City police have stepped up an effort to quell the movement since they occupied the building on 18 November, with the document stating: "It is likely that activists aspire to identify other locations to occupy, especially those they identify with capitalism. Intelligence suggests that urban explorers are holding a discussion at the Sun Street squat. This may lead to an increase in urban exploration activity at abandoned or high profile sites in the capital." The Occupy movement is listed alongside threats posed by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Columbia (FARC), Al Qaeda and Belarusian terrorists.

"Just the words themselves are enough to deceive the public opinion and this is what we see at the moment," Occupy spokesman Spyro Van Leemnen told Yahoo! News. "We are clearly nothing to do with extremists or terrorists, we are a peaceful group and we do use direct action to raise our point but definitely not terrorism." Commenting on the document, City of London Police said: "[We] work with the community to deter and detect terrorist activity and crime in the City in a way that has been identified nationally as good practice."

"We've seen crime linked to protests in recent weeks, notably around groups entering office buildings, and with that in mind we continue to brief key trusted partners on activity linked to protests."

European share prices and the euro fell on Tuesday after ratings agency Standard Poor's warned it may downgrade 15 of the 17 euro-zone nations, including triple 'A' nations like GERMANY, as a result of the euro crisis. European policymakers criticized the timing of the announcement, just three days ahead of a make-or-break EU summit on Thursday and Friday, and said the agency hadn't taken into account proposals for far-reaching reforms of the euro zone's debt rules agreed by the leaders of France and Germany on Monday.

Standard & Poor's had warned late on Monday that it may carry out an unprecedented mass downgrade of euro-zone countries if EU leaders fail to reach an agreement on how to solve the debt crisis at this week's summit. Luxembourg Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker said the S&P announcement was "like a knockout blow" to countries that were cutting their budget deficits. "I FIND WHAT STANDARD & POOR IS SAYING COMPLETELY EXAGGERATED," Juncker said in an interview on Deutschlandfunk radio early on Tuesday. "I have to wonder that this news reaches us out of the clear blue sky at the time of the European summit; THIS CAN'T BE A COINCIDENCE."

Bank of France governor Christian Noyer, a member of the governing council of the European Central Bank, said on Tuesday that ratings agencies were in danger of themselves worsening the euro-zone debt crisis. "THE AGENCIES WERE ONE OF THE MOTORS OF THE CRISIS IN 2008. ARE THEY BECOMING A MOTOR IN THE CURRENT CRISIS? That's a real question we all need to think about," he told a conference on corporate finance in Paris.

Hans Michelbach, a member of parliament for the conservative Christian Social Union party, the Bavarian sister party to Merkel's Christian Democrats, called the S&P warning "an arbitrary decision with no relation to reality." The aim of the announcement, he said, had evidently been to create additional nervousness ahead of the EU summit. HE CALLED ON THE EU TO CRACK DOWN ON THE "UNCONTROLLED GAMES" BEING PLAYED BY THE RATINGS AGENCIES.

Only one in six people in Britain think they live as part of a traditional family, according to claims by a new think-tank yesterday. Apparently, only a small minority come from 'traditional nuclear families' with married parents and two or more children, the Centre for the Modern Family said. Its report said the traditional family is out of date and that the Government should consider ways to support alternative family forms that are adopted by the majority.

But the group's research and findings were criticised by analysts who said that according to official statistics, six out of ten of all families with children are led by two married parents. Family researcher and author Jill Kirby said: 'A large majority of couples are still married. By painting the traditional family as a tiny minority this report is giving a false picture of life in Britain. It makes one wonder what their agenda is. Their data is absurdly fixed. It is at odds with the official data on the family.'

And one of the panel of experts that drew up the report, financed by the Scottish Widows insurance group, acknowledged that the low figure thrown up by its research was connected to the way the questions were framed. The report comes at a key moment for Government policy on the family, with a gap appearing to widen between supporters of ministers such as Iain Duncan Smith who would like to see the tax and benefit system changed to support married couples, and those who believe state support for marriage should take a low priority.

The report said: 'The majority of people feel their family is unrepresented by politicians, the media and advertising, with 52 per cent claiming the Government does not take their family set-up into account. The findings indicate family structures are becoming increasingly diverse. A quarter of all couples are childless, and one in five lives alone. As a result of this, half of the population believe society is out of date in its view of the family.'

