The reception for Sheikh Rachid Ghannouchi, leader of the Ennahda party, at Tunis airport was the biggest showing by the Islamists in two decades, during which thousands of them were jailed or exiled by president Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali. Ghannouchi was exiled in 1989 by Ben Ali, who was toppled on January 14 by popular protests that have sent tremors through an Arab world where similarly autocratic leaders have long sought to suppress Islamist groups.

Protesters in Egypt demanding an end to President Hosni Mubarak's 30-year rule have been inspired by the example of Tunisia. Egypt's main opposition group is also Islamist, but played no part in organising the protests there. Ennahda is expected to contest future legislative but not presidential elections, dates for which have yet to be set.

Father Keith Newton has encouraged Anglicans to join the Ordinariate - a special branch of Catholicism established by the Pope - to welcome protestant defectors. Despite the efforts of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Anglo Catholics have begun leaving following the conversion of three Anglican bishops in mid-January. The Church of England said that 1,000 of its 13,000 parishes were opposed to the ordination of women.

At St Barnabas church in Tunbridge Wells, southeastern England, the parish priest said that a majority of his parishioners want to defect - and he is considering going too. Father Ed Tomlinson believes that traditionalists who oppose the ordination of women have been badly let down by Church leaders.

The priest was told if he and his followers leave they will no longer be allowed to hold services, even on a shared basis, at St Barnabas. "The whole thing stinks to high heaven," he said.

The weeklong vote, held in early January and widely praised for being peaceful and for meeting international standards, was a condition of a 2005 peace agreement that ended a north-south civil war that lasted two decades and killed 2 million people.

The head of the commission's southern bureau, Justice Chan Reec Madut, said Sunday that voter turnout in the 10 states in the south was also 99 percent. He said only some 16,000 voters in the south chose to remain united with northern Sudan, while 3.7 million chose to separate. In northern Sudan, 58 percent of voters chose secession, said Mohamed Ibrahim Khalil, chairman of the referendum commission. He said some 60 percent of eligible voters participated.

"These results lead to a change of situation," said Mohamed Ibrahim Khalil, chairman of the referendum commission, after he read the results. "That change relates only to the constitutional form of relationship between north and south. North and south are drawn together in indissoluble geographic and historic bonds."

The moves continued to sharpen the country's clash over whether Mubarak would resign. Events here present difficult choices for the US, which has been attempting to push for both the stability that the military offers and the sweeping political changes demanded by the opposition. There was no indication that the two sides would meet or hold discussions.

State television showed footage of Mubarak with his newly appointed vice president, former intelligence chief Omar Suleiman, meeting Egypt's top army commanders Sunday. The images appeared to be a bid to show that control of the armed forces was still in the hands of Mubarak and his regime.

Fragmented opposition groups, including the powerful Muslim Brotherhood, put aside sometimes strident differences to unify behind Mohamed El Baradei, a Nobel peace laureate who often tangled with US officials when he led the United Nations agency inspecting Iran's nuclear program. His entry in Egyptian politics is more recent. He came to Cairo last week only after the protest movement had gathered steam on its own.

Egypt's opposition groups have had a checkered past, with ideological divides and personal animosities sapping them against the might of the Mubarak regime. For now, their solidarity appears to be holding. El Baradei's endorsement by the Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt's largest and best-organized opposition force, amounted to a historic display of unity between the country's secular and Islamist opposition forces.

If you insist on joining the emerging market party at this stage of the agflation blow-off, avoid countries with an accelerating gap between rich and poor. Cairo's EGX stock index has dropped 20 per cent in nine trading sessions. Events have moved briskly since a Tunisian fruit vendor with a handcart set fire to himself six weeks ago, and in doing so lit the fuse that has detonated Egypt and threatens to topple the political order of the Maghreb, Yemen, and beyond.

As we sit glued to Al-Jazeera watching authority crumble in the cultural and political capital of the Arab world, exhilaration can turn quickly to foreboding. This is nothing like the fall of the Berlin Wall. The triumph of secular democracy was hardly in doubt in central Europe. Whatever the mix of aspirations of those on the streets of Cairo, such uprisings are easy prey for tight-knit organizations - known in the revolutionary lexicon as Leninist vanguard parties.

