Increasing speculation it may be preparing for a military assault on Iran or a regional war involving Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza, Israel has placed its largest order of military fuel with the United States on record.

The Jewish state, earlier this month, ordered 284 million gallons of JP-8 aviation jet fuel, 100 million gallons of diesel fuel and 60 million gallons of unleaded gasoline – all suitable for military uses – at an estimated cost of $2 billion.

Read more at WND

A volcano in western Indonesia spewed hot lava and sand high into the sky early Sunday in its first eruption in 400 years.

Read more at Fox News

A number of the world’s biggest banks have launched international roadshows promoting the use of the renminbi to corporate customers instead of the dollar for trade deals with China.

HSBC, which recently moved its chief executive from London to Hong Kong, and Standard Chartered, are offering discounted transaction fees and other financial incentives to companies that choose to settle trade in the Chinese currency.

Read more at FT

California officials are outfitting preschoolers in Contra Costa County with tracking devices they say will save staff time and money.

The system was introduced Tuesday. When at the school, students will wear a jersey that has a small radio frequency tag. The tag will send signals to sensors that help track children's whereabouts, attendance and even whether they've eaten or not.

It cost $50,000 and was paid by a federal grant.

Read more at Mercury News

Astronomers are predicting that a massive solar storm, much bigger in potential than the one that caused spectacular light shows on Earth earlier this month, is to strike our planet in 2012 with a force of 100 million hydrogen bombs.

Several US media outlets have reported that NASA was warning the massive flare this month was just a precursor to a massive solar storm building that had the potential to wipe out the entire planet's power grid.

Read more at Yahoo News

U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano on Thursday ranked Chicago’s Big Brother network of well over 10,000 public and private surveillance cameras as one of the nation’s most extensive and integrated — and Mayor Daley wants to make it even bigger.

“Expansion of cameras citywide is one of the highest priorities that will help us here in the city of Chicago,” Daley said with Napolitano at his side.

Read more at Chicago Sun Times

The US warned Lebanon that if it did not prevent any recurrence of the border-fire incident that occurred earlier this month, the IDF would destroy the Lebanese Armed Forces within four hours, Israel Radio cited a report by Lebanese newspaper A-Liwaa on Friday.

According to the report, Frederick Hoff, assistant to US Middle East Peace Envoy George Mitchell, told Lebanese Army chief of staff Jean Kahwaji that Israel was ready to implement a plan to destroy within four hours all Lebanese military infrastructure, including army bases and offices, should a similar confrontation occur in the future.

Read more at jpost

With high Andean peaks and a humid tropical forest, Bolivia is a country of ecological extremes. But during the Southern Hemisphere's recent winter, unusually low temperatures in part of the country's tropical region hit freshwater species hard, killing an estimated 6 million fish and thousands of alligators, turtles and river dolphins.

Read more at Nature News

Hundreds of thousands of Pakistanis were fleeing a southern district Friday after the bloated Indus River crushed a levee and flooded new areas, officials said. The U.N. said as many as 1 million people have been displaced in the south since midweek.

The latest evacuations came after the Taliban issued a veiled threat against foreign aid workers helping out after the floods, a development likely to complicate the massive relief effort. More than 8 million people are in need of emergency assistance across the country.

Read more at Fox News

Iran has enough low-enriched uranium to produce one to two nuclear weapons, but it would not be logical for it to cross the bomb-making threshold, said former UN chief of nuclear inspections Olli Heinonen in an interview with Le Monde Thursday which was cited by Reuters.

Heinonen called Iran's nuclear program a "threat" in a rare public interview, given shortly before he stepped down from his position as deputy director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency. Heinonen was head of the IAEA's nuclear safeguards arm, which monitors countries' nuclear programs to make sure they are intended for peaceful use. Heinonen left the post in August for personal reasons.

Read more at jpost