There were no immediate reports of damage or injuries, and no more details were immediately available. The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center said a tsunami was possible based on the strength of the earthquake. It was not immediately confirmed whether a tsunami had occurred. The warning area covered Vanuatu, New Caledonia and Fiji.

About 100 people were at the service in the main police base on the island of Jolo, a stronghold of the Abu Sayyaf, a small Islamist militant group with ties to al Qaeda, Cabangbang added. 'We've placed our troops on alert to prevent similar attacks on churches, shopping malls, parks and transport terminals,' Cabangbang continued. No group claimed responsibility for the attack.

The Abu Sayyaf has been blamed for several bomb attacks on the Roman Catholic cathedral in Jolo since the early 2000s and for kidnapping priests and nuns. Dozens of US army Special Forces have been deployed on Jolo since 2004 to help train and advise security forces fighting the militants.

George Osborne was recently in New York, soaking up plaudits for boldly leading Britain into fiscal austerity at a time when, apparently in contrast, America's feckless political elite has allowed the national debt to balloon. The problem is that UK austerity, so far at least, is a myth. November's national accounts, released last week, were shocking. Government spending last month was sharply up on the same month in 2009 - yes, up! British state borrowing is still escalating, with the national debt rising very quickly.

Anyone who takes an intelligent interest in current affairs could be forgiven for inferring from the political rhetoric that the UK's fiscal squeeze is not only well under way but that the worst is actually behind us. If this was indeed your impression, you may want to pour yourself a large Yuletide sherry and possibly take refuge in another bowl of trifle. For the grim reality, as the latest figures show, is that Britain's fiscal squeeze hasn't even begun.

I'd hoped to end what has been a nerve-jangling year for the UK economy on an upbeat note. A couple of weeks ago, though, new figures showed that CPI inflation was 3.3 per cent higher in November than the same month the year before. Inflation has now been above the Bank of England's 2 per cent target for 40 of the past 49 months.

Some of us have been warning this would happen. Since late 2008, this column has asserted that the UK faces inflationary dangers and that talk of British "deflation" was deeply disingenuous, an intellectual conceit to justify massive virtual "money printing" and the extension of endless soft credits to banks that should, in fact, be allowed to fail. Such a position has been seen as heresy - not least because "quantitative easing" has friends in high places. QE, for now, has helped politically connected bankers to dodge the implications of their own hubris and incompetence. It has allowed successive British governments to stick their fingers in their ears and avoid tackling root-and-branch banking reform.

To argue that QE is dangerous and that, as a corollary, the UK faces high inflation has been to be treated by the UK's policy-making elite as some kind of economic Herod. I might as well have been suggesting we slay the first born. In recent weeks, though, the mood has changed. Reality has thankfully broken through. "Top economists" are now finally allowing themselves to state what is both historically and technically obvious, that money-printing is counter-productive.

It is feared some of the debt is caused by pressure to 'beat' the increase in VAT on January 4. "This year, more than any other, we would appeal to people not to get carried away and to use credit carefully indeed," said a spokeswoman for the Consumer Credit Counselling Service. "With rising prices and the threat of one million more redundancies, budgeting for 2011 is going to be difficult for most people in Britain. To think you are on top of your finances by paying off the minimum each month is a fool's paradise," she added.

Chris Simpson, marketing director of Kelkoo, said: "Retailers have spent the last few months encouraging consumers to 'shop now to avoid the VAT increase' which more than third seem to have taken on board "However, the combination of lower disposable incomes, higher prices, and a reluctance to increase borrowing is likely to result in lower levels of spending, meaning retailers may have to endure a 2.2 billion pounds fall in retail sales in the first quarter of 2011."

Just a century ago, even after people considered themselves advanced owing to developments like powered flight, it was not known that any other galaxies existed. Our Milky Way was considered the totality of creation.

In 1923, the existence of galaxies beyond the Milky Way was proven. Initial estimates were that there might be as many as a few dozen additional galaxies - a number then viewed as stunning. The latest estimate, from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, is 100 billion galaxies. The count is expected to rise.

Star estimates have risen in concert. A century ago, even the best-informed believed the Milky Way contained perhaps a few million stars. By the 1960s, astronomers contended the Milky Way held a billion stars, a number many found hard to believe. By the 1980s, the estimate had grown to 40 billion stars. Today it's thought the Milky Way contains at least 90 billion stars and perhaps as many as 400 billion. Many other galaxies are likely to contain similar numbers.