In Egypt this means the Muslim Brotherhood, whether or not Nobel laureate Mohammed El Baradei ever served as figleaf. The Brotherhood is of course a different kettle of fish from Iran's Ayatollahs; and Turkey shows that an 'Islamic leaning' government can be part of the liberal world - though Turkish premier Recep Tayyip Erdogan once let slip that democracy was a tram "you ride until you arrive at your destination, then you step off."

It does not take a febrile imagination to guess what the Brotherhood's ascendancy might mean for Israel, and for strategic stability in the Mid-East. Asia has as much to lose if this goes wrong as the West. China's energy intensity per unit of GDP is double US levels, and triple the UK. The surge in global food prices since the summer - since Ben Bernanke signalled a fresh dollar blitz, as it happens - is not the underlying cause of Arab revolt, any more than bad harvests in 1788 were the cause of the French Revolution.

Yet they are the trigger, and have set off a vicious circle. Vulnerable governments are scrambling to lock up world supplies of grain while they can. Algeria bought 800,000 tonnes of wheat last week, and Indonesia has ordered 800,000 tonnes of rice, both greatly exceeding their normal pace of purchases. Saudi Arabia, Libya, and Bangladesh, are trying to secure extra grain supplies.

The UN's Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) implored goverments to avoid panic responses that "aggravate the situation". If you are Hosni Mubarak hanging on in Cairo's presidential palace, do you care about such niceties? We are on a thinner margin of food security, as North Africa is discovering painfully, and China understands all too well. Perhaps it is a little too early to write off farm-rich Europe and America.

"Let me highlight the one resource that is scarcest of all: time," said UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, as dozens of senior international figures swung by to lobby some of the richest and most powerful people on the planet. Ban was specifically talking about the battle to halt climate change, but he could just have easily be addressing stalled world trade talks, Europe's debt crisis, Chinese asset-price inflation or soaring world food prices.

There was no lack of good will in Davos, the self-selecting group that makes the annual pilgrimage up the mountain to this snowbound resort is largely sold on the virtues of a globalised economy and multilateral cooperation. But many of the debates at this year's event were pessimistic in tone, and the political guests sometimes appeared caught flat-footed by shock events far beyond the Davos Congress Centre.

Meanwhile, topics debated with great elan at Davos 2010 have scarcely moved on: post-earthquake reconstruction in Haiti has stalled, the Middle East peace process is in ruins and Iran clings doggedly to its nuclear plants. Since then the Lebanese government has fallen and Ivory Coast has found itself divided between two would-be presidents and on the brink of war.

About 100 members of the fundamentalist group and activists from other leftist organizations and trade unions chanted "Mubarak, step down" and "the decision is made, the people's revolt will remain." Elsewhere, a separate group of 300 protesters gathered in front of the office of Jordanian Prime Minister Samir Rifai, demanding his ouster. "Rifai, it's time for you to go," chanted the group.

Jordan's protests have been relatively small in size, but they underline a rising tension with Jordan's King Abdullah II, a key US ally who has been making promises of reform in recent days in an apparent attempt to quell domestic discontent over economic degradation and lack of political freedoms.

Saeed said Arabs have grown disgruntled with US domination of their oil wealth, military occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan and its support for "totalitarian" leaders in the region. "The Americans and (President Barack) Obama must be losing sleep over the popular revolt in Egypt," he said. "Now, Obama must understand that the people have woken up and are ready to unseat the tyrant leaders who remained in power because of US backing."

Saeed did not specifically name King Abdullah. But he said Jordan's prime minister 'must draw lessons from Tunisia and Egypt and must swiftly implement political reforms'. "We tell the Americans 'enough is enough'," he said.

While the government of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad confronted its own popular uprising two years ago - and successfully suppressed it - conservatives in Iran said they saw little similarity between those events and the Arab revolts, and instead likened the recent upheavals to Iran's own 1979 Islamic revolution.

