The Americans have gone now, and Iraq's Christian communities - some of the world's oldest - are undergoing an exodus on a biblical scale. Of the country's 1.4 million Christians, about two thirds have now fled. Although the British Government is reluctant to recognise it, a new evil is sweeping the Middle East: religious cleansing. The attacks, which peak at Christmas, have already spread to Egypt, where Coptic Christians have seen their churches firebombed by Islamic fundamentalists. In Tunisia, priests are being murdered. Maronite Christians in Lebanon have, for the first time, become targets of bombing campaigns. Christians in Syria, who have suffered as much as anyone from the Assad regime, now pray for its survival. If it falls, and the Islamists triumph, persecution may begin in earnest.

When challenged, ministers deplore persecution in general - but, seemingly, not so much that they'd do something like pick up the phone to Ankara. Yet there is plenty Britain can do. Countries could be denied aid until Christians (or Jews, or Sunnis) are allowed to worship freely. British diplomats could be empowered, even instructed, to advocate freedom of religion. When a peer of the realm alerts the Foreign Office to some persecuted Anglicans, a red alert ought to sound. Mr Hague might even publish an annual audit of religious freedom in various countries, making clear its importance to Britain. It might make its own estimate about the scale of the flood of refugees.

The Foreign Office did not realise the full evil of ethnic cleansing in the Balkans until it was too late: it did not take civil tensions seriously enough. It can do better now, making clear that it regards religious cleansing as an emerging evil that ought to be confronted wherever it is being incubated. Article 18 of the UN Charter of Human Rights guarantees freedom of religion - and yet outright religious oppression is quietly ignored, from Saudi Arabia to the Maldives. For ages, Iran has been able to persecute Baha'is with a minimum of fuss kicked up in the West. The ayatollahs are now turning the screw on Christians, with 300 arrested in the past year.

Speaking in that House of Lords debate were men to whom the idea of religious cleansing is anything but abstract. Lord (Dolar) Popat fled Uganda when Idi Amin turned on the Indians in 1971. Hindus, he said, are taught that it is a sin to be prejudiced against anyone. But it is "an even greater sin to witness persecution, then sit back and do nothing to stop it". Lord Sacks, the Chief Rabbi, said his parents were once victims of the same evil that now confronts Christians. He quoted Martin Luther King: "In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies but the silence of our friends."

Our friends in the Middle East are all waiting to hear from HM Government. Perhaps, in the new year, it might have something to say.

Officials said that 72 people had been confirmed dead, and 217 injured, with the figures still rising. Political leaders immediately connected the attacks to an angry breakdown this week in the relationship between the Shia prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, and the country's most senior Sunni figures. Within days of American troops withdrawing, Mr Maliki, whose Shia-led State of Law party is allied to a radical, anti-American and Iranian-influenced Shia group, on Monday demanded the arrest of Tareq al-Hashemi, the Sunni vice-president, accusing him of running a hit squad.

He also called for a vote of no confidence against Saleh al-Mutlaq, the Sunni deputy prime minister. "The timing of these crimes and the places where they were carried out confirm to all the political nature of the targets," Mr Maliki said last night in a statement, suggesting they were a revenge attack and hinting they had political support. "The criminals and those who stand behind them will not succeed in changing events or the political process, or in escaping punishment."

The worst single incident was a suicide attack near a government anti-corruption office in which a stolen ambulance packed with explosives was detonated by its driver, sending debris into the grounds of a nearby kindergarten. Police said 23 people were killed, including five investigators from the office. A string of three explosions killed 18 people at a construction site in central Baghdad. The series of attacks was the most lethal since August and the second worst this year.

There are an estimated 4.9 billion trees on 63 million acres of woodlands in Texas, said Chris Edgar, a forest resource analyst. Land is considered forested if it has at least 10 percent coverage of tree canopy, he said. "We were surprised by the number," he said. "We were hearing reports, and as I drive around the state, I've seen mortality that in some cases is quite extensive. To see these numbers it really brings it home."

