But Europe's problems have investors reconsidering whether lending to developed countries is always a risk-free endeavor. Citigroup's chief economist said this week the euro zone turmoil may be the "opening act" of a debt crisis that could even infect the United States and Japan, while a top Federal Reserve official said it was "a wake-up call" for America.

In that environment, US ailments - a rising ratio of debt-to-gross domestic product, one of the highest peacetime budget deficits, strapped state governments, and banks that many fear are still "too big to fail" - make investors queasy. While the prospect of US default is remote, that doesn't mean the United States will always be able to borrow money at less than 3 percent for 10 years, as it can today.

"Americans are kind of sleeping at the switch," said Joseph Quinlan, chief market strategist at US Trust and author of "The Last Economic Superpower." "Markets want to see we're serious about tackling deficits. We should never be so complacent as to think the market won't impose discipline on us." The yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury fell to a five-decade low in 2008 near 2 percent and has since not climbed above 4 percent even as US debt levels rose.

Ireland, by contrast, must pay nearly 9 percent to borrow money for 10 years, while Greece pays 12 percent. But if market anxiety about sovereign debt in general continues to grow, some investors are bracing for US yields to rise next year. That could complicate efforts by policy makers to boost a struggling economy, lifting mortgage rates and interest payments on outstanding public debt, which at $9.3 trillion is more than 60 percent of gross domestic product.

"If there are further provocations, we will definitely use aircraft to bomb North Korea," Kim said, when asked how he would respond to another attack after last week's North Korean bombardment of an island near their disputed border, killing two South Korean marines and two civilians. For nearly 60 years, the two Koreas have faced each other across one of the world's most heavily armed borders. They have never signed a peace treaty to end the 1950-53 Korean War.

The North alone has more than 5,000 multiple-launch rockets pointed at the capital Seoul which, with its satellite cities, is home to some 25 million people. The foreign ministers of the United States, Japan and South Korea, long-time allies, meet in Washington on Monday to discuss North Korea.

Clinton said: "North Korea poses an immediate threat to the region around us, particularly to South Korea and Japan. It poses a medium-term threat if it were to collapse to China, because of refugees and other instability. And it poses a long-term threat to the entire world, because of its nuclear program, and its export of weapons around the world." South Korea had exercised great restraint, she said in the Kyrgyz capital Bishkek, according to a transcript released by the State Department.

Temperatures in Poland have fallen to as low as -33C (-27F) in the past few days. Police in the country say 18 people are now known to have died from exposure, most of them homeless people who had been drinking alcohol outside. Russian media reported three deaths in Moscow and at least two people were also reported to have been killed in Germany.

Denmark mobilised its army to help emergency vehicles make their way through snow in the south-east. Snowfalls trapped hundreds of motorists in Brittany and Normandy. In Belgium, 650km (403 miles) of traffic jams were reported, with Flanders hit hard. Cold air moving down from Siberia has contributed to the wintry conditions in northern Europe. Temperatures are an average 5-10C below average in some major cities. Thousands of railway passengers in Germany had to spend the night in their trains after the snow forced high-speed inter-city routes to a halt. The authorities in Berlin kept underground stations, soup kitchens and heated buses open all night to provide shelter for the city's homeless.

There has been widespread disruption to international travel, with several major airports forced to close. Significant flight delays were reported at London Heathrow, Paris Charles de Gaulle, Amsterdam Schiphol, Berlin Tegel and Duesseldorf airports. London's Gatwick airport re-opened on Friday morning after two days, but passengers have been warned to expect delays and cancellations. London City airport and Edinburgh airport in Scotland also suffered closures. Eurostar says it expects to operate a significantly reduced service until Sunday, but that no more tickets will be available until Monday.

Meanwhile, heavy rain has led to severe flooding in parts of Albania, Bosnia, Serbia and Montenegro. More than 1,000 people have fled their homes to escape rising waters and officials have declared a state of emergency in several affected areas.

Desire Petroleum's shares went up by 24% on the news. Chairman of Desire Stephen Phipps called the find in the North Falkland Basin "highly encouraging." Another British company, Rockhopper, found oil in the same area in May. It is not clear if either find will prove commercially viable. The resumption of oil exploration around the Falklands earlier this year revived the long-running dispute between Britain and Argentina over the islands.

