Strong winds created drifts as high as 15 feet (4.6 meters) as the storm dropped as much as four feet of snow (1.2 meters) in some areas, said Pat Slattery, a spokesman for the National Weather Service. "This has been a really big season opening storm," Slattery said. Hundreds of flights were cancelled, schools were closed and the freezing rain that preceded the snow in many places created hazardous road conditions.

Blizzard warnings were issued across the Midwest as the storm moved eastward across the country after pounding Utah, Nevada, Colorado and Arizona. The storm was expected to move across the Great Lakes into Canada, sparing much of the East Coast.

But flash flood warnings were issued for the Mississippi and Tennessee River valleys and Mid-Atlantic and southeast states due to heavy rains from the southern part of the system. Officials told people to stay home if they can, pack an emergency kit of blankets, food and water if they have to drive somewhere, and to avoid rural side roads. Wisconsin declared a state of emergency, shut down government offices and also activated the National Guard after the storm dumped up to 17 inches of snow across the state.

What's more, apologies and package reformulations are not forthcoming. Federal standards regulating package size are full of loopholes. And the fact that companies all have different reasons for having so much so-called "slackfill" in their packaging suggests that consumers may not be getting the full story.

Why would manufacturers make a package that's twice as big as the lump of food inside? Simple human behavior is the answer. We have all been guilty of grocery-shopping in exactly the manner food manufacturers want us to: Scanning shelves quickly and making decisions based on simple, caveman-like visual cues. Bright colors: Grunt! Picture of food delicious: Ungh! That one's big: Slurg! How often have you picked a cereal box or package of potato chips based solely on the size of the bag relative to its price?

Yes, food makers know this, and they've been savvy about responding to consumer complaints with plausible-sounding explanations. In response to the Consumer Reports investigation of under-filled packages, Frito-Lay says Classic Lays potato chip packages are only filled half-way to prevent breakage. But take products such as a container of multivitamins. It's hard to gauge a package's fullness based on its weight or sound when it's shaken. But when consumers end up opening the package at home and the thing is far from full, CUSTOMERS END UP WITH A DECIDED FEELING OF DECEPTION.

Israel has kept quiet as the United States has made attempt after attempt to extend the proverbial diplomatic hand to the Iranians without success. FROM ISRAEL'S POINT OF VIEW, THE DIPLOMATIC CHAPTER IS CLOSING THIS MONTH, and the New Year, if Israel has anything to do with it, will bring a variety of unpleasantries to Iran's doorstep, including the threat of military action.

BUT HOW MANY TIMES WILL ISRAEL ALLOW ITS TOLERANCE TO BE TESTED? As long as Iran appears compromising, even on a surface level, the Russians, the Chinese and even the Europeans can skirt around sanctions talk. And as long as the sanctions haven't been seriously attempted, Israel cannot easily claim that the sanctions have failed in order to justify military action. This is an uncomfortable space for Israel to be in, but the Iranians, Turks and even the Americans don't exactly mind seeing Israel in a tight spot right now.

But Israel is also operating on a different timeline than that of the United States. Whereas US President Barack Obama would much rather avoid a military conflagration in the Persian Gulf while he attempts to sew up Iraq, make over the Afghanistan war and nurse the US economy back to health, Israel is dealing with a matter of state survival. And that, from the Israeli point of view, TAKES PRECEDENCE OVER ITS RELATIONSHIP WITH THE UNITED STATES. This statement from Baidatz is thus likely one of many signals Israel will be sending in the coming weeks to accentuate the Iranian nuclear threat.

Earlier this year, Mr Darling set out plans for the biggest programme of borrowing ever undertaken in peacetime. Today, the Chancellor admitted that weaker-than-expected growth figures have forced him to raise his deficit figures still further. In 2009/10, the Government will spend £178 billion more than it raises in tax, Mr Darling said. That is £3 billion more than the record-breaking figure he forecast at the Budget in April, and equal to equal to 12.6 per cent of the entire UK economy.

Next year, borrowing will also be higher, at £176 billion. In total, from this year until 2014/15, the Government will spend £789 billion more than it raises. Despite the sharp economic slowdown, the Treasury still expects tax revenues this year to be higher than it forecast at the Budget: revenues from stamp duty and VAT have exceeded expectations, as house prices and retail sales have remained robust. Social security costs are slightly lower than the Treasury expected, because unemployment has not hit 3 million.

Shares on the Athens stock exchange fell more than 6 per cent. FITCH CUT RATINGS ON GREEK DEBT TO BBB PLUS with a negative outlook. It is the first time in 10 years a leading ratings agency has given Greece a rating of below A grade.

