The fact that the visits were timed so the two leaders would not meet — Mr Abbas left Beijing on Tuesday, and Mr Netanyahu arrived Wednesday after a swing through Shanghai — signaled that neither they nor Xi Jinping, China’s leader, were ready for actual talks. But Mr Xi did present a four-point peace proposal to Mr Abbas, which, though it did not contain any breakthrough ideas, hinted that China had given some thought to playing a more energetic, if very limited, role as mediator in one of the world’s most protracted conflicts.

“As China’s economy, national strength and international status grow, Arab countries are looking more to China,” said Guo Xiangang, a vice president of the China Institute of International Studies in Beijing who follows China’s relations with Middle Eastern nations. “The expectations they place on China are growing.”

In their meeting on Wednesday afternoon, Prime Minister Li Keqiang of China told Mr Netanyahu that “the Palestinian issue is a core issue affecting the peace and stability of the Middle East, and a peaceful solution reached through dialogue and negotiations is the only effective answer,” according to Xinhua, the state news agency. “As a friend of both Israel and the Palestinians, China has always maintained an objective and fair stance, and is willing to strive together with all sides to actively advance the Middle East peace process,” Mr Li said.

The decision by the cabinet of Chancellor Angela Merkel came a day after Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble, indicated that he supported moving ahead with efforts to create a banking union, despite Germany’s official stance that the step would ultimately require changes to European treaties.

The legislation, which awaits action by the German Parliament, would grant the ECB the authority to oversee the Continent’s largest lenders: those worth more than €30 billion, or $39.5 billion, or the three largest banks in each of the 17 European Union countries using the euro. While the German cabinet’s decision moves a banking union a step closer to becoming reality, it does not resolve arguments over how to unwind failing banks, one of the problems a banking union would address.

German officials, in particular, have been viewed as dragging their feet in arguing that establishing a sound, lasting bank supervision authority was more important than speed. Mr Schäuble has said that creating a mechanism would require changes to EU treaties, a process that could slow the effort considerably. Martin Kotthaus, a spokesman for Mr Schäuble, said Wednesday: “For a new central authority, we would need treaty change because there is no enabling power for such an authority.”

"We're concerned about the recent tensions surrounding the Temple Mount, Haram al-Sharif, including the detention today of the Grand Mufti," State Department deputy spokesman Patrick Ventrell, told reporters, according to AFP, using the Muslim name for the Temple Mount. "We understand that he was released," he said. "But we urge all sides to respect the status quo of this holy site and to exercise restraint and refrain from provocative actions."

Earlier Wednesday, Israeli police questioned and released Jerusalem's most senior Muslim cleric for suspected involvement in throwing chairs at a group of Jews on the Temple Mount. In response to the incident, Jordan MPs unanimously demanded that the government expel Israeli Ambassador Daniel Nevo.

After Israel liberated the Temple Mount during the 1967 Six Day War, it left the Waqf in charge of the compound. The Waqf, in return, has removed every sign of ancient Jewish presence at the Jewish holy site and has consistently destroyed Jewish antiquities on the Temple Mount in a direct violation of a ruling by the Supreme Court.

Assurances aside, the crew's failings appear unusually worrisome given its assignment: manning a nuclear missile base and being prepared at a moment's notice to launch a Minuteman 3 if ordered by the president. An investigation had revealed a force in disarray and resulted in the unprecedented removal of 17 launch officers from their duty at Minot Air Force Base, North Dakota, The Associated Press found.

Weapons safety rules were being violated and codes for the Air Force's most powerful nuclear missiles may have been compromised, among other failings cited in a report. Even the orders of superiors were being questioned, and they were not being shown the proper respect.

"We are, in fact, in a crisis right now," Lieutenant Colonel Jay Folds, deputy commander of the 91st Operations Group, told subordinates in an email obtained by the AP. The group is responsible for all Minuteman 3 missile launch crews at Minot.

Furthermore, it brands our government as unreliable and untruthful. Henceforth, diplomats and soldiers everywhere should beware of the “Benghazi Bus”, which could run over them at any inconvenient time. Getting Benghazied may even become a new verb in diplomatic language. Today’s live testimony of the “Benghazi Whistle blowers” before the House Oversight & Government Reform Committee could provide the testimony that takes down the Obama Administration.

The question is, will Congress have the guts to impeach the public officials who were responsible for the disaster and the subsequent coverup. Had the real facts been quickly known about the Benghazi attacks and how the Administration threw the Ambassador and others under the bus, the November 2012 elections would have gone badly for the Democrats. This additional pressure to cover up automatically became cover-up-at-all-costs.

Will all the facts ever be revealed?

Amid growing concerns over St Louis, Missouri-based Monsanto and the impact the company is having on agriculture, activists have planned rallies for later this month in 36 countries. Monsanto, a titan of the emerging biotech industry, has come under attack from environmentalists, agriculturalists and average consumers over the company’s conduct in the realm of genetically-modified organisms and genetically-engineered foods.

But even as the anti-Monsanto movement increases in intensity, the company itself continues to generate record-setting profits. In April the company announced a 22 percent increase in net profits, and representatives for the companies said they expect to see that trend continue.

Lars Seier Christensen, chief executive of Saxo Bank, said it was clear that the eurozone would eventually break up as Brussels claimed even more power and used it “ever more poorly”. The break-up of the 17-nation bloc could take shape in several forms, Mr Christensen said, including the weaker countries leaving, which he believes could be done for cheaper than the current and future bailouts.

