Riots raged through the capital while mass demonstrations gripped Greece’s next biggest city, Thessaloniki. Some 20,000 protesters gathered in Syntagma Square, outside the parliament in Athens, during a general strike. Hooded youths hurled firebombs and stones at police, who responded with tear gas.

The turmoil hit global markets with the FTSE 100 in London down 43.08 points at 5852.39. Greece now has less than a week to meet three conditions in return for £107 billion in aid to stave off bankruptcy. Deputy Prime Minister Theodoros Pangalos told parliament yesterday: “We are experiencing tragic moments.”

The other eurozone countries have demanded Greece finds another £300 million in savings, passes its cuts package in parliament and secures written guarantees the plans will be implemented even after a new government is elected in April. The Greek people were already furious over existing austerity measures, which cut the minimum wage and jobs. The deputy labour minister resigned in protest after Greece agreed to the deal. Four more ministers quit yesterday.

Cows, which produce up to 500 litres of gas a day, reputedly do more damage than CO2 emissions from cars, with livestock accounting for a quarter of methane emissions. In Scotland, where there is a high concentration of agriculture, the animals produce 46 per cent of all methane emissions.

Teams from 11 countries including Italy, Finland, Sweden, the Czech Republic, France and the Netherlands will meet in Aberdeen to discuss the problem. Scientists believe changing a cow’s diet could help and are investigating how breeding could cut emissions.

But critics are alarmed at the costs. Scottish Tory MEP Struan Stevenson questioned “spending millions of euros on a conference that will generate a lot of hot air of its own”. And Emma Boon, of the TaxPayers’ Alliance, said: “It’s madness for the European Commission to throw such an enormous sum of money at a study into bovine burping.”

Almost 1000 acres of maize found to have been ground with genetically modified seeds have been destroyed throughout Hungary, deputy state secretary of the Ministry of Rural Development Lajos Bognar said. The GMO maize has been ploughed under, said Lajos Bognar, but pollen has not spread from the maize, he added. Unlike several EU members, GMO seeds are banned in Hungary. The checks will continue despite the fact that seed traders are obliged to make sure that their products are GMO free, Bognar said.

During the invesigation, controllers have found Pioneer Monsanto products among the seeds planted. The free movement of goods within the EU means that authorities will not investigate how the seeds arrived in Hungary, but they will check where the goods can be found, Bognar said. Regional public radio reported that the two biggest international seed producing companies are affected in the matter and GMO seeds could have been sown on up to thousands of hectares in the country. Most of the local farmers have complained since they just discovered they were using GMO seeds.

With season already under way, it is too late to sow new seeds, so this year’s harvest has been lost. And to make things even worse for the farmers, the company that distributed the seeds in Baranya county is under liquidation. Therefore, if any compensation is paid by the international seed producers, the money will be paid primarily to that company’s creditors, rather than the farmers.

Those that warned that Greece was headed for a financial collapse were laughed at and were called “doom and gloomers”. Well, nobody is laughing now. You see, the truth is that debt is a very cruel master. Greeks were able to live way beyond their means for many, many years but eventually a day of reckoning arrived. At this point, the Greek economy has been in a recession for five years in a row, and the economic crisis in that country is rapidly getting even worse. It was just recently announced that the overall rate of unemployment in Greece has soared above 20 percent and the youth unemployment rate has risen to an astounding 48 percent.

One out of every five retail stores has been shut down and parents are literally abandoning children in the streets. The frightening thing is that this is just the beginning. Things are going to get a lot worse in Greece. And in case you haven’t been paying attention, these kinds of conditions are coming to the United States as well. We are heading down the exact same road as Greece went down, and the economic pain that this country is eventually going to suffer is going to be beyond anything that most Americans would dare to imagine.

Most families in Greece are just barely surviving at this point. Unfortunately, Greece is probably looking at depression conditions for many years to come. Over the past three years, the size of the Greek economy has shrunk by 16 percent. In 2012, it is being projected that the Greek economy will shrink by another 5 percent. Can you imagine unemployment going up by 2.7 percent in one month? This is what a 21st century economic depression looks like. And needless to say, civil unrest is rampant in Greece. But we haven’t even seen the worst in Greece yet. The worst is still yet to come. And the people of Greece are going to get angrier and angrier and angrier.

