"Bluntly put, the United States will not be able to maintain its leadership role in the community of nations unless its parents take a leadership role in the communities they have built: their families, which are the fundamental units of our society. If the United States desires to be a leader in the world, pursuing what is good for itself and other nations, its parents must first be leaders of their own homes and children," warns Fagan, director of FRC's Marriage and Religion Research Institute.

"What proportion of our children grow up in an intact home" is the best measure of the health of the American family, contends Fagan. He notes that only 45 percent of US teenagers aged 15-17 in 2008 were living in homes with both biological parents present. The majority, 55 percent, were living in homes where the biological parents have "rejected" each other. Fagan's study is based on data collected by the US Census Bureau's 2008 American Community Survey.

The annual cost of divorce to American taxpayers is estimated conservatively at $112 billion, Fagan writes, citing "The Taxpayer Costs of Divorce and Unwed Childbearing" by Benjamin Scafidi. The consequences of broken families, felt first by children, are inevitably felt by the greater society as well. Neighborhoods with greater percentages of children raised in non-intact families witness higher levels of domestic abuse and crime. They tend to have higher levels of unemployment, poverty, and welfare dependency. Broken families are more likely to become burdens on society.

The country has already approached struggling European countries with financial aid, including offering to buy Greece's debt in October and promising to buy $4 billion of Portuguese government debt. Today Portugal had its credit rating downgraded by the Fitch Ratings agency amid mounting concerns over the country's ability to raise money in the markets to finance its hefty borrowings.

Fitch said it was reducing its rating on the country's debt by one notch to A+ from AA- and warned that further downgrades may be in the offing by maintaining its negative outlook. 'To have any discernible effect China will have to buy a lot more than 5 billion euros if they expect to have any impact on the negative sentiment surrounding Europe,' said Michael Hewson, currency analyst at CMC Markets.

The two Koreas have ramped up their rhetoric since North Korea shelled front-line Yeonpyeong Island near the tense western sea border last month, killing four South Koreans. Both sides accuse each other of provoking first.

On Monday, President Lee Myung-bak used much of his regular radio address to vow to get tougher with any new provocation by North Korea. "We have now been awakened to the realization that war can be prevented and peace assured only when such provocations are met with a strong response," Lee said. "Fear of war is never helpful in preventing war." He said South Korea's military "must respond relentlessly when they come under attack."

The latest diplomatic spat between the two sides came as violence along the Israel-Gaza border simmered. After days of accelerated Palestinian rocket attacks on southern Israel and Israeli airstrikes in response, Israeli soldiers killed two Palestinians on the border early Sunday.

Avigdor Lieberman, the Israeli foreign minister, told a conference of Israeli diplomats that instead of a full peace deal, Israel should seek a long-term, interim agreement on security and economic matters. Palestinians have consistently rejected that approach. "It's not only that it is impossible" to reach an overall agreement, he said. "It is simply forbidden."

Lieberman said the West Bank Palestinian Authority - with whom Israel has pledged to negotiate - is "not legitimate" because it has postponed elections. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas remains in office though his term expired almost a year ago, and there is no date for a new election. Lieberman is known for expressing hard-line views that don't always represent Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who says he seeks a negotiated, final peace deal with the Palestinians but has declined to give specifics.

Dozens of flights to and from other Moscow airports were cancelled. Bad weather also turned many streets in the city into ice rinks.

Domodedovo airport remained shut for more than 10 hours on Sunday, after the power supply was cut off, officials said. The outage was caused by tree branches touching power lines loaded down with ice.

In the city itself, freezing rain damaged power supplies to trams and trolley buses and caused huge traffic jams. Health officials urged residents not to risk walking on the icy streets and stay indoors.

Religious violence has claimed over 500 lives this year in Jos and neighboring towns and villages, but the situation was believed to have calmed down. Nigeria, a country of 150 million people, is almost evenly split between Muslims in the north and the predominantly Christian south. The blasts happened in central Nigeria, in the nation's "middle belt," where dozens of ethnic groups vie for control of fertile lands.

The violence, though fractured across religious lines, often has more to do with local politics, economics and rights to grazing lands. The government of Plateau State, where Jos is the capital, is controlled by Christian politicians who have blocked Muslims from being legally recognized as citizens. That has locked many out of prized government jobs in a region where the tourism industry and tin mining have collapsed in the last decades.

The Christmas Eve killings in Jos and Maiduguri add to the tally of thousands who already have perished in Africa's most populous country in the last decade over religious and political frictions.

A predicted two-day snow storm has struck the New York region and the northeast, closing roads and rail lines, grounding more than 2,000 flights, and keeping all but the most determined of shoppers from post-Christmas sales. A thick, record-breaking blanket of snow and high winds shut down air travel in the northeast and transformed a dozen states into featureless white zones.

