It was Pope John XXIII, fondly known as the Good Pope, who phased out clocking machines in the early 1960s. Now the Vatican has brought back a high-tech version involving electronic swipe cards for 2,000 employees. Lay and ecclesiastical staff working in the tiny city state, are now using the swipe cards.

The cards have been issued to everyone from the lowest office staff to the heads of departments, even if they are priests and archbishops, though there has been no mention if Pope Benedict XVI carries one. According to reports some elder clerics in the Vatican have complained that clocking in and out is a headache, especially when they have to leave on pastoral duty. It is all part of a drive to increase efficiency and to make the Vatican more meritocratic.

Next year there are plans to introduce performance-related pay.

MK Tzvi Hendel announced the decision at a press conference, heralding the new party as one that will put education first during a "crisis of values in politics and in every field in this country. The public understands that education is the foundation of everything," Hendel said.

"Anyone who identifies with our path can join and decide who our leader will be," Hendel said, adding that "EVERYONE IS INVITED TO THE PARTY EXCEPT FOR THE EXTREMISTS WHO ARE HAPPY WHEN THEY SEE ARAB BLOODSHED OR HAPPY WHEN THEY SEE SETTLEMENTS EVACUATED."

Four years on, a study by the Pew Research Center has warned of a possible "perfect storm" creating chaos at the polls - fuelled by record numbers of voters, new voters, and shortage of polling station staff. Another report on 10 swing states, by The Century Foundation and Common Cause, found that "SIGNIFICANT PROBLEMS IN THE BASIC FUNCTIONS OF AMERICAN ELECTION ADMINISTRATION SYSTEM PERSIST, AND IN A FEW CASES HAVE WORSENED".

Unsurprisingly, both the Democratic and Republican Parties have been signing up lawyers in readiness for rancorous disputes over voter identity, voting machine malfunctions and close counts. There have already been several legal challenges over the registration of voters and casting of absentee ballots.

In one, the Ohio Republican Party demanded access to lists of newly registered voters whose details did not match driver's licence or social security records - a move which could have enabled activists to challenge the right to vote of up to 200,000 people. On election day, Ms Brunner predicts Ohio's biggest challenge will be the sheer number of people at the polls, with some 80% of registered voters expected to turn out, compared with 70% in 2004.

Food prices have shot up, transport has ground to a standstill and although the waters are slowly receding the capital's streets are still under a meter of water. There have been widespread power cuts. Across the north of the country around 55,000 houses and 440,000 acres of crops have been flooded causing damage worth tens of millions of dollars, according to the government.

Officials say the heaviest rains in 24 years have caused rivers to burst their banks in several places. Hanoi, a picturesque city of three million people on the banks of the Red River, has been worst hit. "Flash floods on the Hoang Long river in the north and rivers from Thanh Hoa to Nghe An will continue to rise," the government's storm and flood control committee said in a flood report on Saturday.

Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph E. Stiglitz of Columbia University told the U.N. General Assembly that "THIS IS A GLOBAL CRISIS AND IT REQUIRES A GLOBAL RESPONSE." U.N. General Assembly President Miguel d'Escoto Brockmann convened a debate on the global financial meltdown to position the world organization squarely at the center of a possible fix.

Development economist and former U.N. official Sakiko Fukuda-Parr of the New School said that "GLOBAL SOLUTIONS ARE NEEDED." At the 1944 Bretton Woods conference of major powers in New Hampshire, the U.S.-led negotiations spawned the two major sister U.N. institutions, the International Monetary Fund and World Bank.

The Department of Water Resources projects that it will deliver just 15 percent of the amount that local water agencies throughout California request every year. The reservoirs that are most crucial to the state's water delivery system are at their lowest levels since 1977, after two years of dry weather and court-ordered restrictions on water pumping out of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. THIS YEAR, WATER AGENCIES RECEIVED JUST 35 PERCENT OF THE WATER THEY REQUESTED.