And those figures don't include losses in urban areas or trees destroyed by wildfires that scorched nearly 4 million acres this year. "We don't have anything that we can compare to this mortality," Forest Service director Tom Boggus said. "This will probably set a benchmark." Boggus started working for the agency in the 1980s during a drought that killed trees, but it was nothing like this, he said. "What's significant is it's statewide. That's the big difference."

Washington sources report that the Islamic Republic crossed the red line President Barack Obama had set for the United States, ie, when Tehran begins using the technologies and fissile materials (enriched uranium) it has amassed for assembling a bomb or missile warheads. This marks the moment that Iran goes nuclear and only a short time remains before it has an operational nuclear weapon.

Washington has always claimed that when the order to build a weapon was given in Tehran, the United States would know about it within a short time.

The US stealth drone RQ-170 was sent into Iranian airspace for the first time to find evidence to support this suspicion. On December 4 the Iranians downed the unmanned reconnaissance craft by intelligence or cyber means not yet fully clarified. The US - and most probably Israel too - then turned to other intelligence resources to find out what Iran was up to. According to debkafile's military and intelligence sources, they found evidence that Iran has in fact begun putting together components of a nuclear bomb or warhead.

This discovery prompted the latest statements by Mr Panetta and General Dempsey. The defense secretary put it into words when he said Tuesday, December: "Despite the efforts to disrupt the Iranian nuclear program, the Iranians have reached a point where they can assemble a bomb in a year or potentially less." The next day, General Dempsey said, "My biggest worry is they will miscalculate our resolve. Any miscalculation could mean that we are drawn into conflict, and that would be a tragedy for the region and the world."

The deadline is approaching for Greeks who have not yet paid a new property tax attached to their electricity bills. Many could lose their power supply by the end of the month; others have been given until January to pay up. Such is the resentment towards the austerity levy that groups of activists have promised civil disobedience, including by-passing the electricity company to re-connect those who have been cut off.

Mr Dimitriadies has decided not to pay the electricity bill with the new property tax attached to it. He says he cannot afford it and won't borrow the money because he is angry there is no exemption for people in his position. "They are asking us to pay a tax that we paid when we bought the house and the constructor paid when he built the house," he tells the BBC World Service. "Now we are being asked to pay it a third time or they will cut off our electricity. We feel we are being held hostage by the government," he says.

In cafes and tavernas, talk of the tax seeps into almost every conversation and many refer to it as the "haratsi", a name for the hated levy imposed on them under the Ottoman occupation. Even the union representing electricity workers at state run company DEI has called on its members to boycott the tax, describing it as "barbaric". Some workers have said they will refuse to carry out government orders to cut the supply to households that cannot afford to pay.

The Greek government further alienated itself when Deputy Prime Minister Theodoros Pangalos, part of the government that devised the tax, told Mega TV channel that he could not afford to pay the 7,500 euros (6,250 pounds, $9,785) bill for the many properties he owned. Greek Finance Minister Evangelos Venizelos said the levy was being imposed on electricity bills because of widespread tax avoidance. "It is the only measure that can be enforced immediately and produce results quickly because it does not depend on the tax collecting mechanism," he said.

The goal of greater union is embedded in the 1981 Gulf Cooperation Council charter, but became a point of serious discussion as the so-called Arab Spring has continued to reshape regional geopolitics. The six-member GCC, holding its highest-level meeting since a wave of protests swept the Arab world this year, pledged closer military and security integration in a final statement read out on Saudi state television.

They agreed on "adopting King Abdullah's suggestion of moving from cooperation to unity that would support our people overcome the challenges faced by the GCC," the statement said. Earlier this year the GCC members - Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE - began serious discussions aimed at forming a unified diplomatic and security confederation.

