Speaking before a meeting on Monday with the Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, Obama sought to head off pressure for him to commit to military action against Tehran if it crosses specified "red lines" in its nuclear programme. The president told a sceptical audience at the annual conference of America's most influential pro-Israel lobby group that he accepts a "basic truth" that no Israeli government can tolerate Iran developing a nuclear weapon, and that he therefore understands the "profound historical obligation" weighing on the shoulders of Israel's leaders.

Obama said explicitly that he is prepared to use force against Iran to defend US interests if necessary, but he chastised those who appear to be in a hurry for war in comments apparently aimed at Israeli officials who have been making belligerent noises. "I would ask that we all remember the weightiness of these issues; the stakes involved for Israel, for America, and for the world. Already, there is too much loose talk of war," he told the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac). "Over the last few weeks, such talk has only benefited the Iranian government, by driving up the price of oil, which they depend upon to fund their nuclear programme."

"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; now is the time to let our increased pressure sink in, and to sustain the broad international coalition that we have built. Now is the time to heed that timeless advice from Teddy Roosevelt: speak softly, but carry a big stick."

It would be only the second time in recent history that a joint pastoral letter on behalf of all Catholic bishops in England and Wales has been issued on an issue of political importance.

The move is being proposed as the debate over extending marriage to homosexual couples gathers momentum. At the weekend Cardinal Keith O’Brien, the most senior Catholic cleric in Britain, accused the Coalition of trying to “redefine reality” and branded the proposals a “grotesque subversion of a universally accepted human right”. Although the proposals would not extend to Scotland, he argued that they would nevertheless “shame the UK in the eyes of the world”.

The remarks drew robust responses from politicians including Harriet Harman, the deputy Labour leader, who accused the Cardinal of “scaremongering”. “I don’t want anybody to feel that this is a licence for whipping up prejudice,” she said. Peter Tatchell, the gay rights campaigner, said: “If he supports marriage, the Cardinal should welcome the fact that many lesbian and gay couples want to get married.”

But one of Mr Duncan’s Conservative colleagues, Peter Bone MP, argued that the parents and teachers who objected to promoting same-sex marriage in schools could be ostracised. “If marriage is redefined, schools will have no choice but to give children equivalent teaching on same-sex marriage, even those children of a very young age, including those at primary school,” he wrote. “So what will happen to parents who because of religious, or philosophical beliefs take their children out of lessons?”

“Parents who object will be treated as bigots and outcasts, possibly excluded from being on the PTA [Parent Teacher Association], or from being a governor. Discriminated against and persecuted because they hold views that have been enshrined in our laws and have been the cornerstone of our society for 2,000 years. And what of the teachers who object to teaching about same-sex marriage. Will they face disciplinary action? How will it affect their careers?”

Some 800 banks took up €529.5 billion of loans at Mr Draghi’s second long-term refinancing operation (LTRO) on Wednesday, borrowing at 1 percent for three years with almost any form of collateral. Citigroup said this amounts to €316 billion of fresh liquidity, stripping out renewal of old loans. This compares with €200 billion in extra stimulus at the first LTRO in December.

Mr Draghi has won high praise from monetarists around the world, convinced that he has acted just in time to head off a dangerous contraction of the money supply and a full-blown banking disaster. "Draghi has been very astute, and has given the single currency project another lease of life," said Professor Tim Congdon from International Monetary Research.

Banks must provide the ECB with collateral at a stiff haircut, using up their balance sheets. Since the ECB has first claim on these assets, other creditors are pushed down the pecking order. "There is no such thing as a free lunch: liquidity today comes at the price of subordination tomorrow," he said. Bob Janjuah from Nomura said the whole credit system is being subverted. "We have monetary anarchy running riot where the elastic band between the real economy and the current liquidity-fuelled markets is stretched further and further beyond credulity," he said.

Professor Charles Wyplosz from Geneva University said the ECB ploy of bailing out insolvent states by the back door will come back to haunt if Europe’s leaders fail to sort out EMU’s fundamental woes and later face a "contagious wave" of sovereign defaults. "The LTROs make things massively more dangerous. The banks borrow cash from the ECB to acquire sovereign bonds. The more the banks accumulate these bonds, the riskier the situation is becoming. The ECB seems to be making a trillion euro bet," he said.

It means infantry soldiers, who can expect to be risking their lives on the frontline a year after they join, are not consuming the number of calories the Army says they need. Last night one of Britain’s most respected soldiers urged the Ministry of Defence to step in. Major General Patrick Cordingley, who led Allied forces to victory over Saddam Hussein in the first Gulf War, said: “This is an extremely serious situation and it must be addressed by the Ministry of Defence as a matter of urgency. Either they should be paid more or their food should be more heavily subsidised.”

