But according to the Office for National Statistics, dramatic changes in life expectancy have prompted many couples to reconsider whether they really want to grow old together. The ONS singled out the fact that people are living longer as the most likely cause for the surge in people heading for the divorce courts as they reach retirement age.

A more relaxed attitude to divorce among the “baby boomer” generation in comparison with their parents and greater financial independence amongst women were also cited as possible explanations. But, significantly, the figures show that, in stark contrast with other age groups, men over 60 are as likely to file for divorce as women.

The Government has insisted there will be no compromise over the sovereignty of Gibraltar, and William Hague, the Foreign Secretary, has vowed to stand "shoulder to shoulder" with its citizens in response to heightened pressure and increasingly belligerent rhetoric from Madrid.

A deal on ending the dispute, which dates back to the Treaty of Utrecht 300 years ago that ceded the territory to Britain, appeared close in 2002 after negotiations between then Europe minister Mr Hain and his Spanish counterpart.

Mr Hain told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme that the Spanish got "cold feet" and backed off. "There was a historic opportunity to have joint sovereignty which would have protected Gibraltarians' way of life – they could remain British citizens, but it also recognised Spain's historic claim at the root of this," he said.

The sun's magnetic field changes polarity approximately every 11 years. It happens at the peak of each solar cycle as the sun's inner magnetic dynamo re-organizes itself. The coming reversal will mark the midpoint of Solar Cycle 24. Half of 'Solar Max' will be behind us, with half yet to come.

Hoeksema is the director of Stanford's Wilcox Solar Observatory, one of the few observatories in the world that monitor the sun's polar magnetic fields. The poles are a herald of change. Just as Earth scientists watch our planet's polar regions for signs of climate change, solar physicists do the same thing for the sun. Magnetograms at Wilcox have been tracking the sun's polar magnetism since 1976, and they have recorded three grand reversals — with a fourth in the offing.

Solar physicist Phil Scherrer, also at Stanford, describes what happens: "The sun's polar magnetic fields weaken, go to zero, and then emerge again with the opposite polarity. This is a regular part of the solar cycle."

A reversal of the sun's magnetic field is, literally, a big event. The domain of the sun's magnetic influence (also known as the "heliosphere") extends billions of kilometers beyond Pluto. Changes to the field's polarity ripple all the way out to the Voyager probes, on the doorstep of interstellar space.

The Chancellor today unveiled a scheme to encourage women back into the workplace by handing up to £1,200 of taxpayer-funded childcare for each child to families where both parents have a job. He said that he had "huge respect" for stay-at-home mothers and said that the government will "help" their families by introducing tax breaks for married couples.

However Laura Perrins, a stay-at-home mother who took on the Deputy Prime Minister during a radio phone-in earlier this year, said that the reported £120 tax breaks were "pathetic" compared to the value of childcare vouchers. She said: "Saying stay-at-home mothers have made a lifestyle choice is pejorative and patronising. They are contributing to the economy, to society, to everything. Staying at home is not a luxury, it's not a hobby. Women who chose to stay at home make huge sacrifices."

"The married tax allowance is something we have been calling for but their version is pretty pathetic when compared to the childcare vouchers. We pay disproportionately more tax. They [the government] are socially engineering it, they think that stay at home mothers are not conforming to what they want."

Two EMP experts told Secrets that the EMP flashed through earth's typical orbit around the sun about two weeks before the planet got there. "The world escaped an EMP catastrophe," said Henry Cooper, who led strategic arms negotiations with the Soviet Union under President Reagan, and who now heads High Frontier, a group pushing for missile defense.

"Basically this is a Russian roulette thing," added Pry. "We narrowly escape from a Carrington-class disaster." Pry, Cooper, and former CIA Director James Woolsey have been recently demanding that Washington prepare the nation's electric grid for an EMP, either from the sun or an enemy's nuclear bomb. They want the 2,000-3,000 transformers in the grid protected with a high-tech metal box and spares ready to rebuild the system. Woolsey said knocking out just 20 would shut down electricity to parts of the nation "for a long time."

