"A number of major (new) Irans have been born in the region today. Egypt is a (new) Iran, whether you (the US-led West) accept it or not," reported the Iranian semi-official Fars News Agency, quoting Guards commander Major General Qassem Soleimani. Speaking to a reported crowd of 50,000 Basij forces, he addressed the United States and added, "Know that today Libya, Yemen and Bahrain are also (new) Irans. [These] great nations will stand together against the threat" of western powers, he said.

He also expressed his wish to die if enemies try to assassinate him, a suggestion posed by conservative experts testifying in the US Congress. "To those who think threats will spread fear amongst us, I will say this: that I ask God to grant me martyrdom at the hands of the enemy," Soleimani said. "I do not see (an assassination) as a threat but rather giving, helping along an old desire" for being martyred. Retired US Army General Jack Keane told the House of Representatives' Homeland Security Committee last month that Washington should start targeting Iranian officials, especially top commanders of the Revolutionary Guards Corps.

"I'm saying we put our hand around their throat right now in every interest they have," a former CIA agent, now with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies think-tank, said, "I don't think that you are going to really intimidate these people, get their attention, unless you shoot somebody."

They say the Muslim Brotherhood could take 45 percent of the seats up for grabs. The liberal Egyptian bloc coalition and the ultra-fundamentalist Nour party are competing for second place. Together, Islamist parties are expected to control a majority of parliamentary seats by March. This week's vote was the first of six stages of parliamentary elections that will last until then.

Continued success by Islamists will allow them to give Cairo's government and constitution a decidedly Islamist character. It could also lead Cairo to shift away from the West towards the Iranian axis. It will also diminish the influence of Cairo's caretaker junta, which has sought to maintain the Mubarak-era status quo and keep US foreign aid dollars - running into the billions per annum - flowing. Analysts say Islamists may also seek to annul the 1979 Egypt-Israel Peace Treaty, which could prompt Israel to seize the Sinai Peninsula for the fourth time in its history to create a strategic buffer zone.

After reaching the Suez Canal in 1967 and controlling the Sinai for twelve years, Israel ceded Sinai to Egypt under the 1979 treaty on condition it remains demilitarized. The Muslim Brotherhood, which birthed the virulently anti-Israel Hamas terror militia, might also seek to effectively annex Gaza. Should Hamas be triumphant in future PA elections, they would also gain a foothold in Judea and Samaria.

Tens of thousands of documents obtained by Bloomberg under the Freedom of Information Act showed that banks reaped an estimated $13 billion in profits thanks to the low-interest loans. JPMorgan, Bank of America, Citigroup, Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley accounted for $4.8 billion of that total. "Remember the great debate we had here over the 700 billion in TARP funds?" he said on the House floor Tuesday. "There was no debate over the 7.7 trillion the Fed gave the banks."

"Did Congress have a clue?" he continued. "There is another game going on way over our heads, and our constituents are struggling while the banks with the help of the Feds have captured control of our government. Now the rating services are threatening us, if we don't come up with a deal they'll downgrade US debt. Could the threat to our national sovereignty be any clearer?"

*Bloomberg reported November 28th - The amount of money the central bank parceled out was surprising even to Gary H Stern, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis from 1985 to 2009, who says he "wasn't aware of the magnitude." It dwarfed the Treasury Department's better-known $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP. Add up guarantees and lending limits, and the Fed had committed $7.77 trillion as of March 2009 to rescuing the financial system, more than half the value of everything produced in the US that year.

This conflict is, in fact, over hegemony, with the West seeking to defend at all costs its predominance in the Middle Eastern resource-rich regions. Demands are becoming louder for military attacks next year, to crush an ambitious Iran. In Berlin, the debate is continuing around whether to take part in a possible war. Whereas transatlantic-oriented forces are calling for just that, other circles, oriented toward a more clear rivalry with the USA, are demanding a durable imposition of western hegemony in the Middle East using cold war methods ("transformation through rapprochement"). The current developments throughout the Middle East could give those favoring military measures the advantage - possibly decisively.

