"It's very alarming," said Joe Spencer, an insect behaviourist with the Illinois Natural History Survey who is researching the issue. Evidence gathered from fields in two Illinois counties suggests that pest problems are mounting as the rootworms grow ever more resistant to efforts to fight them; including crop rotation combined with use of the biotech corn, according to the report issued by Michael Gray, a professor of crop sciences at the University of Illinois, in conjunction with Spencer.

Farmers across "a wide swath of Illinois" could face formidable challenges protecting corn crops from the hungry insects, Gray said in the August 27 report.

According to a report in Vice.com, researchers at Japan’s Nihon University estimate that about 8.1 percent of the country’s students are addicted to the internet, meaning that more than half-a-million kids between the ages of 12-and-18 in the nation as a whole suffer from this affliction.

Such a condition leads to various psychological problems, including insomnia, eating disorders, poor academic performance, depression, and even deep vein thrombosis – the formation of blood clots arising for spending lengthy amounts of time in the same posture. A government study found that up to 15 percent of Japanese students spend as much as five hours online everyday and even more time on the internet on weekends.

As a result, the Tokyo government’s education ministry will introduce “web fasting camps” to help young people disconnect from their PCs, laptops, mobile phones and hand-held devices.

Mothers from Romania moved into the top ten at ninth position, replacing China, with 4,406 live births. And Romanian-born fathers also entered to top ten in ninth position, with 3,867, supplanting Ghana. The figures published by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) show that the proportion of babies born in Britain to foreign-born mothers rose slightly overall to 25.9 per cent.

The top nationality for foreign-born mothers was Poland with 21,156, followed by Pakistan with 19,091. In all there were 189,079 births to non-UK born mothers last year, up from 184,529 in 2011.

Mark Harper, the Immigration Minister, said: "We are working across government to protect public services and ensure our welfare system is not open to abuse. The Immigration Bill, which will be introduced later this year, will make it easier to remove people who have no right to be in this country.”

Much of the media, particularly the BBC, colludes in the fiction that what this country does during these crises is decisive. Britain is mentioned in the same breath as the US. Maps are produced signifying British fire-power on which there are almost as many Union Flags as Stars & Stripes. Our leading politicians adore it all. Tony Blair was in seventh heaven when able to present himself almost as an equal of President George W Bush before the Iraq War. His ecstatic reception in Congress a few months after the invasion was the apotheosis of his dreams.

David Cameron, though more measured, also relishes the role of international statesman. We are informed every time he has a phone conversation with President Obama. His spin doctors have revealed that over the weekend one call lasted an entire 40 minutes! Meanwhile, we have created the grandiosely named National Security Council, after the American version. The difference is that while the US President commands a huge, world-wide navy and other formidable military assets, we have a dwindling Royal Navy, RAF and Army.

And dwindling even faster because of this Government’s defence cuts, which have left us without a proper aircraft carrier, the most basic entry-level possession for any aspiring world power. Yet Mr Cameron continues where Tony Blair, a much wilder fantasist, left off. Painful though it is for me to say it, what happens in today’s debate on Syria in the House of Commons is pretty much irrelevant to the outcome. Whether or not we join in, the US will attack Syria. If we’re part of the mission, Royal Navy ships will fire one or two missiles to America’s hundred. If we’re not there, the US navy will fire them all.

It was the same story before the invasion of Iraq in March 2003. Weeks before that took place, President Bush told Mr Blair there would be no hard feelings if our army didn’t show up. It wasn’t really needed. But Mr Blair’s vanity was pricked. Our soldiers had to join in — and some of them had to die. Britain was admittedly useful to America before the invasion in supplying political and diplomatic cover. It’s the same now. Our diplomats scurry about at the United Nations dreaming up resolutions that suit America while freeing it from the charge that it is acting alone. We are a handy bag carrier, not a world power.

Archbishop Welby, who as a young priest once opposed allowing gay couples to adopt children, said the church now had to face up to what amounted to one of the most rapid changes in public attitudes ever. While insisting that he did not regret voting against same-sex marriage in the House of Lords, he admitted that his own mind was not yet “clear” on the wider issues which he was continuing to think about.

And he admitted that, despite its strong official opposition to allowing same-sex couples to marry, the Church is still “deeply and profoundly divided” over gay marriage. The Archbishop, who comes from the evangelical wing of the Church, which takes a more traditional interpretation of the Bible, publicly opposed the Government’s Same-sex Marriage Act while it was being debated earlier this year.

Asked later whether this meant that he regretted voting against gay marriage, he said he stood by his vote because he did not believe “rewriting the nature of marriage” was the best way to end discrimination against gay people.