Not on the evidence of Monday's press conference by Nicolas Sarkozy and Angela Merkel, where any agreement that might have been reached was about as clear as mud. Nor was there anything in what they said to address the immediate crisis. To the contrary, they merely reaffirmed the old position - the European Central Bank must not act as lender of last resort to sovereigns and eurobonds are out of the question. The upswing in markets is being called a "relief rally", but relief about what?

There was no solution offered to the looming funding crisis faced by Italy and Spain - and perhaps others too - and there was no plan for growth. Still, no matter; markets are determined to believe that salvation is at hand. Now obviously, it is always a mistake to read too much into the short-term movement of stock markets, and particularly the relatively common phenomenon of the pre-Christmas rally.

The cynical view of such rallies is that they are largely driven by the upcoming bonus season. With the annual scramble for bonuses already well under way, fund managers tend to plunge in for fear of getting left behind and underperforming their benchmarks. Quantitative easing in the UK and the US is also helping; investors are being driven out of low-yielding government bonds into higher risk securities. Recession in Britain this quarter and next, already pretty much pre-cooked, may soon prompt the Bank of England to increase the present programme of QE still further to something approaching the 200 billion pounds spent in the last round a couple of years back.

So far, talks seem to have concentrated almost entirely on putting in place an effective framework for controlling the fiscally ill-disciplined. It's being called "fiscal union", but as my colleague, Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, has already pointed out, this is not fiscal union at all, but merely a toughened-up version of the old stability and growth pact. It offers no prospect of support for countries that get themselves into difficulty, only punishment.

Whether any of this is enough to justify the optimism of equity markets remains to be seen. Either way, it doesn't look like good news for Britain, whose primary interest is the immediate problem of preventing a recession, not getting bogged down in the politics of treaty change. A toxic mix of the two - recession in Europe and politically explosive treaty change - still looks all too possible.

The Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party, as expected, emerged with the largest share with 36.6 per cent of the vote. Defying expectations, the far more funadamentalist al-eNour - the "Party of Light" - emerged in second place with 24.4 per cent. It is backed by Egypt's growing community of Salafists, adherents of one of the most puritanical strains of Islam.

With the moderately Islamist al-Wesat winning 4.3 per cent of the vote, religious parties are just shy of a two-thirds majority that would give them the power to draft a new constitution without reference to secular rivals, which made a poor showing. The rise of al-Nour has caused particular alarm among liberals. Their leaders openly espouse the introduction of the harshest interpretation of Islamic law. They call for women to be segregated and veiled, the ban of alcohol, the stoning of adulterers and the amputation of the hands of thieves.

Eurozone states should face greater checks on their budgets and sanctions if they run up deficits, they said. Mr Sarkozy said talks on a new treaty should be completed by March, to ensure such a crisis never happened again. The Paris talks come ahead of an EU summit on Friday that is being seen as crucial for the future of the single currency.

The announcement, and austerity measures unveiled in Rome over the weekend, led to Italy's long-term borrowing rate falling below 6% on Monday afternoon - the lowest it has been since October. Mr Sarkozy said things in Europe "cannot continue as they are" and that the Franco-German wish was for "a forced march toward re-establishing confidence in the eurozone".

"We are conscious of the gravity of the situation and of the responsibility that rests on our shoulders," he said. Mrs Merkel said France and Germany were "absolutely determined" to maintain a stable euro and wanted to see "structural changes which go beyond agreements".

"Both Chancellor Merkel and President Sarkozy have made concessions - the Germans have accepted that the European Court of Justice will not be able to veto budgets, but President Sarkozy has had to accept automatic sanctions for those who break the rules. As for Britain, the PM will face a tough decision over whether he tries to win back powers from Europe in exchange for British support for treaty change. The biggest doubt that hangs over all of this is firstly time - the negotiations will go on for months. And then there is the underlying reality - none of these measures explains how the huge debt mountains will be brought time at a time of almost zero growth."

That designation means there is a 50% chance of a downgrade from the firm. The move would come as a surprise to markets which had seen strong gains earlier in the day. S&P refused to comment on the reports. The French, German and UK stock exchanges ended the day between 0.3 and 1.1% up. However following the reports of a possible downgrade, the Dow Jones lost some of its early gains.

"I felt like I was invaded," she told CBS 2's Dave Carlin. Sherman says a week-long Thanksgiving holiday with family in New York ended with an ordeal that started when the screeners wanted to check the bulge from Sherman's colostomy bag. "This is private for me. It's bad enough that I have it," she said. "I had to pull it from my sweatpants and I had to pull my underwear, my underwear down. You don't do that to anybody," she added. "I felt like I was invaded."