Cooper suggested that North Korea might already have the capability to launch an EMP against the United States. He said in December, North Korea tested its so-called Space Launch Vehicle which could deliver a stealthy nuclear attack on the United States by orbiting a nuclear weapon over the South Pole where the US has no radar or missile interceptors facing south. North Korea, he said, apparently orbited a satellite over the south polar region on a trajectory and altitude consistent with making a surprise nuclear EMP attack against the United States.

The joint counter-terror exercises, codenamed Peace Mission 2013, went live on Saturday and will last until August 15.

“The key goal of the upcoming maneuvers is to organize the joint work by control authority and troops to prepare and conduct military actions during the anti-terrorist operation. The maneuvers will take place in three stages, which include the re-deployment of troops, the planning of the operation and joint military actions,” a military press release said.

Maneuvers have been prepared by the United Strategic Command of the Russian Central Military District and the Shenyang Military Region of the People’s Liberation Army of China.

According to a source familiar with the Conservative leader's thinking, London wants to erase or amend the goal of an "ever closer union" that has featured in the preamble of EU treaties since the founding 1957 Treaty of Rome.

To many Britons, those three words stand for an inexorable one-way journey in which national sovereignty ebbs to Brussels and the undeclared final destination is a European super-state. "Ever closer union" has long been a red rag to John Bull, the patriotic cartoon Englishman draped in a Union Jack flag who feels his country signed up to a common market in 1973 but has become entangled in ever more intrusive European governance.

"We understand and respect the right of others to maintain their commitment to this goal. But for Britain - and perhaps for others - it is not the objective," Cameron said in January.

The technique, which involves fracturing rocks deep underground with water and chemicals to extract oil and natural gas, has dramatically cut energy bills in the USA. Ministers are hoping that it could do the same in the UK, particularly in the Home Counties and north west of England, however campaigners and local people are bitterly fighting drilling.

Two areas of Surrey and Sussex are estimated by US authorities to hold 700 million barrels of recoverable shale oil - or more than a year’s supply for Britain. Last week drilling began at a site in Balcombe, West Sussex, despite protests, and attention will shift in the next few weeks to the South Downs national park where a drilling application has been submitted near Fernhurst.

The Pennsylvania family reached a $750,000 settlement with the gas companies, and have used the award to relocate. In exchange, however, Chris and Stephanie Hallowich agreed that no member of their family could comment on the case “in any fashion whatsoever.”

According to Bruce Baizel, Energy Program Director at Earthworks, which focuses on mineral and energy development, the motives behind restrictive gag orders post-settlements is to conceal any evidence of adverse environmental impact from hydraulic fracturing, or fracking.

Prior to the settlement the Hallowichs said that nearby gas drilling had caused “burning eyes, sore throats, headaches and earaches, and contaminated their water supply.” According to the attorney representing the Hallowichs, since moving their health has improved significantly.

“The refrain in the industry is, this is a safe process. There’s no record of contamination. That whole claim would be undermined if these things were public,” Baizel told ClimateProgress. “These gag orders are the reason [drillers] can give testimony to Congress and say there are no documented cases of contamination. And then elected officials can repeat that,” said Sharon Wilson, an organizer with Earthworks who also spoke with ClimateProgress.

Based on new information released, indicating increasing damage in the country’s economic sectors. According to the report, sanctions imposed by the West are having a greater affect than ever on the economy and increasing the pressure reaching an agreement with the West.

American sources have told journalists that the increase in economic difficulties will have a negative impact on the Rouhani’s, but it may also manage to increase Iran’s readiness to accept limitations on its the nuclear program.

The statement comes after Spanish authorities increased border checks causing delays last weekend. And on Sunday, Spain said it was considering a new 50 euro (£43) fee to cross its border with Gibraltar.

