Also etched into the 10cm medallion are a shofar (ram’s horn) and the image of a Torah scroll. The medallion may be the oldest Torah ornament ever found in archaeological digs.

A third-generation archaeologist working at the Hebrew University’s Institute of Archaeology, Dr Mazar directs excavations on the City of David’s summit and at the Temple Mount’s southern wall. Calling the find “a breathtaking, once-in-a-lifetime discovery,” Dr Mazar said: “We have been making significant finds from the First Temple Period in this area, a much earlier time in Jerusalem’s history, so discovering a golden seven-branched Menorah from the seventh century CE at the foot of the Temple Mount was a complete surprise.”

The menorah, a candelabrum with seven branches that was used in the Temple, is now the national symbol of the state of Israel and reflects the historical presence of Jews in the area. The position of the items as they were discovered indicates that one bundle was carefully hidden underground while the second bundle was apparently abandoned in haste and scattered across the floor.

Given the date of the items and the manner in which they were found, Mazar estimates they were abandoned in the context of the Persian conquest of Jerusalem in 614 CE.

In a rebound from 2012's record low an unbroken ice sheet more than half the size of Europe already stretches from the Canadian islands to Russia's northern shores, days before the annual re-freeze is even set to begin. The Northwest Passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific has remained blocked by pack-ice all year, forcing some ships to change their routes.

A leaked report to the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) seen by the Mail on Sunday, has led some scientists to claim that the world is heading for a period of cooling that will not end until the middle of this century.

If correct, it would contradict computer forecasts of imminent catastrophic warming. The news comes several years after the BBC predicted that the arctic would be ice-free by 2013.

MPs voted against intervention after the attack on civilians that the UK and US blames on the Syrian government, but the Assad regime blames on rebels. The US is trying to gather support for strikes, but no agreement was reached at last week's G20 summit. Mr Hague said a response was needed to "deter" chemical weapons use.

"I do believe very strongly the world must stand up to the use of chemical weapons and there is a debate now taking place in the US Congress," Mr Hague told the BBC's Andrew Marr Show.

"The risks of not doing so in my view are greater than the risks of doing so in a limited, proportionate and careful way." He added: "If it is decided in the various parliaments of the world that no one will stand up to the use of chemical weapons and take any action about that, that will be a very alarming moment in the affairs of the world."

As he continues to pour several hundred billion dollars into the Middle East war theater that will likely soon include Syria, Congress wants to cut $40 billion in food aid to its constituents. A recent USDA report reveals that nearly 18 million families, or 49 million people, lacked “food security” which is defined as “consistent, dependable access to enough food for active, healthy living.” Food insecurity is a polite term for starvation.

Since 1995, the percent starving in the US hovered at or below 12%. That changed in 2008 when it jumped to 14.6%, and has stayed above 14% since then. In 2012, the percentage was 14.5%, or one in seven people.

It announced quietly that it would transfer to the state - ie confiscate - the bulk of assets owned by the country's private pension funds (many of them owned by such foreign firms as PIMCO parent Allianz, AXA, Generali, ING and Aviva), without offering any compensation. In effect, the state just nationalized roughly half of the private sector pension fund assets, although it had a more politically correct name for it: pension overhaul.

By way of background, Poland has a hybrid pension system: as Reuters explains, mandatory contributions are made into both the state pension vehicle, known as ZUS, and the private funds, which are collectively known by the Polish acronym OFE. Bonds make up roughly half the private funds' portfolios, with the rest company stocks.

And while a change to state-pension funds was long awaited - an overhaul if you will - nobody expected that this would entail a literal pillage of private sector assets.

This suggestion was put forward at the 21st Conference for General Thoractic Surgery in Birmingham, England, in May. A paper presented by doctors from The University Hospitals, Leuven suggested that euthanized patients could significantly boost the number of deceased donors. The authors state that in Belgium "euthanasia donors accounted for 12.8% of all lung DCD's".