George Papaconstantinou, Greek finance minister, said the country would do "whatever is required" to reduce a record budget deficit and achieve its medium-term fiscal targets. He said the downgrade reflected Greece's "mounting credibility gap in recent years and an exceptionally difficult fiscal situation" faced by the new Socialist government, which took over in October.

Although the ECB will keep the emergency rules next year, Greece must reduce its deficit soon. The relaxed ECB rules allow for collateral of bonds with ratings of BBB minus. Goldman Sachs said: "Unless the ECB fiddles with its rules before the end of next year, then from the beginning of 2011, GREEK SOVEREIGN BONDS WILL NO LONGER BE ELIGIBLE FOR ECB COLLATERAL."

What he said, in effect, is that GERMANY WILL MARSHAL ITS FORCES TO ENSURE THAT A CHUNK OF THE BRITISH ECONOMY IS SHUT DOWN – whatever the social consequences. This is the closest thing I have seen to A DECLARATION OF ECONOMIC WARFARE IN WESTERN EUROPE in my lifetime. "There is clearly a lobby in London that wants to defend its competitive advantage tooth and nail."

Stern said that he sees "dark powers at work" in Britain. He accused the UK government of "doing its best" to sabotage stricter financial regulation at the G20 in Pittsburgh. This resistance will be crushed. "We WILL effectively change the rules on the financial markets. Politics is sometimes like a locomotive which comes slowly up to full speed. The British financial industry gains 15 per cent of the gross domestic product, in Germany is it six per cent." Britain is out of step with the rest of Europe in trying to keep this "advantage going." It must "share the burden" of the financial crisis in the form of a tax on exchanges.

If a British Chancellor gave an interview on behalf of the British nation saying the German car industry should be shrunk massively, it would be viewed as a gross and gratuitous attack on Germany. The banks did not cause this global crisis. GOVERNMENTS AROUND THE WORLD CAUSED THE CRISIS BY FORCING DOWN THE PRICE OF CREDIT (Greenspan, Bank of Japan, and ECB on short rates: China et al on long rates, by flooding the global bond market) far too low for many years, encouraging debt. BANKS WERE THE INSTRUMENTS, NOT THE CAUSE. That is an elementary point that many people – including Mr Steinbrück, obviously – still fail to understand.

The former Government minister and one of the architects of the British efforts to rescue the financial system, told a high-level business conference in Sussex: "I don't think we are through it yet… an IMF study showed at the middle of this year that BANKS HAD ONLY DECLARED HALF THEIR LOSSES ON THEIR BOOKS: we have a long way to go."

She added: "I don't think all banks - not actually the UK banks – have come clean yet… SOME OF THE CONTINENTAL EUROPEAN BANKS STILL HAVE ISSUES." Baroness Vadera admitted that the apex of the financial crisis last autumn was "frightening." She added: "I still have nightmares about it."

NOW HER CONCERNS ARE NOT WITH NEXT YEAR, when she said the fiscal and monetary stimuli around the world will be "similar to 2009", but the year after when the support measures are withdrawn. She said: "The issue is what is going to replace it in terms of private investment and private demand when it's withdrawn. THE DANGER POINT COMES NOT NOW, AND NOT IN 2010, BUT AT THE START OF 2011."

GERMANY'S ENTIRE EXPORT ECONOMY IS SUFFERING AS A RESULT OF THE DECLINE OF THE AMERICAN CURRENCY. In addition to the auto industry, companies like Airbus and steelmaker ThyssenKrupp, as well as machine tool makers, are having more and more trouble selling their products in the United States. They cannot raise prices to offset exchange-rate losses, because that would make their products too expensive. Conversely, not raising prices means selling their products at a loss. This leaves German automakers, steel companies and machine tool makers with only one option: TO SHIFT SOME OF THEIR PRODUCTION TO THE DOLLAR ZONE.

This process has been underway for many years. Daimler, BMW, machine tool makers and suppliers started building their own factories in the United States as far back as the mid-1990s. For the most part, the trend has not resulted in the loss of German jobs thus far, primarily because the US plants were producing additional models. But that was only the first step. Now BMW and Daimler are expanding their US plants, and the jobs being created there are replacing workers back home. EUROPEAN JOBS HAVE BECOME THREATENED BY THE WEAK DOLLAR.

Airbus is in a dilemma, because aircraft are paid for in dollars, even though the most important production sites are in France, Germany and Spain. As EADS Chief Executive Louis Gallois has said repeatedly, when the dollar loses 10 cents in value against the euro, it costs the group about €1 billion. Hardly anyone expects this trend to turn around in the foreseeable future. IT WILL BE DIFFICULT FOR THE DOLLAR, AS A GLOBAL CURRENCY, TO REGAIN ITS FORMER STRENGTH. "I'm relatively pessimistic," says Michael Burda, a professor of economics at Humboldt University in Berlin.