A day of reckoning is coming for the United States as well. As CNBC recently noted, the US debt problem is far worse than the European debt problem is. That is why I have written over and over about the US national debt and about how the US government is spending too much money. Right now, the US government is still able to borrow gigantic mountains of very cheap money and is spending money as if tomorrow will never come. Well, just like we saw in Greece, when debt gets out of control a day of great pain eventually arrives.

What we are watching unfold in Greece right now is coming to America.

Explaining its negative view on the Italian banking system, S&P cited the banks’ reduced ability to roll over their wholesale debt and so expected weak profitability, Reuters says.“Italy's vulnerability to external financing risks has increased given its high external public debt, resulting in Italian banks' significantly diminished ability to roll over their wholesale debt,” the rating agency said in a statement.

“We anticipate persistently weak profitability for Italian banks in the next few years, and a risk-adjusted return on core banking products that may not be sufficient for banks to meet their cost of capital. We believe this may be negative for the Italian banking industry's stability,” S&P added in its statement. On January 13, S&P reduced Italy’s sovereign rating to BBB+ from A, part of a mass downgrade of nine eurozone nations.

The ‘sobriety’ scheme will see criminals convicted of serious drink-related offences like assault or criminal damage given electronic tags that will be used to monitor alcohol in their blood. If the offenders continue to consume alcohol they will be arrested and brought before a judge who has the option of sending them back to prison.

This comes as a new Greater London Authority telephone survey of over a 1,000 Londoners found that over two thirds would welcome courts banning offenders from consuming alcohol if they were guilty of committing an alcohol related offence. Whilst over 60% backed the right of courts to ban someone from consuming alcohol who has been given bail.

Across the UK, one fifth of all violent incidents take place in or around a pub or club. The majority of all violence occurs in the evening or at night and just under half occurs at the weekend (Friday 6pm until Sunday 6am). The Mayor is keen to continue working with the government on more comprehensive legislation to offer a wider scheme inspired by a programme in South Dakota led by Keith Humphreys, where 99.3% of offender’s tests were negative and the prison population fell by 14 per cent.

Here is the announcement: Ascent to Temple Mount

Join Moshe Feiglin and Manhigut Yehudit this Sunday, 19 Shvat (February 12) for our monthly ascent to the Temple Mount. We will thank G-d for our success in the primaries and pray for the future. Meet at the entrance gate to the Kotel at 7:30 after all halachic preparations, immersion in the mikvah, and non-leather shoes. If you have any questions on the proper preparations, please contact a qualified halachic authority or The Temple Institute.

THE MOSLEM RESPONSE [http://english.wafa.ps/index.php?action=detail&id=18944]

JERUSALEM “ Members of the Israeli right-wing Likud party Thursday called to storm al-Aqsa mosque next Sunday to build the alleged temple on the ruins of the mosque, according to Israeli right wing websites. Several websites of the Israeli right wing published an announcement on behalf of the Likud party, calling on thousands of the Likud members to storm al-Aqsa mosque along with a delegation headed by Moshe Feiglin, who ran against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for leadership of the party and received 25% of the votes of party members.

The announcement said: “We call upon everyone to go up the Temple Mound, the Haram Ash-Sharif, one of the most important religious sites in the Old City of Jerusalem, to declare a proper leadership which insures our full control of the mount in order to build the temple on the ruins of al-Aqsa Mosque. Al-Aqsa Institute for Waqf and Heritage, in a statement, said that these calls to break into al-Aqsa Mosque reflect the Israeli occupations hidden intentions against the mosque. It called upon the entire Islamic nation and Arab world to uphold their responsibilities against the Israeli intransigence.

THE MOUNT IS THE HOLIEST SITE IN JUDAISM AND IS THE PLACE JEWS TURN TOWARDS DURING PRAYER. Among Sunni Muslims the Mount is widely considered to be the third holiest site in Islam, Revered as the Noble Sanctuary.