They observe that "immediate post-transplant graft function and long-term outcome in recipients was excellent." Furthermore, it is believed that patients will see this as a great opportunity for a final act of altruism. "More euthanasia donors are to be expected with more public awareness," they say.

The 12.8% were actually 6 patients. Three of them had severe neuromuscular disease and 3 were mentally ill. They had all made an explicit request to donate their organs. The transplant specialists stressed that the euthanasia and the transplant were performed by two separate and unrelated teams.

Conservative bioethicist Wesley Smith has attacked the proposal, stating that there is "nothing more dangerous than making mentally ill and despairing disabled people believe their deaths have greater value than their lives".

Citing what it calls a "top secret memo" in April from the Ministry of Interior, AINA says the Saudi government offered 1,239 inmates a pardon and a monthly stipend for their families, which were were allowed to stay in the Sunni Arab kingdom. Syrian President Bashar Assad is an Alawite, a minority Shiite sect.

According to an English translation of the memo, besides Saudis, the prisoners included Afghans, Egyptians, Iraqis, Jordanians, Kuwaitis, Pakistanis, Palestinians, Somalis, Sudanese, Syrians and Yemenis. All faced "execution by sword" for murder, rape or drug smuggling. Russia, which has backed Assad, objected to the bargain and allegedly threatened to bring the issue to the United Nations, said an unidentified former Iraqi member of Parliament who confirmed the memo's authenticity, says AINA, an independent outlet.

"Initially Saudi Arabia denied the existence of this program. But the testimony of the released prisoners forced the Saudi government to admit, in private circles, its existence," AINA writes. "The Saudis agreed to stop their clandestine activities and work towards finding a political solution on condition that knowledge of this program would not be made public."

One of the important outcomes in the poll, however, renders a serious challenge to the eurozone and therefore to the entire European Union. And it can probably give a hint of the path Ms Merkel will choose if she stays another four years in the chancellery in Berlin. 55% of respondents believe that Germany should stay in the zone of the single currency, but that the euro area should be restricted to a club of similarly thinking countries.

These attitudes toward promoting the euro area to an elite club of capables are supported by the other results in the poll realised by YouGov Deutschland. A little over half of respondents do not want the next government to commit to further loans for troubled eurozone members. The poll was conducted in the same period when Wolfgang Schaeuble, the German finance minster, announced in the peak of the election campaign that Greece needed a third bailout programme (meaning a loan). But 35 per cent agree more money to be given to countries with troubles.

Open Europe's poll is very timely because it marks the beginning of the new political season in the EU which will pass entirely under the shadow of the German elections. Not only under the shadow, but it is even formally recognised that everything is in waiting for the outcome. The results from the poll also provide ground for better understanding of the motives that drive the German citizens. In that sense, it would be worth for the Europeans that live in countries with chronically malfunctioning rule of law to note that for 48% of the Germans adhering to law is much more important than saving the euro.

This result is in response to the question whether they approve the OMT operations of the European Central Bank, pronounced by the German Constitutional court as illegal. Open Europe emphasises that this shows how seriously Germans take the rule of law.

For most people in the south, ‘north’ means mainly Germany. As a result of ill feeling, ordinary Germans have grown increasingly reluctant to spend their holidays around the Mediterranean any more. Hamburg-based economics professor Bernd Lucke is among those saying that rather than uniting, the single currency has divided Europe.

“The countries in the south are heading for economic disaster. With the unemployment and youth unemployment which we already see, the radicalisation of people living in the southern European countries is to be feared. I’m not sure how long democratic governments will be able to hold on there, before the political pendulum swings over to populist, extremist leaders.”

Recently, Lucke and some like-minded people founded their own party, naming it ‘Alternative for Germany’. They are certain that a single currency for national economies of widely differing strength is not workable. They want to end the single currency. In their vision, countries would perhaps return to their drachma, lira or deutsch marks. “If our political ideas were realised, we would see an orderly disintegration of the euro zone, just as there have already been with currencies in the past. Consider Czechoslovakia, which today is two states with two currencies.

