"There is no alternative to this decision and no going back on it and if the United States vetoes it, we will continue to knock on the door of the UN Security Council seeking full Palestinian UN membership," he told AFP. The comments from Shaath, a member of the Fatah party led by Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas, came after The New York Times reported that Washington was trying to put together a new peace talks proposal that would convince the Palestinians to hold off seeking membership at the United Nations.

Washington has said it will veto any Palestinian bid, but has made it clear it would prefer that the issue does not reach a vote at the Security Council. The Times, citing US officials and foreign diplomats, said Washington was labouring to find language that would be sufficient to lure the Palestinians away from their bid, bring Israel to the negotiating table and be acceptable to the other members of the peacemaking Quartet - the EU, UN and Russia. Europe has struggled to define a unified position on the Palestinian bid, and Shaath said Sunday that EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton would visit Ramallah this week for talks with Abbas on the issue.

The director general of the official Voice of Palestine radio Ahmed Aridi told AFP on Sunday that the station would soon begin broadcasting radio spots in six languages to promote the membership bid. The messages, which will run in English, Arabic, Hebrew, French, Spanish and Russian, state: "You are being offered peace with the state of Palestine on the 1967 borders." The spots are part of the broader "Palestine 194" campaign, which is being officially launched later this week and is expected to include adverts and peaceful protests inside the West Bank and overseas.

"The appeal to the UN is a battle for all Palestinians, and in order to succeed, it needs millions to pour into streets," Palestinian official Yasser Abed Rabbo told the Associated Press following a Palestinian Authority vote endorsing a mass protest march on Israel. Rabbo and other Palestinian leaders insist the protests will be peaceful, but Israeli officials noted that more often than not the Palestinians' definition of "peaceful" does not match Israel's. And even if the intention truly was for a peaceful march, the Israelis say that having tens or hundreds of thousands of Palestinians march on Israeli civilian neighborhoods is a situation that can quickly spiral out of control.

While Jerusalem is certain to be a primary target of such a march, it is pretty heavily barricaded from the north and east, the directions from which the Palestinian protestors would be coming. But the Jewish settlements make much softer targets. That's why the IDF, which will preoccupied defending the northern neighborhoods of Jerusalem and the portion of the "Green Line" separating the Tel Aviv metropolitan area from the West Bank, is busy preparing the Jewish residents of Judea and Samaria to defend themselves.

Those preparations include unspecified drills on how to handle various situations, including a large Palestinian mob beseiging the gates of a small Jewish community. Jewish settler leaders stressed that the training exercises do not constitute the formation of a new Jewish militia, noting that these are pre-existing local security teams, the members of which are, like all Israelis, also members of the IDF reserve forces. Even with all the preparations, the situation can still devolve into chaos and violence at a moment's notice. If armed Palestinian elements open fire from among the protestors, or a Palestinian mob manages to break into a Jewish community, Israeli security forces will be obliged to use deadly force in defense of local men, women and children.

The administration has circulated a proposal intended to be the basis of renewed peace talks with the Israelis - based on a formula that President Barack Obama outlined in May - in hopes of persuading the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, to abandon the bid for recognition at the annual gathering of the UN General Assembly beginning September 20.

The administration has privately made it clear to Mr Abbas that it will veto any request that comes before the UN Security Council to make a Palestinian state a new member outright. But the United States alone does not have enough support to block a vote by the General Assembly to elevate the current status of the Palestinians' nonvoting observer ''entity'' to that of an nonvoting observer state.

Senior officials said the administration wanted to avoid not only a veto but also the more symbolic and potent General Assembly vote that would leave the United States and only a handful of other nations in opposition. The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss diplomatic maneuverings, said they feared that in either case a backlash could sweep the Palestinian territories and the wider Arab world when the region is already in tumult.

Two administration officials said that Mr Abbas had indicated as recently as last week that he would forgo a UN vote in favor of the prospect of real talks. But a senior Palestinian official, Nabil Shaath, angrily dismissed the American proposal now being circulated as inadequate and said a vote would go ahead regardless. ''Whoever wrote this thought we are so weak that we cannot even wiggle, or that we are stupid,'' he said in a telephone interview from the Palestinian capital in the West Bank, Ramallah. He added, ''Whatever is to be offered, it is too late.''

