Several hours of shelling and machine gun fire subsided at around 11 am (4:00 am British time), creating an uneasy peace in the 4.6 square km (two square mile) contested area around the 11th-century Preah Vihear temple claimed by both Southeast Asian neighbours.

Both sides blame the other for sparking clashes that have killed at least two Thais and three Cambodians since Friday and unleashed nationalist passions in Bangkok, energising "yellow shirt" protesters demanding Thailand's government step down. Reasons behind the fighting remain murky. Some analysts reckon hawkish Thai generals and nationalist allies may be trying to topple Thailand's government or even create a pretext to stage another coup and cancel elections expected this year.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said in a statement he was "deeply concerned" and urged both sides to cease fire and find a "lasting solution" to the dispute, echoing a similar statement from Washington over the weekend. The dispute threatens to worsen long-running hostility between Thai political factions ahead of the expected general election this year.

"The prime minister has left a lot of people cold this past few weeks," David Pemberthy, editor in chief of online newspaper The Punch, wrote on Friday. By contrast, Queensland Premier Anna Bligh, a direct descendant of Captain William Bligh of Bounty mutiny fame, has won widespread praise for her management of the disasters and could be the only politician to reap any political benefits.

The floods and cyclone destroyed crops and infrastructure across northeastern Australia, particularly in Queensland, where at least 35 people were killed, 30,000 houses inundated and roads, bridges and rail lines wiped out. Parliament resumes next week and Gillard, who relies on three independents and one Green lawmaker to ensure her Labour party government's one-seat majority, faces a fight over her plan to impose a temporary tax to cover the damage bill.

It is a fight Gillard needs to win to show she can effectively run the government, and to head off faint complaints within her own party over her leadership and her inability to lift Labor's fortunes in opinion surveys. The proposed temporary "floods tax" on middle to high income-earners has produced a firestorm of protest on radio phone-in shows and its passage is set to be a major test of her political character.

The central bank moved 5 billion pounds ($854 million) of cash into the financial system as depositors gained access to their savings. The regulator, which has $36 billion in reserves and guarantees deposits, used military cargo planes to bring in the funds, Governor Farouk El-Okdah said yesterday on state-run television.

The central bank published on its website a list of more than 200 bank branches resuming operations today between 10:00 am and 1:30 pm. Customers are allowed to withdraw up to 50,000 Egyptian pounds and $10,000 a day. Egypt's stock exchange will remain shut until at least February 8, communications manager Hisham Turk said in a telephone interview today.

The government plans to sell 15 billion pounds in treasury bills tomorrow after canceling last week's auction as protests against Mubarak intensified. Yields on Egypt's bills may surge about 30 percent, said Shahinaz Foda, the head of treasury at BNP Paribas Egypt. Credit Agricole CIB expects the pound to slump 20 percent in the "short term." The currency's three month non-deliverable forwards rose to a record last week, suggesting the currency may fall more than 7 percent against the dollar.

The government announced that the transition had begun with a meeting between Vice President Omar Suleiman and two representatives of the Muslim Brotherhood, the outlawed Islamist group the Egyptian government has sought to repress for many years as a threat to stability. They met as part of a group of about 50 prominent Egyptians and opposition figures, including officials of the small, recognized opposition parties, as well as a handful of young people who helped start the protest movement.

"We did not come out with results," said Mohamed Morsy, a Brotherhood leader who attended, while others explained that the Brotherhood had attended only to reiterate its demands and show openness to dialogue. The standoff over the meeting underscored the conflicting narratives about the next chapter of the revolt that has shaken Egypt and the wider Arab world.

More than 100,000 turned out again on Sunday in the capital's central Tahrir Square - more than expected as the work week resumed here. And some of the movement's young organizers, who were busy meeting to organize their many small groups into a unified structure, said they were considering more large-scale demonstrations in other cities, strikes or acts of civil disobedience like surrounding the state television headquarters.

Many of the protesters who gathered in Tahrir Square, the epicenter of the protests, vented anger at reports that the United States was supporting the idea of a negotiated transition undertaken by Mr Suleiman while Mr Mubarak remained in power. "The extremists aren't here in Egypt, but they will be if the United States persists!" said Noha El Sharakawy, a 52-year-old pharmacist with dual citizenship in both countries.

Infrastructures Minister Uzi Landau wants the government to back loans so financing can be obtained to develop the Tamar field, off Israel's coast in the Mediterranean Sea, a spokesman said. Landau also favors exempting the field's developers from a proposed windfall tax. "We have to do everything to improve Israel's energy security," Landau told Israel Radio on Sunday. "It is Israel's obligation to remove as soon as possible every obstacle" to developing Tamar, he said.

Landau's spokesman, Chen Ben-Lulu, said the goal was to have gas from Tamar flowing into Israel by 2013. The explosion in Egypt on Saturday "just proves" the need to do so, he added. "We want energy independence and to achieve it as soon as possible," Ben-Lulu said.

The explosion in Egypt's northern Sinai Peninsula on Saturday came amid a popular uprising against longtime Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. The blast set off a massive fire that was contained by shutting off the flow of gas to Jordan and Israel. Egypt's natural gas company said the fire was caused by a gas leak, but local officials said an explosive device was detonated inside the terminal.

