In the past year, hundreds of thousands of people across the world have switched on their computers to find distressing messages alerting them that they no longer have access to their PCs or any of the files on them.

The messages claim to be from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, some 20 other law enforcement agencies across the globe or, most recently, Anonymous, a shadowy group of hackers. The computer users are told that the only way to get their machines back is to pay a steep fine.

And, curiously, it’s working. The scheme is making more than $5 million a year, according to computer security experts who are tracking them. The threat, known as ransomware, recently hit the United States. Some gangs have abandoned previously lucrative schemes, like fake antivirus scams and banking trojans, to focus on ransomware full time. Essentially online extortion, ransomware involves infecting a user’s computer with a virus that locks it. The attackers demand money before the computer will be unlocked, but once the money is paid, they rarely unlock it.

In the vast majority of cases, victims do not regain access to their computer unless they hire a computer technician to remove the virus manually. And even then, they risk losing all files and data because the best way to remove the virus is to wipe the computer clean.

Security experts warn to never pay the ransom. A number of vendors offer solutions for unlocking machines without paying the ransom, including Symantec, Sophos and F-Secure. The best solution is to visit a local repair shop to wipe the machine clean and reinstall backup files and software.

The largest nine banks have an overall exposure to derivatives of over $200 trillion, a figure that is more than three times the size of the entire global economy. For all global banks, the total “notional” value of derivatives is well over $1,500 trillion; $1,000 trillion is $1 quadrillion.

In simplest terms, a derivative is a bet on the outcome of some future event. While a bookie takes a bet on the outcome of next week’s horse race, derivative traders make bets on events months and years into the future.

A bet works like this. I purchase $1 million in low-rated corporate bonds that currently yield 6 percent and are not due for repayment for another 10 years. I’m going for the higher income knowing that there is a higher risk of default. Thus, I seek to find a bettor that will bet against that risk for a tolerable fee. Banker X thinks my bonds will be paid off when due, and charges me $25,000 for the assurance that if the corporation does default, the bank will make up any difference. My $25,000 payment is pure income to the bank, and there is no offsetting liability recorded.

However, if my corporation defaults five years down the road, and I lose $800,000 in the process, then banker X immediately owes me $800,000, which, by the way, is also the so-called “notional value” of the contract. Because of all the uncertainty, the current notional value of a derivative contract can only be guessed at.

However, there is still a vigorous debate in Downing Street about how the Prime Minister should address the issue in his long-promised speech on Britain’s future in Europe – now expected to come in the New Year. The article notes that Number 10 has been persuaded to drop plans in which voters would be given the choice between a looser relationship and the status quo.

London Mayor Boris Johnson yesterday said that he wanted Britain to have a looser relationship with the EU, which would be “boiled down” to membership of the single market and allow the UK “to shape legislation”. Writing in City AM, Open Europe’s Christopher Howarth argues, “The single market, not the euro, is the EU’s ‘core’ project. We should remain inside, but reduce the EU’s involvement in other policy areas. This is fully achievable – and indeed necessary if we are to reconcile a sceptical public to continued EU membership."

Nor was the phone call, a rarity, followed by any immediate announcement of a face-to-face meeting that has been widely anticipated all week and was explicitly requested early in the day by House of Representatives Republican leader Eric Cantor. Asked in an interview with CNBC if the administration was ready to go over the so-called fiscal cliff if Republicans don't come around on taxes, [Mr] Obama's chief negotiator, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, responded: "Oh, absolutely."

Facing spending cuts and tax increases that start to take effect in January unless Congress acts, Republicans on Capitol Hill were privately acknowledging that they were taking a public relations thrashing at the hands of the White House, which has marshaled a campaign-style offensive that involves some of the very "job-creators" Republicans say they are protecting.

The focus on the debt ceiling is already raising concerns among market watchers. "The more the Republicans talk about raising or not raising the debt limit, that really makes the market nervous, and makes the White House more nervous than Congress," said John Brady, managing director at RJ O'Brien & Associates in Chicago. "The cliff can be punted into the future, but the debt ceiling can't be."

The US Air Force and Boeing demonstrated the device more than two months ago over a military site in the Utah desert, reported the VR-Zone technology website. Boeing did not keep the test a secret, but most mainstream media and technology sites overlooked the report.

