi Hirose in person. "You do not have a plan."

In accordance with Japanese custom, the company head, thus chastised, inclined his head and replied, "I apologize for not being able to live up to your expectations." TEPCO has been stumbling "from crisis to crisis," Klein says. And with no improvement in sight, it had recently become clear that Japan would find itself, out of necessity, doing something that is generally considered very un-Japanese: asking for foreign help. Klein said there were signs that the government was planning on inviting experts from Europe and the US in to help.

Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem said Tuesday after meeting with Russian parliament speaker that his government quickly "agreed to the Russian initiative." Al-Moallem added that Syria did so to "uproot US aggression."

His statement sounded more definitive than his remarks Monday, when he said that Damascus welcomed Russia's initiative. Meanwhile, Russia's Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Tuesday that Russia is now working with Syria to prepare a detailed plan of action, which will be presented shortly.

Lavrov said that Russia will then be ready to finalize the plan together with UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons.

There's a reason you're only getting snippets about Assad's supposed "chilling warning" of "repercussions" to the US if his country is invaded, it's because he calmly and succinctly exposed Obama and the US government's hypocrisy through and through. For one, Assad says there's no evidence his regime used chemical weapons, but notes such illegal weapons were used by the US in Iraq and Israel in Gaza.

Assad recollects that the last time the US presented "evidence" of WMDs was Colin Powell at the UN making the case Iraq had WMDs (and could "nuke us within 45 minutes"), which we all know now was a fabrication.

The report in Bild am Sonntag, which is a widely read and influential national Sunday newspaper, reported that the head of the German Foreign Intelligence agency, Gerhard Schindler, last week told a select group of German lawmakers that intercepted communications had convinced German intelligence officials that Assad did not order or approve what is believed to be a sarin gas attack on August 21 that killed hundreds of people in Damascus’ eastern suburbs.

The Obama administration has blamed the attack on Assad. The evidence against Assad was described over the weekend as common sense by White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “The material was used in the eastern suburbs of Damascus that have been controlled by the opposition for some time,” he said. “It was delivered by rockets, rockets that we know the Assad regime has, and we have no indication that the opposition has.”

Russia has questioned that logic, announcing last week that in July it filed a 100-page long “technical and scientific” report on an alleged March 19 chemical weapons attack on a suburb of Aleppo that it says implicates rebel fighters.

The flying bomb was discovered last week when police, following a tipoff, raided the homes of four suspects and a neo-Nazi meeting place in south western Germany, prosecutors in the city of Freiburg said. Although the plans appeared to be at a very early stage, the target was clear, Wolfgang Maier, a spokesman for the Freiburg prosecutor's office, told The Associated Press. "They want to use it against left-wing or anti-Nazi activists."

A 23-year-old man with known links to far-right extremists was arrested on suspicion of commissioning the bomb. A 42-year-old man alleged to have built the bomb was detained but later released on bail. Police are also investigating two other men, aged 22 and 24, with far-right links as part of the case.

The main suspect, who wasn't named, had previously thrown a firework at anti-Nazi counter-demonstrators during a protest by a fringe far-right party on August 31, prosecutors said. Five people suffered what officials described as "acoustic trauma" in that incident.

But the bomb-rigged plane could have caused considerably more harm had it been used, said Maier. "It could have caused damage in a 20-30 meter (65-100 foot) radius," he said. According to official figures, Neo-Nazis committed over 800 violent crimes in Germany last year.

We are risking our lives bringing you this report on the high level intel and connecting the dots here to what Lindsay is saying. You won’t hear about this in the mega media unless we force them to cover it, and it’s up to us to get this out there. For the first time, we may be able to utilize this high level intelligence to get answers and stop a potential attack.

Yesterday, after the archaeologists found an ancient golden medallion at the the foot of the Temple Mount, Prime Minister Netanyahu contacted Hebrew University's Dr Eilat Mazar, who made the stunning discovery of two bundles of treasure containing thirty-six gold coins, gold and silver jewelry, and a gold medallion with the menorah (Temple candelabrum) symbol etched into it. Also etched into the 10cm medallion are a shofar (ram’s horn) and the image of a Torah scroll.

The Prime Minister said, "This is a magnificent discovery. Nationally, it attests to the ancient Jewish presence and to the sanctity of the place; this is as clear as the sun and it is tremendous." Netanyahu continued to praise the discovery by saying, "This is very moving. This find is the essence of our heritage."

"It is interesting that even then, over 500 years after the destruction of the Second Temple, we see the menorah in an original illustration. This is historic testimony, of the highest order, to the Jewish People's link to Jerusalem, to its land and to its heritage – menorah, shofar, Torah scroll. The essence of the Jewish People could not be any more succinct and clear. This is a wonderful gift to the Jewish People. Thank you."

Only a minority of people now view marriage as the starting point for bringing up children, with support for that view almost halving in less than 25 years. The wide-ranging study, which is in its 30th year, also revealed a dramatic shift in attitudes toward sex, politics, economics, and issues such as welfare and Britain’s relationship with Europe, since it first began in the early 1980s.

But some of the most dramatic changes are in the area of family and relationships, with views once classed as permissive now becoming the norm. Moral disapproval of matters such as sex outside marriage and homosexuality has fallen sharply since the Thatcher era, it shows.

That has been accompanied by a profound decline in religious attachment, with only a minority of people in the UK now identifying themselves as Christians, despite the effects of immigration which has boosted Church attendance.