The combined group would have headquarters in New York and Frankfurt, with Deutsche Boerse shareholders holding about 60 percent of the combined company and NYSE shareholders holding the rest. The companies disclosed their talks on Wednesday. "I think these consolidations are the wave of the future - with aspects we haven't even seen yet - once the derivatives markets are required to be more like exchanges," former SEC Chairman Harvey Pitt told CNBC. "Securities regulators should welcome these consolidations, but competition regulators may be concerned."

Not everyone was so enthused about it, however. Ken Langone, co-founder of Home Depot and a former NYSE director, told CNBC. "The listed exchanges are losing market share dramatically. They're less relevant with electronic trading that's now prevalent throughout the industry. It seems to me that the only sense for the merger here is to cut costs."

Earlier in the day, LSE said it would buy TMX, forming the world's fourth-largest exchange and a top centre for trading mining and energy shares, with $4.1 trillion of stock changing hands a year. The exchanges are looking to regain market share lost to upstart electronic trading platforms. Other exchanges could face similar pressure to merge, analysts said.

It was believed to be first big protest in that area and the first deadly use of force by security forces since January 28. In Cairo, dozens of museum workers, university professors and members of a music syndicate protested separately over poor pay. Workers in Suez and Ismailia carried out similar protests. In Port Said, hundreds of people from a poor neighbourhood set a government building alight to complain about the local authority's failure to build proper housing.

Demonstrators continued to occupy Tahrir Square in central Cairo, keeping up the pressure on Mr Mubarak to step down immediately, while others gathered outside parliament for a second day. Kamal Abbas, head of the Centre for Trade Union and Workers' Services, a civil society group, said tens of thousands of workers had downed tools. "These strikes are happening because in the last two days there has been a lot of news about the amounts of money which those in power stole from the country," he said "All this has led the workers to say, what about us, we are on very small salaries and we too want to live."

The protests have cost the country billions, Samir Radwan, the finance minister, told the Financial Times. He said about 75 billion pounds ($13 billion) was wiped off the stock market before it closed on January 27, while there was a run on banks when they reopened on Sunday. "Frankly, we were frightened that the run would be on foreign currency, the run was on the Egyptian currency but it has fizzled out," he said.

America's closest ally in the Gulf made clear that the Egyptian President must be allowed to stay on to oversee the transition towards peaceful democracy and then leave with dignity. "Mubarak and King Abdullah are not just allies, they are close friends, and the King is not about to see his friend cast aside and humiliated," a senior source in the Saudi capital told The Times.

There are reports of widespread industrial action, and of protests outside Cairo turning violent. The Egyptian government has announced plans for a peaceful transition which see President Mubarak staying in office until elections in September, but opposition groups fear the government is stalling for time and will fail to enact meaningful changes.

Mr Gibbs said: "The government has not taken the necessary steps that the people of Egypt need to see. That's why more and more people come out to register their grievances. If there's some notion on the government side that you can put the genie back in this bottle, I think that's gone a long time ago." He added that the US was reviewing its aid programme to Egypt, and the government's restraint and reform would determine "what that aid will look like".

His remarks follow Tuesday's call by US Vice-President Joe Biden for the Egyptian government to lift its longstanding state of emergency, and to stop harassing journalists and activists. The BBC's North America editor, Mark Mardell, says the Obama administration is clearly ratcheting up the pressure.

The sad truth is that we were once the wealthiest, most prosperous nation on the planet, but now we are deeply drowning in debt. America has become a debt pig that is deeply addicted to debt-fueled prosperity. We had more than any other nation on the planet by far, but that was never good enough for us. We always had to have more. So we borrowed and borrowed and borrowed. Now, average household debt is far larger than average household income, state and local governments across the nation are on the verge of default and our national government has piled up the biggest mountain of debt in the history of the world.

Just read the statistics compiled below. Is there anyone out there that can deny that America has become a fat, bloated debt pig that is completely and totally out of control?

So I hope that you enjoyed the spectacle of Super Bowl Sunday, because there won't be too many more times like this. The greatest debt-fueled party in the history of the world is rapidly coming to an end, and pretty soon it will be time to start turning out the lights.

The following are 17 statistics about debt in America that are almost too outrageous to believe....