The test was codenamed CHAMP - Counter-Electronics High Power Advanced Missile Project and was the first time a real EMP missile has been tested with positive real world results. One of the most startling developments in the research and test is that the missile system does not use any explosives, thereby limiting damage to its intended goal of directing microwave energy that can cause instant blackouts.

Keith Coleman, who serves as Boeing’s CHAMP program manager in their Phantom Works division, stated that video camera footage showed “images of numerous desktop computers running, and then suddenly all of them go out quickly followed by the camera going to black,” VR-Zone reported.

“We hit every target we wanted to... Today we made science fiction, science fact,” said Coleman.

At a conference in Dubai this week, the ITU members decided to adopt the Y.2770 standard for deep packet inspection, a top-secret proposal by way of China that will allow telecom companies across the world to more easily dig through data passed across the Web.

Tim Berners-Lee, a British computer scientist widely regarded as the ‘Father of the Internet,’ spoke out against proposed DPI implementation on such a grandiose scale during an address earlier this year at the World Wide Web Consortium. "Somebody clamps a deep packet inspection thing on your cable which reads every packet and reassembles the web pages, cataloguing them against your name, address and telephone number either to be given to the government when they ask for it or to be sold to the highest bidder – that's a really serious breach of privacy,” he said.

Blogger Arthur Herman writes this week for Fox News online that the goal of the delegates at the ITU “is to grab control of the World Wide Web away from the United States, and hand it to a UN body of bureaucrats.”

“It’ll be the biggest power grab in the UN’s history, as well as a perversion of its power,” he warns.

"Clear signals" must finally be given and "concrete proposals for security policy cooperation" presented, rather than non-binding declarations of intent. For example, a fusion of the air forces of Germany and France would provide a good opportunity for promoting military as well as arms industry cooperation. Experts in Berlin have been complaining since some time that the desperately needed cooperation of the arms industries throughout the EU still has not really materialized, despite persistent political appeals.

Aside from the advantages for the arms industry, this plea for the creation of a German-French air force is aimed at the recent French-British military cooperation, considered in Berlin as a means for preventing a German predominance of the EU's war policy. Practical measures have now been taken to split the British-French alliance.

The SWP's proposal has two objectives. On the one hand, it seeks to comprehensively reinforce German-French military cooperation - thereby also drive a wedge in between the French-British cooperation, which is viewed in Berlin as a serious obstacle to German aspirations for predominance in the EU's warfare policy.

On November 15, several foreign and defense ministers from five European countries, met in Poland, and decided to promote the EU's "Common Security and Defense Policy" (CSDP). The meeting of ministers from Germany, France, Italy, Spain, and Poland was geared toward establishing a German-French leadership over the EU's war policy, while splitting Franco-British military cooperation. “We need to be able to develop such projects, if need be without the United Kingdom,” according to a diplomat involved at the time.”

At the same time, China has announced that its territorial waters extend hundreds of miles beyond its shores, well into what its neighbors and the United States consider international waters. It has installed more than 1,000 ballistic missiles aimed at Taiwan, a democratic island nation and US ally. Vietnam, the Philippines and Japan all have complained to the United States about confrontations on the high seas with China.

China says it is simply developing defensive weapons and protecting its interests. But military analysts say the United States appears to be taking a different view, citing the Pentagon's development of a new class of bombers that can fly for long periods outside of the reach of radar. Admiral Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has expressed concern over China's actions. In a trip earlier this month to Beijing, he said China must respect freedom of navigation.

"We are very anxious to see that … the sea lanes stay open," he said. "The US is not going away."

Feiglin, a political hard-liner, is Number 15 on the Likud list for the upcoming elections and head of the Jewish Leadership faction within the right-wing party, a nationalist group defined by many as extreme. Footage obtained by Channel 10 showed a group of Jews, including the likely future MK, as they prayed on the Temple Mount.

Feiglin recently wrote his political vision on Facebook, remarking that the mission would be over when "we build the [Jewish] Temple on top of the Temple Mount and fulfill our purpose in the land." Though there is no law against Jews praying on the Temple Mount, for years both Israeli officials and the Islamic Wakf — the religious group in charge of managing the site — have told Jews not to carry out religious ceremonies or prayers at the site, for fear of violence and a potential outbreak of riots.