He said: “The Bill was clearly, quite rightly, trying to deal with issues of homophobia in our society and ... the Church has not been good at dealing with homophobia ... in fact we have, at times, as God’s people, in various places, really implicitly or even explicitly supported it. And we have to be really, really repentant about that because it is utterly and totally wrong.”

The Prime Minister has now said he will wait for a report by United Nations weapons inspectors before seeking the approval of MPs for “direct British involvement” in the Syrian intervention. Downing Street said the decision to wait for the UN was based on the “deep concerns” the country still harbours over the Iraq War. MPs had been recalled to vote on a motion on Thursday expected to sanction military action. Instead, after a Labour intervention, they will debate a broader motion calling for a “humanitarian response”.

A second vote would be required before any British military involvement. This could now take place next week. In a statement on Wednesday night Downing Street said that it only wanted to proceed on a “consensual basis” and was now wary about becoming embroiled in another divisive conflict in the Middle East in the wake of Iraq.

Senior sources had previously suggested that Britain would take part in strikes as soon as this weekend which meant an emergency recall of Parliament was necessary on Thursday. However, following Labour threatening not to support the action and senior military figures expressing concerns over the wisdom of the mission, the Prime Minister on Wednesday night agreed to put British involvement on hold.

The Obama administration is pledging that the strikes will be "limited", but what happens when the Syrians fight back? What happens if they sink a US naval vessel or they have agents start hitting targets inside the United States?

Then we would have a full-blown war on our hands. And what happens if the Syrians decide to retaliate by hitting Israel? If Syrian missiles start raining down on Tel Aviv, Israel will be extremely tempted to absolutely flatten Damascus, and they are more than capable of doing precisely that. And of course Hezbollah and Iran are not likely to just sit idly by as their close ally Syria is battered into oblivion. We are looking at a scenario where the entire Middle East could be set aflame, and that might only be just the beginning.

Russia and China are sternly warning the US government not to get involved in Syria, and by starting a war with Syria we will do an extraordinary amount of damage to our relationships with those two global superpowers. Could this be the beginning of a chain of events that could eventually lead to a massive global conflict with Russia and China on one side and the United States on the other?

Of course it will not happen immediately, but I fear that what is happening now is setting the stage for some really bad things.

Emerging markets are now big enough to drag down the global economy. As Indonesia, India, Ukraine, Brazil, Turkey, Venezuela, South Africa, Russia, Thailand and Kazakhstan try to shore up their currencies, the effect is ricocheting back into the advanced world in higher borrowing costs. Even China felt compelled to sell $20 billion of US Treasuries in July. "They are running down reserves by selling US and European bonds, leading to a self-reinforcing feedback loop," said Simon Derrick from BNY Mellon.

We are told that emerging markets are more resilient than in past crises because they have $9 trillion of reserves. But any use of that treasure to defend the exchange rate entails monetary tightening, and therefore inflicts a contractionary shock on countries already in trouble.

Mirza Baig from BNP Paribas advises them to embrace devaluation, calling it futile to defend quasi-pegs. "The costs of fighting are spiralling out of control," he said. Mr Baig said foreigners bear 90 percent of the currency risk in Malaysia, 81 percent in Thailand, 79 percent in Korea and 74 percent in India. So let them take the haircut. Should these countries take that course, they will inflict a deflationary trade shock on the West. The eurozone is in no fit state to handle that. Nor is Britain.

We are in entirely uncharted waters.

It wasn’t easy. In some jurisdictions, officials said that they didn’t know; in others, they stonewalled. Pappas’s first report, issued in 2010, estimated the total state and local debt at $56 billion for the county’s 5.6 million residents. Two years later, after further investigation, the figure had risen to a frightening $140 billion, shocking residents and officials alike. “Nobody knew the numbers because local governments don’t like to show how badly they are doing,” Pappas observed.

Since Pappas began her project to tally Cook County’s hidden debt, she has found lots of company. Across America, elected officials, taxpayer groups, and other researchers have launched a forensic accounting of state and municipal debt, and their fact-finding mission is rewriting the country’s balance sheet. Just a few years ago, most experts estimated that state and local governments owed about $2.5 trillion, mostly in the form of municipal bonds and other debt securities.

But late last year, the States Project, a joint venture of Harvard’s Institute of Politics and the University of Pennsylvania’s Fels Institute of Government, projected that if you also count promises made to retired government workers and money borrowed without taxpayer approval, the figure might be higher than $7 trillion.

Now, however, it may try to stop the European Central Bank's so-called outright monetary transactions (OMT) programme (the ECB's pledge to buy, without limit, the government bonds of troubled eurozone countries that subject themselves to the ESM's conditions).

