Saudi Arabia remains a relatively closed society; gender mixing is restricted to a tight circle of relatives and family friends, and direct criticism of the ruling family or powerful conservative clergy is frowned upon. Morality police patrol the kingdom's few public spaces such as shopping malls to enforce rigid social rules.

Cyberspace presents considerably more complicated challenges than a shopping centre, however, and Saudi authorities are alarmed by the unfettered contact that the Internet allows, including for activists who spread news and information not covered by state media. With just under half the kingdom's nearly 27 million population younger than 25, according to the CIA Factbook, Saudis are avid users of social media of all kinds.

"People use social media ... more than asking to meet in person. It's safer," said a Jeddah-based activist, who like others interviewed for this story asked not to be named because he feared reprisals from state authorities. "We know they are watching us, but they cannot control us on social media."

Ofer Shelah of the Yesh Atid (There Is a Future) party, Netanyahu’s biggest coalition partner, made the comments earlier this week in a Tel Aviv “pub talk” hosted by the left-wing group Peace Now. Many in the Israeli media jumped on the fact that Shelah — a former journalist like his friend and party founder Yair Lapid — seemed to be endorsing a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that contradicts the party line, as well as that of Netanyahu’s Likud.

“Jerusalem will remain united under Israeli sovereignty,” the Yesh Atid party wrote in its founding declaration of principles, “because Jerusalem is not just a place or a city, but the center of the Jewish-Israeli ethos and the holy place for which Jews longed throughout all generations.”

“People say that after signing a peace agreement we will still demand Haifa, Acre and Safed,” he said. “That is not true. Signing the agreement will signal the end of the conflict.” Abbas further clarified that in any peace settlement the Palestinian state would agree to be demilitarized. He noted that during earlier negotiations with former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert there was an agreement to post American soldiers in the West Bank to help maintain security.

“We don’t need planes or missiles. All we need is a strong police force,” said Abbas. “On the other hand, we want sovereignty and independence. I was criticized for saying that I don’t want a single Israeli soldier or settler in the Palestinian state. I meant any Israeli that is part of the occupation. I didn’t mean that I don’t want Jews or Israelis in the Palestinian state. We’ll welcome them as tourists or as people coming to do business. We just don’t want occupation forces.”

"The IAF [Israeli Air Force] targeted a terror site located between Beirut and Sidon in response to a barrage of four rockets launched at northern Israel yesterday," a statement from the military read. "The pilots reported direct hits to the target." The attack took place near Naameh, according to defense sources, AP reported.

The Abdullah Azzam Brigades - an Al-Qaeda-affiliated group that had claimed similar rocket attacks on Israel in 2009 and 2011 – claimed responsibility for Thursday's missile salvo. At least three rockets were launched at Israel from southern Lebanon, setting off air raid sirens in the Nahariya and Acre areas, Haaretz reported on Friday.

Lebanese sources said that four Katyusha rockets were launched at Israel. One of the rockets was intercepted by the Iron Dome missile defense system, IDF Spokesman Brigadier General Yoav Mordechai said. The Israeli army said it does not believe that Hezbollah was responsible for the attacks. Israel invaded Lebanon during an inconclusive 2006 conflict with Hezbollah forces.

Now, officials are taking one drastic step to save the Earth from catastrophe. And it’s so dangerous, they may wipe out half of mankind in the process. To stop the complete and total meltdown of Japan’s nuclear reactors, authorities have proposed a dangerous plan. The biggest problem is Fukushima’s Reactor Number 4. The reactor’s cooling pool for spent nuclear rods is located on the top floor of the TEPCO building. And that building was heavily damaged by the 2011 quake. Due to its instability, authorities say they must move the 400 tons of spent fuel rods right away.

Spent fuel rod transfers occur on a fairly regular basis, but always under the most secure and controlled setting due to the potential nuclear catastrophe that would happen if just one spent rod is mishandled. In the case of Fukushima’s Reactor 4, officials will attempt to remove 1,300 spent fuel rods from a structurally unsafe building in a highly contaminated environment.

