Earlier, opposition member Khaled al-Sultan said the cabinets's resignation was accepted amid a bitter political dispute between the prime minister and opposition MPs. "We are waiting for the appointment of a new prime minister before parliament is dissolved in order to be assured of fair elections," the Sultan told reporters outside parliament. Parliament speaker Jassem al-Khorafi said he had not been informed about a dissolution of parliament.

If it is confirmed that Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmad al-Sabah, the emir of Kuwait, has accepted the resignations, he may then also dissolve parliament before setting a date for new elections. Several opposition MPs welcomed the resignation. "I hope that the emir will please the Kuwaiti people by dissolving parliament... and forming a transitional cabinet to supervise the elections," opposition MP Falah al-Sawwagh told reporters.

Although the problems have been going on for some time, they're about to get much worse. To know when the crisis is reaching a tipping point, keep your eye on global government bond yields. Although European leaders are still behaving as though the euro can be saved, behind the scenes banks are preparing for the breakup of the Eurozone. One of the effects of what the banks are doing is that global bond yields are diverging. Where banks cut back their bond holdings, countries have to pay higher yields. By contrast, in those countries where banks are willing to park their money for safekeeping, governments don't have to pay very high yields.

As a general rule, countries are in very serious trouble when yields on 10-year bonds go above 7%. In Greece, the weakest country in the Eurozone, bond yields are off the charts. In Italy, yields have risen as high as 7.8%. In Portugal, they have reached 12.6% and in Belgium 5.8%. French yields have climbed above 3.5%, which may not sound so bad but is still a lot higher than the yields in countries regarded as safe.

You can track the changing level of these global financial risks by watching what happens to government bonds yields. As long as 10-year Italian bonds have to continue paying more than 7%, the Eurozone is in serious trouble. If Spanish or Belgian bonds rise to that level, the crisis would worsen significantly. And further increases in French bond yields could signal the beginning of the end - Germany and the Netherlands can't support the Eurozone if France is in serious trouble.

The launch of the archive is the first time people will be able to digitally access and search through millions of newspaper articles from the comfort of their homes. Up until now, people have had to travel to the British Library newspaper depository in Colindale, North London, to access the entire collection of 200 local and regional newspapers.

Highlights of the vast collection include gems such as vivid accounts of General Garibaldi's UK visit to a "magnificent reception at Crystal Palace", published in the Dundee Courier on April 18 1864, and the creation of the phonograph by Thomas Edison, in the North Wales Chronicle on December 1, 1877. Ed King, head of the British Library's newspaper collections, said: "People will find this archive extraordinary on both a personal and historical level. For the first time people can search for their ancestors through the pages of our newspapers wherever they are in the world at any time."

"But what's really striking is how these pages take us straight back to scenes of murders, social deprivation and church meetings from hundreds of years ago, which we no longer think about as we haven't been able to easily access articles about them."

(Great source of history - according to the media of the day. Ed - http://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/)

Euro bonds? French President Nicolas Sarkozy apparently isn't familiar with the term. He talks and talks, but he never mentions euro bonds. And then it's Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti's turn. Euro bonds? Never heard of them. Or at least he says nothing about them in his speech. The next speaker is German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who wouldn't dream of mentioning euro bonds.

It is last Thursday, and the three European leaders have just had lunch together in Strasbourg and are giving a press conference on the subject of the euro. It must have been an amazing lunch, full of unity, harmony and understanding. Or at least that's the way they describe it. And when something is that pleasant, it makes complete sense not to talk about euro bonds, even though they are now the central issue in the debate over the euro crisis. Merkel is opposed to the idea and Sarkozy and Monti are in favor, but they don't want to say as much.

Of course, there is, as always, a journalist around who is leery of the harmonious mood, which is why he asks about the bonds that everyone knows about but isn't mentioning. Merkel says that she hasn't changed her opinion on the issue, but without actually uttering the distasteful words. Sarkozy mentions the Rhine River, tells a joke about a hypochondriac, talks and talks and finally says that he and his counterparts will certainly come to an agreement. But he doesn't mention euro bonds by name. And then it's Monti's turn again, and what does he do? He does use the word euro bonds, but then he quickly switches to a new, more attractive synonym, noting that he would not be overly opposed to "stability bonds." His words reveal that there is indeed a serious conflict within the euro zone.

The staged harmonious mood stands in sharp contrast with reality. In the middle of its biggest crisis, Europe is hopelessly divided. One summit follows the next, and they all end with conciliatory statements and avowals, but not with any shared plan for how to save the euro. The situation could hardly be any more dramatic. The European monetary union threatens to implode unless something happens soon.