The German Council on Foreign Relations (DGAP) recently recalled the cause for the renewed escalation of tensions. "Since the demise of British colonial rule and the announcement of the 1957 Eisenhower Doctrine," according to the think tank's recent analysis, the USA has been pursuing the objective of thwarting the rise of any Middle East country to become a regional predominating power - "if necessary by military means." "The growth of power and influence of a regional player" would "automatically be equated with loss of US power and influence in that region."

Washington has always sought, through "alliances and inter-alliance policies, to create a regional balance of power" that guarantees western hegemony in this resource-rich region. On the other hand, the declared objective of the Iranian elites - by no means only those of the current regime - is the use of the economic and political potentials of their country to become a hegemonic power at the Persian Gulf. With the crushing of Iraq, Iran's former rival, and the overthrow of the anti-Iranian Taliban in Afghanistan, attaining this objective has been greatly facilitated. Therefore, the conflict between the West and Iran - regardless of ideological wrappings - is simply a hegemonic conflict.

With its demand to strengthen sanctions for the time being, Berlin is still keeping all options open. However, the comprehensive arms buildup of Iran's Middle East rivals, in which Germany has significantly participated, has facilitated a military intervention.

The emergency action to stop the international financial system from freezing up again was prompted by rumours that a European bank was facing difficulties and could not raise money. Panic started to spread through the German bond markets, which threatened to result in a credit freeze for European banks.

British banks have been warned by the Financial Services Authority, the City watchdog, that they must make preparations for the collapse of the single currency. Downing Street sources insisted that the global economy was not facing a "Lehman's moment", in reference to the collapse of the American investment bank. However, a spokesman for the Prime Minister said: "Clearly there is a very serious situation in the financial markets at this time."

"We are experiencing a credit crunch and that central bank action is about trying to mitigate the effects of that credit crunch. They are ensuring they have the capacity to take action." The eurozone debt crisis has led to growing fears in financial markets about the stability of major European banks. Investors, particularly US money-market funds, are increasingly worried that the European banks are exposed to huge losses on loans they have made in Greece, Italy and other indebted eurozone countries.

The intervention by central banks led to a sharp increase in stock markets around the world. The FTSE-100 closed up 3.2 per cent, and the American Dow Jones index rose by 400 points.

It wasn't quite D-Day - Europe is going to require much bigger solutions than the quite limited band aid offered yesterday by the world's most powerful central bank - but it was the first bit of positive news the single currency has had for some time. What's essentially happened is that the Federal Reserve has agreed to step in and provide the cut-price dollar funding to eurozone banks which markets, fearing the worst about the future of the euro, have been refusing.

This funding strike was in turn threatening a second credit crunch, and another cataclysmic collapse in economic activity, with banks calling in their loans wholesale. Indeed, Downing Street said last night that the second credit crunch is already with us. The move came as key measures of financial stress soared off the scale to some of their highest levels since the Lehman insolvency of three years ago. Things have come to such a pass that almost any sign of movement by the authorities as the eurozone plunges headlong back into recession is counted a blessing.

Nonetheless, the euphoric reaction of stock markets may have been premature. Yesterday's actions help ease the immediate liquidity crisis, and may even buy a little more time, but they do nothing to address the underlying causes of Europe's gathering sovereign debt disaster.

Furthermore, there appears virtually no evidence to support the assumption in markets that the Fed's support presages much wider action to get on top of the crisis.

On the contrary, the catalogue of half measures proceeded apace on Monday, with European finance ministers finally agreeing proposals to leverage their main bail-out fund, the European Financial Stability Facility, only to find that markets have deteriorated to such an extent that the fund can no longer raise anything close to the sums of money originally intended let alone needed. The interwoven banking and sovereign debt crisis in the eurozone has become so dangerous for the world that the US Federal Reserve has been forced to take emergency action, acting as global lender of last resort to shore up Europe's banking system.

That it should have to do so as Germany and the European Central Bank hold back for legal reasons and refuse to commit decisive power adds a strange diplomatic twist. The move came once it was clear that Europe's prostrate banks would struggle to roll over $2 trillion (1.3 trillion pounds) of debts denominated in dollars. Data from ratings agency Fitch shows that US money markets have slashed funding for French banks by 69 per cent and German banks by 50 per cent. Strains have been ratcheting up over the past two weeks. European banks are mostly shut out of the dollar market, or only able to raise money for a week at a time.

