The turbulence in the world financial markets during 2008 is blamed on a failure in the banking system While it is certainly true that many leading banks acted imprudently and incompetently, the crisis was made worse and will be perpetuated by the high levels of both government and consumer debt in the US and EU

The recent downturn in relations between Turkey and Israel is a dramatic change to the warm relations that the two countries enjoyed until recently Turkey joined NATO in 1951, at the same time as Greece