#1 The US national debt is now well over 14 trillion dollars and it is being projected that the US government will have the biggest budget deficit ever recorded this fiscal year.

#2 It is estimated that the US national debt will increase by $150,000 per US household between 2009 and 2021.

#3 During Barack Obama's first two years in office, the US government added more to the US national debt than the first 100 US Congresses combined.

#4 Unfunded liabilities for entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare are estimated to be well over $100 trillion, and nobody in the US government seems to have any idea how we are actually even going to come close to meeting all of those obligations.

#5 When you add up all forms of debt in the United States (government debt, business debt and consumer debt) it comes to approximately 360 percent of GDP. This represents the biggest debt bubble in the history of the world by far.

#6 Today, state and local government debt has reached an all-time high of 22 percent of US GDP.

#7 Unfunded pension benefit liabilities at the state government level - the amount state governments owe in promised retirement benefits beyond what they have collected - exceed $3 trillion.

#8 Average household debt in the United States has now reached a level of 136% of average household income. In China that figure is only 17%.

#9 Today, 46% of all Americans carry a credit card balance from month to month.

#10 Of US households that have credit card debt, the average amount owed on credit cards is $15,788.

#11 Americans now owe more than $887 billion on student loans, which is even more than they owe on credit cards.

#12 A staggering 25 percent of all American adults now have a credit score below 599.

#13 According to a survey released very close to the end of 2010, 55 percent of all Americans are now living paycheck to paycheck. The sad truth is that most of us are maxed out.

#14 1.5 million Americans filed for bankruptcy in 2010. That represented the fourth yearly increase in bankruptcy filings in a row.

#15 One out of every 45 US households was hit with a foreclosure filing in 2010.

#16 The number of American families that were actually booted out of their homes and into the streets set a new all-time record in 2010.

#17 Even as the suffering of the poor is going up the generosity of the wealthy is going down. It turns out that America's wealthiest individuals gave a lot less money to charity in 2010.

Doku Umarov, the self-styled leader of Russia's Islamist terror movement, claimed full responsibility for the suicide bombing of Moscow's busiest airport last month, an attack that left thirty six people dead. "This special operation was carried out on my orders and, if Allah wills it, more of these special operations will be carried out in future," he said by video. "There are hundreds of our brothers ready to sacrifice their lives to assert the word of Allah."

Umarov had earlier appeared in another video alongside a man he identified as a suicide bomber but had stopped short of claiming responsibility for the airport bombing. This time, he was more explicit, vowing to intensify his campaign of terror by conducting "deeper and more aggressive" attacks. "We can carry out operations at any time where and when we want," he warned, wagging his finger aggressively every few minutes in a mostly rambling speech.

The 46-year-old terrorist urged the Kremlin to abandon the North Caucasus, its southern flank, altogether explaining that his campaign of terror was meant to turn the area into an Islamist Emirate with him as its Emir. The Kremlin is adamant that it will never relinquish the North Caucasus, a predominantly Muslim area riven by chronic poverty that includes Chechnya and a string of other small internal republics.

A total of 98.83 percent of voters from Sudan's oil-producing south chose to secede from the north in last month's referendum, the chairman of the vote's organising commission Mohammed Ibrahim Khalil said. The referendum is the climax of a 2005 north-south peace accord that set out to end Africa's longest civil war and instil democracy in a country that straddles the continent's Arab-sub Saharan divide. Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir earlier said he accepted the result, allaying fears that the split could reignite conflict over the control of the south's oil reserves.

"Today we received these results and we accept and welcome these results because they represent the will of the southern people," he said in an address on state TV. Both sides avoided major outbreaks of violence over the past five years. But they failed to overcome decades of deep mutual distrust to persuade southerners to embrace unity.

"Southern Sudanese are a new people now. We have a new identity. We have respect from everyone at last. Our country has come today," said Rebecca Maluk, a war widow and mother-of-three in the crowd in Juba. Many southerners see the vote as a chance to end years of northern repression, which they say stretches back through years of civil war to 19th-century raids by slave traders.

The timing was a surprise, coming on the final day of China's Lunar New Year holiday, but investors have long expected more monetary tightening as Beijing struggles to rein in price pressures and ward off a property bubble in an economy that grew at a double-digit pace last year. Benchmark one-year deposit rates will be lifted by 25 basis points to 3 percent, while one-year lending rates will also be raised by 25 basis points to 6.06 percent, the People's Bank of China said. The changes go into effect on Wednesday.