In February Argentina announced new controls on shipping to the Falklands. It has also raised the issue at the United Nations and rallied support for its sovereignty claim among Latin American countries. Britain says it has no doubt about its sovereignty over the islands, where most of the population is of British descent. The Argentine military invaded the Falklands in 1982 but was defeated by Britain in the war which followed.

The exercises come 10 days after North Korea shelled a South Korean island, killing four people. South Korean observers are present for the first time. The joint military exercises - codenamed Keen Sword - are being held to mark the 50th anniversary of the US-Japan alliance. They are intended to be a show of solidarity between the Pacific allies at a time of heightened tension in the region, says the BBC's Roland Buerk in Tokyo.

The drills were planned well before North Korea shelled the South Korean island of Yeonpyeong last month, killing two marines and two civilians. But they come just days after the United States and South Korea carried out their own joint military exercises, putting on a show of force in the Yellow Sea. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said North Korea remained "an immediate threat to the region around it, particularly to South Korea and Japan". North Korea also posed "a medium-term threat, should it collapse, to China", she said.

About 50,000 US soldiers are stationed in Japan. The US-Japan exercises will continue until 10 December.

Wikileaks says it has faced disruption since it began publishing thousands of secret US diplomatic cables. The memos, which discuss US diplomatic relations and military activities, have been causing controversy across the world. It was not clear how long disruption to the site would last for. In a statement on its website, EveryDNS.net said it had issued a 24-hour termination notice to Wikileaks which ended at 0300 GMT on 2 December.

It said the domain wikileaks.org had become the target of "multiple distributed denial of service (DDOS) attacks". "These attacks have, and future attacks would, threaten the stability of the EveryDNS.net infrastructure, which enables access to almost 500,000 other websites," it said. "Any downtime of the wikileaks.org website has resulted from its failure to use another hosted DNS service provider," it added.

Wikileaks says its website has been under attack since it began publishing more than 250,000 classified US diplomatic cables. It turned to the online store Amazon to host its site but the company ended the agreement on Wednesday - a move welcomed by US officials. Wikileaks said its site is now being hosted by servers in Europe.

While it is unclear how bad the sell off could be, it could wipe out the year's gains, they warn. "Capital gains tax rate will increase from 15 to 20 percent if the tax cuts are not extended. The last time the capital gains tax rate increased - on January 1, 1987 from 20 to 28 percent - investors realized their gains at the lower tax rate," said Daniel Clifton at a Washington partner at Strategas Research Partners. "We would expect a similar effect this time around as investors see the tax rate going up and choose to realize their gains and incur the 15 percent tax."

In a memo to clients, Clifton says that the date most clients are focused on is December 15th for a deal in Congress before beginning to sell. One reason: Many stock options expire that day and investors have to act. The later Congress acts, he tells Whispers, "the more pressure that will build on the stock market." Worse, talk that Congress will simply pass retroactive fixes to the tax system won't help, since investors will take the sure thing and sell rather than rely on Capitol Hill. "Fixing the issue next year will not negate these negative impacts," said Clifton.

Ditto for a retroactive fix to the alternative minimum tax, he writes in the client memo. "The talk of retroactively fixing the tax cuts ignores the fact that the AMT patch cannot be retroactively fixed and is the largest component of the tax increase. Hence, in March and April, 27 million taxpayers will be facing an additional $70 billion in tax payments. The hit to consumer spending would be particularly significant," he writes.

Initiated already in the 1990s, this project aims at the long-term assurance of Western global predominance. According to an analysis by the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP), NATO's activities, particularly in Eastern Asia and the Pacific realm are colliding with the interests of the People's Republic of China. An escalation of long-standing tensions between the West and Beijing are expected. In this context, cooperation between NATO and Moscow is aimed at preventing an eventual alliance between Russia and China.

"Partnership for Peace" (PfP) program - several of the countries that were soon accepted into this cooperation program are today full members of NATO. PfP is currently comprised of 22 countries, including formerly neutral European countries such as Switzerland, Austria and Ireland, but also CIS [Commonwealth of Independent States] member nations, which provides NATO with a foothold in the Caucasus and Central Asia. Seven North African and Middle East countries are members of the "Mediterranean Dialogue," initiated by the military alliance in 1994. Four countries of the Arabian Peninsular are cooperating with the Western powers alliance within the framework of the "Istanbul Cooperation Initiative", founded by NATO in 2004. This is how the war pact has been able to solidly establish a foothold in the world's most important raw materials regions.

