Neither Israel nor the Palestinians are represented at the conference, which Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has dismissed as "rigged" against the Jewish state. Opening the meeting, French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault said the international community wanted to "forcefully reiterate that the two-state solution is the only solution possible" to the seven-decade-old conflict.

In a TV interview later, Ayrault warned that moving the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem would have "extremely serious consequences" and predicted Trump would find it impossible to do so. "When you are president of the United States, you cannot take such a stubborn and such a unilateral view on this issue. You have to try to create the conditions for peace," he told France 3 TV.

Both Netanyahu and Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas have been invited to meet with President Francois Hollande to discuss the conclusions of the Paris talks. Nathan Thrall, senior Middle East analyst at the International Crisis Group, dismissed the conference as "inconsequential". "If there are no consequences, if nobody is listening, if they are repeating the same thing they said over and over again, it amounts to a charade," he told AFP.

The good news is that this conference did not immediately recognize a Palestinian state, nor does it appear that additional action will be taken at the UN Security Council before Donald Trump is inaugurated on Friday.

It had been feared that this conference may attempt to impose some sort of a solution on the Israelis and the Palestinians, but that didn’t come to pass. Instead, the conference participants agreed to work toward “a negotiated solution with two states, Israel and Palestine, living side by side in peace and security“.

So the global community has clearly reaffirmed their commitment to a Palestinian state, but the outcome of this conference was not nearly as bad for Israel as many had been anticipating.

On Tuesday, the UN Security Council will meet to further discuss the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but the Jerusalem Post is reporting that US Secretary of State John Kerry has promised Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that there will not be any more UN Security Council resolutions regarding Israel before Trump takes office…

And describing Brexit as “emotional” for her she urged the remaining 27 member states to use Britain’s decision to leave to railroad through ever closer military cooperation. Mrs Merkel made the remarks as she picked up honorary degrees from two Belgian universities which were awarded in recognition of her work towards a 'unified Europe'. 

They come as eurocrats continue to press forward with plans for much closer European cooperation on military matters - a so-called ‘Defence Union’ - which is seen by most observers as the back-door creation of an EU army. EU chiefs were recently forced to drop controversial plans for a joint military headquarters in Brussels after Britain pledged to veto them, but Mrs Merkel hinted they will be back on the table immediately after Brexit. 

Concerns have been raised that an EU army will fatally undermine NATO - the western military alliance which has kept peace on the continent for 50 years - by creating a competing command structure. But Mrs Merkel insisted such a force will need to come into being in part because of the indifference of Mr Trump, who takes office on January 21, towards the entire euro project. 

She said: “Let’s not fool ourselves. From the point of view of some of our traditional partners - and I am thinking here as well about the transatlantic relations - there is no eternal guarantee for a close cooperation with us Europeans. I’m convinced that Europe and the EU will have to learn to take on more responsibility in the world.” The German leader insisted that only Brussels, and not individual member states, can successfully solve global problems, citing defence issues including Russian aggression in Ukraine. 

She said: "Europe is facing the biggest challenges for decades. It would be naive to always rely on others to solve the problems in our neighbourhood." In a speech to delegates in the Belgian capital she also addressed the issue of Brexit, which she said was an “emotional moment” but also presented Europe with the opportunity to press forwards with its military plans. 

Mr Mallach told BBC's Pienaar Politics that Mr Trump would warn against Jean-Claude Juncker's plan for the common European defence. It is believed that an EU army would ratchet up tensions with Russia's Vladimir Putin and accelerate Brussels-led expansion. During the interview, the businessman reiterated that Britain will be at the "front of the queue" during trade talks. 

The Brexiteer, who was recommended to Mr Trump by Nigel Farage, added that Britain will have the world's strongest economic power as a strong ally during Brexit talks in Brussels. Mr Mallach told John Pienaar: "He is committed to NATO - but is concerned about the burden-sharing, about countries paying their fair share. There is big concern about the EU moving towards an EU army, a military of Western Europe."

Earlier this week, Mr Malloch said: "Trump is very pro-European but he is not well disposed towards the European Union or other supranational organisations - particularly one that is encumbered by bureaucracy." He said Mr Trump will undermine the European Commission, which has exclusive responsibility for negotiating trade deals. The President-Elect will scrap the EU-US trade deal being negotiated and focus solely on bilateral-based economic ties.

The report’s findings suggest that the suppression of free speech on college campuses that is making headlines is only the tip of a very large iceberg. What lies beneath the surface is a massive, publicly funded program of indoctrination through a remaking of the curriculum as a vehicle for advancing the political agenda of progressivism.

This is important because it shows the vision and impact of the “civic engagement” and New Civics movement extends far beyond the campus. The aim is to turn the entire curriculum — including technology, engineering, and computer science — into little laboratories for incubating and motivating millions of  progressive activists — not to be good citizens, but to be activists “doing good work for democracy.”

The progressives’ “New Civics” project is not a fad or a by-product of Obama’s radicalism: it has grown over two decades from an acorn to an oak and now a forest. Where are the leaders who will confront this powerful, entrenched establishment dedicated to producing an entire generation of social justice warriors?

According to an organizer, the demonstration was planned to send a message to Donald Trump during inauguration weekend. A Facebook page for the march was published just hours after Trump officially won the presidential election in the early hours of November 9.

“We’re doing it his very first day in office because we are making a statement,” organizer Breanne Butler said in an interview days after the election. Of the marginalized groups she accused Mr Trump of attacking during his campaign, she said, “We are here and we are watching. And, like, ‘Welcome to the White House.’”

Organizers claim that as many as 200,000 people may participate in the march, many of which will be university-affiliated persons. Many university professors and their students from around the country have been raising money so that they can attend the march on January 21. Others have been organizing sister marches that will take place in various cities around the country.