Undeterred by growing voter resistance to a European Union whose BORDERS ARE PUSHING EVER EASTWARD and soon possibly even further into the North Atlantic, the European Commission in Brussels and individual EU member states are currently working on plans for a further accession round.

According to the current plan, at least five new member states could join the EU by 2014. Accession negotiations with Croatia may be completed as early as next year. Should that happen, the Balkan nation could become an EU member in 2011. Iceland, crisis-riddled and deeply indebted as it is, wouldn't be much further behind.

On Thursday and Friday, EU heads of state and goverment will be in Brussels for their December summit. During the meeting, they are expected to set a date for the start of formal membership negotiations with Macedonia. The Greek government in Athens is still trying to block negotiations over a name dispute with Macedonia, which is also the name of a region in Greece. But it is unlikely Athens will be able to secure much more than a modest delay in opening talks with its neighbor. Efforts to reach a deal on an "interim treaty" with Serbia are also on the summit agenda, and official accession talks are expected to commence soon thereafter. Neighboring Montenegro is also expected to join the lineup for accession negotiations soon.

"There has been an unrelenting quarter century of ONE-SIDED INDOCTRINATION OF THE WESTERN WORLD by the media and by various scientists and governments concerning a coming carbon dioxide… induced global warming disaster," he said. "These warming scenarios have been orchestrated by a combination of ENVIRONMENTALISTS, vested interest SCIENTISTS wanting larger federal grants and publicity, THE MEDIA which profits from doomsday scenario reporting, GOVERNMENTAL BUREAUCRATS who want more power over our lives, AND SOCIALISTS WHO WANT TO LEVEL-OUT GLOBAL LIVING STANDARDS.

"THESE MANY ALARMIST GROUPS APPEAR TO HAVE LITTLE CONCERN OVER WHETHER THEIR GLOBAL WARMING PROGNOSTICATIONS ARE ACCURATE, however. And they most certainly are not. The alarmists believe they will be able to scare enough of our citizens into believing their propaganda that the public will be willing to follow their advice on future energy usage AND AGREE TO A LOWERING OF THEIR STANDARD OF LIVING IN THE NAME OF CLIMATE SALVATION."

He's long described global warming as a hoax, telling the Post three years ago, "I am of the opinion that this is one of the greatest hoaxes ever perpetrated on the American people." The documents, he said, "raise a huge number of questions about THE INTEGRITY OF A LOT OF PEOPLE IN THE ALARMIST COMMUNITY. US Representative Ron Paul, Republican for Texas, has urged members of Congress to consider the joint opinion of nearly 32,000 scientists, including more than 9,000 PhDs, who believe humans likely have little or nothing to do with any "global warming."

Paul later cited the petition results in a statement to Congress. "Our energy policies must be based upon scientific truth – not fictional movies or self-interested international agendas," Paul said. "They should be based upon the accomplishments of technological free enterprise that have provided our modern civilization, including our energy industries. That free enterprise must not be hindered by bogus claims about imaginary disasters."

Robinson has warned of serious political and economic consequences of assuming "global warming" results from mankind's actions. "The campaign to severely ration hydrocarbon energy technology has now been markedly expanded," he said. "In the course of this campaign, many scientifically invalid claims about impending climate emergencies are being made. Simultaneously, proposed political actions to severely reduce hydrocarbon use now THREATEN THE PROSPERITY OF AMERICANS and the very existence of hundreds of millions of people in poorer countries," he told WND.

A Vatican delegation has also visited London in an attempt to finalise the plans. It is understood, however, that the visit will begin on September 16 and that it will end after the Pope has personally presided over the beatification of Cardinal John Henry Newman, possibly in Wembley stadium, on Sunday September 19. The address in Westminster Hall will be one of two public speeches that the Pope will deliver during the trip. The other will be to academics at Oxford University.

Former Tory Minister Ann Widdecombe, a convert to Catholicism who will be standing down at the next General Election, said it was "marvellous" that the Pope will be able to address parliamentarians from such an historic venue. She said: "He should remind Parliamentarians of their duty to guarantee freedom and democracy and that includes Christians."

Westminster Hall was built in the 11th century and is the oldest part of the Palace of Westminster. IT IS SACRED TO MANY CATHOLICS because it was where many martyrs and saints were tried for High Treason during Protestant Reformation. Most notably it was the scene of the trial of Thomas More, the former Lord Chancellor canonised as a saint by Pope Pius XI in 1935 and made patron saint of politicians by Pope John Paul II. More was beheaded after he refused to take an oath attached to the Act of Supremacy THAT MADE THE KING THE SUPREME HEAD OF THE CHURCH IN ENGLAND.