[This last paragraph was later deleted – because it admits that the Temple Mount is Holy to the Jews. Ed]

Vatican officials then met with representatives of the Palestine Liberation Organization in Ramallah. The talks were co-chaired by Monseignor Ettore Balestrero, the Holy See’s Under-Secretary for Relations with States, and by Palestinian minister, Ziad Al-Bandak. The basis for the new Vatican-PLO agreement is a memorandum signed by Palestinian and Vatican officials in 2000 and which repeated the Vatican’s call for AN INTERNATIONAL MANDATE to preserve “the proper identity and sacred character” of Jerusalem. THE CATHOLIC CHURCH WANTS ISRAEL RELINQUISHING SOVEREIGNTY AT THE WESTERN WALL AND THE TEMPLE MOUNT.

Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran, head of the Vatican’s Council for Interreligious Dialogue, recently asked to place holy places under Vatican authority or “international custody” saying: “The Holy See has always accepted that which was set by Resolution 181 on 29 November 1947 - which declared that Jerusalem must be the object of special regime under the auspices of the international community”. Instead of making blatantly political agreements with the Arabs, Catholic leaders should cooperate with the Jews and recognize that the only way to guarantee religious freedom is by maintaining the unity of Jerusalem under Israeli sovreignity.

There is a deep reason for Vatican opposition to Israel’s possessing the Old City. The Roman Catholic Church believes Israel’s right to be the Kingdom of God ended forever with the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple by the Roman Legion in 70 CE. Israel’s rebirth challenged Catholicism’s “Kingdom of God” when Jerusalem “the eternal” became the capital of Israel in 1967. The world must ensure that Har Habayit, the Temple Mount, where humanity received the gift of one God, King David raised a sanctuary for the Ark of the Covenant and King Solomon and Herod built the Temples, does not fall into the hands of genocidaires and looters.

A high-level group of experts has asked the Government to clarify its position on whether it intends to develop "incapacitating chemical agents" for a range of domestic uses that go beyond the limited use of chemical irritants such as CS gas for riot control. The experts were commissioned by the Royal Society, the UK's national academy of sciences, to investigate new developments in neuroscience that could be of use to the military. They concluded that the Government may be preparing to exploit a loophole in the Chemical Weapons Convention allowing the use of incapacitating chemical agents for domestic law enforcement.

The 1993 convention bans the development, stockpiling and use of nerve agents and other toxic chemicals by the military but there is an exemption for certain chemical agents that could be used for "peaceful" domestic purposes such as policing and riot control. The British Government has traditionally taken the view that only a relatively mild class of irritant chemical agents that affect the eyes and respiratory tissues, such as CS gas, are exempt from the treaty, and then only strictly for use in riot control.

But the Royal Society working group says the Government shifted its position to allow the development of more severe chemical agents, such as the type of potentially dangerous nerve gases used by Russian security forces to end hostage sieges. "The development of incapacitating chemical agents, ostensibly for law-enforcement purposes, raises a number of concerns in the context of humanitarian and human-rights law, as well as the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC)," the report says.

The group, the People’s Mujahedin of Iran, has long been designated as a terrorist group by the United States, accused of killing American servicemen and contractors in the 1970s and supporting the takeover of the US Embassy in Tehran before breaking with the Iranian mullahs in 1980.

The attacks, which have killed five Iranian nuclear scientists since 2007 and may have destroyed a missile research and development site, have been carried out in dramatic fashion, with motorcycle-borne assailants often attaching small magnetic bombs to the exterior of the victims’ cars. US officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the Obama administration is aware of the assassination campaign but has no direct involvement. The Iranians have no doubt who is responsible – Israel and the People’s Mujahedin of Iran, known by various acronyms, including MEK, MKO and PMI.

