North Korea has accused the United States of using military drills in South Korea as a launch pad for a nuclear war and has scrapped the armistice with Washington that ended hostilities in the 1950-53 Korean War.

North Korea, which has one major ally, neighboring China, threatens the United States and its "puppet", South Korea, on an almost daily basis. "Since the United States is about to ignite a nuclear war, we will be exercising our right to preemptive nuclear attack against the headquarters of the aggressor in order to protect our supreme interest," the North's foreign ministry spokesman said in a statement carried by the official KCNA news agency.

North Korea conducted a third nuclear test on February 12, in defiance of UN resolutions, and declared it had achieved progress in securing a functioning atomic arsenal. It is widely believed the North does not have the capacity to deliver a nuclear strike on the mainland United States. The North's unnamed foreign ministry spokesman also said it would be entitled to take military action as of March 11 when US-South Korea military drills move into a full-scale phase as it had declared the truce invalid.

“It’s not my choice to stop this, but I don’t know how we can put our citizens at jeopardy and cost our city and our citizens a lot of money,” said Jensen, who met with the association upon the advice of the city attorney. The invocation complaint was lodged by Longview resident Dan L Smith, 69, who describes himself as a “very comfortable atheist.” Smith has emailed council members for years, saying that people of other faiths or no faith shouldn’t have to endure a Christian prayer at a government meeting.

He didn’t want to take the case to court, even though he “would undoubtedly win” based on prior court decisions, he wrote. “All I am asking is that you remove … the invocation from the council’s agenda and that you sever any council ties with the (ministerial association’s) responsibilities for the delivery of the invocation,” Smith wrote in a March 2012 email, which he copied to the city attorney. “I do fully realize that this may not be a popular thing for you to do, but as an elected public official it is the right thing to do.”

But researchers working with a campaign group say DNA tests cannot provide accurate information about ancestry. Ancestry companies insist they are able to provide a valuable service. An increasing number of companies are offering to profile the genetic history of individuals based on a DNA sample for around £200.

But in a public guide, published by Sense About Science, Professors David Balding and Mark Thomas of University College London warn that such histories are either so general as to be "personally meaningless or they are just speculation from thin evidence". The scientists say that genetic profiles cannot provide accurate information about an individual's ancestry.

They say "the genetic ancestry business uses a phenomenon well-known in other areas such as horoscopes, where general information is interpreted as being more personal than it really is". They also highlight uncritical media coverage of the issue. Professor Balding, says that news items about famous people being related to historical figures often come from PR material provided by genetic testing companies. Professor Thomas says that the idea that we can read our ancestry directly from our genes is "absurd". "This is business, and the business is genetic astrology," he said.

The official position of the ROC was stated by the chairman of the Department for External Church Relations (DECR) of the Moscow Patriarchate, Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokalamsk. He suggested that, in the face of serious challenges requiring new stimuli, the pope is naturally giving way to a younger and more dynamic successor.

"Pope Benedict XVI's decision to resign can be regarded as an act of personal courage and humility," read the statement issued by the head of the DECR. "The Orthodox Church is grateful to the outgoing pontiff for his understanding of the obstacles that lie in the way of fully normalized relations between the Orthodox and Catholic churches, especially in western Ukraine."

On the eve of the announcement of the pope's abdication, Metropolitan Hilarion aptly noted the positive trend in relations between the Russian Orthodox and Roman Catholic churches that had taken place following the ascension of Ratzinger to the Holy See. "It is hoped that his successor will continue along the same path, so that the relationship between Orthodox and Catholic Christians further develops for the common good of all Christendom," said the metropolitan.

German power unbalances the entire system. Comparing the unemployment rate of the German bloc with that of Southern Europe, it is difficult to imagine these countries are members of the same trade group. The idea that the Germany-mandated austerity regime will be able to survive politically is difficult to imagine. This is compounded by deepening hostility to Germany. Germany sees itself as virtuous for its frugality. Others see it as rapacious in its aggressive exporting, with the most important export now being unemployment.

Fascism had its roots in Europe in massive economic failures in which the financial elites failed to recognize the political consequences of unemployment. History does not repeat itself so neatly. Fascism in the 1920s and 1930s sense is dead. But the emergence of new political parties speaking for the unemployed and the newly poor is something that is hard to imagine not occurring.

It is difficult to imagine a common European policy at this point. There still is one, in a sense, but how a country with 5.2 percent unemployment creates a common economic policy with one that has 11 or 14 or 27 percent unemployment is hard to see. The crisis of unemployment is a political crisis, and that political crisis will undermine all of the institutions Europe has worked so hard to craft. The test of Europe is not sovereign debt. It is whether it can avoid old and bad habits rooted in unemployment.

One in 10 parents polled said their son or daughter’s “childhood innocence” had disappeared as young as 10 amid “unprecedented” pressure to grow up fast. And only two per cent thought their son or daughter would still seem “childlike” by 16, the age when children were seen as on the cusp of adulthood in previous generations. The research, for the website Netmums, found that children today are only half as likely to spend time reading books as their parents were.

They are also far less likely to spend time listening to music or running around outside than a generation ago, preferring to spend hours alone or playing on internet devices, according to the research. Six out of 10 parents attributed the loss of childhood to exposure to the internet while almost half also blamed television programmes such as Glee for promoting status and good looks. But the biggest influence appears to be from young people themselves, with three quarters of parents polled singling out pressure from friends and schoolmates as the main factor driving children to grow up too fast.

Siobhan Freegard, founder of Netmums, said: “The pace of modern life is so fast that it is even snatching away the precious years of childhood. A toxic combination of marketing, media and peer pressure means children no longer want to be seen as children, even when as parents we know they still are. It’s shocking our study shows childhood ends by 12 years old. Children need time to grow and emotionally mature in order to cope with what life throws at them. There needs to be a radical rethink in society to revalue childhood and protect it as a precious time – not a time to put pressure on children to grow up far too fast.”

The turnabout is testament to healthy corporate profits and the resilience of America's free enterprise system. And it's a huge relief to workers whose 401(k) plans are tied to equities. But the risky little secret of the rebound is that it is powered in significant part by the easy-money policies of the Federal Reserve, which must one day end. To combat the Great Recession, the Fed has bought trillions of dollars of mortgage bonds and US Treasuries to juice the housing market and the economy in general.

On balance these purchases — which go by the non-threatening name of "quantitative easing" — have been warranted, given the deep economic problems caused by the financial crisis. But the time is approaching to scale back the bond-buying spree and get ready to unwind some of the Fed's massive portfolio, which now tops $3 trillion. The longer the policy lasts, the more likely it will end unhappily.

That's a good reason to start thinking about an endgame sooner rather than later. The longer the Fed's easy-money policies go on, the greater the risk they will distort markets, create new bubbles and set the economy up for another fall.