The Danish firm, the world's biggest maker of insulin for the treatment of diabetes, sits outside the euro zone but sells into it. It's a question that is being echoed - in various forms - in the boardrooms of banks, brokerages, trading houses, law firms and the world's leading manufacturers. "It's hard to make detailed plans but we need to think through how our pricing strategy would fare if there were suddenly a dismantling of the euro," Brandgaard told Reuters. "How do we avoid falling into a trap? This is the first time I've asked such a question. It's a topic that is increasingly on the radar."

In the case of the products in question - Degludec and DegludecPlus, two ultra-long-acting insulins - Novo Nordisk has time on its side. The new drugs are still working their way through the regulatory approval process and probably will not reach the market until late 2012. Planning for a breakdown of Europe's 17-nation single currency is not easy. Like many business leaders, Brandgaard views a break-up of the euro as possible though not yet probable - but the odds are increasing. In a November 23 Reuters poll 14 out of 20 economists said the single currency would not survive in its current form - and companies are starting to plan for a worst case scenario.

Their trepidation is best summed up by Martin Sorrell, the head of the world's biggest advertising agency WPP. "The complexity fills everybody with such appalling fear and is so complicated that the last thing in the world you want to happen is that," Sorrell told Reuters on Monday. "But the honest answer is that, like everybody else, you try and contingency plan for any break-up of the euro zone."

President Barack Obama pressed European Union officials on Monday to act quickly and decisively to resolve their sovereign debt crisis, which the White House said was weighing on the American economy. Underlining the threat to tottering European economies, ratings agency Moody's warned on Tuesday it could downgrade the subordinated debt of 87 banks across 15 countries on concerns that governments would be too cash-strapped to bail them out.

Rival Standard & Poor's could downgrade the outlook on France's top-level triple-A credit status within the next 10 days, signaling a possible ratings cut, a newspaper reported. The news briefly hit the euro. White House spokesman Jay Carney said Obama's message, delivered to top EU officials behind closed doors in Washington, was that: "Europe needs to take decisive action, conclusive action to handle this problem, and that it has the capacity to do so."

Poland's Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski made a dramatic appeal in Berlin on Monday for Germany to show more leadership in the euro zone crisis. "You know full well that nobody else can do it," he said in a speech in the German capital, referring to efforts to save Europe's monetary union. "I will probably be the first Polish foreign minister in history to say so, but here it is: I fear German power less than I am beginning to fear German inactivity. You have become Europe's indispensable nation."

An S&P spokesperson in Paris said the agency did not comment on rumors. A spokesman in Melbourne earlier also declined to comment on the report, which if true would signal a heightened risk of a downgrade in the weeks ahead. "It could happen within a week, perhaps 10 days," La Tribune quoted a diplomatic source as saying of a change to the outlook. The economic and financial daily said S&P - which cut Belgium's credit rating to double-A from double-A-plus on Friday - had planned to make its announcement on France the same day but postponed it for unknown reasons.

The euro briefly dipped on the report, which coincided with news that credit rating agency Moody's could downgrade the subordinated debt of a swathe of euro zone banks. French Finance Minister Francois Baroin said the focus should not be solely on France and that while the euro zone debt crisis was serious, France was "clear-sighted" on it. "Everyone is concerned, not just France. It's all the euro zone countries," he told France Info radio, asked about the La Tribune report.

"France is not an island or economically cut off from the world. It depends on different parts of the euro zone for a large part of its economic activity and that's why we are, to a large extent, clear-sighted on the crisis."

Instead, they expressed condolences for the loss of life while saying that the facts about what happened were under investigation. Both sides said they believed they were attacking insurgents along the border. A senior Pakistani defense official acknowledged that Pakistani troops fired first, sending a flare, followed by mortar and machine-gun fire, toward what he said was "suspicious activity" in the brush-covered area below their high-altitude outpost barely 500 yards from the border.

According to Afghan security officials, their commandos were engaged with US Special Operations troops in a nighttime raid against suspected Taliban insurgents when they came under cross-border fire and called in an airstrike. Despite extensive coordination mechanisms set up to prevent such encounters, the US military failed to respond to Pakistani alerts that its troops were being bombed, said the Pakistani defense official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the issue on the record.

The investigation, however, risked being overtaken by events in Pakistan, where the government and military commanders are under strong pressure from the increasingly anti-American Pakistani public and the ranks of the army to end counterterrorism cooperation with the United States. "You cannot win any war without the support of the masses," Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani told CNN. "We need the people with us." Gilani said that "business as usual" with the United States could not continue.

