A number of prominent voices urged Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday to take steps to ease the tensions and bolster the Western-backed Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas. Netanyahu's political rival, former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, warned that renewed violence might not be "far off."

But the Israeli leader stood tough. Poised for re-election, it appears unlikely he will float a bold new initiative anytime soon. "We in the government have no illusions. We want a true peace with our neighbors. But we will not close our eyes and stick our heads in the sand," Netanyahu told his Cabinet.

Netanyahu showed no signs of bending. Speaking to his Cabinet, Netanyahu said the celebrations in Gaza over the weekend exposed 'the true face of our enemies.' "They have no intention of compromising with us. They want to destroy our country, but they will obviously fail," he said.

Of the $20 billion in trade, $7 billion resulted from Turkish exports of gold to Iran. The reason: Turkey has been importing Iranian oil and gas, and has been compensating the Islamic Republic in gold, beginning in February.

The move may be a violation of the United Nations Security Council sanctions imposed on the Islamic Republic. It is clearly a violation in spirit of the sanctions imposed by Turkey's Western allies, including the United States and the European Union, whose governments have all supplemented the UN economic and trade sanctions with others.

The issue has sparked a serious rift in the Conservative Party, with more than 100 of its MPs expected to oppose the change in the Commons next year. Some have criticised David Cameron for "arrogance" in pushing ahead with the plans, despite his promise of a free vote.

The new Conservative group has been put together by Nick Herbert, the former police minister who resigned from the Government in September's reshuffle. Herbert, who is in a civil partnership, said changing the law was "the right thing to do".

"It is precisely because marriage is such a uniquely important institution that we should ensure that all couples who want to enter into it, regardless of their sexuality, can do so," he added. "Conservatives who believe in marriage should feel this most strongly."

That’s tragically a big number. The roster of the slain would have stretched even longer, but for the amazing advances in military armour and military medicine over the past generation. More than 50,000 Americans have been wounded in battle since 9/11 — 16,000 of them so seriously that they would certainly have died had they suffered an equivalent wound in any prior conflict.

Because the post-9/11 wars have lasted so long, soldiers have been exposed to the risks of combat again and again and again. Troops are rotated into combat zones, out of them and then back in again. One authoritative study found that the accumulating strain had inflicted post-traumatic stress disorder on as many as one-fifth of all US troops who had served in the Afghanistan and Iraq theatres.

In the current issue of National Journal, senior correspondent James Kitfield tallies the off-battlefield echoes of war fatigue:

A US military suicide rate that has reached one death per day. A rise in military divorces, up 38% over the past decade.

Prescription drug and alcohol abuse rates much higher than the civilian population. One in five female personnel reporting sexual abuse during their service. Kitfield argues that prolonged war-fighting has also nurtured a culture of arrogance and impunity in the US military’s higher ranks.

Ahead of December 21, which marks the conclusion of the 5,125-year "Long Count" Mayan calendar, panic buying of candles and essentials has been reported in China and Russia, along with an explosion in sales of survival shelters in America. In France believers were preparing to converge on a mountain where they believe aliens will rescue them.

The precise manner of Armageddon remains vague, ranging from a catastrophic celestial collision between Earth and the mythical planet Nibiru, also known as Planet X, a disastrous crash with a comet, or the annihilation of civilisation by a giant solar storm.

In America Ron Hubbard, a manufacturer of hi-tech underground survival shelters, has seen his business explode. "We've gone from one a month to one a day," he said. "I don't have an opinion on the Mayan calendar but, when astrophysicists come to me, buy my shelters and tell me to be prepared for solar flares, radiation, EMPs (electromagnetic pulses) ... I'm going underground on the 19th and coming out on the 23rd. It's just in case anybody's right."

In the French Pyrenees the mayor of Bugarach, population 179, has attempted to prevent pandemonium by banning UFO watchers and light aircraft from the flat topped mount Pic de Bugarach. According to New Age lore it as an "alien garage" where extraterrestrials are waiting to abandon Earth, taking a lucky few humans with them.

The city of Novokuznetsk faced a run on salt. In Barnaul, close to the Altai Mountains, panic-buyers snapped up all the torches and Thermos flasks.

Dmitry Medvedev, the Russian prime minister, even addressed the situation. "I don't believe in the end of the world," before adding somewhat disconcertingly: "At least, not this year."

In China, which has no history of preoccupation with the end of the world, a wave of paranoia about the apocalypse can be traced to the 2009 Hollywood blockbuster "2012". The film, starring John Cusack, was a smash hit in China, as viewers were seduced by a plot that saw the Chinese military building arks to save humanity.

Mayans themselves reject any notion that the world will end. Pedro Celestino Yac Noj, a Mayan sage, burned seeds and fruits to mark the end of the old calender at a ceremony in Cuba. He said: "The 21st is for giving thanks and gratitude and the 22nd welcomes the new cycle, a new dawn."

The country's weather bureau has issued strong storm alerts on the northern island of Luzon after Typhoon Bopha unexpectedly turned around. Officials urged residents to prepare to battle winds with an estimated force of up to 160 kilometers per hour in the country's northwest.

The approaching storm has increased pressure on the government to provide relief, as most of its resources are being directed to the south, where Bopha already made headlines. The Philippines appealed for international aid for the south, where entire settlements have been destroyed and thousands left homeless.

A UN representative assessed the damage as "100 per cent destruction" after aerial surveillance showed the extent of the devastation in the southern island of Mindanao. “This is a very poor area where everyone is dependent on agriculture. If people can't earn money from crops, they won't be able to put food on the table for their families,” Imogen Wall, a spokeswoman for the UN office for the coordination of humanitarian affairs, told AFP.

United States officials with knowledge of the matter tell the Washington Post that the Department of Defense and the US State Department will assist next year in a mission to overthrow Islamic extremists with ties to al-Qaeda who took under control a significant part of Mali, a small West African country that is still picking itself up after a coup this past March.

The US is claiming that it’s ready to help the military rulers, even though it may be a clear violation of American laws: the Pentagon cannot assist first-hand with people responsible for ousting a democratically elected leader. That doesn’t mean, however, that Washington won’t find a way to send support overseas.