A series of killings and bomb attacks over Christmas and New Year are thought to have resulted in more than 100 deaths so far in the central city. Jos is a flashpoint of tension between Hausa Muslims and Berom Christians. It sits on the faultline between Nigeria's north and south.

Captain Ekeocha publicly warned community leaders that the military would fire on anybody burning homes, churches and mosques or carrying out lynchings and attacking civilians. An election official was killed and his body set on fire by an angry mob - one of three people killed in a riot on Monday - as people tried to register to vote.

The rise will put further pressure on the Bank of England to lift interest rates to curb rising inflation. The recent VAT rise from 17.5% to 20% could further fuel inflation, which has now remained above the 2% target by one percentage point or more for 13 months. The Office for National Statistics said the biggest drivers of inflation were air transport, fuel, utility bills and food costs. Fuel prices increased at their fastest annual rate since July, while the cost of food showed its biggest annual rise since May 2009.

The latest increase was more than economists had expected and above the Bank of England's own forecasts.

According to court papers, the non-profit Western Watersheds Project alleged US regulators approved Brightsource Energy's 370-megawatt Ivanpah solar energy plant without conducting adequate environmental reviews, and asked the court to order the defendants to withdraw their approvals. The complaint names the US Department of the Interior, the Bureau of Land Management and the Fish and Wildlife Service, as well as the agencies' heads and other staffers, as defendants. None was immediately available for comment.

"In an ill-conceived rush to accommodate massive renewable energy projects... the federal defendants precipitously approved unnecessarily destructive energy development of the California Desert Conservation Area without first conducting adequate environmental reviews." The complaint said the project's approval process failed to analyze and mitigate the Ivanpah plant's impact on migratory birds, the desert tortoise, which is a threatened species under federal law, desert bighorn sheep, groundwater resources and rare plants.

Conflicts between solar proponents and foes are taking on growing importance as the renewable energy industry experiences a boom, particularly in California. The conflicts have the potential to set back the development of solar energy and derail state and federal commitments to lessening dependence on fossil fuels.

The book "is a vehicle for putting across lightweight speculation that anybody could imagine," asserts MIT-educated physicist Thomas P Sheahen in a paper provided to WND. Hawking and co-author Leonard Mlodinow, a Caltech physicist, claim there was no need for a creator, as the law of gravity assures that the "universe can, and will, create itself from nothing."

"If the author names were reversed, Mlodinow first, everyone would ignore this book," Sheahen writes in 'A Physicist Looks at The Grand Design.' "Only Hawking's fame boosts it to totally undeserved prominence. The folly of Hawkings' claim is pretty obvious," E Calvin Beisner, national spokesman for the Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation in suburban Washington, DC, told WND. "The law of gravity is, of course, not nothing, and consequently the universe's spontaneous self-creation wouldn't be a creation from nothing anyway."

Beisner argued further that "the law of gravity is a law of physics, affecting the interaction of physical, material things. There is no law of gravity where there are no physical things," he reasoned. The authors rely on the concept of a "multiverse" - that there are many universes in existence, and the universe in which Earth resides is a statistical accident that survived while others did not.

"Just as Darwin and Alfred Wallace explained how the apparently miraculous design of living forms could appear without intervention by a supreme being, the multiverse concept can explain the fine tuning of physical law without the need for a benevolent creator who made the Universe for our benefit," the authors contend.

What began as the desperate act of one frustrated man back in mid December has had huge repercussions and caused shock waves across the Arab world.

The Tunisian President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali was forced to flee the country last Friday in the light of a popular revolt against his regime. The hurried departure of the man who had ruled the North African country for 23 years followed weeks of protests across the country, sparked by the suicide of Mohamed Bouazizi in the city of Sidi Bouzid. The 26-year-old graduate who ran a fruit and vegetable stall set himself on fire on December 17 after police confiscated his cart. He eventually died on January 4 and became a martyr, emblematic of Tunisian youths' frustrations with unemployment and a repressive state.

Once the protests reached the capital, the president seemed to waiver and offered to step down after elections in 2014. That was not enough for the demonstrators and by Friday, Ben Ali, knowing the game was up, fled the country with his wife. Observers are waiting to see if the events in Tunisia could lead to further popular revolts in the region. At least four Algerians have set themselves on fire over the past five days and on Monday an Egyptian man also set himself alight outside the parliament building in Cairo. Opposition and independent media in Egypt are already drawing parallels between President Hosnai Mubarak, who has ruled the country for nearly 30 years, and Ben Ali.

"The events in Tunisia should give those in the West who have backed authoritarian Arab regimes pause for thought. Diplomats were fully aware of Ben Ali's failings -- US diplomats even warned about the growing social dissatisfaction. However, the Americans and the Europeans were too quick to assume that the only alternative to the authoritarian rulers would be Islamist theocracies."

