One in 10 parents polled said their son or daughter’s “childhood innocence” had disappeared as young as 10 amid “unprecedented” pressure to grow up fast. And only two per cent thought their son or daughter would still seem “childlike” by 16, the age when children were seen as on the cusp of adulthood in previous generations. The research, for the website Netmums, found that children today are only half as likely to spend time reading books as their parents were.

They are also far less likely to spend time listening to music or running around outside than a generation ago, preferring to spend hours alone or playing on internet devices, according to the research. Six out of 10 parents attributed the loss of childhood to exposure to the internet while almost half also blamed television programmes such as Glee for promoting status and good looks. But the biggest influence appears to be from young people themselves, with three quarters of parents polled singling out pressure from friends and schoolmates as the main factor driving children to grow up too fast.

Siobhan Freegard, founder of Netmums, said: “The pace of modern life is so fast that it is even snatching away the precious years of childhood. A toxic combination of marketing, media and peer pressure means children no longer want to be seen as children, even when as parents we know they still are. It’s shocking our study shows childhood ends by 12 years old. Children need time to grow and emotionally mature in order to cope with what life throws at them. There needs to be a radical rethink in society to revalue childhood and protect it as a precious time – not a time to put pressure on children to grow up far too fast.”

The turnabout is testament to healthy corporate profits and the resilience of America's free enterprise system. And it's a huge relief to workers whose 401(k) plans are tied to equities. But the risky little secret of the rebound is that it is powered in significant part by the easy-money policies of the Federal Reserve, which must one day end. To combat the Great Recession, the Fed has bought trillions of dollars of mortgage bonds and US Treasuries to juice the housing market and the economy in general.

On balance these purchases — which go by the non-threatening name of "quantitative easing" — have been warranted, given the deep economic problems caused by the financial crisis. But the time is approaching to scale back the bond-buying spree and get ready to unwind some of the Fed's massive portfolio, which now tops $3 trillion. The longer the policy lasts, the more likely it will end unhappily.

That's a good reason to start thinking about an endgame sooner rather than later. The longer the Fed's easy-money policies go on, the greater the risk they will distort markets, create new bubbles and set the economy up for another fall.

Unfortunately Buffett isn’t alone. Fellow billionaire John Paulson, who made a fortune betting on the subprime mortgage meltdown, is clearing out of US stocks too. Finally, billionaire George Soros recently sold nearly all of his bank stocks, including shares of JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, and Goldman Sachs.

So why are these billionaires dumping their shares of US companies? In 2006, Wiedemer and a team of economists accurately predicted the collapse of the US housing market, equity markets, and consumer spending that almost sank the United States. The chief investment strategist at Standard & Poor’s said that Wiedemer’s track record “demands our attention.”

Wiedemer calmly laid out a clear explanation of why a large drop of some sort is a virtual certainty. It starts with the reckless strategy of the Federal Reserve to print a massive amount of money out of thin air in an attempt to stimulate the economy.

“These funds haven’t made it into the markets and the economy yet. But it is a mathematical certainty that once the dam breaks, and this money passes through the reserves and hits the markets, inflation will surge,” said Wiedemer. “Once you hit 10% inflation, 10-year Treasury bonds lose about half their value. And by 20%, any value is all but gone. Interest rates will increase dramatically at this point, and that will cause real estate values to collapse. And the stock market will collapse as a consequence of these other problems.”

It was a notable sharpening in the North's often bellicose rhetoric and followed word from UN diplomats that the United States and China had struck a tentative deal on a draft UN Security Council sanctions resolution that would punish North Korea for its third nuclear test, which it conducted last month.

"We will completely nullify the Korean armistice," the North's KCNA news agency said, quoting the Korean People's Army (KPA) Supreme Command spokesman. The two Koreas remain technically at war since the 1950-53 conflict ended in a truce rather than a peace treaty.

At this point, approximately 40 percent of the entire population of the planet has little or no access to clean water, and it is being projected that by 2025 two-thirds of humanity will live in “water-stressed” areas. But most Americans are not too concerned about all of this because they assume that North America has more fresh water than anyone else does. And actually they would be right about that, but the truth is that even North America is rapidly running out of water and it is going to change all of our lives.

Today, the most important underground water source in America, the Ogallala Aquifer, is rapidly running dry. The most important lake in the western United States, Lake Mead, is rapidly running dry. The most important river in the western United States, the Colorado River, is rapidly running dry. Putting our heads in the sand and pretending that we are not on the verge of an absolutely horrific water crisis is not going to make it go away.

Without water, you cannot grow crops, you cannot raise livestock and you cannot support modern cities. As this global water crisis gets worse, it is going to affect every single man, woman and child on the planet.

