Officials called the find “significant” and added, "Surveys conducted in recent months found oil in the target strata. The potential oil reservoir is 128 million barrels of oil, and the contingent reserves are an additional 120 million barrels."

"Bottom line, there is oil. It's 100 percent. Secondly, the quantities are commercial,” said Tzachi Sultan, controlling shareholder of Modiin. The Gabriella license is near shore in shallow water. “At a time of soaring oil prices, this is good news for IDB, Modiin, Adira,” said Chaim Gavriella, CEO of the IDB holding company that owns most of Gabriella’s shares.

The oil was defined as “high quality” and reportedly can be extracted even easier than the gas.

Khulood Badawi, who Honest Reporting says works as an Information and Media Coordinator for the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, is responsible for sending the photo out on Twitter. In a message disparaging to Israel, she wrote, “Palestine is bleeding. Another child killed by #Israel. Another father carrying his child to a grave in #Gaza.”

Here’s the problem: The photo was taken in 2006 by Reuters, and ... the girl ... was injured by falling off a swing.

It said limited supplies were being wasted, and nations had to implement existing legislation more effectively.The EEA presented its findings at the 6th World Water Forum in Marseille. "The critical thing for us is that we are seeing an increasing number of regions where river basins, because of climate change, are experiencing water scarcity," said EEA executive director Jacqueline McGlade.

"Yet behavioural change, and what that means, hasn't really come about." Professor McGlade said the main purpose of the report was to raise awareness about the issue. "Member states need to be clearer about the opportunities they can make in order to enhance their use of a scarce resource," she told BBC News.

"Nations need to use different kinds of methods. Instead of just having a hosepipe ban to fix this year's problem, you need to invest in a very different way. Long-term investment needs to recognise these different uses of how water is allocated, how it is used [and the need for] different water qualities."

Millions have already been spent on studies to look at how to convert the ship after ministers decided to scrap the jump-jet variant of the plane in favour of a conventional take-off and landing model. But so great is the rise in total costs, ministers are considering abandoning the plan and reverting to the Ministry of Defence’s original proposals.

Philip Hammond, the Defence Secretary, believes there is not enough money in the budget to afford the £300 million a year to carry out the work over six years. “We are certainly looking at what’s affordable and what can be done in terms of risk and cost,” said an MoD official. “If you have an unaffordable programme you cannot ignore it.” The move is likely to be embarrassing for the Government as the changes were at the heart of the Strategic Defence and Security Review in 2010. It will also heighten criticism of the Government for disbanding the fleet of Harrier jets and selling them to US Marine Corps for “peanuts”.

Under the new plans, the Government is expected to choose the jump-jet version of the JSF, even though the take-off and landing model can fly further and carry more bombs. The decision will also mean an end to plans for joint-carrier operations with French and American ships as they are only equipped to handle conventional fighters.

Jonathan Porritt, Tom Burke, Charles Secrett and Tony Juniper say the firms are landing UK citizens with all the financial risks of nuclear new build. They have told Prime Minister David Cameron he is being badly advised.

The four - all former directors of Friends of the Earth (FoE) UK - say that the current policy to start building at least eight new reactors over the next decade cannot withstand the "intense scrutiny" it is coming under in the wake of the Fukushima disaster in Japan. "There is now a growing risk of policy failure," they write in their letter to the prime minister.

Mr Cameron recently signed an agreement with French President Nicolas Sarkozy to boost nuclear co-operation. "Our analysis shows that building new nukes will be a massive rip-off for the the British taxpayer," said Mr Secrett. "How on Earth can the prime minister justify paying billions of pounds of subsidy to French power companies when the chancellor is slashing welfare budgets for poor people in Britain and there are a million young people unemployed?"