Mohammad Javad Larijani, a senior aide to Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, describes what Iranian leaders believe is a close relationship between Israel's secret service, the Mossad, and the People's Mujahedin of Iran, or MEK, which is considered a terrorist organization by the United States. “The relation is very intricate and close,” said Mohammad Javad Larijani

The plant's operator, Tokyo Electric Power [Tepco] was forced to increase the amount of cooling water being injected into the No 2 reactor after its temperature soared to 73.3C earlier this week. By Tuesday night, the temperature had dropped to 68.5C at the bottom of the reactor's containment vessel, where molten fuel is believed to have accumulated after three of Fukushima Daiichi's six reactors suffered meltdown after last year's tsunami disaster.

The temperature at the bottom of the No 2 reactor vessel had risen by more than 20C in the space of several days, although it remained below the 93C limit the US nuclear regulatory commission sets for a safe state known as cold shutdown. Tepco said it had also injected water containing boric acid to prevent a nuclear chain reaction known as re-criticality.

He also claimed that Argentina was ready to go to war against a British “invasion”. His outburst came in the wake of an astonishing tub-thumping speech by Argentina’s President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner. She lambasted Britain’s “militarisation” of the South Atlantic and vowed to make a formal complaint to the United Nations against Britain after the decisions to send the Prince and one of the Navy’s most modern destroyers to the South Atlantic territory.

Speaking to a local radio station, Mr Puricelli said: “What the British have got to understand is that we tolerate them in the Falklands but if any armed English force invades Argentine territory, have no doubt we will exercise our legitimate right to self-defence and we have the capacity to do so.”

His onslaught was the latest in the deepening row over the ownership of the islands ahead of the 30th anniversary of the Falklands War this year. Earlier this week, President Kirchner told an audience of Argentine veterans of the Falklands War: “I have instructed our foreign minister to protest at the UN against the militarisation of the South Atlantic which implies a grave risk for international security.” Her threat to report Britain to the UN followed a series of angry demonstrations in Buenos Aires against British rule in the islands.

Downing Street officials yesterday warned that contingency plans were in place for the defence of the Falkland Islands. A spokeswoman for the Prime Minister said: “We are not militarising the South Atlantic. Our defensive posture in the Falklands remains the same.”

He claims reduced solar activity will end up causing the earth to cool down in years to come rather than get hotter. “The climate catastrophe is not occurring,” he said. “In my experience as an energy expert, I learned that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is more of a political than a scientific body. As a rapporteur on renewable energy, I witnessed how thin the factual basis is for predictions that are made at the IPCC.”

Vahrenholt said views laid out in his book The Cold Sun will “will make me enemies in all camps”. He claims new studies have “seriously questioned” the impact of carbon dioxide on global warming. “CO2 alone will never cause a warming of more than 2 degrees Celsius by the end of the century,” he added. “The realisation that the global warming trend is coming to a halt makes it even more compelling. This is a very important development.”

It is what can happen if you join a fixed exchange system, then take out very large debts in what amounts to a foreign currency, and then have simultaneous monetary and fiscal contraction imposed upon you. Germany discovered this on the Gold Standard when it racked up external debt from 1925 to 1929 (owed to American bankers) in much the same way as Greece has done.

When the music stopped – ie, when the Fed raised rates from 1928 onwards – Germany blew apart in much the same way as Greece is blowing apart. This is not a cultural or anthropological issue. It is the mechanical consequence of capital flows into a country that cannot handle it, as Germany could not handle it in the late 1920s. By the way, Greeks work an average 42 hours a week, one of the highest in Europe. Just want to put the record straight on that.

Democratic Governor Chris Gregoire is expected to sign the measure into law next week. It comes a day after a California court declared a ban on gay marriage unconstitutional. Same-sex weddings are already legal in New York, Connecticut, Iowa, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont and Washington, DC. Legislators in the state of New Jersey are expected to vote on the matter next week and gay marriage could appear on the ballot in Maine in November.

Following the introduction of domestic partnership laws in Washington in 2007, the laws were expanded to include "everything but marriage" in 2009. In October, a survey conducted by the University of Washington found that 43% of respondents would support gay marriage legislation. A further 22% said they supported equal rights for same-sex couples, without calling the union "marriage".