Farmers in the Central Valley say they'll be forced to fallow fields, while cities from the San Francisco Bay area to San Diego might have to require residents to ration water. In Southern California, the Metropolitan Water District — the agency that supplies water to about half the state's population — has depleted more than a third of its water reserves. The agency's general manager, Jeff Kightlinger, said Californians must immediately reduce their water use to stretch what little water is available.

"We are preparing for the very real possibility of water shortages and rationing throughout the region in 2009," Kightlinger said, adding that his board will consider rationing during its meeting next month.

Shin Bet internal security agency head Yuval Diskin says "a group in the extreme right" is prepared to assassinate politicians "in order to halt diplomatic processes." Diskin spoke Sunday at the weekly meeting of the Israeli Cabinet. His statement was released by another meeting participant who spoke on condition of anonymity because the session was closed.

This week, Israel marks the 13th anniversary of the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin by an Israeli extremist.

It notes that the cost of insuring the government debt of Italy and Greece has doubled in the past month. For Ireland, the cost of insuring against debt default has risen eightfold since the start of the year. The article notes that another indicator of rising investor concern is the gap between the yields on the bonds issued by Germany and countries with lower credit ratings, such as Italy and Greece. Those have widened to levels not seen in about a decade, before the launch of the euro.

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard notes in the Telegraph that "The interest spread between Italian 10-year bonds and German Bunds has reached 108 basis points, the highest since the launch of the euro. TRADERS SAY IT IS NEARING LEVELS THAT RISK SETTING OFF AN UNSTABLE CHAIN REACTION."

Specialists say the theft technology is the most advanced they have seen, and a person close to British law enforcement said it has affected big retailers including a British unit of Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and Tesco Ltd. The account data have been used to make repeated bank withdrawals and Internet purchases, such as airline tickets, in several countries including the U.S. Investigators haven't pinpointed the culprits. Early estimates of the losses range of $50 million to $100 million, but the figure could grow, said the person close to British law enforcement. THE SCHEME USES UNTRACEABLE DEVICES INSERTED INTO CREDIT-CARD READERS THAT WERE MADE IN CHINA.

The devices selectively send account data by a wireless connection to computer servers in Lahore, Pakisan, and constantly change the pattern of theft so it is hard to detect, officials say. "Pretty small but intelligent criminal organizations are pulling off transnational, multicontinent heists that only a foreign intelligence service would have been able to do a few years ago," said Joel F. Brenner, the U.S. government's top counterintelligence officer. EXAMINING THE STORE'S CREDIT-CARD READERS, INVESTIGATORS DISCOVERED A HIGH-TECH BUG TUCKED BEHIND THE MOTHERBOARD. It was small card containing wireless communication technology.

The bug would read an individual's card number and the corresponding personal identification number, then package and store the data. The device would once a day call a number in Lahore to upload the data to servers there and obtain instructions on what to steal next.

This past Saturday night, southern Iran experienced what was reported as a significant earthquake - a seismic event measuring 5.0 on the Richter scale. Its epicenter was just north of the strategic Straits of Hormuz, which separates Iran from Abu Dhabi and Oman and which is the gateway to the Persian Gulf.

The report quotes an Iranian nuclear scientist who claims to be working in uranium enrichment for the project, and who said that the "quake" was actually an undergound nuclear bomb test. Israel Insider adds that the test/quake was actually the second in a series. Nine days ago, a 4.8 Richter scale event occurred, with its epicenter only five kilometers away from the weekend tremor.

The Israel Insider source reports that two nuclear rockets are currently ready - and are intended for use against Israel in the coming months. If the report is correct, it would belie previous speculation that Iran would not begin nuclear testing until it had more nuclear-bomb production capability. Reuters reports Thursday morning that Iran has begun building a line of naval bases along its southern coast and up to the Straits of Hormuz.

The big media openly worship Barack Obama. MSNBC's Chris Matthews, upon listening to Obama speak, says almost mystically, "I felt this thrill going up my leg." Rolling Stone magazine rhapsodizes, "There is a sense of dignity, even majesty, about him…"

For its October cover, The Atlantic magazine hires a photographer who intentionally photographs John McCain to look ugly and threatening. "I left his eyes red and his skin looking bad," she later admits, adding, "maybe it was somewhat irresponsible for [the Atlantic] to hire me."