Talas had crossed the southern Japanese island of Shikoku and the central part of the main island of Honshu early on Sunday. But because of the storm's slow speed, weathermen warned heavy rains and strong winds would continue, increasing the likelihood of more floods and landslides. Nearly 500,000 people in western and central Japan were issued with evacuation orders and advisories, the Kyodo News agency reported.

The worst hit areas were in Nara and Wakayama prefectures, with homes swept away by flood waters and landslides. Three homes were buried in a landslide in Wakayama prefecture, and one woman who was rescued later died, four remained missing and a 14-year old girl was saved from the debris, police said. They said 10 people were dead and 32 people were missing. In nearby Nara Prefecture NHK TV said seven people were missing after their homes were swept away down a river.

If the court rules that Berlin's commitment to the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF) goes against EU law, or worse, against the German constitution, the entire Eurozone could collapse. Think of the Eurozone as a minefield full of bombs that have long lay dormant, but are all still very active. Now, Germany's court ruling - itself a single bomb timed to go off next Wednesday - could ignite a massive chain reaction.

If the German court rules that European law has been broken, then it has been broken by all other nations subject to the Maastricht Treaty who have participated in bailouts and directly or indirectly assumed each other's debts. If the German constitution has been broken, it's unlikely that German citizens will tolerate any government that refuses to protect the constitution and their rights to participate in determining whether or not they want to backstop all the profligate neighbours that surround them.

The court may sidestep any hard and fast decisions to avoid destroying the entire EU. But it may not have a choice. The law is the law.

Their three daughters, aged 11, seven and one, and five-year-old son, will either be 'fostered without contact' or adopted. Either way, the family's only hope of being reunited will be if the children attempt to track down their parents when they become adults. The couple, who have been married for nearly 20 years and are not being named to protect their children's identities, were given a 'draconian' ultimatum three years ago - as reported at the time by The Mail on Sunday.

Warned that the children must slim or be placed in care, the family spent two years living in a council-funded 'Big Brother' house in which they were constantly supervised and the food they ate monitored. But despite subjecting them to intense scrutiny, social workers did not impose rules on what food the children should eat, and there was apparently little or no improvement.

News of the decision to remove them was broken to the couple, from Dundee, on Tuesday. Critics called it a disgraceful breach of human rights and a chilling example of the power of the State to meddle in family life.

The father, aged 56, said: 'We have tried very hard to do everything that was asked of us. But nothing we've done has ever been enough. The pressure of living in the family unit would have broken anyone. We were being treated like children and cut off from the outside world. To have a social worker stand and watch you eat is intolerable. I want other families to know what can happen once social workers become involved. We will fight them to the end to get our beloved children back.'

Voth has examined the history of 28 European countries over the last 90 years. His conclusion:

1) "Austerity and anarchy are closely linked"

2) "Savings [budget cuts] amounting to just one percentage point of GDP are accompanied by social unrest. And when they reach two or three percentage points, it massively increases."

The cuts being asked in Greece - and likely Italy - far exceed two to three percentage points. The debate on the Italian austerity budget begins in Parliament next week. Nor are they likely to be implemented: "There's no reason to believe that the scale of reforms currently needed to move things forward economically is politically feasible."

This is the perverse outcome of the country's longstanding preference for sons, and its sudden modernisation. Traditionally, the family line is passed via men. When a woman marries, she joins her husband's family. Having a boy is a cultural and a pragmatic choice: you expect him to continue your lineage and support you in old age. The result has long been a surplus of men, because of female infanticide or excess female deaths through neglect. But in the last 20 years, the problem has exploded thanks to the spread of prenatal scans.

Sex-selective abortion is illegal, but is clearly widely practised. The normal human birth ratio is 106 males for every 100 females. In China, that has risen to 118 boys. That means 30 to 50 million men will fail to find wives over the next two decades, according to Professor Li Shuzhuo of the institute for population and development studies at Xi'an Jiaotong University. It is equivalent to every male in the UK dying a bachelor.

Experts have warned that these unmarried "bare branches" pose a threat to social stability. Some suggest that excess men leads to more crime and sexual violence; officials have warned of increased women trafficking. Already, women are kidnapped and sold as wives.

"It would mean we couldn't use our own currency on a train in our own country to buy a British cuppa and a Kit-Kat," he said.