Corn is critical not only as a food staple, but is heavily used in ethanol production, animal feed, and much more. As GM corn becomes the norm, currently taking over 94 percent of the supply, these scientists are seriously concerned about the future of corn production. Joseph Spencer is one outspoken member of the group, a corn entomologist with the Illinois Natural History Survey, part of the University of Illinois. Spencer states that what is happening is no surprise, instead it is something that needs to be addressed. Warning the EPA over the dangers, the experts sent a letter on March 5th to the agency explaining their worries regarding long-term corn production prospects in light of GMO crop failures.

Specifically, the experts are worried about the lack of protection presented by GMO crops against rootworms. The EPA has already acknowledged that Monsanto’s GMO crops are creating resistant rootworms, which are now ravaging the GMO crops as they mutate to the biopesticide used known as Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt). The EPA found that the resistant rootworms, which are evolving to resist the insecticide, are currently found in Iowa, Illinois, Minnesota and Nebraska. After the EPA evaluated documented cases of severe crop damage as well as reports from entomologists, the EPA stated “Monsanto’s program for monitoring suspected cases of resistance is ‘inadequate’.”

Essentially, the GMO crops are doing the opposite of their supposed purpose — leading to more damage from rootworms as they become mutated to resist the defense of the crops. And Monsanto has answered by simply further genetically modifying the Bt, which research shows is extremely ineffective. “When insecticides overlay transgenic technology, the economic and environmental advantages of rootworm-protected corn quickly disappear,” the scientists wrote. It’s time for the EPA and other agencies to address the serious threats to nature and human health presented by Monsanto’s genetically modified creations.

As she travels from one European Union summit to the next, Angela Merkel's constant mantra in recent months has been austerity, austerity, austerity. But apparently the German chancellor hasn't been quite as strict when it comes to her own country's budget. Spiegel reports this week that the German government didn't reach even half of its planned savings in the federal budget. Only 42 percent of the spending cuts named by Merkel's coalition government, comprised of the conservative Christian Democrats and the business-friendly Free Democratic Party, were actually implemented.

Calculations made by the influential Cologne Institute for Economic Research indicate that only €4.7 billion ($6.16 billion) of the €11.2 billion in austerity measures stipulated by the savings package actually took shape in 2011. The government is also falling behind on its targets for this year. Of the originally planned €19.1 billion in savings, less than half has been implemented. For the coming year, the concrete measures that have been agreed on so far cover just one-third of the announced amount of savings. Merkel's cabinet is hoping to agree to the basic foundations of the 2013 federal budget in March.

Calls for Wales to supply surplus water to drought-hit England were dismissed as "too costly" by Welsh Water. The company said pumping water would prove very expensive and English water firms would be looking at other solutions. EAW said periods of exceptionally dry weather in recent years had pushed parts of Wales close to drought with many rivers running low.

The agency warned that if Wales suffered a dry spring and summer this year the situation could worsen and impact wildlife living in rivers. It said it had prepared a drought plan for Wales in the event of this happening, and added that the nation was also likely to face future pressure on its water resources as a result of climate change.

"Although we have enough water in Wales at the moment, there is no room for complacency," said Mr Mills. "There are some rivers which we believe are at the limit for how much water is available to be taken without harming the environment.

By granting waivers to the Merchant Marine Act of 1920 - which requires all vessels carrying products or people between US ports to fly under the US flag, be built in the United States and crewed mostly by US citizens - Obama might head off a spike in Northeast fuel prices this summer. Speculation about waivers is already building in the industry. Ship owners are receiving inquiries from potential customers about the potential to hire the 56 ocean going US-flagged Jones Act tankers.

Many of these ships are already chartered on other routes and the Jones Act fleet accounts for only 1 percent of the world's tanker capacity. Waivers would dramatically increase the number of tankers that could ship surplus fuel from the Gulf Coast to the eastern seaboard, lowering transport costs and creating incentives to build up gasoline stocks ahead of the summer driving season and keep prices in check.

But what seems a relatively modest political win requires fraught political calculations: waivers would anger Obama's staunch Democrat union base and incite attacks over US jobs from his Republican opponents, while likely doing very little to quickly bring down the cost of gasoline and diesel fuels.