Traditionally troops had their pay docked monthly for all their meals. In 2006 a Pay As You Dine system was introduced to give them the choice to buy food off-base. An independent report by the Recruit Trainee Service, submitted to Parliament last week, found “83 per cent of trainees on PAYD said they can afford to eat enough to get through training”, leaving a 17 per cent shortfall. One soldier at Colchester Barracks in Essex said: “I often just take the evening meal, that way I can keep my costs down. A lot of the guys will tell you we prefer being in Afghanistan where food is better and free.”

An MoD source last night suggested some soldiers blew their money on a so-called “billionaire’s weekend” and should learn to budget better. The report, which focused on Phase 2 trainees, also found 46 per cent were deliberately skipping meals to save money.

Then Williamson raised his voice against the Jews: “The Catholic faith and Jewish power are like two weighing pans on a pair of scales: when the Catholic Faith goes up, Jewish power goes down and vice versa”. These past weeks the Vatican is working for communion with the Society of Saint Pius X. Cardinal William Levada, the prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, presented “the path to full reconciliation with the Church” to Bishop Bernard Fellay, the superior general of the fraternity. European rabbis urged the Pope in vain to suspend talks with the society.

The Vatican is now trying to minimize Williamson’s words against the Jews as a mere isolated case. But this Arutz Sheva expose clearly shows that hatred for Judaism permeates the entire Catholic Brotherhood. Last month the Italian branch of the Society chose a new head after the retirement of Father Davide Pagliarani. The successor is Pierpaolo Petrucci, whose positions on the Jews are the exact copy of those of Williamson.

Petrucci published an essay in the website of the Society stating: “About the Jews, Joseph Ratzinger calls them ‘Fathers in faith’. What does it mean? Supporting Israel’s policy despite the Palestinian question? Supporting the Jewish religion? If that’s the case, how can the Church approve a false religion which rejects Jesus Christ?”. Another priest, Don Mauro Tranquillo, calls the Jews “morally responsible for the deicide of Christ”. In 2009 Petrucci calls the Jews “rejecters of Christ”. A year later he stated that “the Church always condemned Judaism as a false religion, praying for the conversion (of the Jews), so that they will reach salvation, seriously compromised by their superstitions”.

Franz Schmidberger, the right-hand man of Bishop Fellay, also asks for the Jews’ conversion: “St Peter, the first pope, preached to the Jews and told them that ‘If you want to be saved you must do three things: You must regret your sins and convert, believe in our lord... and, thirdly, be baptized.’ We expect that every pope who claims to be the successor of St Peter ... should take the same stand.”

The Pope’s unity with Lefebvre’s group is a renovation of the “Adversus Judeaos” teachings which spurred pogroms, burnings at the stake and the inquisition. If the Vatican welcomes back these anti-Semites, the Jewish leaders should immediately stop any dialogue with the Catholic authorities.

WebProNews reports that the AnonymousIRC Twitter account announcd to its 276, 783 followers on Friday, attacks on three church websites. IB Times reports the first message, sent out at around 10 a.m. EST, read: "http://www.betheloic.org HACKED Reason:religious idiocy and foh dah lulz #Anonymous #AntiSec #OWS #ROOTED #DAWKINS."

According to Examiner.com, the homepages of Bethel Outreach International Church, Charlotte International Church and Crossfire Ministries were hacked and defaced. The homepages were replaced with a 30-minute long YouTube video, "Richard Dawkins: An Atheist's Call to Arms," and declaration of "war on religion," with the message "Religion sucks, LOL."

The Richard Dawkins video is a 30-minute speech in which Dawkins urges atheists to stop hiding their beliefs and to fight against the influence of religion in politics and education. The hackers said religion is a sickness!

Friday's attack is yet another in a series of Anonymous online attacks on groups they see as representing what they are opposed to in the world. IB Times reported a week ago that Anonymous hackers took down several FBI affiliates websites. Dayton Daily News reports the targeted sites included the Dayton, Ohio branch of InfraGard, a partner organization to the FBI.

Anonymous also said it has declared war on America in a YouTube video released earlier in the week and called on US citizens to rise up against the US goverment.

The study showed a large proportion can log on to the internet, play on computer games, use an iPhone or iPad and work satellite television services like Sky Plus. But 65 per cent can't make a cup of tea, while 81 per cent can't read a map and 87 per cent wouldn't be able to repair a bicycle puncture. Research also showed a large proportion were sadly lacking in knowledge about the great outdoors.

As many as 63 per cent wouldn't know how to build a den, while 59 per cent can't even climb a tree. A further 79 per cent have no idea how to put up a tent, while 78 per cent can't build a camp fire. And when asked if they cared about the environment a third said 'no' - with half of these saying it was because "in the future we'll be able to live in space."