The New York Times publishes Barack Obama's op-ed on Iraq policy, but refuses to run McCain's op-ed. At the same time, all three network's news anchors tag along with Obama like groupies on his overseas stump tour, while McCain receives scant media coverage.

The pregnancy of Sarah Palin's teen daughter is national news, as is the presence in the Alaska governor's mansion of a tanning bed (which Palin paid for herself). But Obama being mentored and nurtured for years by terrorists (William Ayers), communists (Frank Marshall Davis) and America-hating racists (Rev. Jeremiah Wright), which helped shape him into the most left-wing, America-blaming, radically pro-abortion and tyrant-appeasing presidential candidate in U.S. history, is not news.

Yes, the media have long been biased to the left. But this year it's different. THIS YEAR, THE MASK HAS COME OFF AND THE REAL FACE OF THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA – or MSM as they're popularly called – has been revealed for all to see.

The president also met with the [Pope's] secretary of state, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, and Archbishop Dominique Mamberti, secretary for relations with states. During the "cordial discussions," the Vatican press office reported, the Holy See's interest in Lebanon and the nation's "continuing determination to safeguard its particular identity" was reaffirmed.

The Pontiff expressed his appreciation for "the effort that the country and its leaders are making to redirect institutional life within the normal channels of political dialectic, in which every part of the Lebanese people can offer their contributions to the common good and see their own concerns and expectations duly taken into account."

"If these people want to live together, dress as grooms and get married, they might have the right to do so or not, depending on the laws of their countries. But they shouldn't call it marriage, because it isn't," Queen Sofia was quoted as saying. "There are many possible names: social contract, contract of union," she said in extracts from "La Reina Muy de Cerca" (The Queen Up Close) previewed Thursday in the daily El Pais.

In the book, the Queen, who married King Juan Carlos in 1962, also criticized abortion and gay pride parades. "I can understand, accept and respect there are people of another sexual orientation, but that they feel proud to be gay? That they should get on a float?"

Gay pride, begun in the United States in the 1970s, has become a popular celebration in Spanish cities, with Madrid hosting Euro Pride in 2007, which organizers said attracted around 2.5 million people. The chief spokesman for the opposition conservative Popular Party was unhappy with the Queen's comments, saying the royal family should not wade into politics.

New controls may bring many benefits in clamping down some risks and possible abuses of the securities, but behind the fiery rhetoric lie many misunderstandings. CDSs have been made the fall guy for the collapse of institutions including Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc and bailout of American International Group. They've been called the epicenter of the crisis because they played a role in spreading the risks of bad mortgages and other assets globally, threatening systemic consequences from a large counterparty collapse.

Credit default swaps are used to protect against or speculate on the risk of a company, government or other borrower not paying back their debt. When a borrower fails, the protection buyer is paid the full amount insured. The contracts have enabled banks and investors to pass on asset risks to other investors, which in some cases may have reduced losses from toxic assets.

Swaps have also encouraged banks and insurers to take on more risk than they could handle, sometimes causing their collapse. But the tool itself is not to blame for lax risk management.

Michael McConnell, the director of national intelligence, predicted rising demand for scarce supplies of food and fuel, strategic competition over new technologies, and the spread of weapons of mass destruction. "WHAT I'M SUGGESTING - THERE'S AN INCREASED POTENTIAL FOR CONFLICT," McConnell said in a speech Thursday to intelligence professionals in Nashville, Tennessee.

"During the period of this assessment, out to 2025, the probability for conflict between nations and within nation-state entities will be greater," he said. Conditions for "large casualty terrorist attacks using chemical, biological, or less likely, nuclear materials" also will increase during that period, he said.

McConnell described a multi-polar world in 2025 shaped by the rise of China, India and Brazil, whose economies will by then match those of the western industrial states. "In terms of size, speed, and directional flow, the transfer of global wealth and economic power, now underway, as noted from West to East is without precedent in modern history," McConnell said. Territorial expansion and military rivalries are not likely but cannot be ruled out, he said.