"In my opinion, the Islamic Republic of Iran should see these events without exception in a positive light," said Mohammad-Javad Larijani, secretary general of the Iranian High Council for Human Rights and one of the most outspoken figures among Iran's traditional conservatives. He made it clear that he hoped that the "anti-Islamic" government of Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, who was ousted in Tunisia, would be replaced by a "people's government," meaning one in which conservative Islamic forces would gain the upper hand, as they did when Iranian people overthrew Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, establishing a quasi-theocracy.

On the other side are the United States and France, he said, who are "doing everything they can to ride the wave and prevent the people from establishing the regime that they desire." Some here have even echoed the pan-Islamic rhetoric of the founder of the Islamic Republic, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

"Today, as a result of the gifts of the Islamic revolution in Iran, freedom-loving Islamic peoples such as the peoples of Tunisia, Egypt and nearby Arab countries are standing up to their oppressive governments," said a leading hard-line cleric, Ayatollah Mohammad-Taghi Mesbah-Yazdi, who is believed to have influence with President Ahmadinejad.

Iranian outlets, especially those linked to the government and establishment, are using terms like "revolution" and "uprising" to describe the protests, painting the demonstrators as heroic and giving headline treatment to voices predicting the downfall of President Hosni Mubarak.

The approach is in sharp contrast to their treatment of Iran's own political upheaval following disputed presidential elections 18 months ago. Then many Iranian media organizations promoted the government position and treated protestors unsympathetically - even with contempt (traditional media was also heavily censored during that period).

The Tehran Times, Iran Daily and Resalat newspapers were among those that led their Thursday editions with the Egypt story, using headlines like "SPIRIT OF TUNISIA COMES TO EGYPT," "Egyptians demand end to Mubarak rule" and "Intensification of public protests against Mubarak regime."

And in Israel, a member of the Knesset, or parliament, described a recent conversation with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak that suggested that Mubarak had been expecting - and preparing for - the wave of unrest that has engulfed Egypt, the most populous Arab nation. Leaders across the Middle East were following events in Egypt with rapt attention Saturday, aided in that endeavor by saturation coverage on Arabic television networks such as Al-Jazeera. Many are on edge after protests in Algeria, Jordan and Yemen following unrest in Tunisia that forced that country's president from office after two decades in power.

In Saudi Arabia, the turmoil in Egypt rattled investors as the nation's stock market lost over 6% of its value Saturday. That said, Saudi King Abdullah called Mubarak and "was reassured" about the situation in Egypt, the state-run Saudi Press Agency reported. "During the call, the king said, 'Egypt is a country of Arabism and Islam. No Arab and Muslim human being can bear that some infiltrators, in the name of freedom of expression, have infiltrated into the brotherly people of Egypt, to destabilize its security and stability and they have been exploited to spew out their hatred in destruction, intimidation, burning, looting and inciting a malicious sedition,'" the news agency said. Saudi Arabia "strongly condemns" the protest, it said.

Mubarak assured the Saudi king "that the situation is stable" and that the protests "are merely attempts of groups who do not want stability and security for the people of Egypt, but rather they seek to achieve strange and suspicious objectives." Mubarak added that Egypt will "deter anyone who tries to exploit the freedom of (the) Egyptian people and will not allow anyone to lure those groups or use them to achieve suspicious and strange agendas," the news agency said.

The reactions did not come as a surprise. Iran's Shiite government has long been at odds with mostly Sunni Saudi Arabia for dominance in the region.

On his return to Cairo in December 2008, the activist told US diplomats that an alliance of opposition groups had drawn up a plan to overthrow President Hosni Mubarak and install a democratic government in 2011. He has already been arrested by Egyptian security in connection with the demonstrations and his identity is being protected by The Daily Telegraph. The crisis in Egypt follows the toppling of Tunisian president Zine al-Abedine Ben Ali, who fled the country after widespread protests forced him from office.

