The dire message, delivered two days before the federal government's spending authority expires, appeared aimed at jolting congressional Republicans into a budget compromise. Billions of dollars apart, congressional negotiators were working to strike a deal by Friday to avert a shutdown by setting spending limits through the end of September. The last such shutdown took place 15 years ago and lasted 21 days.

President Barack Obama telephoned House Speaker John Boehner on Wednesday, and Boehner's office said the speaker told Obama he was hopeful a deal could be reached. As the talks continued, the White House sought to put the prospect of a shutdown in terms people would care about, warning even that the beloved National Cherry Blossom Festival Parade in the nation's capital would be wiped out. The Smithsonian Institution and national parks around the country would also be closed.

A shutdown would come at an especially busy time for the Smithsonian. The Cherry Blossom Festival, which concludes this weekend, draws many tourists to an area near the museums. The Smithsonian counts about 3 million visits each April and has already sold 23,000 IMAX movie and lunch combos to school groups for the month.

Yet the renewable energy industry claims their turbines work at 28 to 30 per cent efficiency on average. The Trust also found that for extended periods all the UK's wind turbines linked to the National Grid muster less than 20 megawatts of energy at a given point, enough power for fewer than 7,000 households to boil their kettles.

Stuart Young, author of the report, said: 'Over the two-year period studied, the wind farms in the UK consistently generated far less energy than wind proponents claim is typical. Sadly, wind power is not what it's cracked up to be and cannot contribute greatly to energy security in the UK.'

The UK has more than 3,100 working wind turbines. According to the wind industry, they are capable of generating more than 5.2 gigawatts of electricity - enough for nearly three million homes. Another 10,000 are planned for the next decade to meet EU climate change targets.

Oklahoma was drier in the four months following Thanksgiving than it has been in any similar period since 1921. That's saying a lot in the state known for the 1930s Dust Bowl, when drought and high winds generated severe dust storms that stripped the land of its topsoil.

Neighboring states are in similar shape as the drought stretches from the Louisiana Gulf coast to Colorado, and conditions are getting worse, according to the US Drought Monitor. The area in Texas covered by an extreme drought has tripled in the past month to 40 percent, and in Oklahoma it nearly doubled in one week to 16 percent, according to the monitor's March 29 update.

An extreme drought is declared when there's major damage to crops or pasture and widespread water shortages or restrictions. While dozens of people in Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas have lost homes to the hundreds of grassfires that have torn through the parched landscape in the past month, Oklahoma officials said more fires caused more damage as recently as 2009. This year, the biggest losses are likely to come from the drought's effect on the wheat farmers planted last fall and hoped to harvest in June, they said.

Almost all of Oklahoma is covered in some degree of drought. Only the far northeastern corner has escaped, thanks to a few big winter snowstorms.

After remarking on the difficulty of establishing democracy in the Middle East, Brokaw said that Defense Secretary Robert Gates "will face some tough questions in this region about the American intentions going on now with all this new turmoil, especially in an area where the United States has such big stakes politically and economically."

"And a lot of those questions presumably will come from King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia," reported Brokaw on the Nightly News. "I was told on the way in here that the Saudis are so unhappy with the Obama administration for the way it pushed out President Mubarak of Egypt that it sent high level emissaries to China and Russia to tell those two countries that Saudi Arabia now is prepared to do more business with them."

The World Health Organization says the situation has reached a critical point. A united push to make new drugs is urgently needed, it says. Without a concerted effort, people could be dealing with the "nightmare scenario" of worldwide spread of untreatable infections, says the WHO.

One example is the New Delhi or NDM-1 superbug recently found in UK patients. They brought the infection back with them from countries like India and Pakistan, where they had visited for medical treatment and cosmetic surgery. These superbugs are resistant to carbapenem antibiotics, which is concerning for experts because they are some of our most powerful weapons and are used for hard-to-treat infections that evade other drugs.

The Cardiff University researchers, who made the discovery last August, now say bacteria with this new genetic resistance to antibiotics have contaminated New Delhi's drinking water supply, meaning millions of people there could be carriers. Worryingly, the gene had spread to bacteria that cause dysentery and cholera, which can be easily passed from person to person via sewage-contaminated drinking water.

"Oral-faecal transmission of bacteria is a problem worldwide, but its potential risk varies with the standards of sanitation. In India, this transmission represents a serious problem... 650 million citizens do not have access to a flush toilet and even more probably do not have access to clean water," the researchers warn in the journal Lancet Infectious Diseases.

Price pressures were rising in Asia's emerging economies - which had been the catalyst for the world's recovery from the financial crisis - and were unlikely to subside soon, the Asian Development Bank cautioned. "High and volatile oil and food prices will, in particular, reverberate through the world economy, and they are likely to stay that way in 2011-2012," the ADB said. "They will thus be a significant source of global inflation, especially in developing countries where recovery is firmly under way," the Manila-based agency said in a report.