The first casualty of the 2011 Fukushima nuclear meltdown was the truth. Most of the devastating revelations exposed over the past two years were first vehemently denied by Japanese, American and corporate leaders. The truth is, within days of the four nuclear meltdowns, western North America was slammed with a massive dose of radiation that contaminated everything in its path as the world slowly spun and the invisible radiation cloud moved eastward.

Summing up where mankind is right now in the fight to save humanity from global devastation, the report leaves readers with this final warning, ‘We have three 100-ton melted fuel blobs underground, but where exactly they are located, no one knows. Whatever barriers TEPCO has put in place so far have failed. Efforts to decontaminate radioactive water have failed. Robots have failed. Camera equipment and temperature gauges… failed. Decontamination of surrounding cities has failed. If and when the corium reaches the Tokyo aquifer, serious and expedient discussions will have to take place about evacuating 40 million people.’

"Many other countries outside of Japan have experienced decommissioning reactors, so we hope we can consult them more and utilize their experience,” TEPCO’s vice president, Zengo Aizawa, said at a news conference on Wednesday night. "In that sense, we need support, not only from the Japanese government but from the international community to do this job."

The call comes after one of the 1,060 temporary tanks used to store highly contaminated water sprang a leak on Wednesday, discharging as much as 300 tons of radioactive liquid containing large amounts of cesium. Further tests revealed excessive radiation levels elsewhere in the facility.

Japan’s Nuclear Regulation Authority (NRA) rated the incident 3 on the International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale, which spans from 1 to 7. "The current situation is at the point where more surveillance won't be enough to keep the accidents from happening," declared Shunichi Tanaka, chairman of the NRA.

“Unfortunately, TEPCO waited until a severe emergency arose to finally report how bad things really are. Historically, everything TEPCO says always turns out to be much worse than they initially admit,” nuclear accident researcher Christina Consolo told RT. Most experts say that it could take between four decades and a century to eliminate the impact of the Fukushima disaster.

Other Scottish bishops had agreed the inquiry should go ahead. Archbishop Conti told the Catholic paper he was confident the percentage of priests involved in abuse was small. The Catholic Church has said it will engage in any process which allows "lessons to be learned". Commenting on the continuing investigation into allegations of sexual and physical abuse at Fort Augustus School, Archbishop Conti said he would have alerted the proper authorities if the allegations had been made to him while he was Bishop of Aberdeen.

Pointing out that the Bishops' Conference decided in 2013 to publish audits by the National Safeguarding Office, it added: "The Church remains willing to engage in any process which allows lessons to be learned and survivors to be supported."

"Deliveries of natural resources from countries in the Arctic" - ie Russia and Norway - are "of great importance" to Germany, the BGR declared. It is very inconvenient that the prediction of the volume of Arctic resources is based only on unreliable estimates. This research institute is, therefore, consolidating its exploration of the mineral resources of the Arctic Ocean, into a new research program.

The melting of the polar cap could soon allow these resources to be profitably exploited. Within the framework of the natural resources policy offensive launched by the German government around eight years ago, the BGR has been intensifying its activities for German industry. The BGR, which has long since been closely linked to the German business community, founded, in 2010, the Agency for German Resources (DERA) which now serves German industry directly.

The BGR, a high level federal authority, within the portfolio of the Ministry of Economics and Technology, explicitly views itself in an undaunted continuity with institutions of the German Empire and the Nazi period. According to its website, the Royal Prussian Geological Institute founded in Berlin in 1873 could serve as the first of its "predecessor organizations," which - renamed in 1919 - continued its work during the Weimar Republic under the new name, the Prussian Geological Institute.

In 1939 it became the Reich's Office for Geological Survey, which then in 1941 became the Reich's Office for Geological Research. Already in 1945, according to the BGR, the first "attempts at reorganizing" the state geological service were undertaken in the former Hannover branch office of the Reich's Office, which, in 1950, resulted in the formal establishment of the Office for Geological Research, from what was left from the Reich's Office for Geological Research. The transformation into what is today the BGR followed in 1958. And like the BGR, its predecessors had supported German industry with geological research in its expansion - throughout all stages.

