The hearing was being broadcast live by US television. Feinstein said she had spoken with Pardo, who also met with CIA director David Petraeus, adding that the Mossad chief had mentioned the possibility of unilateral Israeli action against Iran. Her fellow Democrat, US President Barack Obama, opposes a strike on Tehran’s nuclear facilities – favoring sanctions instead.

Israeli officials have sent conflicting messages about the option of pre-emptive military strikes on Iran's nuclear facilities. Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has called for stronger sanctions on Iran saying Tehran's economy is wobbling, but last week expressed skepticism about the efficacy of sanctions at a Defense and Foreign Affairs committee meeting in the Knesset.

Defense Minister Ehud Barak has warned that the window for effective military action against Iran's nuclear program is rapidly closing. He has also cautioned Israelis against over-estimating Iran's ability to strike back should Israel launch an attack on Tehran's nuclear program. President Shimon Peres on Tuesday said "no option should be excluded against the program of Iran, which seeks to acquire weapons of mass destruction. The regime of the ayatollahs is the most corrupt in the world, from a moral point of view," Peres added.

Everything on display last week in the Strait of Hormuz was pure theater. There were tough words, risky posturing, well-acted one-person pieces and even a taste of the risqué, but not much in terms of a plot. Or at least that's how it was on the stage of the fifth Fujairah International Monodrama Festival (FIMF).

"The world passes through here," the festival's director said during the opening ceremony on January 22. With that, he was hardly referring to the flotilla of warships approaching the small emirate of Fujairah at that very moment, made up of the American aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln, a guided missile cruiser, two destroyers, the British frigate HMS Argyll and the French frigate La Motte-Picquet.

All of them were sailing west through the Strait of Hormuz toward the Persian Gulf. The US military already refers to this zone as a "theater," a possible scene of combat. The Persian Gulf hasn't seen this kind of display of naval power since the final campaign against Saddam Hussein. Indeed, its size has prompted many to wonder whether it is merely posturing and bluffing or, rather, a sign of an upcoming fourth war in the Gulf.

Two other American aircraft carriers, the USS Carl Vinson and the USS John C Stennis, are cruising in the Gulf of Oman and the Arabian Sea. In late December, Iran held one of its most elaborate naval exercises in its recent history, and ones that also involved cruise missiles and minelayers. Iranian Rear Admiral Mahmoud Mousavi, a spokesman for the drill, said it was meant to "to prepare the navy for confronting the enemy in war situations."

With Iran's coastline bristling with missiles, the Revolutionary Guards' flotilla of armed speedboats and their submarine bunkers, so much military might is concentrating in the area that any incident could spark a new Gulf war.

But more than 2,400 vacancies, including roles for nurses, engineers, chefs and other skilled workers, are being advertised by an online recruitment agency in Bucharest. The firm says that British companies are trying to fill 2,434 new jobs with Romanian workers – making the UK a better bet for migrant workers than Germany, which is advertising 2,387 positions.

Many of the posts in Britain are for medical positions, tourism professionals and skilled staff, with 25 per cent being offered to labourers and unskilled workers. Earlier this month, UK unemployment hit 8.4 per cent, its highest level since 1994. But official figures show that nine out of ten jobs created in 2010 went to foreign nationals. The Romanian website, TjobsRecruit, cheerily greets prospective job seekers with ‘New year, new job, new life!’

The vacancies, advertised in English, include 28 taxi driver jobs located all over the UK, nursing roles in care homes for £12 an hour, sales positions promising a minimum salary of £750 a month, junior doctors and aircraft engineers.

There are also 80 vacancies at gastropubs, three-star and four-star hotels in Oxfordshire, Warwickshire, Sussex and Surrey. These include opportunities for waiters (£12,646 a year), housekeepers (£6.20 an hour), receptionists (£14,500 a year) maintenance workers (£7.28 an hour) and various kitchen posts from porters to head chefs. In 2010, the British Medical Association put the number of unemployed junior doctors in the UK at around 3,000. Yet the Romanian website is advertising for the junior doctor’s position of residential medical officer at hospitals across the UK.