The Reuters-Jefferies CRB index, a global benchmark for commodities, hit a one-month high, responding to the broad rally in the 19 markets it tracks, including oil and gold. Gold has become more of a currency than a commodity these days, acting as a hedge against a weaker dollar and political troubles that weigh on currency values.

"If something happens in Saudi Arabia it will go to $200 to $300. I don't expect this for the time being, but who would have expected Tunisia?" Yamani told Reuters on the sidelines of a conference of the Centre for Global Energy Studies (CGES) which he chairs. "The political events that took place are there and we don't expect them to finish. I think there are some surprises on the horizon," he said in a speech.

Saudi King Abdullah offered $93 billion in handouts in March in an effort to stave off unrest rocking the Arab world. So far, demonstrations in the Kingdom have been small in scale and police were able to easily disperse a Shi'ite protest in the oil-producing eastern province last month. But Yamani said that the reluctance of people to participate in popular protests was merely concealing underlying discontent. "Some people relax about the situation in Saudi Arabia because the Saudi Islamic brand prohibits people to go to the street and to talk," he said in a speech.

Ethiopia is planning to construct a nearly $5 billion dam, called the Great Millennium Dam, along the Nile River about 25 miles from the Sudan border. The dam will section off a larger portion of the Nile than is used now by Ethiopia. Egypt is adamantly opposed to the dam or any deal that would reduce its share of the Nile and give more access to other countries.

A 1929 colonial-era treaty gives Egypt majority rights to the Nile's waters. But six African countries have signed a petition, the Entebbe Agreement, calling for all Nile Basin countries to modify the old pact and re-allocate the shares of water from the Nile River. Egyptian security sources say Cairo is appealing to the US and European Union to oppose the proposed Ethiopian dam.

The sources said the Egyptian military believes Israel is encouraging Ethiopia to build the dam as a way to weaken the caretaker Egyptian government following the toppling of Hosni Mubarak's regime. Mubarak was a stanch US ally. The sources further said the Egyptian military has been told to prepare for any eventuality regarding the situation. While the Egyptian security sources said they hoped the confrontation did not escalate to a military level, one source told WND "the regime may be inching closer to a water war."

The X-47B, according to CNN, "requires almost no human interaction. It can take off and land by itself... It will be able to find its target by itself. The only thing it needs a carbon-based life form for is to let it know it's OK to drop the bomb." The terrifying almost-automated death machine flew its first test flight in February, and is expected to complete its three-year test program with sea trials in 2013 to demonstrate its ability to autonomously refuel in mid-flight.

For those wondering at home, yes, this would probably be a great time to get a little unsettled. After all, we all know how easy it is to hack into military systems.

The 59-year-old did however admit that he now carries a gun everywhere he goes because he has received more than 300 death threats and has a $2.4 million bounty put on his head by the Taliban. Seven UN workers and at least 13 others in Afghanistan were killed over the weekend when an anti-Jones mob attacked their compound in Mazar-e Sharif, the largest city in the north of the country.

More than 150 others were injured in related protests that spread to the capital Kandahar over three days. They were furious after Jones burned a copy of the Koran at his Dove Outreach Centre in Gainesville, Florida, on March 20. He had called off a previous attempt in the face of an international outcry but then staged a mock 'trial' of the Prophet Muhammad and burned the Islamic holy book as 'punishment'.

Having been deserted by his parishioners he is now left with just one assistant to spread his hate-filled message. In an interview with ABC News Jones was asked if he was willing to die for his cause. He said: 'Yes we are, very definitely. That's how important we feel about it.' He said he would carry on speaking out even if it lead to the death of American soldiers. 'Perhaps in the long run, we may save hundreds or thousands (of lives),' he said. 'We wanted to raise awareness of this dangerous religion and dangerous element,' Jones said. 'I think today's attack proves that there is a radical element of Islam.'

He insisted that it was not his place to intervene in the dispute, saying: "I don't want to try to insert Britain in some leading role where, as with so many of the world's problems, we are responsible for the issue in the first place." His remarks about Kashmir were greeted warmly by the audience of Pakistani students and academics, but drew accusations from historians that the Prime Minister was wrongly apologising for Britain's past.

Daisy Cooper, the director of the Commonwealth Policy Studies Unit, said: "This is typical of the UK's schizophrenic relationship with former colonies where it is both proud and embarrassed about its past. The Coalition has said that it has big ambitions for a modern Commonwealth and the UK should stop being embarrassed about its colonial past and they should work with other countries to help improve their human rights."

Tristram Hunt, the Labour MP, historian and former television presenter, said: "To say that Britain is a cause of many of the world's ills is naive. To look back 50-odd years for the problems facing many post-colonial nations adds little to the understanding of the problems they face. David Cameron has a tendency to go to countries around the world and tell them what they want to hear, whether it is in Israel, Turkey, India and Pakistan."