Up to 1,300 victims are alleged to have been killed in what opposition sources are calling a “gas attack” on the towns of Zamalka and Ein Tarma as UN inspectors visit nearby Damascus for a pre-planned investigation into allegations of chemical weapons used by both rebels and the Syrian Army. Video clips show dozens of dead bodies with no apparent wounds. The opposition National Coalition has seized on the footage to insist there is no “political solution” to the crisis in Syria, a not so subtle call for NATO military intervention. UK Foreign Secretary William Hague called the alleged attack a “shocking escalation.”

However, several impartial experts have cast doubt on the narrative behind the footage, noting its all too convenient emergence just as UN inspectors enter the country. “Firstly, the timing is odd, bordering on suspicious,” writes BBC security correspondent Frank Gardner. “Why would the Assad government, which has recently been retaking ground from the rebels, carry out a chemical attack while UN weapons inspectors are in the country?”

His suspicions are shared by Swedish diplomat and former UN weapons inspector Rolf Ekeus, who told Reuters, “It would be very peculiar if it was the government to do this at the exact moment the international inspectors come into the country… at the least, it wouldn’t be very clever.” Swedish chemical weapons expert Ake Sellstrom, who is leading the current UN inspection in Syria, told Swedish broadcaster SVT that the high number of those killed and wounded sounded “suspicious.”

Charles Lister, an analyst at IHS Jane’s Terrorism and Insurgency Center, told the Jerusalem Post that the timing of such an attack is confusing. “Logically, it would make little sense for the Syrian government to employ chemical agents at such a time, particularly given the relatively close proximity of the targeted towns (to the UN team),” he said. As we reported earlier today, evidence strongly suggests that previous chemical weapons attacks in Syria were carried out by FSA rebels and then blamed on Assad, in an attempt to fulfil Barack Obama’s “red line” for US military intervention.

IDF Radio reported that bomb shelters in the northern city of Akko (Acre) have been opened for public use, and the IDF is urging residents of the north to remain close to shelters. This would not be the first time Sunni Islamist groups affiliated with the "global jihad" or Al Qaeda ideology have fired rockets from Lebanon into Israel.

Gülen himself has been living in self-imposed exile in the US for years, having left Turkey after public prosecutors accused the elderly imam of working to foment an Islamist revolution. His followers have established schools in 140 countries, as well as a bank, media outlets and hospitals.

Gülen's followers present themselves outwardly as modern. Their numbers are growing in Turkey, where poorer families praise Gülen's commitment to education, and business people appreciate his business-friendly approach. But individuals who have left the fold have told SPIEGEL of brainwashing and sect-like structures within the movement.

In US State Department diplomatic cables made public by WikiLeaks, American diplomats described Gülen's followers in 2004 as "Turkey's most powerful Islamist grouping, feared by the core institutions of the Turkish State" saying the network "controls major business, trade, and publishing activities, has deeply penetrated the political scene - including AKP at high levels."

The Twentieth century saw some of the most destructive wars in history, the development of the Atomic Bomb, the beginning of air and space travel, the colonization and decolonization of the Third World, the rise and fall of Communism, dramatic improvements in the standard of living, the population explosion, the rise of the computer, incredible advances in science and medicine, and hundreds of historically unprecedented changes.

The Twentieth century also produced more inflation than any other century in history. Inflation is nothing new. Roman rulers produced inflation in Third Century Rome by debasing their coins, China suffered inflation in the fourteenth century when the Emperors replaced coins with paper money, Europe and the rest of the world suffered inflation when gold and silver started flowing into the Old World from the New World in the sixteenth century, and the French and American Revolutions destroyed currencies in each of those countries.

Nevertheless, as we shall see, the Twentieth century produced the worst inflation in human history. Every single country in the world suffered worse inflation in the Twentieth century than in any century in history.

He says water is leaking out all over the site and there are no accurate figures for radiation levels. The ongoing problems at the Fukushima plant increased in recent days when the Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco) admitted that around 300 tonnes of highly radioactive water had leaked from a storage tank on the site.

