JERUSALEM, ISRAEL - The Western Wall and the State of Israel will forever belong to the Jews, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Saturday night, as he lit the eight candles of Hanukkah at the Wall, in Jerusalem’s Old City. Dating from the Second Temple era, the Western Wall, or Kotel, is the only remnant of the outer wall that surrounded the Jewish Temple, the holiest site in Judaism.“I want to tell them from the closest possible place to the [Hanukkah] miracle of the jar of oil: The Western Wall has been ours for 3,000 years, and it and the State of Israel will be ours forever,” [Mr] Netanyahu said.

USA - The Journal Reports that in March a debate was had within the White House around whether a “dragnet” of citizen records should be created. The changes also allow databases of US civilian information to be given to foreign governments for analysis of their own. In effect, US and foreign governments would be using the information to look for clues that people might commit future crimes. “It’s breathtaking” in its scope, said a former senior administration official familiar with the White House debate.

PHILIPINES - The number of people killed after Typhoon Bopha struck the southern Philippines has risen to more than 1,000, officials say. With nearly 850 people still missing, the toll is likely to rise further, Civil Defence chief Benito Ramos said. The storm struck the Philippines on 4 December, with the southern island of Mindanao worst affected. Many of those still unaccounted for are fishermen who went to sea before the storm hit. The storm displaced hundreds of thousands of people and caused severe damage to property and infrastructure.

USA - Today, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, an ardent gun control advocate, moved to politicize the monstrous school shooting in Connecticut, issuing the following statement: "With all the carnage from gun violence in our country, it’s still almost impossible to believe that a mass shooting in a kindergarten class could happen. It has come to that. Not even kindergarteners learning their A,B,Cs are safe.

BEIJING, CHINA - A knife-wielding man slashed 22 children and an adult at an elementary school in central China on Friday, state media reported, the latest in a series of attacks on schoolchildren in the country. The man attacked the children at the gate of a school in Chenpeng village in Henan province, the Xinhua news agency reported. There have been a series of attacks on schools and schoolchildren around China in recent years. The rash of violence has prompted public calls for more measures to protect the young in a country where many couples only have one child.

INCIRLIK AIR BASE, TURKEY - The United States authorized on Friday the deployment of 400 troops for two Patriot missile-defense batteries along Turkey’s border with Syria, a move that could put American forces near the front lines of the Arab country’s escalating civil war. Defense Secretary Leon E Panetta signed the order authorizing the deployment of the batteries Friday morning while flying from Kabul to this military base in southern Turkey. Speaking to US airmen inside a hangar, [Mr] Panetta said the crisis in Syria has made this base, roughly 60 miles from Syria, and others in the region exceptionally important. “This is a challenging time, a critical time,” [Mr] Panetta said. “You are in a critical place doing a critical task.”

EUROPE - European leaders agreed to press on with further steps to shore up their finances and sustain momentum in tackling the debt crisis on Friday, a day after clinching a deal on banking supervision and approving long-delayed aid to Greece. After more than eight hours of late-night talks at a summit in Brussels, leaders promised to push ahead with setting up a mechanism to wind down problem banks, although it was unclear when the facility would be completed. They also launched tentative discussions on how to make countries stick to economic targets and on creating a "solidarity fund" to help member states suffering one-off economic shocks, but did not delve deeply into either issue, pushing the debate out to the middle of next year.

UK - The BBC should feature more lesbian, gay and bisexual people in children’s television, a report has found. It should be “more creative and bolder” in how it depicts lesbian, gay and bisexual (LGB) people across all platforms, taking care to avoid stereotypes, the review said. The study, commissioned by the BBC, found that although there has been a gradual improvement in the level of representation of LBG people, they were “still relatively invisible” in the media. An expert panel said the corporation should use children’s programming to help “familiarise audiences through incidental portrayal from an early age” as well as validating older children who may be LGB.

SYRIA - Desperation for food is growing in parts of Syria, where fist fights or dashes across the civil war front lines have become part of the daily struggle to secure a loaf of bread. Conditions are especially dire in the northern city of Aleppo, where civilians enduring incessant clashes and air raids in rebel-held districts say hunger is a new threat to survival in the 20-month-old revolt against President Bashar al-Assad.

ISRAEL - The IDF Spokesman’s Office is preparing for the next war, in which the swiftness of its response will be key, Brigadier-General Yoav Mordechai, the IDF Spokesman, says. Speaking to the Globes Business Conference in Tel Aviv earlier this week, Mordechai said his unit was in the midst of preparing for a future war that will likely be more complex than the recent conflict with Hamas. “We’re not patting ourselves on the back from the last operation,” he said, referring to November’s Operation Pillar of Defense. “Militarily, we understand that this was a time-limited operation,” he said. “We made mistakes – and where we err, we correct ourselves.”

BERLIN, GERMANY/BUDAPEST, HUNGARY/BOLZANO, ITALY - A new study published by the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP) warns of the heightened "potential for conflicts" in the EU due to the ethnic policy promoted by Berlin.

UK - Ministers should demand that the pharmaceutical firm Roche returns £500 million to the NHS if it is found to have sat on trials data showing the flu drug Tamiflu to be ineffective, say MPs. The Swiss drugs giant has been accused of withholding key data on effectiveness of Tamiflu, which the NHS stockpiled in vast quantities in 2009 to protect against the swine flu threat. Roche claims the drug reduces the risk of developing flu-related complications including bronchitis and pneumonia. Dr Sarah Wollaston, a Conservative MP and member of the Health Select Committee, wrote the letter. “It could be that the previous government spent 0.5 per cent of the entire 2009 NHS budget on a drug which the manufacturers were aware was no better than a placebo.”

UK - Four years ago, the Queen asked academics why no one had foreseen the “awful” financial crisis which has blighted the country ever since. On Thursday, during a tour of the Bank of England, she effectively answered her own question as she talked about “lax” City workers and a regulator that “didn’t have the teeth” to intervene. The Duke, meanwhile, was typically direct. “There’s not another one coming, is there?” he asked. Then, as he left Mr Kapadia and his group, he said: “Don’t do it again!”

USA - Members of the US Congress convened in Washington on Thursday to discuss the United States’ ongoing extrajudicial slayings of Americans and foreigners overseas using unmanned drones. On Capitol Hill, Representative Dennis Kucinich (Democrat for Ohio) led a House Judiciary Committee discussion that demanded more transparency from President Barack Obama over how his administration carries out the targeted killing of suspected terrorists using drone aircraft. Despite the growing number of kills, the White House has remained mostly quiet on its drone program, with the lions’ share of information only surfacing through intelligence leaks made to the media.

FRANCE - In the midst of the economic crisis, France's Socialists are denying reality. The minister of industrial renewal is calling for nationalization of some industries, while the president shies away from necessary structural reforms. Business leaders fear the clock has been turned back 30 years. The liberal economist Nicolas Baverez, who predicted "France's downfall" 10 years ago and has just written a book titled "Réveillez-Vous" ("Wake Up"), saw the wrangling over Florange as proof that the French left still hasn't accepted globalization, and acts as if the country were an economic and cultural preserve. "The idea of nationalization sends an ominous message to all investors," Baverez said.