They also moved to expand the union earlier this year - opening talks with Jordan and Morocco - hoping to include all eight Sunni Arab monarchies. Abdullah's call to create an Arab super-state comes only one day after GCC officials revealed they want to include Egypt in the alliance. Saudi Arabia has long accused Iran of expansionist ambition and suspects Tehran of attempting to develop a nuclear bomb.

Dock workers became suspicious after finding explosives poorly stored on open pallets, and the missiles were then found in containers marked "fireworks". The managing director of the ship's owner, Thorco Shipping, expressed surprise. Thomas Mikkelsen told AFP news agency from Denmark that he was unaware of the matter.

Another company official, speaking on condition of anonymity, confirmed the ship had been detained in Finland and said the missiles could have been loaded on to the vessel by mistake, AFP adds. Police did not confirm Finnish media reports that the ship had also been scheduled to stop in South Korea, Reuters news agency reports.

The MS Thor Liberty left port in Emden, northern Germany, on 13 December and docked two days later in Kotka, southern Finland, to pick up a cargo of anchor chains, said Finnish Customs spokesman Petri Lounatmaa. It was bound for the Chinese port of Shanghai but there was no indication for whom the military cargo was destined.

Routine checks by Finland's traffic safety authority revealed a load of up to 160 tonnes of improperly packed nitroguanidine, a low-sensitivity explosive with a high detonation speed. "Actually in our investigation at the moment, we have got the information that we found 69 Patriot missiles on the ship and around 160 tonnes of explosives," said Detective Superintendent Timo Virtanen from the Finnish National Bureau of Investigation.

"This is where terrorism starts, in the education system." Ali Al-Ahmed, director of the Institute for Gulf Affairs, told Fox News. Al-Ahmed, a Saudi national, said the textbooks, made and paid for by the Saudi government, were smuggled out of the kingdom through confidential sources.

In a textbook for 10th-graders, printed for the 2010-2011 academic year, al-Ahmed said teenagers are taught barbaric practices. "They show students how to cut (the) hand and the feet of a thief," he said. In another textbook, for ninth-graders, the students are taught the annihilation of the Jewish people is imperative. One text reads in part: "The hour (of judgment) will not come until the Muslims fight the Jews and kill them... There is a Jew behind me come and kill him."

According to the textbook translations provided to Fox News, women are described as weak and irresponsible. And al-Ahmed said the textbooks call for homosexuals to be put to death "because they pose a danger at society, as the Saudi school books teaches." Al-Ahmed says the textbooks are both a Saudi and an American problem. "If you teach six million children in these important years of their lives, if you install that in their brain, no wonder we have so many Saudi suicide bombers."

After the 9/11 terrorist attacks, there was an intense focus on Saudi Arabia and its educational teachings because almost all of the attackers were from the kingdom. In 2006, Saudi Ambassador to the US Prince Turki al-Faisal told the Chicago Council on Foreign Relationships that the Saudi king was determined to eradicate this ideology of hate.

"In Saudi Arabia, King Abdullah recognizes that above all else education is the key, and he has put forth a program of reforms in this area," al-Faisal said. "In recent years, the kingdom has reviewed all of its education practices and materials and has removed any element that is inconsistent with the needs of a modern education. Not only have we eliminated what is objectionable from old textbooks that were in our system, we have also implemented a comprehensive internal revision and modernization plan."

But the new textbooks, most from the 2010-2011 academic year, show the hateful speech remains.

Nestled amid plains so flat the locals joke you can watch your dog run away for miles, Fargo treasures its placid lifestyle, seldom pierced by the mayhem and violence common in other urban communities. North Dakota's largest city has averaged fewer than two homicides a year since 2005, and there's not been a single international terrorism prosecution in the last decade. But that hasn't stopped authorities in Fargo and its surrounding county from going on an $8 million buying spree to arm police officers with the sort of gear once reserved only for soldiers fighting foreign wars.