"Poor children need more than just a $1,000 for their family, they need a war against poverty to make it a major priority in the way which we have a priority for Afghanistan, and a priority to bail out banks, and a priority to defend corporate interests when it comes to environmental issues," West said about more and new entitlements for the poor.

Professor West didn't just call for another war on poverty (the first war was fought by Lyndon B Johnson), but went on to say that the push for more entitlements "is going to be fought in the streets." West showered the Occupy movement with praise for making people aware of the issue. "It's a major question of priorities here. That's why the Occupy movement is so important because some of this is going to be fought in the streets. Civil disobedience does make a difference," he said.

"Corporate greed now is an issue everybody has got to talk about. Wealth inequality. Everybody must talk about it because of the Occupy movement," Mr West concluded.

The Paris-based thinktank slashed its forecast for growth among its 34 members from 2.3% half a year ago to 1.6%, with Europe dramatically downgraded from 2% to just 0.2% because of the unresolved sovereign debt crisis. Pier Carlo Padoan, OECD chief economist, made plain in the body's latest six-monthly economic outlook that the greatest threat to global economic health comes from the eurozone rather than from the tax-and-spend gridlock in the US Congress.

In his introduction to the report he said: "Recent contagion to countries thought to have relatively solid public finances could massively escalate economic disruption if not addressed." In a devastating critique of eurozone leaders' hesitancy and dilatoriness, he said: "The scenario so far is that Europe's leaders have been behind the curve. We believe this could be very serious."

His comments came amidst evidence that the 17 eurozone countries are even wider apart on the measures required to staunch the exit of global investors and prevent a credit crunch on an even worse scale than in 2008-09.

The extraordinary appeal by Radoslaw Sikorski, delivered in the shadow of the Brandenburg Gate in the German capital, came as the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development called on European leaders to provide "credible and large enough firepower" to halt the sell-off in the eurozone sovereign debt market, or risk a severe recession. The OECD's comments came as the organisation slashed its half-yearly forecasts for growth in the world's richest countries, warning that economic activity in Europe would grind to a near-halt.

Yet their calls were met by a stubborn insistence in Berlin that only EU treaty change to forge a "stability union" in the eurozone would revive confidence in the markets. Wolfgang Schauble, German finance minister, rejected calls for the European Central Bank to act as a "lender of last resort" in the eurozone, and for the introduction of jointly guaranteed eurozone bonds to relieve the pressure on the most debt-strapped members of the common currency such as Greece and Italy.

Germany was not big enough to support the rest of the eurozone on its own, Mr Schauble told foreign correspondents in Berlin. The way to win back the confidence of the markets was to complete monetary union with a "stability union" based on strict budget discipline enshrined in the treaties of the EU. In a startling comment for a senior Polish minister, Mr Sikorski declared that the biggest threat to his nation's security was not terrorism, or German tanks, or even Russian missiles, but "the collapse of the eurozone".

"I demand of Germany that, for your own sake and for ours, you help it survive and prosper," he said. "You know full well that nobody else can do it. I will probably be the first Polish foreign minister in history to say so, but here it is: I fear German power less than I am beginning to fear German inactivity. You have become Europe's indispensable nation."

However, the negative outlook indicates a "slightly greater" than 50% chance that Fitch downgrades the US over the next two years. "Failure to reach agreement in 2013 on a credible deficit reduction plan and a worsening of the economic and fiscal outlook would likely result in a downgrade of the US sovereign rating," David Riley, a managing director at Fitch, said in the report. Fitch warned that its revised fiscal projections call for federal debt held by the public to exceed 90% of gross domestic product and debt interest payments making up more than 20% of total tax revenues by the end of the decade.

"In Fitch's opinion, such a level of government indebtedness would no longer be consistent with the US retaining its 'AAA' status despite its underlying strengths," Riley said. Despite the US national debt level surpassing the $15 trillion mark this month, the Supercommittee announced last week it failed to reach a bipartisan deal, triggering automatic cuts of $1 trillion split between defense and non-defense discretionary spending. However, Fitch warned that further deficit reduction efforts "will not be credible" if they solely rely on cutting discretionary spending. Economists have said Congress needs to quickly move to slash entitlement spending on programs such as Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.

To be sure, Fitch did recognize the positive characteristics that have allowed the US to become the world's largest economy, highlighted by the global benchmark role of the dollar and Treasuries that create deep markets and minimize risk. "What we have to do is recognize that Washington is out of touch and out of control; that it's been taken over by the extremes on the left and the right," David Walker, former US Comptroller General, told FOX Business.