But some nuclear experts are concerned that the problem is a good deal worse than either Tepco or the Japanese government are willing to admit. They are worried about the enormous quantities of water, used to cool the reactor cores, which are now being stored on site. Some 1,000 tanks have been built to hold the water. But these are believed to be at around 85% of their capacity and every day an extra 400 tonnes of water are being added.

The lack of clarity about the water situation and the continued attempts by Tepco to deny that water was leaking into the sea has irritated many researchers. Dr Ken Buesseler is a senior scientist at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution who has examined the waters around Fukushima. "It is not over yet by a long shot, Chernobyl was in many ways a one week fire-explosive event, nothing with the potential of this right on the ocean. We've been saying since 2011 that the reactor site is still leaking whether that's the buildings and the ground water or these new tank releases. There's no way to really contain all of this radioactive water on site."

In a letter to the UN secretary general, Mitsuhei Murata says the official radiation figures published by Tepco cannot be trusted. He says he is extremely worried about the lack of a sense of crisis in Japan and abroad. This view is shared by Mycle Schneider, who is calling for an international taskforce for Fukushima. "The Japanese have a problem asking for help. It is a big mistake; they badly need it."

“It’s a concept called the dhimmi. The dhimmi is an agreement, it actually means ‘protection,’ and those who are dhimmis are the protected. But they are protected in sort of the sense of mafia protection money, meaning that they are a secondary class of citizen, and this stretches back to the very beginning of the Islamic conquest from the life of the prophet Muhammad all the way up through the Ottoman Empire,” Sexton said. “If you were a non-Muslim you fell under this separate legal category, where you were essentially treated like livestock.”

“They would keep you alive, but you had no real rights. If they wanted to kill you, they could. If they wanted to rape your women, put you in slavery, take your property, they could.” Sexton proceeded to point out that the Coptic community in Egypt is one of the oldest Christian communities in the world, and many of the areas we now think of as firmly “Islamic,” like Istanbul (Constantinople) were actually Christian long before the Islamic conquest.

So what happened?

“They were put under the status of dhimmitude, which essentially over time, either forced them to accept Islam or live in this legal area where they could be killed [or enslaved],” Sexton said. And unlike under Roman law, religious minorities were also disarmed to ensure they could not defend themselves, Sexton said. They also had to pay a “jizya,” which was described as an “I’m not a Muslim” tax. There was also a concept called “fay” saying all property actually belongs to the umma, the Islamic community, and anyone outside that community can therefore have their property appropriated to wage war, Sexton added.

“These Christian communities, the Coptics being one of the most well-known, have been there [since] pre-Islamic times and they are on the verge of extermination,” Sexton warned.

He's a New World man doing the oldest job in the Old World; an Argentine with Italian blood who doesn't like Latin. He writes very little yet talks incessantly. He is, one Left-wing journalist reassures the obsessive critics of the Church, still a Catholic. That's a relief, because traditionalists tell me that we've elected a Buddhist.

Then a chance click on a blog by Alejandro Bermúdez, head of the Catholic News Agency, leant me a fascinating insight into his intellectual character. During his first homily, Pope Francis quoted the 19th century French convert Léon Bloy. And it's a striking quote: When one does not confess Jesus Christ, I am reminded of the expression of Léon Bloy: ‘He who does not pray to the Lord prays to the devil.’ When one does not confess Jesus Christ, one confesses the worldliness of the devil.

Oh my! To anyone who doubts Pope Francis' orthodoxy, there it is in black and white. God is a reality and to reject him is to embrace the only real alternative – the devil. Note that it's "the devil" with a small "d", because he's much smaller than God and cannot possibly win the Final Battle between the two. Satan is a pipsqueak and a born loser, and you'd have to be pretty dumb to pick him for an ally.

Bloy said, "Any Christian who is not a hero is a pig." His angry writings seek to shame us into seeking sainthood. In a quieter, yet no less energetic way, Francis is doing the same.