In a hard hitting Financial Stability Review, the ECB said the "risks to euro area financial stability increased considerably in the second half of 2011". It said "positive market responses" to European summit agreements had been "short-lived - indeed, a bumpy ratification process appears to have contributed to additional market uncertainties."

As European leaders - minus the UK - stumbled towards extending 150 billion euros (125 billion pounds) of extra credit lines to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the report demanded "bold and decisive action both within and outside the euro area." It said that "swift and effective implementation" of the December 9 Brussels agreement was "pivotal... to curtailing the cycle of risk intensification in the euro area that characterised the latter half of 2011."

But the ECB's own role is less pivotal apparently. Mario Draghi stuck to his usual script in a speech to the European Parliament and insisted the bank would not intervene. The European Treaty "forbids monetary union," he said. "Losing credibility for the central bank is not going to do any good to market confidence."

Britain was unapologetic about refusing to contribute more to the IMF. "We were clear that we would not be making a contribution," a Treasury source told reporters. Wolfgang Schauble, the German finance minister, admitted there was "no chance" of the US increasing its contribution to the IMF either. Instead, Mr Draghi, who said markets should pay less attention to credit rating agencies, backed fiscal union and austerity measures.

But Angela Merkel seems to be standing against the whole eurozone, once again rejecting collective borrowing through Eurobonds. "When Angela Merkel says no to Eurobonds, this means nothing other than no to the euro," Michael Mross told RT. "Because you don't have to be an economist to know that a common currency cannot work without a common bond market."

"If you want to have a common currency, you have to have one single rulership in Europe," Mross added. "But nobody wants it." Michael Mross believes that Merkel's idea is to let euro die by itself. "Because of the fact that Germany is not permitted to pull out of the euro, Angela Merkel says 'we don't want Eurobonds.' And without Eurobonds the euro will not work," he explained.

Mross however agrees that the Eurobonds will only trigger the process of transferring more money from Germany to other European countries.

He also says that it is too late for the debt-hit countries to do their "housework" in order to keep their economies in good shape. "Every week we have a new emergency meeting, every week we have a new summit, every week we have new hopes, and every week nothing happens," he said.

"President Obama is acting on a British geopolitical plan to force a confrontation with Russia and China, a military confrontation of which Syrian and Iran would nearly be the ignition point," Freeman explained. "But the real goal is a war to stop the progress that Russia and China are engulfed in." Lawrence Freeman says that the International Criminal Court is being used as an instrument to carry out regime change with a smoke screen of human rights protection.

"The Russians and the Chinese are seeing this played out again and they are beginning to respond," he said. "Especially the Russians, they are responding militarily by sending the Kuznetsov aircraft carrier to the Syrian borders." It is a risky game, Freeman admits, but he thinks that Russians are aware of the danger of what could happen if they do not do it. "This could result - and I think the Russians and the Chinese are aware of this - this could result in World War III," he said. "So this is extremely dangerous, and measures have to be taken now to stop these policies by President Obama and the British."

Political analyst Marcus Papadopoulos agrees that Russia will not allow the situation in Syria to end up as it did in Libya. "The difference between Syria and Libya is the Russian factor," he told RT. "Russia has made it very clear that what happened in Libya will not happen in Syria and they've already vetoed a resolution at this Security Council, so of course there's going to be a lot more talk by the UN of what can be done but I think the Russian factor will prove to be a critical one".

He also voiced his opinion on how to resolve the present crisis. "What needs to happen is that the international community needs to act as a mediator between the Syrian government and the opposition parties," he said. "And unfortunately it's not helping - how the American, British and French governments are demonizing President Assad and they're taking the side of the Syrian opposition."

A closer look at the fine print, however, revealed that the 27 heads of state and government really only emerged from the summit with one concrete pledge aimed at dampening the most immediate effects of the debt crisis currently battering Europe. They vowed to loan up to 200 billion euros ($260 billion) to the International Monetary Fund so that the IMF could step up its aid to European countries in need. Now, though, with Germany's central bank showing increasing doubts about the fund and others demonstrating an unwillingness to participate, even that measure may now be in doubt.

Bundesbank head Jens Weidmann has insisted that before Germany sends its 45 billion euros share to the IMF, it needs assurances that other fund members outside of Europe are also willing to help out. Russia indicated its willingness to play along on Thursday. There are indications, however, that the United States will not help out. According to Bloomberg, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke told Senate Republicans on Wednesday that the Fed would not devote more money to the IMF. US President Barack Obama has also said that the IMF has sufficient resources.