Bankers didn't mention that they took tens of billions of dollars in emergency loans at the same time they were assuring investors their firms were healthy. And no one calculated until now that banks reaped an estimated $13 billion of income by taking advantage of the Fed's below-market rates, Bloomberg Markets magazine reports in its January issue. Saved by the bailout, bankers lobbied against government regulations, a job made easier by the Fed, which never disclosed the details of the rescue to lawmakers even as Congress doled out more money and debated new rules aimed at preventing the next collapse.

A fresh narrative of the financial crisis of 2007 to 2009 emerges from 29,000 pages of Fed documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act and central bank records of more than 21,000 transactions. While Fed officials say that almost all of the loans were repaid and there have been no losses, details suggest taxpayers paid a price beyond dollars as the secret funding helped preserve a broken status quo and enabled the biggest banks to grow even bigger.

"When you see the dollars the banks got, it's hard to make the case these were successful institutions," says Sherrod Brown, a Democratic Senator from Ohio who in 2010 introduced an unsuccessful bill to limit bank size. "This is an issue that can unite the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street. There are lawmakers in both parties who would change their votes now."

The amount of money the central bank parceled out was surprising even to Gary H Stern, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis from 1985 to 2009, who says he "wasn't aware of the magnitude." It dwarfed the Treasury Department's better-known $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP. Add up guarantees and lending limits, and THE FED HAD COMMITTED $7.77 TRILLION AS OF MARCH 2009 TO RESCUING THE FINANCIAL SYSTEM, more than half the value of everything produced in the US that year.

Meanwhile, Ted Kaufman, (a former Democratic Senator from Delaware) says, "we're absolutely, totally, 100 percent not prepared for another financial crisis."

"I think next year's launch of the Year of Faith will be a really great event for the promotion of new evangelization," Archbishop Salvatore (Rino) Fisichella told CNA on November 22. "One whole year reflecting on faith, reflecting on our engagement in faith, of our choice of faith and also, I'd say, in our knowledge of the content of our faith." Archbishop Fisichella is the head of the Pontifical Council for Promoting the New Evangelization, a Vatican department created only last year by Pope Benedict.

"The mission of the new evangelization," Archbishop Fisichella said, "is to announce that Jesus Christ is the true answer to all the questions that men and woman have today trying to make sense of our lives." Over the past year, Archbishop Fisichella has firmly established the new department within the Roman curia while reaching out to dioceses around the world. He says it's also been a year of discerning what the "beautiful expression" of the term "new evangelization" actually means. Last month, the pontifical council brought 8000 people involved in various forms of evangelization to Rome to discuss the topic during a two-day conference.

Some of the pontifical council's tasks for 2012-13 are already set out in the Pope's Apostolic Letter titled "Porta Fidei," which was issued in October and announced the Year of Faith. "It is written in Porta Fidei that each bishop along with priests and laity should find a special solemn moment in which to profess in public their faith," the archbishop explained, "but we hope in Rome, here at the tombs of St Peter and St Paul, that we can organize several events to also publically profess that our faith is a sign for the world of today - a sign of hope and faith and love."

Meanwhile the Synod of Bishops, which will chart much of the future course for the pontifical council, will meet next October 7-28 under the title, "The New Evangelization for the Transmission of the Christian Faith."

The Senate is going to vote on whether Congress will give this president - and every future president - the power to order the military to pick up and imprison without charge or trial civilians anywhere in the world. Even Representative Ron Paul (Republican for Texas) raised his concerns about the NDAA detention provisions during last night's Republican debate. The power is so broad that even US citizens could be swept up by the military and the military could be used far from any battlefield, even within the United States itself.

The worldwide indefinite detention without charge or trial provision is in S1867, the National Defense Authorization Act bill, which will be on the Senate floor on Monday. The bill was drafted in secret by Senators Carl Levin (Democrat for Michigan) and John McCain (Republican for Arizona) and passed in a closed-door committee meeting, without even a single hearing.

I know it sounds incredible. New powers to use the military worldwide, even within the United States? Hasn't anyone told the Senate that Osama bin Laden is dead, that the president is pulling all of the combat troops out of Iraq and trying to figure out how to get combat troops out of Afghanistan too? And American citizens and people picked up on American or Canadian or British streets being sent to military prisons indefinitely without even being charged with a crime. Really? Does anyone think this is a good idea? And why now?