The TSA released a statement Sunday, apologizing to Zimmerman but disputing her story. "TSA contacted the passenger to apologize that she feels she had an unpleasant screening experience; however, TSA does not include strip searches in its protocols and a strip search did not occur in this case," the statement read. State Senator Michael Gianaris of Queens wonders how the TSA can be so sure. He says with no cameras in the private screening rooms, it is a screener's word against the passenger's.

"It's outrageous," he said. "What they need to find out is exactly what happened and if someone crossed the line they need to be penalized."

"I missed my flight and I had to wait two and a half hours for the next one," Zimmerman said.

After meeting in Paris, they announced that an unprecedented bilateral agreement between the two countries will be sent to the President of the European Council, Herman Van Rompuy, on Wednesday. It will then be discussed at an EU-wide summit on Friday, with a view to officials drafting the new treaty and putting it to all the nations of Europe. But although both Mrs Merkel and Mr Sarkozy said they wanted all 27 European Union countries - including Britain - to sign up, they made clear the 17 eurozone members would simply go ahead on their own anyway.

Mrs Merkel said: "It's a historic choice - we both believe that the most important thing is friendship between France and Germany."

"We had decades of terrible war and 70 years of peace - we need to understand each other and accept our differences. This is proof of our absolute determination that the stability of the euro is preserved. We have come to a close agreement; there is close cooperation between France and Germany."

Argentine patrol commanders carrying out interceptions near the South American coast told Spanish captains they were in violation of Argentina's "legal" blockade of sea channels to the Falklands. The warning has been backed up in a letter to Aetinape, the Spanish fishing vessels association from the Argentine embassy in Madrid warning boats in the area that "Falklands, South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands and adjoining maritime spaces are an integral part of the Argentine territory."

The confrontation strategy targetting foreign boats marks an escalation of tensions in seas that the Duke of Cambridge, a Flight Lieutenant with the RAF, is set to patrol during a tour of duty next year. The Duke is to be deployed to the Falklands next February as part of routine training duties. Commanders would face the dilemma of despatching the Royal to take part in operations to monitor or contain the Argentine challenge. President Cristina Kirchner has adopted a steadily more beligerent stance towards Britain's South Atlantic possessions.

A newly formed gathering of South American nations meeting in Venezeula backed Argentina's sovereignty demands at the weekend. Argentina's claim over the Falklands was backed by a newly formed block of South American and Caribbean countries, CELAC, on Saturday with unanimous approval. Mrs Kirchner used the last UN General Assembly meeting to put Argentina's claims of sovereignty over the Falklands on a par with Palestinian claims to statehood.

But that debate, experts say, misses large parts of the bigger picture. An increasingly isolated Iran alarms not just Israel and the West but its Gulf neighbors, especially longtime foe Saudi Arabia, and they are already fighting back - and the confrontation goes well beyond simply tightening sanctions. From proxy wars in Iraq and Syria to computer worm attacks and unexplained explosions in Iran - to allegations of an assassination plot in Washington - a confrontation once kept behind the scenes is breaking into increasingly open view.

The storming of Britain's Tehran embassy last week - and the tit-for-tat shutdown of Iran's embassy in London - were just the latest signs that already limited dialogue is beginning to break down. That, analysts say, is inherently dangerous. "With Iran, you have a government that is increasingly isolated and acting in increasingly unpredictable ways," says Jon Alterman, director of the Middle East program at the Center for Strategic and National Studies in Washington.

Western intelligence officials said the Islamic Republic had initiated plans to disperse long-range missiles, high explosives, artillery and guards units to key defensive positions. The order was given in response to the mounting international pressure over Iran's nuclear programme. Preparation for a confrontation has gathered pace following last month's report by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna that produced evidence that Iran was actively working to produce nuclear weapons. The Iranian leadership fears the country is being subjected to a carefully co-ordinated attack by Western intelligence and security agencies to destroy key elements of its nuclear infrastructure.

Recent explosions have added to the growing sense of paranoia within Iran, with the regime fearing it will be the target of a surprise military strike by Israel or the US. Its ballistic missile programme suffered a major setback on November 12 after an explosion at the regime's main missile testing facility at Bidganeh, about 30 miles west of Tehran. At least 17 people died, including General Hassan Tehrani Moghaddam, the head of Iran's missile research programme.