Canada too has shown no interest in the IMF plan. And Japan has insisted that Europe do more on its own. But there are problems in Europe too. British Prime Minister David Cameron on Wednesday made it clear that his country would only contribute 10 billion euros, far lower than the 30 billion euros EU leaders had expected, according to the Financial Times. The Czech Republic, for its part, has said it will chip in its share of 3.5 billion euros if all EU countries participate. Furthermore, it wants to take its time to thoroughly examine the plan - making next Monday's envisioned deadline for collecting European funds look increasingly unrealistic.

Still, it is Germany's central bank which is causing the most consternation. Weidmann has said that, despite the Bundesbank's independence, he would like parliamentary backing for the measure. Furthermore, he is against earmarking the proposed 200 billion euros IMF fund solely for European use, saying it should be used to strengthen the IMF as a whole.

And it has become increasingly clear that new ECB head Mario Draghi has become a convert. "I will never be tired of saying that the first response ought to emanate from the country," Draghi said during a Thursday speech he held in Berlin, his most recent indication that the ECB seeks to avoid becoming Europe's lender of last resort. "There is no external savior for a country that doesn't want to save itself." At the same time, he also urged European policy makers to hurry up. "The crisis has not ended yet," Draghi said. "It is now important not to lose momentum and to swiftly implement all those decisions that have been taken to put the euro area economy back on course."

As part of the accelerating, high-stakes diplomacy, Reuters has learned, the United States is considering the transfer of an unspecified number of Taliban prisoners from the Guantanamo Bay military prison into Afghan government custody. It has asked representatives of the Taliban to match that confidence-building measure with some of their own. Those could include a denunciation of international terrorism and a public willingness to enter formal political talks with the government headed by Afghan President Hamid Karzai.

The officials acknowledged that the Afghanistan diplomacy, which has reached a delicate stage in recent weeks, remains a long shot. Among the complications: US troops are drawing down and will be mostly gone by the end of 2014, potentially reducing the incentive for the Taliban to negotiate. Still, the senior officials, all of whom insisted on anonymity to share new details of the mostly secret effort, suggested it has been a much larger piece of President Barack Obama's Afghanistan policy than is publicly known.

US officials have held about half a dozen meetings with their insurgent contacts, mostly in Germany and Doha with representatives of Mullah Omar, leader of the Taliban's Quetta Shura, the officials said. The stakes in the diplomatic effort could not be higher. Failure would likely condemn Afghanistan to continued conflict, perhaps even civil war, after NATO troops finish turning security over to Karzai's weak government by the end of 2014. Success would mean a political end to the war and the possibility that parts of the Taliban - some hardliners seem likely to reject the talks - could be reconciled.

The effort is now at a pivot point.

"I think the military is very frightened of the prospect of an Egypt that would be led by Islamist political parties," Lappin said. "They are worried about security. They are worried about the economy, what this could do to tourism." Lappin believes that Egypt's military rulers are also very reluctant to allow change as they have been in power for many years, since the 1950s. "I think they are very reluctant to let go of that power," he said. "So I think it's going to be unpredictable, violent in some cases, and it's also going to damage Egypt's ability to maintain law and order on its streets."

Yaakov Lappin is wary about calling what has happened in Egypt a revolution because the elites, which are the military, are still in power in Egypt. "I don't think there actually has been a revolution yet," he said. "I think that what's happened is that the figurehead of the military regime has been deposed very dramatically. Certainly that was a hugely significant event, it was an earthquake."

Egypt has seen major changes, and changes will continue to happen, but this is not a revolution until the military is in power according to Lappin. "Until then I think the two sides are stuck in their current positions, fighting it out through a range of ways," he said. "And one of these ways is street battles between the military security forces and the people."

Those on interest-only mortgages, who do not pay back any of the value of the property but must clear it in full at the end of the term, could be worst hit. An estimated 1.5 million such loans, worth 120 billion pounds, will become due for repayment over the next 10 years, which could hit lenders and homeowners.

Although customers usually need to show they will be able to repay the money once the mortgage has finished, lenders were less strict about this during the boom years of 2002 to 2007. By 2007, a third of all mortgages were interest only, but 75 per cent of these had no reported repayment vehicle at all, meaning the customers did not have to prove they could pay back the loan

Today the regulator publishes the Mortgage Market Review, aimed at shaking up the lending market to try to prevent a return of irresponsible lending and to stop borrower "nightmares" where people face losing their homes because they were granted loans that will be unaffordable when rates go up. It estimated that up to 15 per cent of people who took out mortgages between 2005 and 2010 could now be in negative equity, with many others "trapped" into paying a high interest rate by their current lender because they were unable to go elsewhere. The Bank of England recently found that 15.5 per cent of people with a mortgage were constantly struggling with repayments or falling behind

He added, "A (nuclear) disaster befalling one of us would affect us all." The Sunni Muslim kingdom last summer said it would build 16 nuclear reactors for energy, but Faisal's remarks were the first indication, at least in public, that Saudi Arabia may acquire nuclear weapons. Israel has maintained a policy of "nuclear ambiguity," meaning it does not confirm or deny assumptions that it has nuclear weapons, perhaps as many as several hundred.