Mario Draghi has a close relationship with the world of faith. The president of the European Central Bank (ECB) was educated at a Jesuit school in Rome, he wrote articles for the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano, and when he delivered remarks on the "crisis in the euro area" last week, he chose the Catholic Academy in Munich as the venue for his announcement. "Caring for the welfare of our neighbors is not only an ethical principle of the Christian faith," he preached, standing next to a candlelit crucifix, "it also makes eminent economic sense."

Europe's top monetary policymaker can certainly use the support of higher powers. Only a few weeks ago, he said "the worst" of the euro crisis was over. But since voters denied the proponents of the current reform policies a clear majority in Italy's recent election, providing former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi with a political comeback, the crisis is back.

For weeks, his promise felt like a strong cold remedy: It successfully treated the symptoms, but it didn't eliminate the virus causing the cold in the first place. On the surface, the patient seemed to have recovered, but in reality he was as sick as before. Politicians in Berlin, Brussels and Washington, the headquarters of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), are keeping an eye on about half a dozen hot spots in the euro zone. Their alarming conclusion is that some pathogens are now more dangerous than ever.

Not surprisingly, Draghi's appeals to governments are slowly beginning to sound like sermons. "Individuals have to do what they can to help themselves before they seek help from the community," Draghi told his Munich audience last week. "The same is true for the countries in the euro area."

As tensions continue to mount between the hareidi and National Religious communities in the wake of the negotiations on which parties will or won't be part of the new government, MK Meir Porush (United Torah Jewry) called on Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to throw MK Moshe Feiglin out of the Likud, because of his “provocative actions” in ascending the Temple Mount.

“Attempts to ascend the Temple Mount are irresponsible and dangerous, and damage the delicate relations between Jews and Muslims,” Porush said Monday. “His actions are likely to set off a conflagration that will result in an intifada.”

The Temple Mount was closed off Monday morning after Feiglin asked to be allowed to ascend and enter the Dome of the Rock. As an MK, Feiglin was within his rights to do so at his request, although police still refused to allow him to enter. Meanwhile, a crowd of Arabs gathered around Feiglin. Police declared an emergency and called in forces to break up the Arab mob, closed the Mount to non-Muslims, and ejected Feiglin.

In response, Feiglin sent a letter to the Attorney General asking him to make clear whether Israel has given up its sovereignty over the Temple Mount, and if so – when and in what circumstances did it do so.

The 3,085-meter-high Plosky Tolbachik has emitted two streams of lava one of which has travelled down more than 6 kilometers while the other one made 18 kilometers. The fiery river has been setting trees in its way ablaze while turning ice and snow into clouds of steam.

The Kamchatka Peninsula in the Russian Far East is one of the most various and active volcanic areas in the world. It is located in the ‘Ring of Fire’, an area where a large number of earthquakes and volcanic eruptions occur in the basin of the Pacific Ocean, together with territories of Japan, Alaska, Philippines, Fiji Islands, New Zealand and many other active regions.

Israel’s Agriculture Ministry set up an emergency hotline today and urged residents to be vigilant in reporting sightings of the insects to prevent an outbreak. The locusts pass through the country as part of their normal migration from north east Sudan to Saudi Arabia, the Egyptian Agriculture Ministry said, emphasising that Egypt was just ‘a transfer station’ for the locusts, which were in larger numbers this year.

As the insects descended on agricultural farms in Giza and in Cairo, causing significant damage, fears have been raised that they could spread to Israel. Farmers in 15 out of the 27 Egyptian governorates suffered significant agricultural damage as the insects devoured crops and flowers.

The infestation comes as a study warns that yellow-legged Asian hornets that prey on bees are among the latest non-native species threatening UK wildlife, and even people’s health. A growing number of alien species, from killer shrimps to Spanish slugs, are set to soon reach our shores, a Europe-wide study warns. The Asian hornet, which grows to between 2.5cm and 3cm (1-1.2 inches), preys on native honeybees, wasps and other pollinators, potentially devastating hives and threatening honey and crop production.

The insider-account of the damaging divisions between the White House and the State Department comes as diplomats around the world wait to see if John Kerry, the new US Secretary of State, can persuade Mr Obama to greater engagement on Syria, Egypt and the wider Middle East.

Vali Nasr, a university professor who was seconded in 2009 to work with Richard Holbrooke, Mr Obama's special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, records his profound disillusion at how a "Berlin Wall" of domestic-focused advisers was erected to protect Mr Obama. "The president had a truly disturbing habit of funnelling major foreign policy decisions through a small cabal of relatively inexperienced White House advisers whose turf was strictly politics," Mr Nasr writes in The Dispensable Nation: America Foreign Policy in Retreat.

"They want to control everything," Admiral Mullen is quoted as saying of a White House that Prof Nasr says was "ravenous" in its desire to manage foreign policy, even by the to-be-expected standards of turf wars between diplomatic and national security teams.