Tensions on the Korean peninsula rose sharply last year over two deadly attacks - the sinking of a South Korean naval ship blamed on the North and a North Korean artillery barrage that killed four people on a front-line South Korean island. North Korea denies it was involved in the ship sinking, which killed 46 South Korean sailors. On Sunday, the North used harsh rhetoric against South Korea and the US, calling their joint drills a "dangerous military scheme".

"Our military and people will take stern military countermeasures against the American imperialists and the (South Korean) traitors' group, because they are challenging us with aggressive military action," the North's military said in a statement carried by the official Korean Central News Agency.

It accused South Korea and the US of plotting to launch "limited war" and topple Pyongyang's communist government. If provoked, the North will start a "full-scale" war and turn Seoul into a "sea of fire," the statement said.

Earlier Sunday, the North's military warned that it would fire directly at South Korean border towns and destroy them if Seoul continued to allow activists to launch propaganda leaflets toward the communist country.

The speaker on the audio tape is identified as Ibrahim al-Rubeish, a former detainee at the US-run Guantanamo Bay lockup. The tape was produced by al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, a Yemen-based offshoot of the terror network, according to the SITE Intel group, a US-based group that monitors extremist websites.

In the 10-minute recording, Al-Rubeish criticized Saudi Arabia for providing a haven for deposed Tunisian President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. He also said toppling longtime rulers is not enough and that new governments must be established based on Islamic religious law, or Shariah. "One tyrant goes, only to be replaced another who may fix for the people some of their worldly issues by offering job opportunities and increasing their income, but the greater problem remains," al-Rubeish said, according to a translation provided by SITE.

That in turn could lead to an over-provision of faith schools, the British Humanist Association argues. In the 2001 Census, more than 70% of people described themselves as Christian. The Pagan Federation insists druids, wiccans, witches and other pagans constitute a serious and growing religious group.

Ten years ago 42,000 people declared themselves as Pagans - the seventh highest number for any UK religion - but some experts believe the true figure was nearer 250,000 - and is significantly higher now. BBC Religious affairs correspondent Robert Pigott said the 42,000 figure was still only a fraction of those describing themselves as Jedi Knights.

Pagans do not worship one single god, but look for the spiritual in nature. Some groups concentrate on specific traditions, practices or elements such as ecology, witchcraft, Celtic traditions or certain gods. Wiccans, druids, shamans, sacred ecologists, odinists and heathens all make up parts of the Pagan community.

In October, the Charities Commission granted the Druid Network official status as a religion.

US President Barack Obama has said the Libyan leader should step down and leave the country immediately. He still controls Tripoli, but eastern Libya has fallen to the uprising. Discussions on forming an anti-Gaddafi transitional government are reportedly under way. Mustafa Abdel-Jalil - who resigned as justice minister in protest against the excessive use of force against demonstrators - said a body comprising military and civilian figures would prepare for elections within three months, Libya's privately-owned Quryna newspaper reported.

Libya's ambassadors to the United States and UN have both reportedly voiced their support for the plan, which was being discussed in the rebel-controlled eastern town of Benghazi. The UN estimates more than 1,000 people have died as Colonel Gadddafi's regime attempted to quell the 10-day-old revolt. Saturday night's vote was only the second time the Security Council has referred a country to the ICC, and the first time such a vote has been unanimous.

The Libyan delegation at the UN had sent a letter to the Council backing measures to hold to account those responsible for armed attacks on Libyan civilians, including action through the International Criminal Court - which had been one of the main points of contention in the resolution.

Mr Shalgam, an ally of Gaddafi since the pair were teenage radicals in the late 1950s, defended his support for Gaddafi over several decades and his decision to continue backing the Libyan leader throughout days of brutal crackdowns on protesters. "I couldn't imagine at the beginning the bloodshed of the victims," he claimed.

He recalled striking up a friendship with Gaddafi over a shared admiration of Gamal Abdel Nasser, the Egyptian president from 1956, as they grew up in the south of Libya. "I was one of his closest good friends, who worked with him from the beginning of the revolution," he said. "Unfortunately we started the revolution with freedom, at the end of it you are killing our people."

In an emotional speech to the UN Security Council in New York, Mr Shalgam, who had previously remained loyal, said: "Muammar Gaddafi is telling the Libyans 'either I rule you or I kill you'." He told the 15 members of the council, who are considering an Anglo-French plan for sanctions against the Gaddafi regime: "We need a courageous resolution from you".