Every city squad car is equipped today with a military-style assault rifle, and officers can don Kevlar helmets able to withstand incoming fire from battlefield-grade ammunition. And for that epic confrontation - if it ever occurs - officers can now summon a new $256,643 armored truck, complete with a rotating turret. For now, though, the menacing truck is used mostly for training and appearances at the annual city picnic, where it's been parked near the children's bounce house.

"Most people are so fascinated by it, because nothing happens here," says Carol Archbold, a Fargo resident and criminal justice professor at North Dakota State University. "There's no terrorism here." Like Fargo, thousands of other local police departments nationwide have been amassing stockpiles of military-style equipment in the name of homeland security, aided by more than $34 billion in federal grants since the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, a Daily Beast investigation conducted by the Center for Investigative Reporting has found.

Mexico's tourism agency expects to draw 52 million visitors by next year only to the regions of Chiapas, Yucatan, Quintana Roo, Tabasco and Campeche. All of Mexico usually lures about 22 million foreigners in a year. It's selling the date, the Winter Solstice in the coming year, as a time of renewal. Many archeologists argue that the 2012 reference on a 1,300-year-old stone tablet only marks the end of a cycle in the Mayan calendar.

"The world will not end. It is an era," said Yeanet Zaldo, a tourism spokeswoman for the Caribbean state of Quintana Roo, home to Cancun. "For us, it is a message of hope." Cities and towns in the Mayan region on Wednesday will start the yearlong countdown. In Chiapas the town of Tapachula on the Guatemalan border will start a countdown on an 8-foot digital clock in the main park exactly a year before the mysterious date.

In the nearby archaeological site of Izapa, Maya priests will burn incense, chant and offer prayers.

In the tropical jungle of Quintana Roo, between the resorts of Cancun and Playa del Carmen, people are putting messages and photos in a time capsule that will be buried for 50 years. Maya priests and Indian dancers will perform a ritual at the time capsule ceremony.

The Maya reputation for wisdom has people taking the alleged prediction seriously. The Mayan civilization, which reached its height from 300 AD to 900 AD, had a talent for astronomy. Its Long Count calendar begins in 3,114 BC, marking time in roughly 394-year periods known as Baktuns. Thirteen was a significant, sacred number for the Mayas, and they wrote that the 13th Baktun ends on December 21, 2012. The doomsday theories stem from a stone tablet discovered in the 1960s at the archaeological site of Tortuguero in the Gulf of Mexico state of Tabasco that describes the return of a Mayan god at the end of a 13th period.

For some reason, Gronemeyer says, people have ignored evidence that dates beyond 2012 were recorded.

Lord West, the former the former First Sea Lord, said Britain should also undertake military exercises in response to the "aggressive" decision by the Mercosur bloc to close ports to ships flying the "illegal" flag. The Foreign Office also condemned the decision by the bloc, which includes Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay, as tensions over the long-disputed territory erupted into the open on Wednesday.

Ministers warned Argentina that "no one should be in any doubt about the British Government's commitment to support" the area, which involves a vast swathe of potentially mineral-rich South Atlantic waters. Ambassadors throughout the region were ordered to raise the issue as a "matter of urgency" as anger mounted over the unjust decision to "intimidate the people of the Falkland Islands".

The South Atlantic islands are a powerful Argentine national symbol and the government often reiterates its sovereignty claim over the South Atlantic archipelago since the brief, but bloody war, in 1982. Britain has repeatedly said that its sovereignty over the three groups of islands, whose inhabitants are overwhelmingly of British descent, is not up for negotiation.

Central bankers tend to be diplomatic and cautious in their public statements, so the dramatic wording the European Central Bank (ECB) used this week to warn about an escalation of the euro crisis was indeed striking. Tensions in the financial markets had "intensified to take on systemic crisis proportions not witnessed since the collapse of Lehman Brothers three years ago," the ECB warned in its latest report issued on Monday.