The so-called "stress alarm" - the euro/dollar three-month cross currency basis swap - spiralled down to minus 166 points early on Wednesday, uncannily like the last days before the Lehman crisis metastasized in October 2008. There is little evidence yet that Berlin is willing to lift its veto on eurobonds or an ECB blitz. Chancellor Angela Merkel said it was "not appropriate" for Germany to drop its objections as a quid pro quo for backing from other EU states for treaty changes to police budgets. German finance minister Wolfgang Schauble said mass bond purchases and eurobonds are both illegal under EU treaties and remain "out of the question."

The drama always comes back to the ECB. Will it blink?

That would see Britain picking up a 450 million pounds bill for loans in 2011 alone, including 128 million pounds for just an extra mile of Rome's rail track. Debts for other years' loans would run into billions. Ukip's economics spokesman Godfrey Bloom said: "It's irresponsible for the EIB to continue handing out suicidal loans for projects these countries simply can't afford."

"And it's outrageous the UK taxpayer is again bailing out the type of lend-and-spend policies which got us into this mess." The EIB, run by EU states and with George Osborne among its governors, said: "We don't speculate about economic circumstances of member states."

His pronouncement opens up the possibility of space missionaries heading out to the stars to convert aliens to Christianity. Speaking on the eve of addressing the British Science Festival, Dr Consolmangno said he had no problem with science and religion co-existing together. But he dismissed Creationism and claimed that the revival of "intelligent design" - the controversial theory that only God can explain gaps in the theory of evolution - was "bad theology".

Dr Consolmango is one of a team of 12 astronomers working for the Vatican, said the Catholic Church had been supporting and funding science for centuries. He said the characteristics synonymous with having a soul - intelligence, free will, freedom to love and freedom to make decisions may not be unique to humans. 'Any entity - no matter how many tentacles it has has a soul,' he said.

The Pontifical Academy of Science, of which Stephen Hawking is a member, kept the senior cardinals and the Pope up-to-date with the latest scientific developments, he said. The discovery of aliens would raise huge theological problems for the Roman Catholic church that would make the debate over women priests, clerical abstinence and contraception pale into insignificance.

Water suppliers have been told to do more to tackle leaks and advise families and firms how to cut back on usage. It comes as a separate report brands Britons some of the biggest water wasters in Europe. Desperately needed rain is unlikely in the next few weeks and the Environment Agency report warns the drought could last until next summer.

The Agency claims central, eastern and south-east England are unlikely to see a full recovery from the drought until after 2012. This time last year much of Britain was covered in snow, which would melt to fill reservoirs. But this month Anglian Water was granted a drought permit to extract an extra 17 million litres a day from the River Nene until next April. In Sussex, South East Water says it will consider applying for a drought permit with its reservoirs at Ardingly and Arlington both just over a third full.

A spokesman said yesterday: "We want to see those reservoirs filling up sooner rather than later this winter in order to secure customers' supplies for next year." Parts of the Rivers Colne, Nene, Trent and Kennet are nearing the lowest levels ever recorded for November. Boats on 10 miles of the Kennet and Avon Canal, linking Reading and Bristol, were grounded due to low water. Environment Secretary Caroline Spelman said: "If we have another dry winter, there is a high risk that parts of the country will almost certainly be in drought next summer, so it's vital we plan ahead to meet this challenge."

Mr Hague blamed the radical Basij militia, whose volunteers have been turned on the regime's opponents, adding: "The idea that the Iranian authorities could not have protected our Embassy or that this assault could have taken place without some degree of regime consent is fanciful." All British diplomats were withdrawn from Iran on Wednesday, including Dominick Chilcott, the newly appointed ambassador.

The last left the country as Mr Hague rose to deliver his statement to the Commons. He denounced Iran's actions as a "flagrant breach" of its "international responsibilities" under the Vienna Convention, which guarantees the protection of diplomatic premises and personnel. "If any country makes it impossible for us to operate on their soil, they cannot expect to have a functioning Embassy here," he added.

That rampaging mob of 'students' storming the British Embassy in Tehran on Tuesday, lobbing petrol bombs, ransacking the building, burning the Union Jack and threatening to hold hostage terrified members of staff inside the compound, was a deeply worrying spectacle for those of us who have studied the Iranian regime over the years.