To be sure, the German court has no jurisdiction over the ECB – and thus has no power to judge its actions. The only institution that does have that power is the European court of justice in Luxembourg. But Germany's constitutional court can judge whether the actions of EU institutions are compatible with its constitution and the EU treaties.

If the court finds that the ECB's actions are unlawful, it can constrain German institutions – even the German parliament. For example, it could forbid the Bundesbank from participating in the OMT programme. Or it could rule that the German government's participation in the ESM must be conditional on the ECB's willingness to limit OMTs. Udo Di Fabio, a former judge on the court, has argued that the tribunal could even force the German government to unwind the EU treaties if it does not succeed in curbing the OMT programme.

In a further sign that the NSA row has soured relations between the US and its European allies, Peer Steinbrück, leader of the Social Democratic party, told ARD TV: "I would interrupt the negotiations until the Americans say if German government offices and European institutions are bugged or wiretapped. We don't know if the Americans may be sitting under our desks with some technical devices." He pledged to press Washington about the spy agency's activities before continuing with the talks about a transatlantic free trade agreement.

His move comes after Germany's Der Spiegel weekly reported that the NSA bugged the United Nations' New York headquarters, with the European Union and the International Atomic Energy Agency among those targeted.

Der Spiegel said files obtained by whistleblower Edward Snowden showed that the NSA spied on the EU in New York after it moved to new rooms in autumn 2012 and that the NSA runs a bugging programme in more than 80 embassies and consulates worldwide called the "Special Collection Service", which has "little or nothing to do with warding off terrorists".

“Greece shouldn’t have been allowed into the euro,” Ms Merkel told around 1,000 supporters of her Christian Democratic Union in Rendsburg on Tuesday. “Chancellor Schroeder accepted Greece in [in 2001] and weakened the Stability Pact, and both decisions were fundamentally wrong, and one of the starting points for our current troubles.”

Ms Merkel reiterated her desire to see a strong single currency, but warned that this can only be achieved through reforms in struggling countries such as Greece. “That [a unified euro area] is such a treasure, such a boon, that we can’t place it in doubt,” she told her supporters. “That’s why the euro is more than a currency. For this reason we’ve shown solidarity, but solidarity always linked to responsibility for reforms in those countries that experience our solidarity.”

Ms Merkel’s finance minister, Wolfgang Schaeuble, admitted last month that Greece will need another bailout, raising fears among Germans that they will have to foot the bill. On Sunday, the Chancellor refused to rule out another aid package but dismissed debt haircuts, which would hurt Germany as the country with the largest exposure to Greece.

Brent October futures are above $115 per barrel and West Texas Intermediate blend (WTI) hit $110 on speculation unrest in Syria will disrupt oil shipments and supplies in the Middle East. For WTI its the highest price since May 2011.

The US and Britain are gearing up in a coordinated military action against Syria, as both confirmed chemical weapons attacks were carried out against civilians, something the Assad government denies. The US-Syria standoff could send oil prices soaring, and Brent could ‘spike briefly’ to $150 a barrel if the US initiates a military attack on Syria, Societe Generale bank told Bloomberg on Wednesday.

US Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel has given the green light to launch a strike against Syria, and is just waiting for the directive from President Obama. “The concern is that an attack on Syria will reverberate through the region, increasing the spill over into other countries and possibly resulting in a larger supply disruption elsewhere,” Michael Wittner, the head of oil market research in New York, said in an August 27 report.

Oil-production in Syria is low, but its geographical position poses a threat to disrupt neighboring pipelines and seaways. Turkey, its northern neighbor, is home to 2 major pipelines that transport Iraqi oil to Europe and Central Asia.

Hossein Sheikholeslam, the director general of the Iranian parliament’s International Affairs bureau, claimed the United States would not dare attack Syria but said that if it does, “the Zionist regime will be the first victim.”

“No military attack will be waged against Syria,” Sheikholeslam was quoted as saying on Monday by Iran’s state run Fars News Agency. “Yet, if such an incident takes place, which is impossible, the Zionist regime will be the first victim of a military attack on Syria,” Sheikholeslam said in an apparent response to the Obama administration’s increasingly stern rhetoric against Syria.

Iran has been one of embattled Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s chief allies. It has sent Hezbollah reinforcements to battle rebel forces and acted as Assad’s chief defender in the Middle East.

Carla del Ponte, a member of the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Syria, told Swiss TV there were “strong, concrete suspicions but not yet incontrovertible proof,” that rebels seeking to oust Syrian strongman Bashar al-Assad had used the nerve agent.

But she said her panel had not yet seen any evidence of Syrian government forces using chemical weapons, according to the BBC, but she added that more investigation was needed. Damascus has recently faced growing Western accusations that its forces used such weapons, which President Obama has described as crossing a red line. But Ms del Ponte’s remarks may serve to shift the focus of international concern.