Survival expert Ray Mears said he was shocked by the findings, from electricity provider npower. He added: "I can't believe our young people are so ill-equipped when it comes to practical skills. When I was growing up, I was told 'You don't need equipment, you need knowledge to survive in the wild' and this is something that I truly believe. Simple skills like putting up a tent can teach you important lessons that can't be learnt without doing them yourself. You learn how to work in a team and communicate with your peers as well as how to work under pressure and use logic. Most importantly, you also learn how to look after yourself and know your strengths."

TOP TEN THINGS CHILDREN AGED 5 TO 13 CAN DO:

1 Work a DVD player - 67 per cent

2 Log onto the internet - 58 per cent

3 Play computer games on games console (wii, Xbox or similar) - 50 per cent

4 Make a phone call - 46 per cent

5 Use a handheld games console (Nintendo DSi, PSP or similar) - 45 per cent

6 Use an iPhone (or smartphone) - 42 per cent

7 Work Sky Plus - 41 per cent

8 Send a text message - 38 per cent

9 Search for clips on YouTube - 37 per cent

10 Use an iPad (or tablet computer) - 31 per cent

TOP TEN THINGS CHILDREN AGED 5 TO 13 CAN'T DO:

1 Recognise three types of butterfly - 91 per cent

2 Repair a puncture - 87 per cent

3 Tie a reef knot - 83 per cent

4 Read a map - 81 per cent

5 Build a camp fire - 78 per cent/Put up a tent 78.5 per cent

6 Spot a blackbird, sparrow or robin - 71 per cent

7 Make papier mâché - 72 per cent

8 Make a cup of tea - 65 per cent

9 Build a den - 63 per cent

10 Climb a tree - 59 per cent

Police forces across the UK were inundated with calls from around 9.40 pm from concerned members of public who had seen a “bright light or a fire in the sky” and believed it may have been an incident involving an aircraft. The Met Office said it had received reports from as far north as Aberdeen and as far south as Solihull. A spokesman said: “We’re not sure what it was, but people are certainly interested in what they saw. We have had about 40 calls from across the country.” The Kielder Observatory also reported the sighting of a “huge fireball” travelling from north to south over Northumberland.

Credit rating agencies have warned they will declare Athens to be in default if the CACs are triggered which would be a dramatic culmination to a three-year rollercoaster ride for Athens, the eurozone and global markets. While the markets have been ready for a Greek default for months, the move could leave Greece and its banks barred from funding from the European Central Bank (ECB). On Monday, Standard & Poor’s declared Greece to be in a state of “selective default” which led to the ECB announcing it would no longer accept Greek government bonds as security for new loans.

The rating agency said its decision had been prompted by the threat of the CACs and the actual use of them is likely to tip Greece into actual default. The agency said it regarded the process as a “distressed debt restructuring”. Raoul Ruparel of Open Europe, the London-based think-tank, said: “Greece is likely to struggle to reach the targets for a voluntary agreement so the credit rating agencies are almost certainly going to see this as a default. What happens next is unknown territory. Greek banks will probably be barred from normal ECB funding and have to turn to the Emergency Liquidity Assistance [provided by the ECB] instead but for how long, we don’t know.”

The rule of thumb is that a 10 percent rise in crude cuts US growth by 0.2 percent four quarters later, but the science is flabbily soft and nobody knows where the inflexion point lies. The effect is famously “non-linear”. Nothing much seems to happen until confidence suddenly snaps. What is deeply troubling is that Brent crude should have reached fresh records in sterling (£79) and euros (€94) - with a knock-on effect on US petrol prices, mostly tracking Brent - even though the International Monetary Fund has sharply downgraded its world growth forecast to 3.25 percent this year from 4 percent in September, and even though International Energy Agency (IEA) has cut its oil use forecast for this year by 750,000 barrels per day (bpd).

Oil is not supposed to ratchet defiantly upwards in a downturn, which is what we have with the Eurozone facing a year of contraction in 2012, and much of the Latin bloc sliding into full depression. Japan‘s economy shrank in the fourth quarter. Asia’s emerging powers of Asia - the key force driving the commodity boom of the last decade - are in various stages of “soft-landings” after hitting the monetary brakes last year to check property bubbles and curb inflation. China’s manufacturing has been bouncing along near contraction levels through the winter. So what happens when it recovers?

The unpleasant fact we must all face is that the relentless supply crunch - call it ‘Peak Oil’ if you want, or ‘Plateau Oil’ - was briefly disguised during the Great Recession and is already back with a vengeance before the West has fully recovered. So we have a remarkable situation. China alone will be adding 125 million cars to its roads over the next five years, with auto production targets of 30 million annually by 2016. India is spending $1 trillion on infrastructure projects over the next five years.