Another option could be the evolution of a multi euro-currency zone, where countries with similar economic conditions grouped together, he suggested. Perhaps the less likely, but still possible, would be that Germany leaves the single currency. The bank boss argued that as the bills begin to pile up for the eurozone's largest economy, this option would seem an attractive solution to the country’s citizens. However, he said all of these options would “require rationality returning” to Brussels, which “does not seem to be on the cards”. “There are a lot of things to worry and think about if you are a citizen or investor in the eurozone.”

Mr Bolton is now a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. His comments came as Congress is readying to hear testimony from several witnesses about the September 11, 2012, attacks on the US Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, that killed four, including Ambassador J Christopher Stevens. Witness Greg Hicks already has stated publicly that the administration was aware that the attack was terrorist in nature, and not related to protests of a YouTube film about Muslims, as originally stated.

Mr Bolton said these witnesses’ testimonies could prove explosive. “The three witnesses who have been identified are not bystanders,” he said in the Newsmax report. “These are not people who are going to report on hearsay of what somebody in Tripoli told somebody that they heard from. These are people who are directly involved in different capacities before, during and after the attack.”

Committee staffers have hinted that the witnesses’ statements are going to prove “devastating,” especially for then-Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. And “you’ve already seen some Democratic members of Congress… beginning to run from this,” Mr Bolton said in the Newsmax report.

So what happens when their physical gold is gone but they still have lots and lots of people with legal claims to gold? When that moment arrives, it will represent the end of the paper gold scam. Many believe that the recent takedown of the price of paper gold was a desperate attempt by the bankers to put off that day of reckoning, but it appears to have greatly backfired on them. Instead of cooling off demand for precious metals, it has unleashed a massive "gold rush" all over the globe.

Meanwhile, word has been spreading among wealthy families in both North America and Europe that they had better grab their physical gold out of the banks while they still can. This is creating havoc in the financial community, and at least one major international bank has already declared that it will only be settling those accounts in cash from now on.

The paper gold scam is starting to unravel, and by the time this is all over it is going to be a complete and total nightmare for global financial markets.

The European Commission has proposed a tough 47 percent “anti-dumping” tariff to penalise the imports, it emerged on Wednesday. The move would benefit European manufacturers, who allege their Chinese rivals - whose panels are as much as 45 percent cheaper - are unfairly subsidised by Beijing.

Chinese solar panel production quadrupled between 2009 and 2011, exceeding global demand, and EU manufacturers say China has now captured 80 percent of the European market. However, action against the Chinese imports is fiercely opposed by European solar panel installation companies which have thrived on the cheap supply and claim that hundreds of thousands of jobs could be at risk. On Wednesday night Britain said it was “working hard to ensure the Commission’s response, and any measures imposed, are proportionate and take account of wider effects on the industry”.

But it's not just Algeria. Lawmakers in Venezuela were bloodied in a punch up following an election to replace Hugo Chavez. Sanctions on Iran, meanwhile, have forced many of its oil and natural gas customers away because of the economic risks of doing business. In Nigeria, the United Nations said it was deeply concerned about the bloodshed that followed a military attack on Boko Haram, a militant group with ties to al-Qaida.

Rights groups, meanwhile, pressured British Prime Minister David Cameron to address the human rights situation in the United Arab Emirates, where some observers saw the recent arrest of al-Qaida sympathizers as a cover-up for repression. French concerns extended beyond Mali and Total's, meanwhile, when a car bomb ripped through part of its embassy in Tripoli and April was the deadliest month in Iraq in roughly five years. Including Algeria, that's seven of the 12 members of OPEC embroiled in some degree of turmoil.

"This is about the economic and monetary union but for the EU as a whole," he said. "The commission will, therefore, set out its views and explicit ideas for treaty change in order for them to be debated before the European elections."

"We want to put all the elements on the table, in a clear and consistent way, even if some of them may sound like political science fiction today. They will be reality in a few years' time." Mr Barroso's announcement that he will set out plans for a European federation next spring, before elections to the European Parliament in May 2014, will further deepen Conservative divisions over the EU.

The intervention will add weight to the argument made by Lord Lawson, and other anti-EU Tories, that it is pointless to try and improve Britain's membership terms when the dynamic, set by the eurozone, is towards a fully-fledged federal Europe.

The US Commission on International Religious Freedom recently said: “The flight of Christians out of the region is unprecedented and it’s increasing year by year.” In our lifetime alone “Christians might disappear altogether from Iraq, Afghanistan, and Egypt.” Ongoing reports from the Islamic world certainly support this conclusion: Iraq was the earliest indicator of the fate awaiting Christians once Islamic forces are liberated from the grip of dictators.

In 2003, Iraq’s Christian population was at least one million. Today fewer than 400,000 remain — the result of an anti-Christian campaign that began with the US occupation of Iraq, when countless Christian churches were bombed and countless Christians killed, including by crucifixion and beheading.

The 2010 Baghdad church attack, which saw nearly 60 Christian worshippers slaughtered, is the tip of a decade-long iceberg. Now, as the US supports the jihad on Syria’s secular president Assad, the same pattern has come to Syria: entire regions and towns where Christians lived for centuries before Islam came into being have now been emptied, as the opposition targets Christians for kidnapping, plundering, and beheadings, all in compliance with mosque calls telling the populace that it’s a “sacred duty” to drive Christians away.