Tory MP Philip Davies said the scheme was "totally outrageous". But last night the Daily Express forced Eurostar bosses to back down. We contacted the multi-national firm after hearing from an outraged reader about his experience of the proposed new system.

Eurostar initially said it was unsure when it would reach a final conclusion on the move to ban cash payments in sterling because it had to review customer reaction to a seven-day trial which ended this week. But hours later it said customer feedback had convinced it to continue accepting the pound. The move was warmly welcomed as a victory for common sense, although critics remained aghast that the company had even considered making the change in the first place.

London MEP Mr Batten took up the issue after being contacted by a constituent. He said: "Banning the pound on Eurostar was a ludicrous idea in the first place. Thank goodness the Daily Express took up my constituent's complaint and that Euro-star has seen sense and back-tracked." Daily Express reader James Beedell discovered the ban on a return trip to France last Sunday with his wife and daughter and her boyfriend.

The Archbishop of Sydney, Peter Jensen, yesterday condemned the move as an 'intellectually absurd attempt to write Christ out of human history'. He described the phrase 'common era' as 'meaningless', and compared it to using 'festive season' instead of Christmas. The changes, introduced by the government, were supposed to be pushed through next year, but have been delayed by the row.

The terms CE and BCE have been popularised in academic and scientific publications.

Use of the CE abbreviation was introduced by Jewish academics in the mid-19th century. The terms CE and BCE became popular in academic and scientific publications in the late 20th century. They were used by publishers to emphasise secularism or sensitivity to non-Christians, but both still use the Gregorian calendar and the year-numbering system revolving around BC and AD. The term Anno Domini is Medieval Latin translated as 'In the year of Our Lord.'

As a result, the country's economic hardships risk morphing from pressuring specific segments of the population to undermining more general aspects of social justice. The numbers are striking - and worrisome. Over the last 30 years, labor's share of the national pie has declined to 44 percent from 52 percent, with profits growing at twice the annual rate for average wages.

This morning's monthly employment report adds to the concerns. Unemployment remains very high, whether measured by the most-quoted unemployment rate (9.1 percent), the less partial under- and un-employment rate, (16.2 percent) or, most comprehensively, the proportion of total adults who are not working (42 percent compared to 35 percent 10 years ago).

The duration and composition of joblessness is very troubling. The average unemployed American has been without a job for 40 weeks, a record level, and 44 percent of the unemployed have been out of a job for more than 26 weeks. The incidence of joblessness is severe among those lacking a college degree (11 percent compared to 4 percent for college graduates). For 16-19 year olds the unemployment rate is a horrible 25 percent.

Whichever number you look at, America's labor market problems constitute a full-blown crisis with far reaching economic, social and political consequences. If current trends continue, joblessness will become stubbornly embedded in the system and, distressingly, some of the unemployed will become unemployable.

We all know that such a crisis fuels rising poverty and misery. Shelter is an issue, too, as mortgage and other debt payments are harder to meet. And credit will become even scarcer for those who are already struggling. Regrettably, there is little to suggest that, left to its own devices, the economy would improve any time soon. It is mired in low growth and insufficient job creation; and the balance of risks is increasingly tilting toward a recession.

This weekend, American workers will understandably temper their celebrations. Their malaise is about more than the challenging economic headwinds. It is about fundamental social issues. America is now on the growing list of advanced countries where social cohesion is coming under increasing pressure. If left to fester through inadequate public and private sector responses, this phenomenon will damage the welfare of current and future generations. Loud alarm bells should be ringing everywhere.

If what's falling from the sky isn't enough, the ground shook in places that normally seem stable: Colorado and the entire East Coast. On Friday, a strong quake triggered brief tsunami warnings in Alaska. Arizona and New Mexico have broken records for wildfires. Total weather losses top $35 billion, and that's not counting Hurricane Irene, according to the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration.

There have been more than 700 US disaster and weather deaths, most from the tornado outbreaks this spring. Last year, the world seemed to go wild with natural disasters in the deadliest year in a generation. But 2010 was bad globally, and the United States mostly was spared. This year, while there have been devastating events elsewhere, such as the earthquake and tsunami in Japan, Australia's flooding and a drought in Africa, it's our turn to get smacked. Repeatedly.

