"Pakistan is willing to do its best with the international partners and, most notably, the governments of Afghanistan and the United States, to acquit itself of this high responsibility (in Afghanistan)," she told the 193-nation assembly.

But her remarks came after Pakistan warned the United States to stop accusing it of playing a double game with Islamist militants and as it showered praise on China.

Now the US must deal with the threat of a jihad that security analysts warn would create serious problems for the US as it tries to end violence originating in Pakistan - and the Pakistani government can't be trusted, even if there's no alternative. The religious leaders threatening jihad are associated with the Sunni Ittehad Council (SIC), a coalition of local groups. According to Pakistani news reports, the council issued a press release declaring that it is illegitimate to call the US a superpower because only Allah deserves the title.

The scholars urged the Pakistani government to end the country's role in the war on terrorism and to try to establish a new international bloc made up of China, Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan. An analyst told FoxNews.com that the threat should be taken seriously.

The program, called Disaster SNAP (supplemental nutrition assistance program), was created by the federal government and is administered by the State Department of Public Welfare. Because of unexpectedly large turnouts, the application process was moved from Disaster Recovery Centers in Philadelphia to the 12 state offices in neighborhoods citywide.

Residents, based on income, household size and proof of flood-damage can receive up to a month's worth of food stamps. Those already receiving food stamps are eligible for partial relief, to the extent that their prior month's food supply was damaged. Throughout the day Monday, and beginning early Tuesday morning, many state offices had lines stretching for blocks with confused residents, many alerted by other neighbors that relief was available.

During my recent stint in the Obama administration as director of the Office of Management and Budget, it was clear to me that the country's political polarization was growing worse - harming Washington's ability to do the basic, necessary work of governing. If you need confirmation of this, look no further than the recent debt-limit debacle, which clearly showed that we are becoming two nations governed by a single Congress - and that paralyzing gridlock is the result.

So what to do? To solve the serious problems facing our country, we need to minimize the harm from legislative inertia by relying more on automatic policies and depoliticized commissions for certain policy decisions. In other words, radical as it sounds, we need to counter the gridlock of our political institutions by making them a bit less democratic.

German finance minister Wolfgang Schauble said it would be a folly to boost the EU's bail-out machinery (EFSF) beyond its 440 billion euros lending limit by deploying leverage to up to 2 trillion euros, perhaps by raising funds from the European Central Bank. "I don't understand how anyone in the European Commission can have such a stupid idea. The result would be to endanger the AAA sovereign debt ratings of other member states. It makes no sense," he said.

Mr Schauble told Washington to mind its own businesss after President Barack Obama rebuked EU leaders for failing to recapitalise banks and allowing the debt crisis to escalate to the point where it is "scaring the world". "It's always much easier to give advice to others than to decide for yourself. I am well prepared to give advice to the US government," he said.

The comments risk irritating the White House. US Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner has been a key driver of plans to give the EFSF enough firepower to shore up Italy and Spain, fearing a drift into "cascading default, bank runs and catastrophic risk" without dramatic action. The danger for Germany is that America will lose patience, with unpredictable consequences. The US Federal Reserve is currently propping up the European banking system in a variety of ways, including dollar swaps.

Markets across the world ignored the mixed signals about the true scope of EU rescue measures, convinced that EU leaders have a "grand plan" up their sleeves and will unveil the details after the Bundestag has voted on Thursday on the earlier July deal to revamp the fund.

"Like the arrogant powers that are present near our marine borders, we will also have a powerful presence close to American marine borders," the head of the Navy, Rear Admiral Habibollah Sayyari said, according to the official IRNA news agency. Speaking at a ceremony marking the 31st anniversary of the start of the 1980-1988 war with Iraq, Sayyari gave no details of when such a deployment could happen or the number or type of vessels to be used.

The declaration comes just weeks after Turkey said it would host a NATO early warning radar system which will help spot missile threats from outside Europe, including potentially from Iran. The decision has angered Tehran which had enjoyed close relations with Ankara. And it comes a few months after Iran sent warships through the Suez canal, after the fall of former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, the first time the Islamic Republic had deployed navy vessels in the Mediterranean.

The United States and Israel have not ruled out military action against Iran if diplomacy fails to stop it getting nuclear weapons. Tehran denies it is developing nuclear arms saying its atomic program is for purely peaceful purposes. Iran has dismissed the threats, warning that it will respond by hitting US interests in the Gulf and Israel if any such attack happened. Analysts say Tehran could retaliate by launching hit-and-run strikes in the Gulf and by closing the Strait of Hormuz, the waterway where about 40 percent of all traded oil passes.