Dauntless will set sail for the Falkland Islands in the coming weeks armed with a battery of missiles that could "take out all of South America's fighter aircraft let alone Argentina's," according to one Navy source. The Type 45 destroyer is the most advanced anti-aircraft and anti-ballistic ship in the world equipped with 48 Sea Viper missiles and the Sampson radar, which is more advanced than Heathrow air traffic control

The ship is in a league of its own in air defence able to track dozens of multiple targets. "It can shoot down Argentine fighters as soon as they take off from their bases," said another Navy source. "This will give Buenos Aires serious pause for thought." The deployment, expected in late March, comes as Argentina has stepped up its sabre rattling over possession of the islands with a ban on all Falkland registered ships in South American ports.

David Cameron has responded that the sovereignty of the islands is not for negotiation. Sending the £1 billion Dauntless on her first mission to the area will reinforce Britain’s position although it will cause difficulties for the Foreign Office which is trying to downplay the rhetoric. Admiral Lord West, the former First Sea Lord and Falklands veteran, said the Type 45 has an “amazing anti-air warfare capability.”

The pathogens thrive in warm, moist environments. They feel comfortable in people's armpits, in the genital area and in the nasal mucous membranes. Their hunting grounds are in the locker rooms of schools and universities, as well as in the communal showers of prisons and health clubs.

The bacteria are transmitted via the skin, through towels, clothing or direct body contact. All it takes is a small abrasion to provide them with access to a victim's bloodstream. Festering pustules develop at the infection site, at which point the pathogens are also capable of corroding the lungs. If doctors wait too long, patients can die very quickly.

Microbiologists refer to this bacterium as community-acquired methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or ca-MRSA. The terrifying thing about it is its resistance to almost all common antibiotics, which complicates treatment. And, in contrast to the highly drug-resistant hospital-acquired MRSA (ha-MRSA) strains, which primarily affect the elderly and people in hospitals and nursing homes, ca-MRSA affects healthy young people. The bacterium has become a serious health threat in the United States. Doctors have already discovered it in Germany, although no deaths have been attributed to it yet in the country.

The two bacteria, ha-MRSA and ca-MRSA, are only two strains from an entire arsenal of pathogens that are now resistant to almost all available antibiotics. Less than a century after the discovery of penicillin, one of the most powerful miracle weapons ever produced by modern medicine threatens to become ineffective.

Kluytmans has even demonstrated that the pathogens found in humans are very often genetically identical with the bacteria detected on meat. It's virtually impossible to become infected by eating such meat, at least as long as it's well-cooked. The risk arises when raw meat comes into contact with small wounds. What's more, even vegetable crops can become contaminated when liquid manure is spread onto fields.

The exhaust gases emitted by giant feedlots for pigs and chickens could also pose a danger greater than previously thought. These meat factories blow bacteria, viruses and fungi into the air. The government of the western German state of North Rhine-Westphalia has commissioned a study to determine whether feedlots are discharging multidrug-resistant bacteria, thereby endangering people in the surrounding areas.

India has said it will continue to import oil from Iran, joining China in refusing to bow to intensifying US pressure not to do business with Iran. India currently routes its dollar payments for Iranian crude through a Turkish bank - an avenue that might be closed off as Washington ratchets up pressure on the Persian Gulf state.

"There are different (payment) options which are being evaluated and discussed. We are also considering the rupee as an option," Reserve Bank of India Deputy Governor H R Khan told reporters. Indian officials say the country could pay partly for its Iranian oil imports in rupees that Iran could then use to buy Indian goods. India pays Iran about $1 billion every month through Turkey for the 370,000 barrels a day of crude oil it buys from the world's fourth-largest oil producer. Khan said as of now there had been no disruption in the current payment arrangement.

India's Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee told reporters in Chicago on the weekend that New Delhi would not scale down its petroleum imports from Iran despite US and European sanctions against the Islamic republic. "We will not decrease imports from Iran," Mukherjee was quoted as saying by the Press Trust of India at the end of a two-day visit aimed at wooing US investment. "Iran is an important country for India despite US and European sanctions on Iran. It is not possible for India to take any decision to reduce imports from Iran drastically."

Analysts believe China bought as much as 490 tons of gold in 2011, double the estimated 245 tons in 2010. “The thing that’s caught people’s minds is the massive increase in Chinese buying,” remarked Ross Norman of Sharps Pixley, a London gold brokerage, this month. So who in China is buying all this gold? Most of China’s gold demand from foreign sources, therefore, is from individuals.

Not every Chinese citizen is in the position to export cash, so the next best tactic for the nervous is to buy gold, a refuge from plunging property prices and declining stock markets as well as an anticipated depreciation of their currency. “Within China,” notes Michael Pettis of Peking University, “many are going to argue that the rapid decline in the trade surplus, coupled with unmistakable evidence of flight capital, means that the PBOC should devalue the RMB.” And the fact that China’s leaders in public are talking about the adverse impact of the European crisis on China weighs heavily on sentiment.