Lucke was attacked while giving a speech in Bremen, probably by radical leftists, but got away with no more than a fright. He says that his party has won praise from the right but that the AfD had nothing to do with them. “Those, who don’t want to look closely at our demands always link us with the extreme right-wing party NPD. But what do they have to do with us? We criticise the euro, because it has failed as a European currency. We criticise the enormous liabilities that we have taken on for the southern European countries. We criticise all that, because it goes against the Maastricht treaty and against our government’s promises not to be liable for other countries.”

There were gasps as the Russian President made his remarks after being asked how he would react if Barack Obama proceeds with an attack in response to Syria’s use of chemical weapons. ‘Will we help Syria? We will. And we are already helping, we send arms, we cooperate in the economics sphere,’ Mr Putin declared.

Amid signs any US-led action could be delayed for as long as a fortnight, with President Barack Obama battling to win the approval of Congress, Russia last night sent a fourth warship with ‘unspecified cargo’ to the eastern Mediterranean.

In an unprecedented act of defiance for any recent international summit, eleven countries, including the US and the UK, issued their own statement demanding a ‘strong international response to the grave violation of the world’s rules and conscience’ by Assad’s regime.

The countries, which also included Australia, Canada, France, Italy, Japan, South Korea, Saudi Arabia, Spain and Turkey, said they would ‘support efforts undertaken by the United States and other countries to reinforce the prohibition on the use of chemical weapons’.

President Obama insisted military action was right even if the public was largely against it, saying US intervention in the Second World War had also been opposed by a majority. As he left the summit, the US leader said: ‘I’m not drawing an analogy to World War II other than to say that when London was getting bombed, it was profoundly unpopular, both in Congress and around the country to help the British. Doesn’t mean it wasn’t the right thing to do.’

Analysis Jon Donnison BBC News, Sydney: Labor's six years in power are emphatically over. Australia's economic growth during difficult global financial times should have played well for an incumbent government. But the economy has begun to slow and Kevin Rudd's Labor party has been undone by disunity and infighting. The rivalry between Mr Rudd and Julia Gillard which saw the leadership of the party and the country switch back and forth did not sit well with voters.

You sense from voters that Mr Abbott's victory is not so much a ringing endorsement as a rejection of Labor. He's a conservative who has promised a tough line on immigration and asylum-seekers. He opposes gay marriage and has been a sceptic on climate change. Kevin Rudd sold himself as the comeback kid. It didn't work. His party now faces a period of further introspection.

The five-day visit is being made in Princess Anne's capacity as a member of the International Olympic Committee. She will attend the opening ceremony of the 125th session of the International Olympic Committee at the Theatre Colon in Buenos Aires this evening.

Protest group Quebracho – which led riots against the British Embassy in Buenos Aires in April last year – has vowed to disrupt proceedings, claiming it will be able to enter the theatre. It called on supporters, including ex-combatants from the 1982 Falklands War and Spanish activists, to meet at the theatre ahead of the IOC opening ceremony.

Buckingham Palace would not say whether the Princess's security had been stepped up either as a result of the threat or as a precaution in anticipation of such protests.

According to the Labor Department, the economy added a disappointing 169,000 jobs in August. In addition, the government lowered its estimate of the number of jobs created in June and July by 74,000 positions. The grinding pace of recovery has hollowed out the workforce.

Government data showed that only 63.2 percent of working-age Americans have a job or are looking for one, the lowest proportion since 1978. Nearly 90 million people are now considered out of the labor force, up 1.7 million from August 2012.

“We just don’t see this consistent, strong job market that’s really going to entice people to go back into it,” said Michael Evangelist, policy analyst at the National Employment Law Project. “You don’t want people falling out of the labor force where they’re not able to contribute and not able to find work.”