The network of scaled down "partnerships" is not only useful to the West because it can, to various degrees, bind numerous countries around the globe to NATO, but also because these countries are simply "partners" and not members of this war alliance. They have no voice in strategic decisions and ultimately remain at the mercy of Western planning. At best, according to the "Strategic Concept," they have the right to participate in decisions concerning operative questions in the NATO-led missions, in which they are participating. The geo-strategic project behind this system of "partnerships" serves to systematically stabilize western hegemony.

The escalation at the disputed maritime border was a setback for German efforts to reach unification between North and South Korea. For years, Germany has been pursuing this objective. Berlin is not only hoping to have more influence on the Korean Peninsular - claiming that in questions of reunification their qualifications are unrivaled - but also to gain comprehensive geo-strategic advantages over China. North Korea, according to Chinese experts, serves as a "buffer zone" between the People's Republic of China and the US troops stationed in South Korea. On the other hand, for years, Germany has been furnishing South Korea with weaponry. South Korea is at the top of Germany's list of customers for its combat material.

For years, Germany has been preoccupied with relations between South and North Korea. Berlin's efforts have been aimed particularly at achieving a "reunification" of the two countries. German organizations, particularly the party affiliated foundations, above all the FDP-affiliated Friedrich Naumann Foundation, are present in Seoul with corresponding programs and are making efforts to intensify their contacts to Pyongyang. Berlin declares that, due to its experience with the annexation of the German Democratic Republic, Germany is in the best position to be helpful in a fusion of South and North Korea - hoping to play an active and effective role that will insure its influence on the Korean Peninsular.

Just recently German experts concluded that the new generation that has now come to power in Pyongyang, is prepared to open up North Korea to the West. The escalation of belligerency at the maritime border between the two Koreas, is taking place at a time of possible wide-ranging transformations in Pyongyang.

According to Shen Dingli, if North Korea is defeated, the West could advance right up to the Chinese border, and this would be "disastrous for China." In Seoul, the scenario of a war between a reunited Korea and the People's Republic of China is now being seen as a possibility. This war would, to a large extent, be waged with German weapons - on the Korean side and against Beijing.

But the campaign's ineffectiveness aside, the timing of the effort does tell us something about the atheist and humanist movement - specifically, IT DETESTS CHRISTIANITY. The AHA is launching its most expensive ad campaign during the Christmas season because this is a time of year atheists like to attack Christians, whether its renaming Christmas trees "holiday trees," forcing schools to rename Christmas parties "winter break" parties, or outlawing the display of Nativity scenes.

All religions, even the godless ones, are driven to recruit new members. But you don't see Christians attacking the Jewish faith during Hanukkah as a way to gain new followers. You don't see Jews seeking to expand popular appeal by publicly attacking Christians during Easter. Such a tactic, even if shamelessly couched as a way to get people to "think," could actually be considered a hate crime (under legislation passed by Congress) should AHA's advertising incite criminal activity against Christians, say, along the lines of the recent attempted bombing by a Muslim terrorist at a Christmas tree lighting ceremony in Portland, Oregon.

Perhaps the most absurd defense of AHA's anti-Christian Christmas campaign comes from its sugar daddy, Mr Stiefel. "We must denounce politicians that contend US law should be based on the Bible and the Ten Commandments," says Stiefel. "It has not been based on these and should never be. Our Founding Fathers created a secular democracy."

Actually, our American system of governance is deeply rooted in, and based on, the Judeo-Christian values practiced and cherished by our founders. Even a cursory study of American history reveals this to be true.

The official government position has been that the contrail, which appears to have been made by a single source, was from a jet passing by. For weeks, experts have examined the billowing plume and the single-source white-hot exhaust which they contend was from a missile, not a jet. The experts who examined the video have had extensive experience working with missiles and computer security systems for various sensitive agencies of the US government. They even went so far as to suggest that the missile may have been shot from a submerged Chinese nuclear submarine, coinciding with an increasing level of confrontation between the United States and China and designed to send a message to Washington.

"The question that still must be answered is why NORAD's muted response was simply that North America was not threatened, and later our government approved the lame excuse that the picture recorded was simply an aircraft leaving a contrail," said retired US Air Force Brigadier General Jim Cash. A former US Air Force fighter pilot and commander of an F-15 squadron and an F-16 wing, Cash was assigned to NORAD as an assistant director of operations at the Cheyenne Mountain complex near Colorado Springs, Colorado, and is fully knowledgeable of NORAD procedures.