Recently, researchers led by Yale University cosmologists proposed there exists at least three times as many stars as previously thought. The Yale estimate is 200 sextillion stars, a 2 followed by 23 zeroes. The magnitude of the universe might make you feel small - but should make you feel important. Even if we are short-lived little blips in an extremely long-lived enormous cosmos, life grants the cosmos meaning.

If we evolved on a wholly natural basis, who can say where evolution, and our own thinking, may take us? If there is a higher intelligence behind the universe, who can say what may be in store?

That quake caused extensive damage and a handful of injuries, but no deaths. Sunday's temblor also came a few hours after a magnitude 7.3 earthquake struck under the sea near Vanuatu. There were no reports of damage or injuries from that quake, though it generated a small tsunami wave.

New Zealand and Vanuatu are situated on the Pacific "ring of fire" - an arc of earthquake and volcanic zones stretching from Chile in South America through Alaska and down through the South Pacific. The quake struck Christchurch in the late morning as shoppers thronged central city streets to take advantage of traditional Boxing Day sales. Although masonry and glass fell across sidewalks, no one was hurt, according to police.

It was the largest of more than a dozen aftershocks that rattled Christchurch throughout Sunday. Scientists said the temblors were related to the September quake and could continue for some time. Earlier on Sunday, a 5.9 magnitude quake was felt across New Zealand's North Island, but no damage or injuries were reported. The quake was centered north of volcanic White Island off New Zealand's east coast.

Airlines canceled hundreds of Sunday flights in the Northeast corridor, with more likely to come as the storm intensifies. Maryland, Virginia and North Carolina declared states of emergency early Sunday or Saturday night. As North Carolina road crews tried to clear snowy and icy highways, Mid-Atlantic officials spent Christmas Day preparing for up to a foot of snow, plunging temperatures and high winds.

"Our concern is tomorrow it's going to get significantly colder," Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell told The Weather Channel on Saturday evening. "Winds with gusts up to 45 miles per hour will cause blowing snow and that's going to cause the worst of it... and we're urging extreme caution in travel. Try to get home early and if you don't have to travel don't go."

A blizzard warning was issued for New York City for Sunday and Monday, with a forecast of 11 to 16 inches of snow and strong winds that will reduce visibility to near zero at times. As much as 18 inches could fall on the New Jersey shore with wind gusts over 40 mph. A blizzard warning was also in effect for Rhode Island and most of eastern Massachusetts including Boston, with forecasters predicting 15 to 20 inches of snow from noon Sunday to 6 pm Monday. A blizzard warning is issued when snow is accompanied by sustained winds or gusts over 35 mph.

Early Sunday, winter storm warnings covered northern Georgia, the Carolinas, Washington, Delaware, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Massachusetts and the eastern sections of Maryland, Virginia, Pennsylvania and New York. Winter weather advisories were in effect for eastern Tennessee and Kentucky, West Virginia and northwest Virginia.

The system gave the Carolinas its first white Christmas in decades. Columbia, South Carolina, had its first significant Christmas snow since weather records were first kept in 1887.

So say public opinion polls that ask Americans how they see the future, their's and their country's. One recent survey, by the respected Pew Research Center, found that depression era Americans were more optimistic about economic recovery in the near future than people questioned in a Pew poll this October, when only 35 percent said they expected better economic conditions in a year's time. In response to a similar question in 1936 and 1937, about half expected general business conditions to improve over the next six months.

The phrase "new normal" was coined by PIMCO, one of the world's biggest investment funds, and is shorthand for an American future that includes lowered living standards, slow growth and high unemployment. Joblessness now stands at 9.8 percent, up from 9.6 percent in October. Add workers who have given up looking for jobs and people forced to work part time and the rate climbs to 17 percent, a powerful reason for declining optimism.

But it's not the only one. A slew of studies, surveys and reports show that a growing number of Americans - some surveys say more than half - no longer believe that their country is a land of unlimited opportunity, where all it takes to rise to success is hard work and determination.

"The end of American optimism," as a headline over an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal proclaimed this summer, has not quite arrived. But Americans increasingly believe that the rich just get richer and the poor just get poorer. They have good reason to think so. The rich-poor gap in the United States is wider than in any other developed country.

That has rarely been a matter of concern for most Americans but the recession that began in December 2007 turned inequality into a topic of public debate, on occasion with peculiar twists.