"Ben Ali profited, for example, from the civil war in neighboring Algeria in the 1990s. As long as the Tunisian president prevented the spread of Islamists to his country, then he could do what he liked. The rest of the world left him alone because they misinterpreted repression as stability."

The remarks to two US newspapers come ahead of a state visit by the Chinese leader to Washington this week. They reflect continuing tensions over currency issues between the two powers. In a rare interview published in the Washington Post and Wall Street Journal, Mr Hu also reiterated criticism of a decision by the US Federal Reserve to inject $600 billion into the economy, which some argue will weaken the dollar at the expense of other countries' exports.

"The monetary policy of the United States has a major impact on global liquidity and capital flows and therefore, the liquidity of the US dollar should be kept at a reasonable and stable level," President Hu said. He meanwhile disagreed with suggestions that letting the yuan appreciate in value would help China to combat inflation.

Beijing has previously come under pressure over its currency from the US, which has accused China of allegedly manipulating the yuan to help boost Chinese exports. Despite criticism of the current system, Mr Hu said he believed it would be a long time before the yuan - or renminbi (RMB) - was accepted as a global currency. "China has made important contribution to the world economy in terms of total economic output and trade, and the RMB has played a role in the world economic development," he said.

Mr Nasrallah also said Hezbollah would defend itself against any indictments by a UN tribunal over the killing of Rafiq Hariri. "The opposition unanimously will not name Hariri tomorrow," Mr Nasrallah said in a televised address. He did not say who Hezbollah would support.

Mr Hariri's government fell over a dispute about how to respond if, as expected, a UN tribunal accuses Hezbollah members of being behind the murder in 2005 of his father, Rafiq Hariri, who was prime minister at the time. Hezbollah - the powerful Shia social, political and militant group - had asked the government to disassociate itself from the tribunal and to state it would not arrest those it indicted. When agreement proved impossible, Mr Nasrallah said on Sunday, Hezbollah decided to bring down the government using democratic means and had not taken to the streets.

The names of those indicted will remain secret, but press leaks suggest they will include members of Hezbollah, who came under suspicion because of mobile phone evidence, our correspondent says. Rafiq Hariri and 22 others were killed in February 2005 when a huge bomb exploded next to his motorcade in Beirut.

Syria was initially blamed for the assassination, and eventually forced in its wake to withdraw its troops from Lebanon after 29 years. In the past year, however, members of Hezbollah have emerged as prime suspects. On Sunday, Mr Nasrallah repeated his claim that Rafiq Hariri's murder was carried out by Israel.

They were only going to tell Micah about it when they took him to the airport on February 19 for the flight to the US. They had already spent more than 1,500 pounds on plane tickets and had been organising the trip for months. But this week US Embassy officials denied the schoolboy a visa to enter the US. They said there was a risk he would not leave the US at the end of his holiday and refused his application under Section 214 (b) of the Immigration and Nationality Act.

A letter from Micah's primary school was included in his visa application confirming he attended the school. But the US Embassy's rejection letter to Micah said: "Because you either did not demonstrate strong ties outside the United States or were not able to demonstrate that your intended activities in the US would be consistent with the visa status, you are ineligible." His grandmother Kathy, from Brixton, South London, said: "It was going to be a total surprise. He would have loved it. We feel so deflated by the whole experience."

The family have written to US President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to ask for an explanation of the decision. A US Embassy spokesman said it was "not policy" to comment on individual immigration cases.

In the volume, which covers the first two years of Mr Blair's premiership and will be published later this month, Mr Campbell tells how he warned the ex-prime minister about Cherie's 'madder stuff', such as her support for alternative therapies.

It also reveals Mr Blair consulted the Bible before making key decisions, reading a passage about John the Baptist hours before ordering a bombing raid on Iraq in 1998. And Mr Campbell was forced to advise him just weeks after he took office not to suffer from 'world leader-itis', that is preferring life on the international stage to dealing with problems in the UK.

In a section on Cherie, Mr Campbell discussed a report in a newspaper about a 'bioelectric shield' pendant 'that was supposed to ward off evil spirits and harmful rays' she had been pictured wearing. He writes: 'I said to Fiona (Millar, Campbell's partner and an adviser to Cherie), she had to get a hold of all this madder stuff but she said Cherie never raised it with her because she knew she would disapprove.' Mr Campbell also discussed Cherie's interest in alternative therapies with her husband. 'Tony Blair said they had to be slightly mad to cope,' he wrote.

Germany faces mounting pressure from the European Commission and its euro zone partners to strengthen a rescue fund for troubled member states, the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF). "If the discussion is about a further package of measures, it is above all important that we develop a complete strategy that must absolutely include closer economic coordination," Merkel told a news conference in Mainz after a meeting with other senior members of her ruling Christian Democrats. "You cannot simply raise another particular aspect each day," she added.