The IAEA report said Iranian scientists had worked to develop a missile capable of carrying nuclear warheads. Security analysts described Iran's missile advances as "a turning point" that had "profound strategic implications". Last week another mysterious explosion caused significant damage to Iran's uranium conversion facility at Isfahan.

"It looks like the 21st century form of war," said Patrick Clawson of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a Washington think tank, told the Los Angeles Times. "It does appear that there is a campaign of assassinations and cyber war, as well as the semi-acknowledged campaign of sabotage." Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's spiritual leader, issued a directive to the heads of all the country's military, intelligence and security organisations to take all necessary measures to protect the regime.

Iranian officials called the blast an accident. Perhaps it was. Decades of international sanctions have left Iran struggling to obtain technology and spare parts for military programs and commercial industries, leading in some cases to dangerous working conditions. However, many former US intelligence officials and Iran experts believe that the explosion - the most destructive of at least two dozen unexplained blasts in the last two years - was part of a covert effort by the US, Israel and others to disable Iran's nuclear and missile programs. The goal, the experts say, is to derail what those nations fear is Iran's quest for nuclear weapons capability and to stave off an Israeli or US airstrike to eliminate or lessen the threat.

"It looks like the 21st century form of war," said Patrick Clawson, who directs the Iran Security Initiative at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a Washington think tank. "It does appear that there is a campaign of assassinations and cyber war, as well as the semi-acknowledged campaign of sabotage." Many Western experts are convinced that American and Israeli engineers secretly fed the Stuxnet computer worm into Iran's nuclear program in 2010. The virus reportedly caused centrifuges used to enrich uranium to spin out of control and shatter. Neither the US nor Israeli government has acknowledged any role in the apparent cyber-attack.

Nor did anyone claim responsibility after two senior nuclear physicists were killed, and a third wounded, by bombs attached to their cars or nearby motorcycles in January and November last year. Militants waving pictures of one of the slain scientists stormed the British Embassy in Tehran last week, setting fires and causing extensive damage. Several European countries recalled their envoys from Iran after the British government closed its embassy and expelled Iranian diplomats from London.

Like the deaths, the explosions have drawn special scrutiny in the think tanks of Washington, where Iran watchers have tracked reports of unexplained blasts in Iranian gas pipelines, oil installations and military facilities. In October, Iranian news services reported three such explosions in a 24-hour period. The blasts killed two people. Another large blast was reported last week in Esfahan, Iran's third-largest city. Whatever the cause, headlines about unsolved killings, unexplained explosions and sinister computer viruses have rattled Iranians, especially those who work in the nuclear program, analysts said. Perhaps that's the point. "All these things have a profound effect," Clawson said. "You have to watch your back when you go to work. You're not certain what's going to happen when you turn on your computer. You're not certain whether you can talk to your colleagues."

The evidence of an extensive Western covert program against Tehran, and Iranian retaliation, is now too obvious to ignore. Asked whether the United States, in cooperation with Israel, was now engaged in a covert war against Iran's nuclear program that may include the Stuxnet virus, the blowing-up of facilities and the assassination or kidnapping of scientists, one recently retired US official privy to up-to-date intelligence would not deny it.

"It's safe to say the Israelis are very active," the official said, adding about US efforts: "Everything that [GOP presidential candidate] Mitt Romney said we should be doing - tough sanctions, covert action and pressuring the international community - are all of the things we are actually doing." Though the activities are classified, a senior Obama administration official also would not deny that such a program was under way. He indicated that the US was not involved in every action, referring to recent alleged explosions at Isfahan and elsewhere. But, he added: "I wouldn't assume that everything we do is coordinated."

In September, the head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, Fereydoun Abbasi-Davani, accused Great Britain, Israel and the US of conducting attacks on him and other Iranian scientists."Six years ago the intelligence service of the UK began collecting information and data regarding my past, my family, the number of children," Abbasi-Davani told a news conference at the annual conference of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna. Abbasi-Davani, who was said to have been wounded in a 2010 car bomb explosion, said the attacks were carried out by Israel with the "support of the intelligence services of the United States and England."

US officials alleged in October that agents acting for Iran's Revolutionary Guard, which has increasingly exerted control over the Tehran regime, were involved in a plot to kill that Saudi ambassador to Washington in a restaurant. Iran denied the allegations. Then, on Sunday, in what may have been another escalation, Iran's news agency reported that Iranian armed forces shot down an unmanned US spy plane that illegally crossed the country's eastern border.