Chinese asset values have not yet crashed across the board, but the buying of gold — a leading indicator of panic — is an especially troubling sign that they will. Therefore, it is not surprising that gold purchases by Chinese citizens and investors are frightening Beijing’s technocrats. At the end of last month, they shut all of the countries gold exchanges other than two of them in Shanghai.

While this requirement doesn’t apply to houses of worship, it will force Catholic colleges, hospitals and other Christian groups to provide these drugs despite their faith-based opposition to them. Many of these organizations, despite not being, themselves, churches, are intrinsically rooted in religious belief systems that stand firmly opposed to medications and procedures that would terminate the life of an unborn child. These deeply-rooted moral codes, which drive the groups’ work, will be impeded, Catholic leaders say, should the Obama administration continue with its planned mandate.

Recently, the federal government made one small concession surrounding the requirement, as officials decided to give church-affiliated hospitals and organizations another year before they will be forced to comply with the coverage restrictions. “In effect, the president is saying we have a year to figure out how to violate our consciences,” Cardinal-designate Timothy M Dolan, archbishop of New York and president of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, recently said.

Over the weekend, the Catholic Church’s letter went beyond simply issuing oppositional rhetoric to media. Instead, priests read an open note to congregations across the country, dubbing the administration’s take on women’s health and religious violations as an attack on their faith. The Catholic leaders went on to say that the Church “cannot — we will not — comply with this unjust law,” as it violates the Catholic conscience.

Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president, said the German proposal for the EU to control Greece’s budget decision-making “would not be reasonable, not be democratic nor would it be effective”. He said that he had confronted Angela Merkel, his German counterpart, with his views and insisted she had agreed.

“The recovery process in Greece can only be enacted by the Greeks themselves, democratically,” Mr Sarkozy said. “There can be no question of putting any country under tutelage. Having spoken to the chancellor, I can tell you this is exactly her position.” However, Ms Merkel said she still believed that Greece required stricter monitoring to stick to its bail-out targets, saying Athens’ repeated failure to implement agreed reforms warranted more intensive intervention. “Greece is a special case in this sense,” Ms Merkel said. “They have to implement the programme completely.”

The continued debate over Greece’s future came as Ms Merkel was handed a symbolic victory in her months’ long drive to include tough budget limits into the fabric of the single currency. But Berlin lost a second signatory at the summit when the Czech Republic announced it would join the UK by not agreeing to the pact.

Iain Duncan Smith and Boris Johnson both told Mr Cameron yesterday not to allow the European Court of Justice to enforce the new rules on spending in the eurozone after No 10 revealed on Friday that the UK will not fight the plans. Tory MPs will today join the launch of a cross-party campaign to demand a referendum on Britain’s membership of the EU.

The People’s Pledge, which has collected 100,000 signatures supporting a nationwide vote, will announce plans to hold a series of local referendums to pile pressure on the Government to act. To further antagonise Tory Eurosceptics, it emerged yesterday that Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg is sending a member of his staff with Mr Cameron to the summit to keep an eye on him – after the Lib Dem leader was allegedly ‘blindsided’ by the PM’s treaty veto before Christmas.

Eurosceptic Tories warned Mr Cameron that he will face the ‘mother of all rows’ if he fails to block plans for the new European fiscal union to use the European Court of Justice to enforce its rules. They believe that will allow those countries which sign the treaty to meddle with the single market, of which Britain is a member.

In a third headache for Mr Cameron, the think-tank Open Europe called on the Government to ‘repatriate’ 130 laws on crime and policing, including controversial measures such as the European Arrest Warrant. If it does not, responsibility for the laws will pass from the British courts to the European Court of Justice.

Tensions between Iran and the West are close to crisis level. With massive help from the western media, Iran has firmly become embedded as the root of all evil in the minds of many westerners. The author of the book Towards a World War Three Scenario, The Dangers of Nuclear War told RT that “The issue of Iran’s nuclear weapons is a red herring, but this red herring could lead us to a WWIII scenario.” He also recalled all the American military bases with nuclear weapons close to Iran’s borders.

Michel Chossudovsky recalled that a couple of weeks ago, America’s Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta quite categorically stated to CBS that Iran neither possesses, nor is developing nuclear weapons. Panetta did not rule out that there are still diplomatic means to cut Iran’s Gordian knot.