In November, a widely-read New York Times columnist, Nicholas Kristof, compared the United States to Latin American banana republics. To see countries where the richest one percent take home more than a fifth of the national income, he said, it was no longer necessary to leave the US.

Two weeks later, he followed up with a column reporting that the comparison had drawn protests from readers who deemed it glib and unfair. Latin Americans thought it hurtful and invidious. After checking into the matter, he came to the conclusion that "I may have wronged the banana republics."

Companies such as Kraft Food and Pepsi and some of the largest US banks benefited, the newspaper said. Most licenses were granted under a law allowing trade in humanitarian goods, even if that ended up including products as diverse as cigarettes and chewing gum. The story posted on the Times' website implies no illegal activity by administration officials or company personnel. Rather, it suggests the various deals for goods ranging from Louisiana hot sauce to body-building supplements undermine America's moral and diplomatic authority as the leading purveyor of tough sanctions on Iran, North Korea and other nations.

The newspaper said one American company was allowed to bid on a pipeline job to help Iran sell natural gas to Europe even though the US opposes such deals. Other American companies were permitted to deal with Iranian firms suspected of involvement in terrorism or weapons proliferation, the Times said.

In response, administration officials said decisions are made on a case-by-case basis and reflect the realities of import chains, which can link some companies unwittingly to others."I haven't seen any licenses that I thought we should have done differently," Adam Szubin, the director of the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control, which grants the licenses, told the Times. But he conceded that US officials weren't fully investigating every importer.

Since then, Nettie Banks, 68, a retired Prichard police and fire dispatcher, has filed for bankruptcy. Alfred Arnold, a 66-year-old retired fire captain, has gone back to work as a shopping mall security guard to try to keep his house. Eddie Ragland, 59, a retired police captain, accepted help from colleagues, bake sales and collection jars after he was shot by a robber, leaving him badly wounded and unable to get to his new job as a police officer at the regional airport.

Far worse was the retired fire marshal who died in June. Like many of the others, he was too young to collect Social Security. "When they found him, he had no electricity and no running water in his house," said David Anders, 58, a retired district fire chief. "He was a proud enough man that he wouldn't accept help."

The situation in Prichard is extremely unusual - the city has sought bankruptcy protection twice - but it proves that the unthinkable can, in fact, sometimes happen. And it stands as a warning to cities like Philadelphia and states like Illinois, whose pension funds are under great strain: if nothing changes, the money eventually does run out, and when that happens, misery and turmoil follow.

It is not just the pensioners who suffer when a pension fund runs dry. If a city tried to follow the law and pay its pensioners with money from its annual operating budget, it would probably have to adopt large tax increases, or make huge service cuts, to come up with the money. Current city workers could find themselves paying into a pension plan that will not be there for their own retirements. In Prichard, some older workers have delayed retiring, since they cannot afford to give up their paychecks if no pension checks will follow.

"This was not funded with earmarks and it was not a study about cow burps," said John Aber, an environmental scientist and provost of the University of New Hampshire. "It's not wasteful," he said. "It's important."

Senator Tom Coburn, Republican for Oklahoma, released on Monday his annual "Wastebook" report, a look at 100 projects that received federal funding which, he says, contributed to record deficits in the past year. Among those projects was a $700,000 grant from the Department of Agriculture to a team of environmental scientists at the University of New Hampshire to study greenhouse gas emissions - the chemicals associated with global warming - in the dairy industry.

Coburn's "Wastebook" quotes one of the project's researchers telling a local New Hampshire paper that "cows emit most of their methane through belching, only a small fraction from flatulence." Scientists at the University of New Hampshire say Coburn has cherry picked quotes and taken things out of context in an effort to undermine their research. They say the project's findings will not only help the environment, but also farmers and businesses involved in the dairy industry.

The pre-Christmas rally has propelled leading US and European shares to their biggest December gains in a decade and pushed London's benchmark FTSE 100 index through the 6,000 level on Thursday for the first time since June 2008. The FTSE All-World index rose to 216.73, up 0.2 per cent, its highest level since September 2008. Even as Fitch downgraded Portugal's sovereign debt, investors voiced optimism that stronger economic growth next year would lead to further gains. More money is pouring into equities than at any time in the last four years.

"We are now at the cusp of a change in expectations among investors, with asset allocators believing equities will return far more next year than credit or fixed income," said Mislav Matejka, equity strategist at JPMorgan. "The key to the rally is that fears of a double-dip global recession have turned around over the past three months."