Wind gusted up to 55 miles an hour in places, while there was up to two feet of snow in places. The National Weather Service predicted snowfalls of 16 to 20 inches in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut by Monday afternoon, when the storm was to taper off. Its timing was determinedly un-festive - not falling for Christmas Day but dumping enough snow to disrupt just about everyone's travel plans after the break.

Furthermore, retailers hoping to cash in on post-Christmas sales - or to draw in those returning unwanted gifts were thwarted by the big blow. Schools were not in session, but millions of commuters were told to expect nightmarish slogs in and around the cities. Blizzard warnings - official forecasts of huge snowfalls with sustained winds of 35 miles an hour - were in effect from the Carolinas to New England.

North Carolina, Virginia, Maryland and New Jersey declared states of emergency, and New York, Philadelphia and Boston declared snow emergencies, imposing parking bans on major thoroughfares and urging residents to stay off the roads. More than 2,000 flights were cancelled by major airlines on the Eastern Seaboard, 1,444 of them at Kennedy International and La Guardia Airports in New York and Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey. The knock-on effect of the cancellations affected hundreds of other flights from Chicago and Atlanta, and even from London and Paris.

He said failure to support the beliefs of Christians and other religious people could drive them from their jobs and blamed the Human Rights Act for allowing them to be victimised. The bishop was backed by ex-Lord Chief Justice Lord Woolf, who said the courts had gone 'too far' in restricting the rights of Christians in the workplace. He said it was 'about time the tide turned'.

The two were speaking at the end of a year in which Christian relationship counsellor Gary McFarlane lost his appeal against dismissal after he refused to give sex therapy to a homosexual couple, and nurse Shirley Chaplin lost a discrimination case after she was moved to a back office job because she wore a crucifix.

During the General Election campaign, David Cameron promised to abolish the Human Rights Act and replace it with a British Bill of Rights, which would spell out rights and responsibilities based on British traditions. But that promise has been watered down by the Coalition agreement, which promises only to set up a commission to 'investigate the creation of a British Bill of Rights that incorporates and builds on all our obligations under the European Convention on Human Rights'.

There were no immediate reports of damage or injuries, and no more details were immediately available. The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center said a tsunami was possible based on the strength of the earthquake. It was not immediately confirmed whether a tsunami had occurred. The warning area covered Vanuatu, New Caledonia and Fiji.

About 100 people were at the service in the main police base on the island of Jolo, a stronghold of the Abu Sayyaf, a small Islamist militant group with ties to al Qaeda, Cabangbang added. 'We've placed our troops on alert to prevent similar attacks on churches, shopping malls, parks and transport terminals,' Cabangbang continued. No group claimed responsibility for the attack.

The Abu Sayyaf has been blamed for several bomb attacks on the Roman Catholic cathedral in Jolo since the early 2000s and for kidnapping priests and nuns. Dozens of US army Special Forces have been deployed on Jolo since 2004 to help train and advise security forces fighting the militants.

George Osborne was recently in New York, soaking up plaudits for boldly leading Britain into fiscal austerity at a time when, apparently in contrast, America's feckless political elite has allowed the national debt to balloon. The problem is that UK austerity, so far at least, is a myth. November's national accounts, released last week, were shocking. Government spending last month was sharply up on the same month in 2009 - yes, up! British state borrowing is still escalating, with the national debt rising very quickly.

Anyone who takes an intelligent interest in current affairs could be forgiven for inferring from the political rhetoric that the UK's fiscal squeeze is not only well under way but that the worst is actually behind us. If this was indeed your impression, you may want to pour yourself a large Yuletide sherry and possibly take refuge in another bowl of trifle. For the grim reality, as the latest figures show, is that Britain's fiscal squeeze hasn't even begun.

I'd hoped to end what has been a nerve-jangling year for the UK economy on an upbeat note. A couple of weeks ago, though, new figures showed that CPI inflation was 3.3 per cent higher in November than the same month the year before. Inflation has now been above the Bank of England's 2 per cent target for 40 of the past 49 months.

Some of us have been warning this would happen. Since late 2008, this column has asserted that the UK faces inflationary dangers and that talk of British "deflation" was deeply disingenuous, an intellectual conceit to justify massive virtual "money printing" and the extension of endless soft credits to banks that should, in fact, be allowed to fail. Such a position has been seen as heresy - not least because "quantitative easing" has friends in high places. QE, for now, has helped politically connected bankers to dodge the implications of their own hubris and incompetence. It has allowed successive British governments to stick their fingers in their ears and avoid tackling root-and-branch banking reform.

To argue that QE is dangerous and that, as a corollary, the UK faces high inflation has been to be treated by the UK's policy-making elite as some kind of economic Herod. I might as well have been suggesting we slay the first born. In recent weeks, though, the mood has changed. Reality has thankfully broken through. "Top economists" are now finally allowing themselves to state what is both historically and technically obvious, that money-printing is counter-productive.