Mr Rastani said: "We don't really care whether they're going to fix the economy, our job is to make money from it. The 1930s depression wasn't just about a market crash. There were some people who were prepared to make money from that crash. I think anyone can do that."

"It's an opportunity. When the market crashes, if you know what to do, if you have the right plan to set up, you can make a lot of money from this." Describing the current economic turmoil as a "cancer", Mr Rastani said the rescue package being put together by governments to save the euro zone was doomed to failure. He said: "I'm fairly confident the euro is going to crash and its going to fall pretty hard, because markets are ruled right now by fear."

A proposed 2.6 trillion pounds euro-zone rescue package is expected to be announced within days and could be in place within weeks. But Mr Rastani told BBC TV it was "wishful thinking" to believe governments could prevent another recession. "Governments don't rule the world," he said. "Goldman Sachs rules the world. Goldman Sachs does not care about this rescue package." Other financial experts slammed the comments as "insensitive and crass". Max Johnson, a foreign exchange broker at Currency Solutions, said: "To say anyone can make money from a crash is massively out of touch with the man in the street who, right now, is really feeling the economic downturn and market dip."

But many seemed to support Mr Rastani and took to the internet to praise his honesty. On the trader's Facebook page, Rob Russo said: "God bless you for speaking the truth on the interview with the BBC. Many, millions, will be caught completely unprepared." "Western power and prosperity will be gone if we don't wake up our fellow citizens to this coming crisis and help them save their wealth to have something left to rebuild with later." "Thanks again, we need more honest men in this world to tell the truth to the sleeping masses."

But to spare him the shame of a 30-second walk in public, the private company which transports prisoners sent a fortified van across three counties to drive him there at an estimated cost of 1,000 pounds.

This made him late for a separate appearance on an attempted robbery charge at Oxford Crown Court, where Judge Tom Corrie condemned the waste of taxpayer cash. 'I'm not quite sure why he couldn't be walked across the street rather than sending a van from Southampton,' he said. 'I wonder how much public money has been wasted.'

Thomas had been held at the police station after being arrested over two alleged public order offences. GEOAmey, the company responsible for transporting prisoners, is based in Oxford, a few miles from Banbury. However, it claims, its local staff were all busy so it decided to send a van on the two-hour journey from Southampton to avoid walking Thomas between the two buildings and to protect his identity. A spokesman insisted: 'Police wouldn't expect us to turn up at Banbury, handcuff a prisoner and take him down the street and to the court.

GEOAmey is paid more than 90 million pounds a year to transport defendants between prisons, police stations and courts on behalf of the Ministry of Justice. Glyn Travis, of the Prison Officers' Association, said: 'This is a prime example of how the privatised system is a constant drain on public resources. In the past police would have been able to walk him to the station themselves but now because of the contracts with private companies they are not able to do so. It is wrong for the contractors to think they needed to move a van nearly 100 miles to protect the human rights of the prisoner.'

The gold price has a history of extreme volatility on its climb to record highs. Between May and June 2006 the price fell by 25 per cent. Between March and November 2008 the price fell 33 per cent.

"Short term, there's clear demand destruction in gold derivatives right now, just as happened during Lehman's collapse," says Adrian Ash, head of research at BullionVault, which provides an online gold market for private investors. "The dollar and Japanese yen rally also continues to hurt gold prices," he added. "Long term, gold tends to fall when other investments - shares, bonds, even cash - offer a better opportunity. So it's hard to see this drop as the end of gold's 10-year bull market because everything else looks just as bad today as it did last month," Mr Ash said.

Analysts have found it difficult to forecast when gold will find a floor, but see support coming relatively soon. "As gold exchange-trade funds are hardly registering any outflows at the moment, the strong price correction should essentially be due to profit-taking of speculative financial investors," said Carsten Fritsch, an analyst at Commerzbank. "Net long positions fell for the second straight week by 14 per cent in the week ending September 20."

The gold bubble is only likely to end when confidence in central banks' policymakers across the globe has been restored. With economic indicators likely to remain gloomy for some time, the bubble doesn't look ready to pop just yet.