"I'm hoping for a break. I'm tired of working this hard. This is ridiculous," said Jeff Masters, a meteorologist who runs Weather Underground, a meteorology service that tracks strange and extreme weather. "I'm not used to seeing all these extremes all at once in one year." The US has had a record 10 weather catastrophes costing more than a billion dollars: five separate tornado outbreaks, two different major river floods in the Upper Midwest and the Mississippi River, drought in the Southwest and a blizzard that crippled the Midwest and Northeast, and Irene.

Even before Irene, the Federal Emergency Management Agency was on pace to obliterate the record for declared disasters issued by state, reflecting both the geographic breadth and frequency of America's problem-plagued year. "If you weren't in a drought, you were drowning is what it came down to," Masters said. Add to that, oppressive and unrelenting heat. Tens of thousands of daily weather records have been broken or tied and nearly 1,000 all-time records set, with most of them heat or rain related:

- Oklahoma set a record for hottest month ever in any state with July.

- Fairbanks, Alaska, hit 97 degrees on July 11, a record.

- Houston had a record string of 24 days in August with the thermometer over 100 degrees.

- Newark, New Jersey, set a record with 108 degrees, topping the old mark by 3 degrees.

Tornadoes this year hit medium-sized cities such as Joplin, Missouri, and Tuscaloosa, Alabama. The outbreaks affected 21 states, including unusual deadly twisters in Minnesota, Wisconsin and Massachusetts. "I think this year has really been extraordinary in terms of natural catastrophes," said Andreas Schrast, head of catastrophic perils for Swiss Re, another big insurer. "These events are abnormal," Karl said. "But it's part of an ongoing trend we've seen since 1980."

The storm was inching toward the marshy Louisiana coast and was forecast to dump up to 20 inches of rain to southeast Louisiana over the next few days. The storm center was about 85 miles west-southwest of Morgan City, with maximum winds of 50 mph. Winds were expected to stay below the 74-mph (119-kph) threshold of hurricane strength as the storm crawls ashore.

In New Orleans, a major US tourist destination, the storm evoked memories of Hurricane Katrina, which flooded 80 percent of the city, killed 1,500 people and caused more than $80 billion in damage. Half the city, a major US tourist destination, lies below sea level and is protected by a system of levees and flood gates.

The levees had pumped away about 8 inches of rain so far, with isolated reports of flooding in roads and homes. The system can process about 1 inch of rainfall per hour, but the storm's slow-moving nature remained a worry, officials said. "Don't go to sleep on this storm," Mayor Mitch Landrieu told residents, warning stormy conditions could continue for the next 36 hours. New Orleans is under a flash flood watch through Monday night due to heavy rain potential, the National Weather Service said. Potential damage from wind gusts up to 50 mph will also be a concern for New Orleans on Sunday as Lee's center moves inland, it said.

Lee's tidal surge could spur coastal flooding in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama before drenching a large swath of the Southeast and Appalachian regions next week. Storm winds were already pushing Gulf waters inland, slamming barriers in low-lying areas and prompting mandatory evacuations in the coastal communities of Lafitte, Crown Point and Barataria. In Mississippi, local governments were taking precautions as forecasters predicted tides could be 2 feet to 4 feet above normal.

Financial, manufacturer and energy stocks suffered the biggest losses as declining issues far outweighed winners. Nonfarm payrolls generated no new jobs last month as sagging consumer confidence discouraged already skittish businesses from hiring, keeping pressure on the US Federal Reserve to provide more monetary stimulus to the economy.

Stocks had risen recently on hopes the Fed would introduce new stimulus after data reflected a weak economy, recouping 50 percent of the down move from a July high. However, some analysts said the Fed may be running out of bullets in its fight to stimulate the economy.

The debt crisis has been a tough test of endurance for Europe. To better face such challenges in the future, German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schauble wants to forge a new European Union treaty, the mass-circulation daily Bild reported Friday. According to the report, Schauble clarified his plan during a closed-door meeting of leaders of his conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and its Bavarian sister party the Christian Social Union (CSU) on Thursday evening.

Shifting greater powers over economic and financial policy to Brussels is necessary, he said according to the paper, "even though we know how difficult a treaty change will be." Schauble also acknowledged that such reforms would create a significant divide between the 17 European Union countries that use the euro and the remaining 10 that do not.