Outside the chamber, he gave another speech in which he pleaded for the outside world to do something "within hours, not days" to stop the bloodshed in the country. Mr Shalgam said Gaddafi had lost the support of "90 per cent" of his diplomats and predicted further revolution in the middle-east. "Slavery and the rule of one person is finished - it's finished," he said.

Sadr has been in the neighboring Iran for more than three years for Shiite religious studies in the holy Iranian city of Qom. Last month, Sadr returned to Iraq for two weeks but he suddenly left to Iran to come back on Wednesday to the country again. Earlier in the day, Sadr's political office released a statement by Moqtada al-Sadr calling for holding a survey among Iraqis within a week in all Iraq's 18 provinces about their opinion over public services.

One of the survey's questions asking people whether they prefer peaceful demonstrations if the government fails to improve public services after more than six months. Observers here see Sadr's move as part of various measures by the Iraqi politicians to help soothe rising anger among Iraqis who accuse the politicians and the government officials of failure yet they get very high salaries while normal people are suffering poverty and poor public services.

Recently, several thousands of Iraqis sporadically took to the streets in several provinces across the country protesting unemployment and a sharp rise in the prices of food staples, as well as demanding better public services. Sadr, in his 30s, gained popularity among younger Shiite Iraqis by his anti-American rhetoric since the toppling of former president Saddam Hussein's government by the 2003 US led invasion of Iraq. His Mahdi Army militia has been fighting against US troops and was one of the major forces in the sectarian strife in Iraq that claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis.

Some residents, Democratic Governor Brian Schweitzer and even some Republican lawmakers say the bills are making Montana into a laughingstock. And, they say, the push to nullify federal laws could be dangerous. "We are the United States of America," said Schweitzer. "This talk of nullifying is pretty toxic talk. That led to the Civil War."

A tea party lawmaker said raising the specter of a civil war is plain old malarkey. "Nullification is not about splitting this union apart," freshman Republican Derek Skees said. "Nullification is just one more way for us to tell the federal government: 'That is not right.'" Some of their bills are moving through the legislature. Others appear doomed: an armed citizen militia, FBI agents under the thumb of the sheriff and a declaration that global warming is good for business.

Whatever their merits, the ideas are increasingly popping up in legislatures across the nation, as a wave of tea party-backed conservatives push their anti-spending, anti-federal government agenda.

Investigators say they found literature exhorting Muslim immigrants against integrating into Italian society and saying the pope should be punished for having baptized the journalist during an Easter vigil ceremony in St Peter's Basilica. The investigation grew out of security checks ahead of a pastoral visit by Benedict to Brescia in 2009, but authorities insisted that their probe revealed no plot against the pontiff or other terrorism aims.

In 2008, Egyptian-born journalist Magdi Allam angered some Muslims by becoming a Catholic. After being baptized, he changed his name to Magdi Cristiano Allam. He had built a career in Italy as a newspaper commentator and author attacking Islamic extremism and supporting Israel.

Mass demonstrations are also being held elsewhere in the Middle East.

Yemen saw some of the largest marches yet by pro- and anti-government protesters in the capital Sanaa.

Egyptians in their thousands returned to Cairo's Tahrir Square to mark two weeks since the ousting of Hosni Mubarak from the presidency and to press for reforms.

Thousands attended a day of mourning in Manama for those killed in recent unrest in Bahrain.

More protests are expected later in the day in Amman, Jordan, and the West Bank city of Ramallah.

The demonstrations follow a wave of Arab revolts that have toppled the presidents of Tunisia and Egypt, and challenged the rule of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi in Libya.

LSE blamed issues with the market data technology and said it was investigating the problem. The LSE's woes come at a bad time for traders, with major economic news in the UK after the latest gross domestic product figures and ongoing volatility amid the Libyan political crisis. Joshua Raymond, market strategist at City Index, said: 'It's yet another glitch to trading and traders, who still remember the same issues that halted trading for some three hours in 2009, and they will undoubtedly be venting fury this morning at the LSE.'

'At a time of uncertainty in the markets, where traders are having to keep on their toes with the situation in Libya, the last thing they need is an unexpected halt to trading.' Today's technical troubles came in the same week that Borsa Italiana - the LSE's Milan platform - suffered a five-hour outage.

The second largest US residential mortgage funds provider reported a loss of $113 million in the fourth quarter, a tiny fraction of the double-digit billions the firm lost in the quarters immediately after the government seized it more than two years ago. Including the latest request, Freddie Mac will have received more than $64 billion in direct aid from the government. The fourth-quarter loss, about $0.53 per share, includes a $1.6 billion dividend payment the company paid to the government.