Without the waivers, however, the US Northeast - another plank of support for Obama that includes coveted swing state Pennsylvania - may face an unprecedented shortage of gasoline due to the closure of half of regional refineries by mid-year.

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When Catherine Margaret Ashton, also known as Baroness Ashton of Upholland, became Europe's top diplomat two years ago, even her husband Peter Kellner expressed skepticism. Upon her appointment, the British people "weren't exactly dancing in the streets," admitted Kellner, president of the YouGov international opinion polling group. Following an unpromising start, Ashton's reputation has continued in one direction: downward.

After one and a half years, the job performance of Europe's first high representative of the Union for foreign affairs and security policy-- as Ashton is officially known - was so dismal that there was open speculation that she would be replaced. "We are slowly running out of time," warned Elmar Brok, the foreign policy spokesman for Germany's conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) in the European Parliament. Guy Verhofstadt, the leader of the group of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE) at the parliament in Brussels, described Ashton's policies as "ridiculous."

The Briton, who has the "charisma of a caravan site on the Isle of Sheppey," as British journalist Rod Liddle once quipped, has endured the reproaches without complaint. When she is criticized, she dutifully takes notes. She gladly reads off prepared statements. Her strengths lie in her work behind the scenes, she asserts. When she became the EU's foreign policy chief, she said that she was not "an ego on legs," adding: "The skills I bring (are) of negotiation, of diplomacy."

Over the coming months, Ashton will have an opportunity to prove whether this is true. The top EU foreign policy representative currently faces the most difficult mission in international politics. It is her job to negotiate with Iran over its controversial nuclear program.

The US will never give a decisive approval for an attack on Iran, Gazit says. And Israel is ready to strike without such approval, because it is not waiting for a “green light.” Gazit believes that a “yellow light” is more than enough for Israel to initiate their plans. Last week, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that Iran has to “halt its nuclear program or suffer the consequences.”

Meanwhile, the US heralds a more measured approach to the crisis, with President Barack Obama saying that “for the sake of Israel’s security, America’s security, and the peace and security of the world, now is not the time for bluster.” Israel has enough power and determination to attack Iran, but it will carry out only a single strike in order to reach its short-term goal, Gazit believes. Israel has neither the capability nor interest to wage a sustained war against Iran, he said.

“There is no possibility of Israel continuing with a military effort against Iran that is going to last for days, or weeks, or months,” he explained. “Israel has… will have a very limited interest and that is to destroy the present nuclear capability of Iran, to reach nuclear devices. Period.” Gazit is absolutely positive that Iran will counterattack in case Israel strikes first.

But he does not believe that this is going to be “a decisive kind of counterattack that will destroy Israel. It will be no doubt painful, but nothing beyond it,” he said. And besides a direct military counterattack, Iran will implement political and economic measures to punish the aggressor. Gazit says Iran will definitely block the Strait of Hormuz and set some kind of ultimatum, saying “we are not going to reopen the flow of oil unless A, B and C.”

It includes a ban on using a hose or sprinkler to water plants, wash a car or boat, fill fountains, swimming or paddling pools, or to clean patios, driveways or windows. Even spraying your children to keep them cool in the sunshine will be outlawed, and those caught breaking the rules face a £1,000 fine. Seven water companies announced that they would enforce Temporary Use Bans – affecting one in three UK homes – from April 5 after the plans were revealed in the Daily Mail yesterday.

The strict rules are an attempt to close any loopholes after the last hosepipe ban in 2006 led to widespread accusations of cheating, with thousands reported to water companies by their neighbours or served with 'yellow card' letters warning them to obey the law. Yesterday water companies stressed that they hoped the ban would be enforced through goodwill and educating people about the need to save water.

The restrictions were brought in following two years of chronically low rainfall which has left rivers dry and reservoirs down to record low levels.