The UK said it wanted an explanation from Spain about any new measures targeting the British territory. Gibraltar's chief minister Fabian Picardo said "sabre rattling and threatening of the sort attributed to Sr Margallo today [did] nothing for the establishment of strong cross frontier relations".

"The people who live in Gibraltar and in the cities around us clearly wish to live in peace and to benefit from increased economic activity that can be generated from allowing us to work together to deliver growth in jobs and wealth for all the region."

Each month this year, via its quantitative easing programme, the Federal Reserve has been buying up $85 billion (£55.8 billion) of financial assets – a mix of US Treasuries and mortgage-backed securities. The idea has been to lower long-term interest rates to encourage a broad-based recovery in economic activity and, more specifically, a pick-up in the US housing market.

Recently, however, the mood music at the Federal Reserve has changed. Suddenly, all the talk has been about the “tapering” of asset purchases, with the implication that, over the next year or so, such purchases might stop altogether and be followed – heaven forbid – by an increase in official interest rates.

For both financial investors and the Bank of England, tapering offers new challenges. Markets have become increasingly volatile of late, while the new Governor, Mark Carney, and his colleagues worry about the impact of US tapering on domestic UK monetary conditions.

"Because somewhere out there, someone was watching. Someone whose job it is to piece together the things people do on the internet raised the red flag when they saw our search history." But instead of rehashing the old story of the NSA intercepting and recording virtually every form of electronic communication that exists, or ruminating on what filters Ms Catalano triggered to lead to this truly disturbing outcome, perhaps a better question is just what is it that Google knows about each and everyone who uses its interface daily, which in this day and age means everyone with a computer.

As it turns out, pretty much everything. Here is the thought, and not so "thought" experiment that the WSJ's Tom Gara ran yesterday, before Ms Catalano's story had hit, to uncover just how rich his informational tapestry is in the repositories of the firm that once upon a time urged itself, rhetorically, to "not be evil."

Let’s run through a little thought experiment.

Imagine there’s a list somewhere that contains every single webpage you have visited in the last five years. It also has everything you have ever searched for, every address you looked up on Google GOOG +1.86% Maps, every email you sent, every chat message, every YouTube video you watched. Each entry is time-stamped, so it’s clear exactly, down to the minute, when all of this was done. Now imagine that list is all searchable. And imagine it’s on a clean, easy-to-use website. With all that imagined, can you think of a way a hacker, with access to this, could use it against you?

And once you’ve imagined all that, go over to google.com/dashboard, and see it all become reality.

Around 26 million Britons are struggling with money - more than half of UK adults said they were struggling with their finances, Government-backed body the Money Advice Service (MAS) found. Income per hour has dropped by 6 percent in real terms since the previous research was carried out, making it harder for people to make ends meet.

A "live for now" culture and poor financial skills were also found to be likely causes. The report also revealed that a worrying number of Britons lack financial knowledge. Some 12 percent of those questioned believed the Bank of England's base rate, which has been at a historic 0.5 percent low for more than four years, was over 10 percent.

More than one third of people did not understand the impact that inflation has on their savings and 16 percent could not identify the correct balance on a bank statement.

Tens of thousands Syriac Christians – members of the oldest Christian community in the world – have fled their ancestral provinces of Deir al-Zour and Hasakah in northeastern Syria, residents have said.

"It breaks my heart to think how our long history is being uprooted," said Ishow Goriye, the head of a Syriac Christian political Hasakah. Mr Goriye, told The Daily Telegraph how, over the past two years he has watched as Christian families from Hasakah pack their possessions on the rooftops of their vehicles and flee their homes "with little plan to come back".

Conflict in the area, desperate economic conditions, lawlessness, and persecution by rebel groups born from the perception that Christians support the regime, remain the main reasons for why Christian families are fleeing the area. The growing presence of radical jihadist groups, including al-Qaeda, has also seen Christians targeted.