The US Treasury took control of Freddie Mac and its larger sister entity, Fannie Mae (FNMA.OB), at the height of the financial crisis in September 2008 as losses mounted from mortgages gone bad. The plan to put them into conservatorship was meant to be temporary, although it is likely to be years before a long-term replacement structure takes shape.

Libya's food supply chain is at risk of collapse, says the UN's food agency. Nato defence ministers will hold emergency talks later on Friday. Around the capital, Tripoli, an elite brigade commanded by Colonel Gaddafi's son Khamis is believed to be dug in. The UK and France are pushing for an arms embargo and a war crimes investigation.

Libyan state TV has said the government will give each family 500 dinars (250 pounds; $400) to cover increased food costs, while some public sector workers will receive a pay rise of 150%. However, much of the country is now in the hands of anti-government forces. In Geneva, the UN Human Rights Council is meeting in special session for the first time to discuss the crisis in Libya. Libya is an elected member of the council but some members have called for it to lose its seat.

"In brazen and continuing breach of international law, the crackdown in Libya of peaceful demonstrations is escalating alarmingly with reported mass killings, arbitrary arrests, detention and torture of protesters," said Ms Pillay, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. The UN World Food Programme has said Libya's food supply chain is at risk of collapse because imports were not getting into the country and food distribution is hampered by violence, the AFP news agency reports.

Already, the region has been reshaped by the fall of decades-old regimes and growing pressures on others, including Muammar Gadaffi's 42-year rule in Libya. But the ultimate questions for many are whether the pro-Western Saudi monarchy can ride out the unrest, and if Iran will capitalize on the changes with more footholds and influence in areas closely tied to Washington's interests. "If an uprising occurs in Saudi Arabia, it will have a dramatic impact that is off the charts," said Theodore Karasik, a regional affairs expert at the Dubai-based Institute for Near East and Gulf Military Analysis. "Policymakers will have to grapple with it for decades."

Saudi authorities have stood strongly behind Bahrain's Sunni monarchy, which is under siege by a revolt from that tiny kingdom's Shiite majority after decades of grievances over discrimination and other abuses. For the Saudis - and the rest of the Gulf's Sunni rulers - the Shiites in Bahrain represent a potential beachhead for Shiite powerhouse Iran.

"We are witnessing a rebellion of the Arab peoples throughout the Arab world," said Nicholas Burns, a former top State Department diplomat with long experience in the region. "While it may be most acute in Bahrain and Libya, there is every reason to believe that it will continue to spread for the time being." And any significant cracks in the king's hold on Saudi Arabia, which has a small Shiite minority, would undoubtedly be hailed by Tehran.

Iran's Revolutionary Guard sent ships on a courtesy call to Qatar in January and held navy maneuvers with Oman this month in further signs of expanding ties in the Gulf. The Dubai-based analyst Karasik said Iran increasingly views itself "as a pure regional hegemon because of the uprisings."

"Pricing in Libya supply disruptions is one thing, but what if this social unrest spreads to Saudi Arabia, which holds 20 percent of the world's oil?" said David Rosenberg, chief economist and strategist for Gluskin Sheff. "Do the math: we'd be talking about $200 oil." Without taking into account the collateral effects of such a strategic part of the Middle East falling under siege by its own people, a simple production comparison gets the price to at least $140 a barrel.

West Texas crude oil for April delivery, the benchmark for the US, rose as much as $8.44 a barrel in trading today to $98.48 on Libyan Leader Muammar Gaddafi's defiance in the face of the uprising. Saudi Arabia produced 9.8 million barrels a day of crude oil in 2009, 5.4 times more than Libya, according to the US Energy Information Administration. Multiplying $8.44 by 5.4 equals a $45.95 jump in the price of crude.

"Oil would go parabolic," said Joe Terranova, chief market strategist for Virtus Investment Partners and former energy trader. "The Shiite population (compared to the Sunni ruling family) is more concentrated in the oil producing region. The workers could strike."

"With 20 percent of the world's oil reserves, Saudi Arabia would clearly have a much greater affect on oil prices," said Jim Iuorio, managing director for TJM Institutional Services. "However, I have a difficult time believing that the US government would let the country fall into the hands of a different government. Make no mistake, Saudi Arabia is not Egypt or Libya and the US would be quick to aid."