Berlin insists it sees no need to commit more funds to the 440 billion euro ($591.7 billion) EFSF, which has so far been tapped only by Ireland. Instead, the German government is open to a discussion about ways to enable the existing fund to be used in full. Senior European sources told Reuters, however, that the sense of urgency in Berlin for boosting the fund had diminished after successful bond auctions this week in Spain and Portugal, the two countries seen most at risk of a bailout following rescues of Greece and Ireland last year. Instead Germany is pushing for broader anti-crisis measures to be agreed at a summit of European Union leaders in March.

The church has long argued for a reconciliation of science and faith. In fact, it was a Roman Catholic priest, Father Georges Lemaitre, who first proposed the Big Bang theory in 1927, on the basis of Albert Einstein's theory of relativity, according to the American Natural History Museum in New York. The current Pope wrote about it in a 1995 book, and John Paul II called science a "highway to wonder" way back in 1979.

The Big Bang debate is just one example of the line Vatican scientists must walk. And there are many scientists indeed at the Pontifical Academy of Sciences in Rome, where Stephen Hawking and friends have discussed topics as diverse as biology, astronomy and chemistry. Not all scientists believe there will ever be accord between science and religion, of course.

"Reconciling science with Christian religion is impossible," Zbigniew Jaworowski, a medical doctor, and a professor emeritus of natural sciences at the Central Laboratory for Radiological Protection, in Warsaw, Poland, told FoxNews.com. "Let the Pope stick with his sacred book, and let science follow its way."

The consequences of not tackling the country's mounting debt burden would be dire, he last week told an audience of leading budget experts and economists at a gathering in Washington. "We will have the riots in the streets, we will have the defaults, we will have all of those ugliness problems," he said, referring to "French kids lobbing Molotov cocktails at cars, burning down schools because the retirement age will be moved from 60 to 62".

As it stands today, the US borrows about 40 cents of every dollar it spends. Curbing the budget deficit has been the stated mission of Mr Ryan, a rising Republican star, for several years. But such calls for action have multiplied in Washington in recent months, igniting what some say is the fiercest debate over fiscal and budgetary policy in decades.

The risks are big. If the government rushes into austerity, cutting too much and too quickly, it could stunt economic recovery. But if the political system cannot forge some kind of consensus on steps to restore US deficits to sustainable levels, the danger is potentially even greater: a sovereign debt crisis in the world's largest economy.

Now the unrest sparked by his self-immolation has led to the downfall of one of the region's longest-serving autocrats. Unable to quell the unrest, despite making a string of televised concessions to the protesters, the 74-year-old President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali simply vanished from the scene.

While the impact of the unrest on Tunisia is uncertain, its impact on the region is already apparent.

Arabs identified with the young Tunisian because his problems - unemployment, corruption, autocracy, the absence of human rights - are their problems. Throughout the region there is a dignity deficit. What is more, in an age of globalisation, regimes can no longer cut their citizens off from news. The Arab media - even in countries where they are constrained - could sense their audiences' thirst for news about Bouazizi's death and the extraordinary drama it triggered. They could not keep silent, as they might have done in the past.

Several dangers lie ahead. One is that Tunisia falls into chaos - a scenario that would convince Arab rulers to cling more tightly to power rather than sharing or relinquishing it. Another is that the unrest may spread. It is already apparent - and for broadly similar reasons - in neighbouring Algeria.

In a string of Arab countries, succession issues loom as ageing autocrats confront the unmet aspirations of their youthful and rapidly growing populations.

On Friday, Tunisia's president fled the country after trying to quell deadly riots in the North African country by slashing prices on food staples. We are entering a danger territory," Abdolreza Abbassian, chief economist at the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), said last week. The UN's fear is that the latest run-up in food prices could spark a repeat of the deadly food riots that broke out in 2008 in Haiti, Kenya and Somalia.

That price spike was relatively short-lived. But Abbassian said the latest surge in food stuffs may be more sustained. "Situations have changed. The supply/demand structures have changed," Abbassian told the Australian Broadcasting Corp last week. "Certainly the kind of weather developments we have seen makes us worry a little bit more that it may last much, much longer. Are we prepared for it?"

The plant produces fats to be used in industrial processes like paper-making as well as to enrich feeds for animals. The dioxin-laden industrial substance went into the animal feed ingredient. Initially the scare was confined to Germany, but then it emerged that a batch of affected eggs had been exported to the Netherlands for processing and from there to Britain. The processed eggs were destined for use in the production of a variety of foodstuffs including mayonnaise, cakes and quiches.

Some 4,700 German farms have been banned from making deliveries after tests at the Harles und Jentzsch plant in the state of Schleswig-Holstein. Authorities believe some 150,000 tons of feed for poultry and swine containing the fat have been fed to livestock across the country.

LATEST: Germany has closed 934 more poultry and pig farms as fears over the contamination of dioxin in animal feed continue. The move came after a manufacturer in Lower Saxony was found to have hidden some of the outlets it sold produce to. South Korea and China to ban imports of German pork and poultry.