The mayhem followed a vote in Iran's parliament to downgrade diplomatic relations with Britain - a response to the tough new financial sanctions imposed by London last week over Iran's nuclear programme, after the International Atomic Energy Authority warned that Iran is getting ever closer to building a bomb. These protesters were clearly orchestrated by the Iranian regime, for the mayhem could never have taken place without sanction in a country where secret police stalk the streets, torture is endemic, criminals are executed in public and foreign embassies are closely guarded and monitored.

Far from being students, many of the thugs involved were elite members of Iran's paramilitary Basiji brigades, a hard-core volunteer outfit under the control of the country's Revolutionary Guards, who answer to the country's top cleric, the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

There were only 145 cases in the first six years of the warrant system. This means that one in four Britons sent overseas to face criminal charges since 2004 went last year. Serious concerns have emerged that the warrants are being used to extradite individuals accused of minor offences; Polish authorities have used them to pursue suspects accused of exceeding their overdraft limit or not paying for dessert.

The statistics on their use emerged ahead of a key Commons vote on Britain's lopsided extradition arrangements. Some 1,173 people, including both Britons and Europeans, were sent from the UK for trial last year compared with 699 in 2009/10, and just 178 in 2006/7. Tory MP Dominic Raab said last night: 'We've seen too many innocent British citizens go through the ordeal of extradition, not to mention appalling prison conditions, just to duck this issue. We need reform, and that includes re-negotiation of the European Arrest Warrant.'

The 24-hour walkout by two million workers is being staged amid union fury over plans to reform pensions which will involve members working longer and having to pay more. It is the biggest strike for over 30 years, with schools, hospitals, courts, transport and government all set to be hit by the walkout. But Mr Cameron told the House of Commons: 'So far the evidence would suggest that 40 per cent of schools are open.' He also said the country had full ambulance service cover and that just 18 out of 900 job centres were closed.

Making a Commons statement on the latest effects of today's action, Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude said that, as of 11am, 135,000 civil servants - less than a third - were on strike. He added: 'Most civil servants are going to work today as normal. We put in place rigorous contingency plans to ensure that, so far as possible, essential public services are maintained during such periods of industrial action. Only 16 of the 930 job centres are closed to the public.'

The euro and European shares surged on the news, which came after euro zone finance ministers agreed to ramp up the firepower of their bailout fund but acknowledged they may have to turn to the International Monetary Fund for more help. In a related move, Italy's central bank started emergency cash tenders for banks which have been squeezed particularly hard in recent weeks as Rome's borrowing costs have soared towards 8 percent, a level seen as unaffordable in the long term.

"We are now entering the critical period of 10 days to complete and conclude the crisis response of the European Union," Economic and Monetary Affairs Commissioner Olli Rehn said as EU finance ministers met.

Preparations have already been made for Ernst Uhrlau's retirement party next Wednesday when he steps down from his post as the head of the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), Germany's foreign intelligence agency, on his 65th birthday. The office of the chancellor has selected a posh location in Berlin for his farewell party and Angela Merkel herself is expected to attend. Uhrlau, a member of the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD), will be turning over his post to Gerhard Schindler, a member of the business-friendly Free Democratic Party.

At events like this, the successes of the person retiring are usually celebrated. In Uhrlau's case, topping the list are his efforts to review the problematic history of the BND's creation after World War II. It has long been known that around 10 percent of the employees at the BND and its predecessor organization once served under SS chief Heinrich Himmler in Nazi Germany. In 2011, Uhrlau appointed an independent commission of historians to research the agency's Nazi roots.

Now, only one week before Uhrlau's retirement, the commission has uncovered what is a true historical scandal. The researchers have found that the BND destroyed the personnel files of around 250 BND officials in 2007. The agency has confirmed that this happened. The commission claims that the destroyed documents include papers on people who were "in significant intelligence positions in the SS, the SD (the intelligence agency of the SS and the Nazi Party) or the Gestapo." They added that some of the individuals had even been investigated after 1945 for possible war crimes. Historian Klaus-Dietmar Henke, spokesman for the commission, told Spiegel Online he was "somewhat stunned" by the occurrence.