Andreas Vosskuhle, head of the constitutional court, said politicians do not have the legal authority to sign away the birthright of the German people without their explicit consent. "The sovereignty of the German state is inviolate and anchored in perpetuity by basic law. It may not be abandoned by the legislature (even with its powers to amend the constitution)," he said. "There is little leeway left for giving up core powers to the EU. If one wants to go beyond this limit - which might be politically legitimate and desirable - then Germany must give itself a new constitution. A referendum would be necessary. This cannot be done without the people," he told newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine.

The extraordinary interview comes just days before the Bundestag votes on a bill to revamp the EU's 440 billion euros bail-out fund (EFSF), enabling it to purchase EMU bonds pre-emptively and recapitalise banks. Tensions are running high after it emerged over the weekend that officials are working on plans sketched by the US Treasury and the European Commission to "leverage" the firepower of the EFSF to 2 trillion euros, in conjunction with lending from the European Central Bank.

Carsten Schneider, finance spokesman for the Social Democrats, demanded that Chancellor Angela Merkel and finance minister Wolfgang Schauble clarify their "true intentions " before the vote on Thursday. "A new multi-trillion programme is being cooked up in Washington and Brussels, while the wool is being pulled over the eyes of the Bundestag and German public. This is unacceptable," he said.

Prince Hermann Otto zu Solms-Hohensolms-Lich, the Bundestag's deputy president and finance chief for the Free Democrats (FDP) in the ruling coalition, expressed outrage over the secret plans. "Unless the German finance minister can give an immediate assurance that there will be no leveraged formula, I will not vote for this law. We might as well dispense with months of negotiations if all this means is that the Bundestag will be circumvented and served cold left-overs," he said

Germany is marveling at a breath-taking shake up of political roles. For five years, Weidmann served as an economic adviser to Chancellor Angela Merkel. During that period, he was loyal to her, even seeming too keen at times. But now, in his new role as president of the Bundesbank, he has become one of her fiercest adversaries.

Weidmann has criticized decisions related to the euro bailout as "inconsistent" and "highly risky." He has called on politicians in Berlin to change their course, and he has been advocating "the Bundesbank's principles regarding stability." All of those things put him at odds with top officials at the European Central Bank (ECB).

Behind the glass facade of ECB headquarters in Frankfurt, a fierce battle over fundamental beliefs has been smoldering for months. ECB President Jean-Claude Trichet and the majority of his colleagues are willing to rush to the aid of embattled EU finance ministers and to make major purchases of the sovereign bonds of debt-ridden euro-zone countries, such as Greece, Portugal and Italy.

For his part, Weidmann is strictly opposed to these measures. He believes they amount to an unacceptable means of financing states through effectively printing money. In fact, he has come to assume the mantle of the last staunch defender of monetary stability.

Twice in the last decade Israeli leaders - Ehud Barak in 2000 and Ehud Olmert in 2008 - have accepted Palestinian statehood. Dozens of settlements would have been uprooted and others concentrated in blocs along the border, in exchange for which Palestine would have receive compensatory territory from within Israel proper. The result would have been a contiguous Palestinian state in the equivalent of the territory taken by Israel in the 1967 Six Day War, with Jerusalem as a shared capital.

Palestinian leaders effectively said no. That's because the deal would have required one significant reciprocal concession: confining the return of the descendants of Palestinian refugees from the 1948 war to a Palestinian state. The main obstacle to an agreement, then, is not territory or settlements but the Palestinian insistence on the "right" to demographically destroy the Jewish state.

Absurdly, the Palestinian leadership is demanding that Palestinians immigrate not only to a Palestinian state but also to a neighbouring state, Israel. That demand, of course, would lead to the internal collapse of the Jewish state - which is precisely the goal. This is why Palestinian leaders have rejected President Barack Obama's call that they recognise Israel as the homeland of the Jewish people.

Instead of encouraging Palestinian rejectionism and fantasies of a "right of return" to the Jewish state, the international community should be asking Palestinian leaders some hard questions: Why have you rejected every offer for statehood - going back decades? And do you really expect Israeli Jews to accept an agreement that would threaten the only state in the world in which the Jewish people is sovereign? The UN vote will only reinforce Israeli fears about a Palestinian state. The inevitable result will be to deepen the Palestinian-Israeli tragedy and distance us even further from a peaceful and mutually just solution.

Mr Abbas last week urged the council in New York to back a state with pre-1967 borders. Israel reiterated its call for peace talks without preconditions. The Security Council is expected to refer the Palestinian request to a special committee - which includes all 15 council members - which will examine it and make a recommendation. The Palestinian envoy to the UN, Riyad Mansour, said two-thirds of the General Assembly members supported a Palestinian state.