Variants of this are happening across Asia and Latin America. The picture is by now well-known to Telegraph readers. Two billion people in the emerging world are joining the global economy and competing toe-to-toe for scarce resources with the West. Their rising demand - not our declining demand - will set oil prices.

Netanyahu's office issued a statement immediately, calling the speech "harshly inflammatory ... from someone who claims that he is bent on peace." The statement continued: "Jerusalem has been the eternal capital of the Jewish People," and added that, "Abu Mazen [Abbas] knows full well that there is no foundation to his contemptible remarks, including his baseless and irresponsible claims regarding the Al Aqsa Mosque. The State of Israel expects that one who supposedly champions peace would prepare his people for peace and coexistence and not disseminate lies and incitement. This is not how one makes peace."

According to the Israeli Prime Minister, his government will maintain the holy places in Jerusalem to ensure freedom of worship for all religions. The head of the Palestinian Authority told the conference that the Israeli occupation authorities are accelerating their efforts and using the ugliest and most dangerous means to implement plans to erase the Arab Muslim and Christian character of Jerusalem.

US Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta said last month that there is a "strong likelihood" of an Israel attack by June. If Prime Minister Netanyahu delivers an ultimatum, it would give the United States 2-3 months to act or face the reality of an Israeli attack that would almost certainly require the United States coming to its aid, if necessary.

Israeli officials have said that in several months, Iran will have buried so many of its nuclear facilities deep under concrete bunkers in mountains that an attack would not be effective. The Israeli Prime Minister “has the upper hand,” claims the Telegraph's correspondent Adrian Blomfield. “Exuding confidence, Mr Netanyahu effectively brings with him an ultimatum, demanding that unless the president makes a firm pledge to use US military force to prevent Iran acquiring a nuclear bomb, Israel may well take matters into its own hands within months,” wrote Blomfield.

One other factor he did not mention is that President Obama is running for re-election. Failure to back Israel, if necessary, could torpedo his campaign. Moreover, Republican presidential candidates Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney will address the annual American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) convention this week. President Obama, Prime Minister Netanyahu and President Shimon Peres also will speak.

The closing statement of the European Union summit that the leaders of the 27 member states approved on Friday filled a total of 15 pages. It included 24 mentions of the word "growth," and only referred to a "crisis" once. The language underscores the direction Europe's politicians would actually like to be heading.

"It is time to move from crisis mode to growth mode," European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said on the first night of the summit, seeking to set the tone. "I think we are turning the page," Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president who is currently in the midst of his election campaign, said triumphantly. "We are in the midst of exiting this crisis."

But one leader at the summit wasn't yet prepared to hint that a turning point had been reached. At the close of the two-day summit, German Chancellor Angela Merkel offered words of warning. "We are still in a fragile situation," she said. "We have made progress, but to say that we can now give the all clear - it would be much too early for that." Indeed, it seemed as though Merkel was seeking to apply the brakes on the euphoric mood. The calculation behind her move is clear, too: The crisis nations at Europe's periphery shouldn't be permitted to feel overly secure, nor should they let EU-imposed reforms slide. "The next two years will be just as decisive as the last two," Merkel said.

The lawyers argue that the women “encourage sexuality and other inappropriate behaviors.” The Egyptian paper Al-Bawaba named two of the targets as actresses Ghada Abd al-Raziq and Summaya al-Khashab. The same lawyers previously accused renowned comic actor Adel Imam of insulting Islam. Imam was given a three-month jail sentence.

A Christian man recently received a far harsher sentence for the same crime. According to Bikyamasr, Coptic Christian Makram Diab was given a six-year prison sentence for making offensive remarks about Mohammed, who Muslims revere as a prophet. Egypt’s Christian community has also been hit by kidnappings targeting young women. According to Christian community leaders, many Christian girls have been kidnapped by Muslim men and forced to convert to Islam. Police often decline to intervene.

The rock's closest approach to the planet is scheduled for February 15, 2013, when the distance between the planet and space wanderer will be under 27,000 km (16,700 miles). This is lower than the geosynchronous orbit kept by the Google Maps satellite. The asteroid has proven a bitter discovery. It has been circling in orbit for three years already, crossing Earth’s path several times, says space analyst Sergey Naroenkov from the Russian Academy of Sciences.

It seems that spotting danger from outer space is still the area where mere chance reigns, while asteroid defense systems exist only in drafts.

Still, prospects of meeting 2012 DA14 are not all doom and gloom. “The asteroid may split into pieces entering the atmosphere. In this case, most parts of it will never reach the planet’s surface,” remarks Dunham. But if the entire asteroid is to crash into the planet, the impact will be as hard as in the Tunguska blast, which in 1908 knocked down trees over a total area of 2,150 sq km (830 sq miles) in Siberia. This is almost the size of Luxembourg. In today’s case, the destination of the asteroid is yet to be determined.