The disclosures, contained in previously secret US diplomatic dispatches released by the WikiLeaks website, show American officials pressed the Egyptian government to release other dissidents who had been detained by the police. Mr Mubarak, facing the biggest challenge to his authority in his 31 years in power, ordered the army on to the streets of Cairo yesterday as rioting erupted across Egypt.

Tens of thousands of anti-government protesters took to the streets in open defiance of a curfew. An explosion rocked the centre of Cairo as thousands defied orders to return to their homes. As the violence escalated, flames could be seen near the headquarters of the governing National Democratic Party. Police fired rubber bullets and used tear gas and water cannon in an attempt to disperse the crowds.

At least five people were killed in Cairo alone yesterday and 870 injured, several with bullet wounds. Mohamed ElBaradei, the pro-reform leader and Nobel Peace Prize winner, was placed under house arrest after returning to Egypt to join the dissidents. Riots also took place in Suez, Alexandria and other major cities across the country.

The forum's deliberations took place against the background of the turmoil in Egypt and elsewhere in the Arab world. Terrorism is also back on the agenda, after the bombing of Moscow airport. And the increasingly tense relationship between China and the US has served as a backdrop to many of the discussions at the WEF. Davos delegates do not seem to know how to react to events in Egypt. The young people demonstrating on the streets of Cairo are not the kind of voices that are represented at the forum.

The most prominent voice from the Arab world in Davos has been Amr Moussa, the head of the Arab League and a former foreign minister of Egypt. But, in his public appearances, Mr Moussa has restricted himself to bland and generalised calls for "reform" in Egypt and elsewhere in the Arab world. He has also suggested that unrest on the streets of Egypt and elsewhere partly reflects frustration at a lack of progress in the Middle East peace process.

Other participants from the region have suggested that the Middle East is now subject to a "political contagion", similar to the financial contagion that caused sovereign-debt crises to cross borders in Europe.

Fitch has lowered its outlook on Egyptian sovereign debt to negative from stable. Richard Fox, head of Fitch's Middle East and East Africa sovereign ratings, warned that "a continuation or intensification of significant unrest that seriously threatened economic and financial performance and the economic reform process would lead to a rating downgrade."

The situation could have ripple effects worldwide if the Suez Canal becomes jeopardized or even shut down. According to Canaccord Genuity, "this may be impactful as approximately 1.8 million barrels per day of oil was transported through the Suez Canal in 2009. A closure of the canal would result in an extra 6,000 miles of travel for any oil being transported out of the region, an additional cost which could drive up oil prices."

Despite the rapid transformation of the web during its short history, and the unprecedented freedom of expression it has enabled, the internet still has vulnerable points that can be exploited by governments or for commercial interests. Renesys's Cowie contrasted a country such as Egypt with those that have highly dispersed international connections. "In the United States you have every global carrier available to you, you have multiple cable landing points ...you have a country that effectively can't be taken off the internet," he told Reuters.

Bristol Water said conditions in its area were even worse than those that preceded the great drought of 1976, and had not been drier for more than 75 years. Reservoir levels in the Bristol area are more than a quarter down on the same time last year. Other water authorities also reported that stocks were down as leaks caused by burst pipes in the December freeze added to the pressure on supplies. Ian Michaelwaite, director of Netweather, a private forecasting company, said that at this time of year reservoirs should be at 100 per cent capacity, barring a few exceptions.

Bristol Water said conditions were caused by a lack of Atlantic weather systems, which usually cross Britain bringing bands of rain, especially to Western regions. "They showed some signs of returning to their usual pattern occasionally, only for a blocking cold front to take over again," said Mr Williams.

Piers Corbyn, of the long range forecaster, Weather Action, predicted more cold winters and cool summers. "In the winter reservoir levels will be low but they will probably pick up in the summer because we will have more rain. There will be regional differences because it will depend on where the high pressure might be." Mr Corbyn said the conditions had "nothing to do with global warming", and he added: "The world is now cooling." He said: "It is changes in the position of the jet stream caused by changes in solar activity and lunar modulation.