However, Saudi Arabia's biggest worry is Iran, run by a Shi'ite Muslim regime that openly says it wants to head a new Islamic empire in the Middle East. The Islamic Republic is on a collision course with the West - and Shi'ite Muslim Arab countries - as it proceeds towards the capability of both manufacturing and delivering a nuclear weapon. Saudi Arabia focused on peaceful use of nuclear energy at the energy conference in the oil-rich monarchy. "Once our nuclear project is complete and we have satisfied the kingdom's demand for electricity," Saudi Arabia plans to export electricity, said Khalid Al-Sulaiman, vice president of renewable energy at King Abdullah City.

As the world looks for alternative energy sources, Saudi Arabia, which produces 20 percent of the world's crude oil, is looking to a future of not being dependent on oil to keep its economy strong.

On Thursday, the British Daily Mail newspaper said that an Israeli attack on Iran's nuclear facilities could come as soon as December 25, the day the Christian world celebrates Christmas. The paper quoted a senior Foreign Office official as saying that "'We're expecting something as early as Christmas, or very early in the new year." Israel, the official said, would not wait for Western approval for such an attack, if it felt that Iran was truly at the point of no return.

The officials said that the US would most likely support Israel, given that President Barack Obama is desperate not to lose Jewish support in next year's presidential election. Reports last week said that the US was gearing up its own plans to militarily halt Iran's nuclear program, and that Britain was cooperating. The Foreign Office official did not confirm that report in his remarks Thursday, but did say that "of course we are not in favor of Iran developing a bomb." With that, he said, Britain did not believe that Iran would use a bomb, even if they did develop a one. "The bigger concern is it will be impossible to stop Saudi Arabia and Turkey from developing their own weapons," the source added.

Considering that Iran does not celebrate Christmas, however, it was unclear why that date would be preferred by Israel for an attack against the Shi'ite Muslim country, and the Daily Mail story did not address this point.

The Korea Times quoted an unnamed source as saying that the scientists and missile engineers are working at the Natanz and Qom sites, among others. Iran is operating a uranium enrichment plant at Natanz. Despite Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's denials, Israel and Western powers assume the objective of the enrichment plant is to use the uranium to build a nuclear weapon, while engineers try to build a missile capable of delivering it.

North Korea has an enrichment plant in its own country and has conducted nuclear tests. Both it and Iran are under United Nations sanctions for not cooperating with International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors. "The source with access to intelligence on the years-long weapons collaboration between Pyongyang and Tehran said the North Koreans are visiting Iran via third countries and many of them are being rotated every three to six months." the newspaper reported.

"The North Korean experts are from the country's so-called Room 99, which is directly supervised by the North's ruling Workers' Party Munitions Industry Department," it added. "The room, which can be translated as office or bureau, is widely believed to be engaged in exports of weapons and military technology."

While David Cameron and George Osborne have been careful not to say openly that they believe the euro is past rescue, Mr Johnson and other senior Tory politicians yesterday began for the first time to discuss publicly the likelihood of a euro collapse. 'I would be amazed if we were all sitting here next year and the euro had not undergone some sort of change,' said the London Mayor. 'I think it highly likely that there will be a realignment in the sense that some countries will fall out... and we all know who the likely candidates are. Ouzo will be substantially cheaper.'

'But there is such phobia about this and such a lot of political ego has been invested in the success of the euro project that people are failing to see that might be the best way forward.' Mr Johnson told BBC1's The Andrew Marr Show: 'If we continually go on with these hysterical attempts to bubblegum the whole thing together we are just going to consign those periphery economies particularly to low growth and we are never going to get confidence back in the eurozone.' Yesterday a leading Conservative peer warned that Britons living on the Continent could be left stranded and 'destitute' if the eurozone breaks up.

Dame Pauline Neville-Jones said banks would close their doors meaning Britons could be left unable to withdraw money to live on.

She spoke as it emerged that officials are drawing up plans to evacuate British expats and to give them emergency loans in the event of a breakdown of the system. Warning of the risk of collapse, Dame Neville-Jones said: 'Spain is clearly a vulnerable area. If that happens, one of the things that will happen in a crash of that kind is that the banks would close their doors.'