But considering the US military preparations around Iran, this statement rather looks like a deceptive maneuver.

Last week, EU nations adopted an unprecedented set of sanctions against the Islamic Republic. These include a complete embargo on oil supplies from Iran, and are expected to come into force in July.

“What we are witnessing here is a build-up towards a military confrontation. These sanctions constitute the staging of a military agenda,” feels Michel Chossudovsky. “In turn, we have massive deployment of US military hardware, troops going to Israel to be stationed in Israel, more troops go to Kuwait, [American] naval forces are entering the Persian Gulf.” Michel Chossudovsky believes that “What the United States wants now, including its allies, is some kind of a green light which will give a human face to a war.”

"Outlook Less Bleak From Alpine Retreat" was the assessment on the news pages of the Financial Times, suggesting the cool mountain air and pristine snow had raised the spirits of leaders more used to Brussels summits. But, in an end of forum debate, experts predicted the break-up of the eurozone, economic malaise in the United States and a rise of militancy - and then there are the consequences of a conflict over Iran's nuclear programme.

Nouriel Roubini, professor of economics at New York University, said the world might just about muddle through in 2012 but not much longer. "2013 could be a perfect storm where you have a full eurozone crisis, where the fiscal problems of the United States come to a head and... there is an investment bust and you have a hard landing in China as well," he said.

New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman had a similarly bleak forecast. "I feel we will be back here next year and the hole will be that much deeper," he said.

Evangelos Venizelos said the proposal to create a European Union “budget commissioner” with the power to veto Greek tax and spending decisions, revealed by the FT, “ignores some key historical lessons”. He added EU lenders already had sufficient monitoring safeguards in place in its bail-out programme. Mr Venizelos’s comments came as talks in Athens shifted from the weeks-long negotiations over restructuring its privately held debt to the question of which public institutions will have to pay to fill a widening gap in Greece’s budget figures.

According to officials involved in the discussions, negotiators representing Greek bondholders largely completed a deal with Athens at the weekend which would cut the long-term value of privately held bonds by just over 70 per cent.

But the formal signing of the agreement has been delayed amid disagreement over whether a remaining budget shortfall will be filled by further Greek austerity measures, additional loans from EU governments, or by the European Central Bank, which is facing pressure to give up profits on the €40 billion in Greek bonds it holds. A deal is essential to finalising the new Greek bail-out, which must be completed before a €14.4 billion bond comes due on March 20 or Greece would become the first developed economy to default in nearly 60 years.

According to the report, security forces tried to aid the president's wife Asma Assad, to escape via Damascus, along with his children, mother and cousin. The sources told Al-Masry-Al-Youm that "a convoy of official vehicles was seen heading to the airport in Damascus," before they were intercepted by brigades of army defectors. According to the source, there was a heavy exchange of fire between the security forces and the Free Syrian Army forces; the family were prevented from escaping and returned to the presidential palace.

The opposition Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported a total of 41 civilian deaths across Syria on Sunday, including 14 in Homs province and 12 in the city of Hama. Thirty-one soldiers and members of the security forces were also killed, most of them in two attacks by army deserters in the northern province of Idlib, it said. Activists said that Syrian soldiers killed 19 people in fighting to retake Damascus suburbs from rebels on Sunday. A day earlier, the Arab League suspended its monitoring mission because of mounting violence.

The program was described by the department’s diplomatic security branch in a little-noticed section of its most recent annual report and outlined in broad terms in a two-page online prospectus for companies that might bid on a contract to manage the program. It foreshadows a possible expansion of unmanned drone operations into the diplomatic arm of the American government; until now they have been mainly the province of the Pentagon and the Central Intelligence Agency.

American contractors say they have been told that the State Department is considering fielding unarmed surveillance drones in the future in a handful of other potentially “high-threat” countries, including Indonesia and Pakistan, and in Afghanistan after the bulk of American troops leave in the next two years. State Department officials say that no decisions have been made beyond the drone operations in Iraq.

The drones are the latest example of the State Department’s efforts to take over functions in Iraq that the military used to perform. Some 5,000 private security contractors now protect the embassy’s 11,000-person staff, for example, and typically drive around in heavily armored military vehicles. When embassy personnel move throughout the country, small helicopters buzz over the convoys to provide support in case of an attack. Often, two contractors armed with machine guns are tethered to the outside of the helicopters.