The news that Google is hiring another executive, which comes by way of Noah Shactman, isn't such a big deal, but the fact that she happens to have orchestrated one of the most innovative periods of battlefield technology might raise a few eyebrows. What in the world does Google have planned that it's hiring military leadership? Dugan's career in science and technology offers some clues, and based on what she told Fast Company last November, she appears to have a knack for innovating quickly.

"The defense world is like a mini-society," she said. "It has to deploy to anyplace in the world on a moment's notice, and it has to work in a life-or-death situation. That kind of focus, that kind of drive to ship an application, really does inspire greater genius. And the constancy of funding that comes with that - in good times or bad, whether this party or that party is in power - also helps inspire innovation."

We doubt Google's interested in building war machines, but by bringing Dugan on board, the company will inevitably have some tight connections with military leadership, which can't hurt.

A couple of weeks ago, I sat on the speakers' podium during the opening panel of the Euromoney Bond Investors' Congress in London. Together with leading industry experts, including senior ratings agencies' officials, we engaged in a detailed discussion of the contentious aspects of the Greek debt debacle and the fate of the eurozone.

The audience was "top drawer"; the room packed with 500 of the world's biggest bond market participants; the combined assets under management measured in the trillions of dollars. "Who thinks the upcoming Greek bail-out will be the last, drawing a line under the eurozone's sovereign debt crisis?" asked the senior Euromoney staffer chairing the panel. "Put your hands up".

Delivered with a serious demeanour, this was exactly the right question. So deadly was the inquiry, and so germane, that the mood in the room grew uneasy, barely camouflaged by an outbreak of coughing. Scanning this ultra-influential audience, I saw rows of delegates cowed, keeping their eyes locked forwards but staring down slightly, not daring to look elsewhere.

NOT A SINGLE HAND WAS RAISED. Not a single hand among hundreds of the world's leading bond market practitioners was stirred to support a debt swap now presented as the key to the world economy shaking off the post sub-prime torpor and taking us into the sun-lit uplands of sustainable global growth. Far from being the end of this eurozone debt crisis, or even the beginning of the end, Friday's debt-swap was probably just the end of the beginning.

He is seen as lackluster and relatively unknown in Germany, but François Hollande, the Socialist Party challenger of French President Nicolas Sarkozy, stands a good chance of being elected president on May 6. He is the man German Chancellor Angela Merkel fears, because he could jeopardize her European legacy. Hollande wants to renegotiate the fiscal pact to save the euro adopted in December by 25 European Union member states.

This is one of the reasons Merkel openly supports Sarkozy and has refused to meet with his challenger in Berlin so far. Hollande, 57, was the first secretary of the Socialist Party from 1997 to 2008. Without ever having held a cabinet position or served as prime minister, he would be only the second leftist president of the Fifth Republic, after former President François Mitterrand, under whom Hollande began his career in 1981.

Excerpt from interview:-

SPIEGEL: (Former conservative French Prime Minister) Dominique de Villepin called the chancellor's support for Sarkozy "the kiss of death."

Hollande: I really didn't ask Mrs Merkel to arrange my eventual election in this way. But now everyone knows my position on the fiscal pact, and on the day after the election they will have to take it into account. If I become president, France will not continue with the same policies as under Nicolas Sarkozy - both in domestic policy and in foreign and European policy.

SPIEGEL: And so now you're campaigning in France as the candidate who is confronting Germany.

Hollande: I'm also the candidate who knows that the German-French friendship is indispensable for Europe. And I will never let myself be carried away to making statements that would change it.

SPIEGEL: But they've already been made. Your fellow Socialist Party member Arnaud Montebourg said: "The question of German nationalism is returning through the Bismarckian policies Mrs Merkel pursues." Do you distance yourself from that?

Hollande: I think (former German Chancellor) Helmut Schmidt came up with the best response at the SPD's (recent) party conference. Our two peoples, our political elites, cannot fall back into nationalism. We have to be careful not to be too arrogant, which is a tendency the French can also sometimes have. And a large country with such outstanding economic performance as Germany cannot forget that it owes some of its success to demand from other European countries.