However, some market analysts voiced caution pointing out that the latest market rally was in thin trading and that the global economic recovery was far from assured. "I've been doing this job long enough to recognise when the markets are entering a new phase of madness that leaves me scratching my head with bemusement," said Albert Edwards, global strategist at Societe Generale, in a recent note. "The notion that we are in a sustainable economic recovery is as ludicrous as it was in 2005-07."

The 50-year-old pilot, who lives outside Sacramento, asked that neither he nor his airline be identified. He has worked for the airline for more than a decade and was deputized by the TSA to carry a gun in the cockpit. He is also a helicopter test pilot in the Army Reserve and flew missions for the United Nations in Macedonia.

Three days after he posted a series of six video clips recorded with a cell phone camera at San Francisco International Airport, four federal air marshals and two sheriff's deputies arrived at his house to confiscate his federally-issued firearm. The pilot recorded that event as well and provided all the video to News10. At the same time as the federal marshals took the pilot's gun, a deputy sheriff asked him to surrender his state-issued permit to carry a concealed weapon. A follow-up letter from the sheriff's department said the CCW permit would be reevaluated following the outcome of the federal investigation.

The YouTube videos, posted November 28, show what the pilot calls the irony of flight crews being forced to go through TSA screening while ground crew who service the aircraft are able to access secure areas simply by swiping a card. "As you can see, airport security is kind of a farce. It's only smoke and mirrors so you people believe there is actually something going on here," the pilot narrates.

Video shot in the cockpit shows a medieval-looking rescue ax available on the flight deck after the pilots have gone through the metal detectors. "I would say a two-foot crash ax looks a lot more formidable than a box cutter," the pilot remarked.

In a day of rising tension, Seoul and Pyongyang traded strong rhetoric, with the South warning of a "powerful response" to any attack from the North. A month ago, the North fired on a Southern island, killing four people. Thursday's speech by Armed Forces Minister Kim Yong-chun marks the strongest statement from Pyongyang since the attack on Yeonpyeong island.

Analysts believe the hard-line stance might be timed to coincide with the 19th anniversary of North Korean leader Kim Jong-il taking control of the armed forces, which will be marked on Friday. "We've heard this language before," said Mr Crowley in an interview with BBC's News-hour. "Unfortunately sometimes that kind of language is followed by irresponsible actions, whether it's a missile test, a nuclear test or the shelling of South Korea, as occurred last month." He added that the North would get no reward for its "provocative actions".

China, the North's only major ally, also issued a statement asking both parties on the peninsula to remain calm.

Pyongyang is frequently accused of sabre-rattling in order to strengthen its hand in negotiations with other countries over its nuclear ambitions. But the North insists that it is the victim, and repeatedly accuses the South of preparing for war by holding military drills on the border.

Kim Yong-chun, quoted by state news agency KCNA, said the North was "getting fully prepared to launch a sacred war of justice", and also threatened to use a "nuclear deterrent". Despite possessing enough plutonium to create a bomb, the North is not thought to have succeeded in building a nuclear weapon.

Negotiations between the BBC and the Vatican went on for many months to enable the recording to take place. Gwyneth Williams, the controller of BBC Radio 4, has said she is "delighted Pope Benedict is sharing his Christmas message with the Radio 4 audience". Catherine Pepinster, the editor of Catholic newspaper The Tablet, said the broadcast was unusual. "This is an unprecedented thing for a Pope to do, to do a script for radio, particularly, you know in a country abroad in a language that is not his own so in that sense it's unprecedented, and I'm very impressed that the BBC persisted so assiduously and got it."

However, the decision has been criticised by the UK's National Secular Society (NSS). Its executive director, Keith Porteous Wood, told BBC Radio 4's Today programme the BBC had made a mistake in inviting the Pope to deliver the message. "I've no problem whatsoever with the message itself, which is a religious message. But I think it's an extraordinarily bad choice for the BBC, and I think it's actually a slap in the face to these tens and hundreds of thousands of child abuse victims."

"I think the problem is that the Pope, and indeed the Vatican, manages - because of its chameleon status between church and state - to kind of move to a position at any moment that accords it maximum power and the least amount of accountability. What we've been having, particularly with the Papal visit and again, indeed, with Thought For The Day, is the Pope pontificating his views and telling us everything and being totally unaccountable for the quite terrible things that the church has been responsible for."