Although annual inflation slowed in December, analysts polled by Reuters expect it to have picked up to 5.3 percent last month, the fastest pace in more than two years, on the back of soaring food prices. "It is the first interest rate rise in the Year of the Rabbit, but it will not be the last," said Xu Biao, an economist with China Merchants Bank in Shenzhen, referring to the country's new year, which began last week.

"If inflation stays high in February, the central bank will be forced to increase interest rates on a continuous basis," he added. "Investor confidence will be seriously hurt by expectations of aggressive policy tightening." This is the third rate increase since China began a monetary tightening cycle in earnest in October. It announced the last rate rise on December 25.

But Netanyahu spoke to a group of European legislators about the unrest, outlining three different scenarios for Egypt, which has had relatively good relations with Israel since the two countries signed a peace treaty in 1979. "First, Egyptians may choose to embrace the model of a secular reformist state with a prominent role for the military," Netanyahu said. "There is a second possibility, that the Islamists exploit their influence to gradually take the country into a reverse direction."

The third possibility, the Prime Minister said, is that Egypt go the way of Iran, "where calls for progress will be silenced by a dark and violent despotism." Netanyahu said he expects any new Egyptian government to keep the peace treaty with Israel, as it has served both countries - and the entire region - well.

For the Israeli Prime Minister, though, the biggest problem at the moment isn't Egypt. "The greatest threat facing the world today is the possibility that a militant Islamic regime will meet up with nuclear weapons and that nuclear weapons will meet up with a militant Islamic regime," he said. "The first is called Iran. The second is called Pakistan."

The radical camp in the Middle East is gaining strength, Ashkenazi warned, adding that "the moderate camp among the traditional Arab leadership is weakening." He also made note of what he characterized as the "fascinating phenomenon" whereby power is shifting to the people of the region thanks to online social networks.

The army chief said that in the wake of the growing threat of radical Islam among Israel's neighbors, the defense budget would have to be boosted in the coming years. The main change faced by the army is the widening spectrum of threats, he said. "Because of this spectrum, we must prepare for a conventional war... it would be a mistake to prepare for non-conventional war or limited conflicts and then expect that overnight the forces will operate in an all-out-war," he said.

But details of the strategic reserves have not been made public, it added on Monday. China controls about 95 percent of the global trade for the 17 minerals that collectively make up the rare earth metals market. The metals, prized for their special chemical or electromagnetic properties, are used in making mobile phones, batteries for hybrid cars, wind turbines, flat-screen televisions and other high tech products.

According to a report issued by the US Geological Survey in November, about 36 percent of the world's reserves of the metals are in China. With the prices of rare earth metals rising on average by about 130 percent last year, mining companies in countries such as Australia have stepped up efforts to extract the minerals. But according to the Wall Street Journal, a new mine could take a decade to develop, so the processing of rare earth elements will remain concentrated in China for years.

Last month, China brought 11 rare earth mines under state control as Beijing consolidated the industry - a move analysts said could drive up prices of the elements.

Tuesday saw one of the biggest anti-government rallies in Cairo since the protests began on 25 January. It came despite the government's announcement of its plans for a peaceful transfer of power. President Hosni Mubarak has said he will stay in office until elections in September, when he plans to step down. Mr Biden told Mr Suleiman that the transition to a more broadly based government should produce "immediate, irreversible" progress. The US vice-president has been phoning his Egyptian opposite number on an almost daily basis and his latest call is the toughest yet, the BBC's North America editor, Mark Mardell, reports.

As the protests entered their third week, hundreds of thousands of Egyptians poured into Cairo's Tahrir Square for the latest protest. Initial attempts by the army to check the identity cards of those joining the demonstration were quickly abandoned because of the sheer weight of numbers. The BBC's Jim Muir, in Cairo, says the message to the authorities is simple - there is huge support from all walks of Egyptian life for the protests, and the government's concessions are not enough.