A plaque marking the spot where the trial took place was kissed by Mother Teresa of Calcutta during one of her visits to Britain.

At the same time, the percentage of children being born to foreign mothers has also reached new levels, reported Jil Matheson, the national statistician. The Office for National Statistics figures showed that in 2008 some 11 per cent of the population were born abroad, up from around 8 per cent in 2001 and 6.7 per cent in 1991. Figures are not available for 1997 when Labour came to power but, based on trends, is likely to have been just over 7 per cent.

Britain's population is on course to pass 70 million in around two decades, Ms Matheson warned. She said projections based on past demographic trends suggest a 17 per cent increase in population over the next 25 years to hit 71.6 million by 2033. It currently stands at 61.4million and ministers have insisted the landmark total will not be reached.

The figures are likely to fuel recent claims by a former Government adviser that Labour DELIBERATELY RAN AN OPEN-DOOR POLICY ON IMMIGRATION TO RADICALLY CHANGE THE COUNTRY AND "RUB THE RIGHT'S NOSE IN DIVERSITY".

The snow currently extends from eastern Nebraska and northeastern Kansas to Michigan. The snow will continue to press to the northeast through the overnight hours, further making travel severely treacherous. The snow will accumulate a total of 12 and 18 inches from northeastern Iowa to northern Lower Michigan by Wednesday evening. Madison and Green Bay, Wisconsin, lie within this zone.

Snow, strong winds and blowing snow threaten to cause more flight delays across the Midwest Wednesday. These delays could have a ripple effect across the nation. The most substantial lake-effect snow event of the season so far following the storm will bring localized blizzards to areas that escaped the front end of the massive storm.

And more snow is coming: The National Weather Service said the upper elevations of the Sierra mountains could get up to 3 feet of snow, with up to 4 feet forecast for the mountains of southern Utah. Officials in northern Arizona closed parts of Interstate 17 and I-40, saying some stretches were snow-packed and visibility levels were near zero. Department of Transportation spokesman Rod Wigman advised people to stay home if possible as the brunt of the storm sweeps through.

A petition has been making the rounds, CALLING ON THE ISRAELI POLICE TO CLOSE THE TEMPLE MOUNT TO MUSLIMS UNTIL SHALIT IS RELEASED without preconditions. The campaign, which is being carried out under the banner, "Without Gilad, There is No Mosque" was initiated by Temple Mount activist Yehuda Glick, who spoke with Arutz Sheva about the project.

"The Temple Mount is our heart of hearts, and an IDF soldier rotting for three years in a hovel without a minimum of basic rights is also in our hearts. The only thing that we can do TO HURT THE MUSLIM PUBLIC IS TO BLOCK THEIR ACCESS TO THE TEMPLE MOUNT," Glick said, adding that he hopes the pressure from the entire Muslim world will force Hamas to free Shalit in order to reopen the Mount.

Josef Ackermann, the CEO of Deutsche Bank, warned emphatically that the financial situation could deteriorate. "A FEW TIME BOMBS" ARE STILL TICKING, Ackermann told his audience, noting that the growing problems of highly leveraged small countries could lead to new tremors. And then, almost casually, Ackermann mentioned the problem child of the European financial world by name: GREECE.

ACKERMANN ISN'T ALONE IN HIS OPINION. Practically unnoticed by the public, an issue has returned to the forefront in recent weeks - one that was a cause for great concern at the height of the financial crisis but then, as optimism about the economy began to grow, was eventually forgotten: THE FEAR OF A NATIONAL BANKRUPTCY IN THE EURO ZONE. And the question as to whether such a bankruptcy, should it come about, COULD DESTROY THE COMMON EUROPEAN CURRENCY.

Greece was always at the very top of the list of countries at risk. But now the danger appears to be more acute than ever. The finance ministers and central bankers of the euro-zone member states are as alarmed as they are helpless. "The Greek problem," says a senior administration official in Berlin, "will be an acid test for the currency union." FURTHERMORE, THERE IS A THREAT OF A DOMINO EFFECT. If one euro member falls, speculators will test the stability of other potential bankruptcy candidates. This could destroy the currency union.

A MELTDOWN COULD HAPPEN AS EARLY AS NEXT YEAR. That's when the government borrowers in Athens will be required to refinance €25 billion worth of debt - that is, repay what they owe using funds borrowed from the financial markets. But if no buyers can be found for its securities, Greece will have no choice but to declare insolvency - just as Mexico, Ecuador, Russia and Argentina have done in past decades. This puts Brussels in a predicament. European Union rules preclude the 27-member bloc from lending money to member states to plug holes in their budgets or bridge deficits.