ECB President Mario Draghi told a committee of the European Parliament that Europe's banks faced major dangers in the coming months. "The pressure that bond markets will be experiencing is really very, very significant if not unprecedented," Draghi said. It will be a tough year for banks. In 2012 overall they will have to pay back 725 billion euros ($953 billion) in debt, of which 280 billion euros will fall due in the first quarter alone. They will have to borrow fresh money to service this debt, but it's almost impossible for them to raise that money in the private market. Most of them have large holdings of European government bonds on their balance sheets, so they don't have the mutual trust necessary to lend each other large sums of money.

"The interbank market is pretty shut," said Dieter Hein, a finance expert at Fairesearch, an independent research company for institutional investors, banks and brokers. "Virtually no one outside is lending any money to euro-zone banks any more." That's why the ECB has become the lendor of last resort for many banks. Ever since the start of the 2008 financial crisis it has kept on supplying the banking sector with fresh cash, for up to one year in some cases. On Wednesday, it launched the biggest lending operation in its history, and banks responded by borrowing 489 billion euros in the ECB's first ever offering of three-year funding - at an interest rate of just one percent initially.

But critics are sounding the alarm. They say that by bailing out the banks, the ECB is financing governments through the back door. Bill Gross, head of the world's biggest bond investor Pimco, said Europe was simply shifting funds from one hand to the other.

Hugo Beck, economics professor at Pforzheim University in Germany, said the flood of money would eventually stoke inflation. "The ECB is hurling gigantic amounts of liquidity into the market," he said. "It can't control that, it's playing with fire."

Last night there were fears the decision could lead to a wave of copycat legal-aid funded appeals by prisoners convicted by juries that included a serving police officer. Police have been allowed to sit on juries in England and Wales since 2004 when the then Labour Home Secretary David Blunkett controversially relaxed the rules, despite warnings from the Police Federation that it would prove "unworkable".

Former Tory Shadow Home Secretary David Davis last night said there was serious doubt over whether police officers should continue to sit on juries. He added: "I thought it was only in America that convictions were overruled on ridiculous technicalities, but thanks to Europe we are now seeing this happen in the UK too. I would think that no policeman or woman could ever again sit on a UK jury again following this decision - the risks are simply too great. You also have to wonder where this will ever stop. This is not some minor decision that has been made, it is very important and greatly affects how we run our justice system."

In a landmark report, Sir Denis O'Connor, the Chief Inspector of Constabulary, also said police should be prepared to use plastic bullets and water cannon to tackle rioters who use weapons such as petrol bombs and rocks to attack emergency services.

Sir Denis said: "If we don't raise some of these awkward issues, then we're not giving people the chance to prepare for a future where we're slightly more assured as to what will happen."

"Some new rules of engagement are necessary so the police can protect the public in confidence. People were burned out of their houses. We can all remember the woman leaping from the burning building in Croydon."

The recommendations were made in a far-reaching report on the handling of rioting in London and several other major cities in August.

Over 500 banks raced to borrow from the scheme, which was far beyond market expectations. The euro rose sharply on the news, but then fell back later. When the plan was announced, French President Nicholas Sarkozy said banks could use the money to invest in eurozone sovereign debt. However, analysts were uncertain if banks will use the money in this way.

"The very heavy take-up of the ECB's three-year, long-term refinancing operation provides some encouragement that banks' liquidity needs are being amply met," said Jonathan Loynes at Capital Economics. "But while this might help to address recent signs of renewed tensions in credit markets and support bank lending, we remain sceptical of the idea that the operation will ease the sovereign debt crisis too as banks use the funds to purchase large volumes of peripheral government bonds."

This was the European Central Bank's first offer of three-year loans and was the largest amount of money the central bank has injected into the financial system, beating the 450 billion euros it put in with its 2009 one-year loans offer. Although the offer was seen as a success, its impact on the eurozone economy is still uncertain.

Although the ECB has ruled out lending directly to countries, banks taking the three-year loans at 1% are being encouraged to invest in sovereign debt at 6% to 7%. This not only provides a lucrative return for the banks, but increases demand for sovereign debt, helping countries such as Italy and Spain that need to raise money.