"We hope the Security Council will synchronise itself with this moment of history and allow Palestine to become a member at the United Nations," he said. Direct talks between Israel and the Palestinians stalled in September 2010. The Palestinians walked out in protest at the building of Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank.

In his speech at the UN, Mr Netanyahu said that the core of the conflict was not settlements, but the refusal of the Palestinians to recognise Israel as a Jewish state.

Barbara Plett, BBC UN correspondent writes, "The threat of confrontation has triggered a diplomatic scramble to neutralise the effects of a possible US veto. The Security Council has to decide whether to refer the Palestinian request to a committee or postpone consideration of it, given the threat of an American veto. Both would buy time for efforts by international powers to steer the diplomatic focus away from the membership application and onto peace talks.

But the Palestinians are not happy with proposals presented so far, and may use allies on the council to push their agenda. It is not clear how much support they have. Analysts say the council is moving into uncharted territory: it has received a membership bid from an entity that is not a state, which has both massive international support, and opposition from the world's most powerful nation.

Mr Bashar's government is accused of a violent crackdown that the UN says has killed more than 2,700 people. The president denies the allegations, saying he is tackling armed gangs of terrorists. In the latest violence, Syrian tanks bombarded a strategic town in the restive central province of Homs on Sunday night, injuring three people, activists and residents say.

Addressing the UN General Assembly in New York on Monday, Mr Moulaem said foreign governments had sought to undermine the delicate balance between Syria's different religious groups. "How can we otherwise explain media provocations, financing and arming religious extremism?" he said. "What purpose could this serve other than total chaos that would dismember Syria?"

Mr Moulaem also said that economic sanctions recently imposed by the US and the EU were hurting "the interests and the basic daily subsistence needs of the Syrian people". The UN Security Council has condemned the government crackdown on protests, which erupted in March. Events from Syria are hard to verify as international journalists have been largely prevented from reporting there, but the BBC's Lyse Doucet has just arrived in Damascus.

She says it is extremely hard to get people to talk about politics, except for those who still defend the president. Mr Assad still has some support, she adds, but the brutal crackdown against protests in the suburbs, and in cites and villages outside Damascus is diminishing that base.

At least two people were killed and another four were reported missing. As the storm approached, the authorities ordered the evacuation of more than 100,000 people in the central Albay province. The typhoon is expected to continue across the country, before blowing across the South China Sea towards southern China on Thursday. The storm - with wind gusts of up to 170km/h (105mph) - is now making its way across the island of Luzon, which is home to more than half the Philippine population, the BBC's Kate McGeown in the Philippines reports.

Four fishermen are missing, and more than 50 more have been rescued after their boats capsized in rough seas. There are fears that the death toll would rise further. Meteorologists also warn that huge - 12ft (4m) - waves are expected to slam the shoreline. "The damage is expected to be big," Richard Gordon, head of the Philippines National Red Cross, told the BBC. "Right now there are already power interruptions. Our agriculture will again be damaged here. And certainly in terms of infrastructure there are some bridges that are flooded right now."

The Philippines suffers frequent typhoons - but Nesat is thought to be the largest this year. "This typhoon is very wide in diameter, about 650km, and covers most of Luzon," Graciano Yumul, who supervises the country's weather bureau, told reporters. It comes almost exactly two years after Typhoon Ketsana killed more than 400 people.

The latest arrests include disorderly conduct, resisting arrest, obstructing governmental administration and assaulting a police officer, according to Browne. The protests started September 17 in lower Manhattan and are aimed at drawing attention to the role powerful financial interests played in America's spiraling economy. "We've got a whole bunch of people sitting in Washington that can't figure it out," said organizer Bill Csapo.

The mission is for " 20,000 people to flood into lower Manhattan, set up beds, kitchens, peaceful barricades and occupy Wall Street for a few months," the official "Occupy Wall Street" website read. By Saturday, the site had a series of updates on arrests, including the exact location of a police van holding arrestees. One was described as having a "very bad concussion, possibly life threatening" and urged participants to demand medicare care for those affected.

"It's just letting people know that it's going on," Csapo said on the website. "We need to call the police and tell them to let these people go." CNN called police officials, but they declined to comment further on the extent of injuries or specific use of force. But descriptions by the website and some protesters present affirm the use of mace and Tasers.