While the march’s website claims that “we join in diversity” by “defending the most marginalized among us,” women who are pro-life or defend traditional marriage and family fall outside the stated qualifications of those who wish to march and are not welcome. The “unity principles” that narrow the scope of the march specifically espouse “reproductive rights” and “LGBTQIA rights,” while omitting the rights to religious freedom or the fundamental right to life.

“We believe in Reproductive Freedom,” the guidelines state. “This means open access to safe, legal, affordable abortion and birth control for all people, regardless of income, location or education.” Planned Parenthood advocate Scarlett Johansson, for instance, announced, “I am marching on Washington to let our next president know that we, men and women alike, will not stand down or be silenced and will fight to protect our bodies and our choices.”

Actress Debra Messing of Will & Grace went further still, saying, “An attack on Planned Parenthood is an attack on all American women.” Conspicuous by their absence will be the tens of millions of “American women” who believe in the right to life for all, including the unborn.

“When you see the situation in Washington, I think they are not willing, those who lost the election, to accept the new president whose name is Trump… What’s going on in Washington sounds like the beginning of a civil war,” said Wimmer, who is a former MP with Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU), and also served as vice president of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE).

“There is a network of resistance against the President who will be in office on the 20th of January and I think when you look at the reality in Europe, people of all our European countries – they want to live in good [relations] with [the] Russian Federation,” Wimmer said, adding that the media campaign aimed at vilifying Trump resembles the way the mainstream media used to demonize Russia.

“There is no hostility [between Russia and Europe], the hostility is organized in a very artificial way and it is the same way of organizing hostilities as we see nowadays against Trump,” the former MP said.

Babies made without mothers could come sooner than we think, leading biologists claim. Late last year, a team at the University of Bath discovered that sperm and skin cells – or any other kind of non-egg cell – might be all you need for conception. At the time, they said the scenario of men conceiving with men was ‘speculative and fanciful’.

But in a new report published today, the top embryologists at Harvard and Brown Universities urge nations to begin contemplating the legal minefield that would surround mother-less babies. ‘With science and medicine hurtling forward at breakneck speed, the rapid transformation of reproductive and regenerative medicine may surprise us,’ they write.

‘Before the inevitable, society will be well advised to strike and maintain a vigorous public conversation on the ethical challenges of IVG [in vitro gametogenesis].’

He said: “In 10 years we will all be Muslims because of our stupidity. Italy and Europe live in a pagan and atheist way, they make laws that go against God and they have traditions that are proper of paganism. All of this moral and religious decadence favours Islam.”

He added: “We have a weak Christian faith. The Church nowadays does not work well and seminaries are empty. Parishes are the only thing still standing. We need a true Christian life. All this paves the way to Islam. In addition to this, they have children and we do not. We are in full decline.”

He added: “We help without delay those coming from outside and we forget many poor and old Italians who are eating from the trash. We need policies that take care of Italians first: our young people and the unemployed. I am a protester. If I were not a priest, I’d be out there demonstrating in the squares. What is the point of so many migrants that instead of thanking for the food we give them, they just throw it, spend hours with their cell phones and even organise riots?”

A faction of right-wing parties in the European Parliament is organizing the January 21 meeting, which will include members of France's Front National, Italy's Northern League, the Party for Freedom of the Netherlands and the Alternative for Germany (AfD). The German anti-immigration party has risen to third place in public opinion polls ahead of the country's general election, which is expected in about nine months.

The meeting will feature National Front leader Marine Le Pen and the Dutch anti-Islam politician Geert Wilders, as well as AfD co-leader Frauke Petry and the party's European lawmaker Marcus Pretzell. Ludovic de Danne, an advisor to Petry, was quoted by the Paris newspaper "Le Figaro" as describing the meeting as a "European counter-summit." It will mark Petry's first sit-down with National Front head Le Pen, with both women expected to discuss the overlap in their parties' policies, de Danne said.

A host of other highly regarded German news organizations were also being blocked from the event, including the "Handelsblatt" business daily, the weekly "Der Spiegel" and the "Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung" newspaper, according to Pretzell.

Former Goldman Sachs President Gary Cohn, a regular attendee in the past, told the group he would skip 2017 after being named in December to head the National Economic Council, said people familiar with the conference. Other top Trump appointees will also pass up the forum.

A senior member of Trump’s transition team said the president-elect thought it would betray his populist-fueled movement to have a presence at the high-powered annual gathering in the Swiss Alps. The gathering of millionaires, billionaires, political leaders and celebrities represents the power structure that fueled the populist anger that helped Trump win the election, said the person, who asked for anonymity to discuss the matter. 

While the Trump team stays away, Xi Jinping is set to become the first Chinese president to attend the forum, bringing with him a contingent of China’s wealthiest executives. China is casting itself as an advocate of globalization, in contrast to Trump’s “America First” platform critical of free-trade deals.

But one of the things that has people the most concerned is his endless provoking of Russia.  Every few days it seems like Obama is doing something else to aggravate Russia, and if he wasn’t leaving office in about a week I am sure that the mainstream media would be full of speculation about a possible war.

Lame duck presidents are not supposed to make risky moves like this once a new president has been elected.  On Thursday, we learned that US troops have been permanently deployed to Poland for the very first time. Poland was once a key member of the Warsaw Pact alliance, and the Russians are quite alarmed that US troops will now be stationed so close to the Russian heartland.

And it has also been announced that NATO troops will arrive in Lithuania in late January.  If you will remember, Lithuania was actually part of the Soviet Union during the Cold War. All of a sudden, Russia has become enemy number one.  Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton say that Russia is to blame for Clinton’s election loss, and so at the end of December Obama expelled 35 Russian diplomats from the country.

That is the sort of thing that you do before a war starts.