It is feared some of the debt is caused by pressure to 'beat' the increase in VAT on January 4. "This year, more than any other, we would appeal to people not to get carried away and to use credit carefully indeed," said a spokeswoman for the Consumer Credit Counselling Service. "With rising prices and the threat of one million more redundancies, budgeting for 2011 is going to be difficult for most people in Britain. To think you are on top of your finances by paying off the minimum each month is a fool's paradise," she added.

Chris Simpson, marketing director of Kelkoo, said: "Retailers have spent the last few months encouraging consumers to 'shop now to avoid the VAT increase' which more than third seem to have taken on board "However, the combination of lower disposable incomes, higher prices, and a reluctance to increase borrowing is likely to result in lower levels of spending, meaning retailers may have to endure a 2.2 billion pounds fall in retail sales in the first quarter of 2011."

Just a century ago, even after people considered themselves advanced owing to developments like powered flight, it was not known that any other galaxies existed. Our Milky Way was considered the totality of creation.

In 1923, the existence of galaxies beyond the Milky Way was proven. Initial estimates were that there might be as many as a few dozen additional galaxies - a number then viewed as stunning. The latest estimate, from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, is 100 billion galaxies. The count is expected to rise.

Star estimates have risen in concert. A century ago, even the best-informed believed the Milky Way contained perhaps a few million stars. By the 1960s, astronomers contended the Milky Way held a billion stars, a number many found hard to believe. By the 1980s, the estimate had grown to 40 billion stars. Today it's thought the Milky Way contains at least 90 billion stars and perhaps as many as 400 billion. Many other galaxies are likely to contain similar numbers.

Recently, researchers led by Yale University cosmologists proposed there exists at least three times as many stars as previously thought. The Yale estimate is 200 sextillion stars, a 2 followed by 23 zeroes. The magnitude of the universe might make you feel small - but should make you feel important. Even if we are short-lived little blips in an extremely long-lived enormous cosmos, life grants the cosmos meaning.

If we evolved on a wholly natural basis, who can say where evolution, and our own thinking, may take us? If there is a higher intelligence behind the universe, who can say what may be in store?

That quake caused extensive damage and a handful of injuries, but no deaths. Sunday's temblor also came a few hours after a magnitude 7.3 earthquake struck under the sea near Vanuatu. There were no reports of damage or injuries from that quake, though it generated a small tsunami wave.

New Zealand and Vanuatu are situated on the Pacific "ring of fire" - an arc of earthquake and volcanic zones stretching from Chile in South America through Alaska and down through the South Pacific. The quake struck Christchurch in the late morning as shoppers thronged central city streets to take advantage of traditional Boxing Day sales. Although masonry and glass fell across sidewalks, no one was hurt, according to police.

It was the largest of more than a dozen aftershocks that rattled Christchurch throughout Sunday. Scientists said the temblors were related to the September quake and could continue for some time. Earlier on Sunday, a 5.9 magnitude quake was felt across New Zealand's North Island, but no damage or injuries were reported. The quake was centered north of volcanic White Island off New Zealand's east coast.

Airlines canceled hundreds of Sunday flights in the Northeast corridor, with more likely to come as the storm intensifies. Maryland, Virginia and North Carolina declared states of emergency early Sunday or Saturday night. As North Carolina road crews tried to clear snowy and icy highways, Mid-Atlantic officials spent Christmas Day preparing for up to a foot of snow, plunging temperatures and high winds.

"Our concern is tomorrow it's going to get significantly colder," Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell told The Weather Channel on Saturday evening. "Winds with gusts up to 45 miles per hour will cause blowing snow and that's going to cause the worst of it... and we're urging extreme caution in travel. Try to get home early and if you don't have to travel don't go."

A blizzard warning was issued for New York City for Sunday and Monday, with a forecast of 11 to 16 inches of snow and strong winds that will reduce visibility to near zero at times. As much as 18 inches could fall on the New Jersey shore with wind gusts over 40 mph. A blizzard warning was also in effect for Rhode Island and most of eastern Massachusetts including Boston, with forecasters predicting 15 to 20 inches of snow from noon Sunday to 6 pm Monday. A blizzard warning is issued when snow is accompanied by sustained winds or gusts over 35 mph.

Early Sunday, winter storm warnings covered northern Georgia, the Carolinas, Washington, Delaware, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Massachusetts and the eastern sections of Maryland, Virginia, Pennsylvania and New York. Winter weather advisories were in effect for eastern Tennessee and Kentucky, West Virginia and northwest Virginia.

The system gave the Carolinas its first white Christmas in decades. Columbia, South Carolina, had its first significant Christmas snow since weather records were first kept in 1887.