Mr Cameron's apparent willingness to accept historic responsibility for the Kashmir dispute has echoes of public apologies issued by his Labour predecessors. In 1997, Tony Blair apologised to the Irish people for the famine the country suffered in the mid-19th century. And in 2006, he spoke of his "deep sorrow" at Britain's historic role in the African slave trade.

In 2009, Gordon Brown issued a formal Government apology to tens of thousands of British children shipped to Australia and other Commonwealth countries between the 1920s and 1960s. In the same year, Mr Cameron said that Britain should do more to celebrate its history, writing: "We must never forget that Britain is a great country with a history we can be truly proud of. Our culture, language and inventiveness has shaped the modern world."

The size of the package is still at issue as well. Negotiators had tentatively agreed on a figure of $33 billion (20 billion pounds), but Republican House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner is now pushing for a new target of $40 billion. Separate negotiating sessions at the White House and the Capitol Tuesday failed to produce an agreement between Boehner and Democratic leaders, who blamed each other for an impasse that could throw hundreds of thousands of government employees out of work.

The budget showdown is the biggest political test for both parties since Republicans swept to power in the House and made big Senate gains in last year's election on promises to slash government spending and reduce the federal government. President Barack Obama vowed to keep negotiators at work until they agree on a budget for the remainder of the fiscal year, which ends September 30. Temporary funding expires at midnight Friday.

"The only question is whether politics or ideology are going to get in the way of preventing a government shutdown," Obama told reporters after the White House meeting failed to find common ground. A government shutdown would ripple through an economy still recovering from the worst recession since the 1930s.

With federal agencies under orders to get ready for a shutdown, it is unclear how matters will unfold. But some tax refunds could get delayed, calls to federal hotlines may go unanswered and national parks will close. Social Security checks, however, are to go out on time. Most of the 4.4 million federal workforce, including members of the US military, will go to work because their jobs are deemed essential.

* Based on previous shutdowns, several hundred thousand federal workers could be idled as nonessential, disrupting all but vital US services such as national defense, emergency medical care and air traffic control. In addition, some employees of federal contractors may also be furloughed.

* Unlike the last two shutdowns, both of which occurred in the 1990s, this one would take place during tax preparation and filing season. That could mean delayed tax refunds to an untold number of Americans, congressional aides say.

* The last shutdown closed much of the federal government from December 16, 1995, to January 6, 1996. National parks and museums were closed, an estimated 200,000 applications for US passports went unprocessed and work on more than 3,500 bankruptcy cases was suspended.

* Also during the last shutdown, new patients were not accepted into clinical research at the National Institutes of Health, hotline calls to NIH about diseases were not answered, and toxic waste cleanup work at 609 sites stopped.

* A shutdown may be felt on a number of fronts, including delays in approving import and export licenses and new benefits for military veterans, congressional aides say. Processing new Social Security applications may also be delayed, but checks for retirees are expected to go out on time.

* Essential personnel in the last shutdown - employees who remained on the job - included members of the US military, federal criminal investigators, those involved in federal disaster assistance and workers vital to keeping crucial elements of the US money and banking system up and running.

The company had set up 9 seismographs along the Shinkansen tracks and the Pacific coast. On the day of the quake, at 2:47 PM, a seismograph in Miyagi Prefecture 50 kilometers from the tracks detected ground acceleration of 120 gals, which is the benchmark for stopping train operations. The early detection system automatically cut power to the trains. All of the trains then applied the emergency brakes to slow down.

The seismograph at Sendai Station recorded the biggest tremors. The railway operator found that the first tremor occurred 9 to 12 seconds after 2 trains near Sendai slammed on the brakes. The strongest tremor came one minute and 10 seconds later. It's not known at what speed the trains were moving when the biggest tremor hit, but they had apparently slowed down enough to avoid derailing

David Cameron has pledged four more British Tornado jets on top of eight already being used for the air strikes. But pressure is growing for other European countries, especially France, to offer more after the Americans withdrew their attack aircraft from the campaign on Monday. "We will need more strike capability," a Nato official said. Since the French launched the first raids on Libya 16 days ago, the coalition and Nato have destroyed around 30% of Gaddafi's military capacity, Lieutenant General Charles Bouchard, the Canadian officer leading the air campaign, told Nato ambassadors.

Until last week, President Nicolas Sarkozy was the loudest opponent of handing over the operations to Nato control. Nonetheless, the French are not only taking part in the Nato campaign, but are the biggest non-US contributors, with 33 aircraft, double Britain's 17. Not all of these are strike aircraft. Until Monday, the Americans had performed most of the attacks on ground targets, with the French executing around a quarter and the British around a 10th. Given the US retreat, Nato is seeking to fill the gap, but only the British have pledged more.