Observers also fear a behind-the-scenes power struggle, or nuclear instability, between the country's military and politicians - despite the announcement his third son Kim Jong Un is to be his successor. Rod Lyon, a Korea expert at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute in Canberra, said: 'The reason people are watching closely is not because we expect the North to strike out, it's because events within North Korea could have unsettling ramifications.'

'If there's a contested succession, it means there's a struggle over things like who controls North Korea's plutonium, not just who controls North Korea's army.' The other key regional player is China, the closest North Korea has to a major ally and which has a sometimes testy relationship with the United States. Cai Jian, a Korea expert at Shanghai's Fudan University, said: 'China's biggest worry will be over North Korea's stability, and China's aim will be to ensure the country remains stable.'

Figures suggest European Union officials expect British taxpayers to be the second largest contributor. The Prime Minister has repeatedly promised not to provide any extra funding for the IMF for the specific purpose of saving the euro and Britain is already liable for 12 billion pounds of loans and guarantees to Ireland, Greece and Portugal. Earlier this month, EU countries set today as the deadline to raise up to 200 billion euros in new loans for the IMF to deal with the eurozone crisis. Finance ministers will hold a conference call in an attempt to reach agreement on the war chest.

An EU official said Britain was still expected to contribute 30.9 billion euros (25.9 billion pounds), leaving the country as the second biggest contributor to the new IMF fund behind Germany and equal with France. Any suggestion that Britain will pay more towards the bailing out debt-ridden eurozone economies will cause anger among Tory Euro-sceptics, particularly if the eurozone nations do not pay their fair share. Douglas Carswell, the Conservative MP for Clacton, said: "George Osborne has spent 20 months going along with the bail-out and borrow consensus. It has cost this country billions of pounds in liabilities which dwarf all the austerity measures. He needs to call a halt now."

Mr Carswell called for eurozone countries to be allowed an "orderly default" on their debts. Peter Bone, the Tory MP for Wellingborough, urged the Chancellor to stand up for the British "national interest", even if he is as isolated in today's meeting as Mr Cameron was earlier this month in Brussels. Ten days after Mr Cameron deployed his veto in Brussels, the eurozone crisis appeared no closer to resolution.

Nick de Bois, Conservative MP for Enfield North, comments: "The figures revealed in the Daily Express today are a wake-up call for local councils. That the sum of 27 million pounds was spent by local authorities in the past two years on translations is staggering. People in Britain will rightly argue that, in times of austerity, this is one cut we can all agree on. However, I would argue that even if we were not living in tough economic times, the use of taxpayers' money in this way is very questionable indeed."

"Let's be absolutely clear - there is no legal requirement on local councils to provide translation services. There are, in fact, guidelines recently issued by the Department for Communities and Local Government which encourage local authorities to think long and hard before offering translation services. Take as an example my own local council in the London Borough of Enfield. Residents have recently had to fight a campaign against a threat to services at the much-used Ordnance Road Library, which is located in one of the more deprived parts of my constituency."

"It costs 220,000 pounds a year to run and is a learning resource used by residents and schools alike. The fact that library services could be under threat when last year the council spent 350,000 pounds on translation services speaks volumes. This is not what residents want and it is not what is good for our country. I say that because I want to make a wider point here. I'm all in favour of having people come to this country who want to make a better life for themselves and their families and contribute to society."

"To achieve this, learning the language is crucial. Without it, at best, your job opportunities are restricted and it's far more difficult to realise your potential. At worst, you can't integrate into society. What all areas of Government - from Whitehall to town halls - need to ensure is that policies are geared towards encouraging people to learn English, not allowing people to get by without doing so."

Is Iran in possession of satellite jamming technology? A European intelligence source claimed Iran stunned Western intelligence agencies when it managed to "blind a CIA spy satellite by aiming a laser burst quite accurately," in a never before reported incident. According to an article in The Christian Science Monitor, this unreported incident might suggest that the Iranians have successively gained access to jamming technology, allowing them to track unmanned aerial vehicle navigation capabilities.

Former US Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton told Fox News on Sunday that such an option is possible. "Some reports have said Russia sold (Iran) a very sophisticated jamming system a short time ago. Now, our military says that is not true, it came down because of a malfunction. I certainly hope that's right because if the Russians have provided Iran with sophisticated jamming equipment it means a lot else is at risk too," said Bolton.

He added that Congress should be quite concerned if Iran is in possession of jamming technology that can bring down missiles, planes and communications and guidance systems "for a whole range of our weapon systems." Google CEO Eric Schmidt asserted that Iran has been developing cyber warfare which might endanger the US in the future. "The Iranians are unusually talented in cyber war for some reason we don't fully understand," Schmidt said in an interview with CNN on Thursday.