"There is absolutely no doubt that what was captured on video off the coast of California was a missile launch, was clearly observed by NORAD, assessed by a four-star general in minutes, and passed to the president immediately," he said. Even more ominously, cautioned Cash: "We must question the timing of this shot across our bow. The president was abroad being diplomatic, which means trying to placate China which is becoming overly concerned with our handling a totally out-of-control deficit in spending."

Also, Wayne Madsen, a former naval officer who has worked at the National Security Agency and the Naval Data Automation Command, said the inability to pick up what he described as a Chinese Jin-class submarine-launched ballistic missile isn't the first time US Navy anti-submarine warfare sensors have failed. Madsen, who today is an investigative journalist, said the Pentagon is working "overtime with the media and on the Internet to cover up the latest debacle. However, even some reporters who cover the Pentagon full-time are beginning to question the Pentagon's version of events... over the skies west of Los Angeles."

With each firm employing an average of four to five people, it means around 1.25 million people lost their jobs as a result of their employer's collapse. In a further blow, the ONS said it is the first time that the number of business deaths has overshadowed the number of new businesses. Only 236,000 started up last year, according to ONS statistician Andrew Allen.

Less than half the businesses set up in 2004 were still going by the end of the recession in 2009. Jane Bennett, head of campaigns at the Forum of Private Business, described the figures as 'quite shocking' following one of the worst recessions in living memory. She said: 'Many veteran business owners well into their 60s have told us that they have never known such difficult trading conditions.' She warned that the recession, which lasted for 18 months, may be over, but thousands of businesses are still on the brink of collapse.

Nearly half of girls say they want sex education to focus on the consequences of pregnancy, not the biology of sex. The survey of 13 to 16-year-olds also found that more than a third of boys want to know what 'being a parent' is all about and that no issue was deemed more important by so many. Experts from Hull University said they were surprised the majority of teenagers they surveyed support 'moral' ideas about having sex.

Most believe their first sexual relationship should be special and that sex should only take place in long-term serious relationships. The survey was carried out by Dr Julie Jomeen and Dr Clare Whitfield of the university's faculty of health and social care. The survey of sex and relationships among 2,036 teenagers from nine schools in both affluent and deprived areas found 46 per cent of girls and 38 per cent of boys rated being a parent as the most important topic to know more about.

In second place for girls was the morning after pill, with 41 per cent wanting to learn more, while 34 per cent of boys wanted more information about sexual intercourse. Ways in which HIV can be passed on was the third most important topic for 33 per cent of girls and 28 per cent of boys. The survey, commissioned by East Riding of Yorkshire Council and NHS East Riding of Yorkshire, also questioned attitudes about sex and relationships. Around three-quarters of boys and girls agreed 'you don't have to have sex to keep a partner' and a relationship doesn't have to include sex.

Norman Wells, director of the Family Education Trust, said: 'Young people are clearly tiring of the negative messages they are receiving about pregnancy and parenthood from sex educators obsessed with contraception. For too long, government policy has all too often been encouraging and facilitating casual sex.'

But the central bank risks disappointing markets if, as several analysts predict, it will only decide at its monthly meeting that its liquidity taps for euro zone banks will stay wide open and merely hint at more government bond purchases. "The price action... adds to risk that the market may be disappointed with today's outcome," Citigroup currency and markets strategists said in a note.

Even European powerhouse Germany struggled to sell its bonds on Wednesday and Portugal's borrowing costs soared in further signs that last weekend's 85 billion-euro ($110.7-billion) EU-IMF rescue of Ireland and leaders' pledges to defend the euro at any cost failed to impress investors.

European Union leaders appeared to pass the baton to the ECB.

The remarks foreshadow a visit to Europe this week by a US Treasury envoy who is expected to visit Berlin, Madrid and Paris to hold talks on the ramifications of the debt crisis. The developments have echoes of the pressure applied by Washington on European capitals last May to create the near $1 trillion EFSF safety net that was last week used to rescue Ireland after its banking crisis spiraled out of control. The IMF, whose biggest single shareholder is the United States, has committed 250 billion euros to the EFSF.

While reluctant to dictate to Europe how it should address the unfolding debt crisis, the US government is growing concerned about the global fallout of Europe's predicament. US Treasurys' prices fell and the euro strengthened against the dollar on Wednesday after the news that the United States would be prepared to support an enlarged EFSF.

Germany, whose leaders have expressed frustration at the market backlash against their plans to solve the euro zone's debt problems, does not want to make the stability fund larger.