Wael Ghonim, a Google executive who was detained by state security forces for 12 days, often blindfolded, was feted by the crowds as he entered Tahrir Square. He is credited with setting up the page on the Facebook social network that helped galvanise protesters. "We will not abandon our demand and that is the departure of the regime," Mr Ghonim told protesters in the square, to cheers and applause.

The unrest over the last two weeks has seen fierce clashes with police, and pitched battles between protesters and Mubarak supporters. Human Rights Watch (HRW) researchers say they have confirmed the deaths of 297 people since 28 January, based on a count from eight hospitals in the cities of Cairo, Alexandria and Suez. No comprehensive death toll has been given by the Egyptian government.

Mr Hague is currently on a three-day tour of north Africa and the Middle East. In an interview on his way to Jordan, he voiced concerns about the future. "Amidst the opportunity for countries like Tunisia and Egypt, there is a legitimate fear that the Middle East peace process will lose further momentum and be put to one side, and will be a casualty of uncertainty in the region," he said. "Part of the fear is that uncertainty and change will complicate the process still further. That means there is a real urgency for the Israelis and the United States."

Mr Hague spoke after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to "reinforce the might of the state of Israel" whatever the outcome of the unrest. Responding directly to those words, the foreign secretary said: "This should not be a time for belligerent language." He added that without action now, "within a few years, peace may become impossible".

He re-iterated his feelings in a message on the micro-blogging website Twitter, saying: "Time for bold leadership on Middle East Peace Process from the US & equally bold steps by Israelis and Palestinians".

Emerging again, he was the first to deny that he had done anything heroic at all, bowing to the young activists on the streets since 25 January. But his return to the public eye, marked by an emotional TV interview on 7 February which gripped Egyptian viewers, re-energised the movement just as it seemed to be losing steam. The fact that hundreds of thousands of protesters returned to the streets of Cairo the day after he spoke testifies to his appeal.

He was hailed on Facebook and Twitter as a hero, Egyptian blogger Issandr el-Amrani noted. "You know how this has been a leaderless movement and they're saying they want to designate him as a leader of the youth component in this movement," Mr Amrani told the BBC World Service.

Mr Ghonim walked free after a campaign waged by Google on behalf of its marketing manager for the Middle East and North Africa. The search engine giant may not have been aware that its Dubai-based manager had been running a popular Facebook page, with 400,000 Egyptian followers, outside of office hours, BBC technology correspondent Mark Gregory reports. Named after Khaled Said, a businessman who died in police custody in Alexandria last year, the page played a crucial role in organising the protests. The "We are all Khaled Said" website became a rallying point for a campaign against police brutality. For many Egyptians, it revealed details of the extent of torture in their country.

Soon after being freed, he appeared live on one of Egypt's most watched talk shows, on the Dream 2 television channel. "This is the revolution of the youth of the Internet, which became the revolution of the youth of Egypt, then the revolution of Egypt itself," he said. He burst into tears, insisting it was the fault of the authorities, not the campaigners, and left the studio - a human response that provoked a wave of sympathy.

"Ghonim's tears have moved millions and turned around the views of those who supported [Mubarak] staying," the website masrawy.com wrote two hours after the interview. At least 130,000 people have joined a Facebook page titled "I delegate Wael Ghonim to speak in the name of Egypt's revolutionaries" since the interview, the Associated Press news agency reports. It is not yet clear what, if any, political ambitions the young executive harbours, beyond "putting an end to all the rubbish" in Egypt.

The digs have been taking place under the Dome of the Chain, believed to have been built over 1300 years ago. For eight months, the dome - which has a diameter of 14 meters - has been surrounded by a metal fence and black cloth, which hide whatever activity has been going on there from outside inspection. The Muslim Waqf religious authority has claimed the activity is simply a refurbishing of the structure, but refuses adamantly to let Jews or tourists near.

Jewish activists made various attempts to enter the Dome, but met with no success. In the end, the Our Temple Mount news outlet found an Arab who was willing to take photos inside the compound in return for a handsome fee. The man said that it appears the Waqf has already completed its digs and is now covering the dig with dirt.

Our Temple Mount notes that according to Jewish tradition, the place where the Dome of the Chain is located is the spot upon which the sacrificial Altar stood in Temple times. Temple activists said that the Muslim digs are intended to erase the Jewish connection to the Temple Mount.

See photo's at http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/142187