The blaze burned through 750 hectares of suburbs in the city's north-east since Saturday night, threatening lives and properties. Gusts of up to 47 miles an hour fanned the flames as 150 firefighters tried to protect some 100 homes. The Fire and Emergency Services Authority said the bushfire was moving fast in a northwesterly direction and was "out of control and unpredictable". Strong winds have also prevented water bombing aircraft from containing the fires.

After 30 years as president and many more as a senior military official, Mubarak has had access to investment deals that have generated hundreds of millions of pounds in profits. Most of those gains have been taken offshore and deposited in secret bank accounts or invested in upmarket homes and hotels. According to a report last year in the Arabic newspaper Al Khabar, Mubarak has properties in Manhattan and exclusive Beverly Hills addresses on Rodeo Drive.

His sons, Gamal and Alaa, are also billionaires. A protest outside Gamal's ostentatious home at 28 Wilton Place in Belgravia, central London, highlighted the family's appetite for western trophy assets. Amaney Jamal, a political science professor at Princeton University, said the estimate of $40 billion-70 billion was comparable with the vast wealth of leaders in other Gulf countries.

"The business ventures from his military and government service accumulated to his personal wealth," she told ABC news. "There was a lot of corruption in this regime and stifling of public resources for personal gain. "This is the pattern of other Middle Eastern dictators so their wealth will not be taken during a transition. These leaders plan on this."

Different cultures are encouraged to live apart, and objectionable views met with "passive tolerance", he will say. He will also signal a tougher stance on groups promoting Islamist extremism.

Mr Cameron is to suggest there will be greater scrutiny of some Muslim groups that get public money but do little to tackle extremism. Ministers should refuse to share platforms or engage with such groups, which should be denied access to public funds and barred from spreading their message in universities and prisons, he will argue.

"Frankly, we need a lot less of the passive tolerance of recent years and much more active, muscular liberalism," the prime minister will say. "Let's properly judge these organisations: Do they believe in universal human rights - including for women and people of other faiths? Do they believe in equality of all before the law? Do they believe in democracy and the right of people to elect their own government? Do they encourage integration or separatism?

"These are the sorts of questions we need to ask. Fail these tests and the presumption should be not to engage with organisations," he will add.

The city centre turned into a virtual ghost town before the rally, with shops boarded up and pubs closed. But police and community activists averted large-scale violence, making only eight arrests on a mix of assault, drugs and weapons charges. There were no serious injuries.

Tensions ran high as EDL leader Stephen told marchers to reject the influence of Islam in British public life. "Every single one of you are on the forefront of the fight against militant Islam," he said. The EDL says it is not a racist organisation, and welcomed a speech by Prime Minister David Cameron earlier Saturday, where he told international leaders that his country had been too tolerant of British Islamists who rejected Western norms.

The EDL was formed after a group of radical Muslims shouted slogans at British soldiers, calling for them to "burn in Hell," during a homecoming parade in Luton in 2009.

The plans met resistance during talks on the sidelines of a Brussels summit. There was talk of holding a special eurozone summit next month but no decision was taken. German Chancellor Angela Merkel told other EU leaders that the euro must be defended as a political project. The new pact could also mean more countries raising the retirement age. Under the plan, the practice of index-linking salary increases to inflation - a custom in Belgium and Portugal - would also be scrapped.

"What we want to establish is a pact for competitiveness, and in so doing we want to make it very clear that we intend to grow together more closely on a political level," Mrs Merkel said at a joint news conference with French President Nicolas Sarkozy. The BBC's Europe correspondent Chris Morris says the Franco-German move lays bare a flaw at the heart of the euro project - that it created monetary union without economic union. Countries with the same currency were allowed to pursue very different economic policies.

Many of the details will be bitterly contested, but if Germany and France get their way those differences will begin to disappear. The Franco-German motor is humming again - but Germany is in the driving seat.

Asked on CNN if his organization would support the maintenance of the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty, Mohamed Morsy, a spokesman for the Muslim Brotherhood, dodged a direct answer but said Israel had failed to honor the treaty. He said it would be up to the Egyptian parliament to decide on the fate of the treaty, and that the parliament would reflect the will of the people.

Asked next if an Egypt with a Muslim Brotherhood component in government would even recognize the state of Israel, Morsy again evaded a direct answer despite being pressed several times. "It's ridiculous to ask about the future," he said at one point, and then responded with the question: "Does Israel recognize a Palestinian state?" He also accused Israel of "shedding the blood of the Palestinians for more than 60 years."

Morsy added that the Brotherhood "are not against the Jews. We are against Zionism. We are against torturing the Palestinian people." Morsy also said the Muslim Brotherhood opposed violence. "We do not use violence against anyone," he said. But what was happening on "Palestinian land," however, he said, was not violence but "resistance. And resistance is acceptable by all mankind. And it is the right of people to resist imperialism," he said.

In days gone by, it was pretty much guaranteed that any demonstration in the Arab world would feature burning American flags and a blazing effigy or two of the US president. At the pro-democracy demonstrations on the streets of Cairo and elsewhere, references to the United States have been conspicuously absent, a sign of what some analysts are already calling a "post-American Middle East" of diminished US influence and far greater uncertainty about America's role. "I don't think America appeals to the younger generation," she said. "I'm cautious not to present them with the American example because there's a negative attitude to America, a disappointment."

No one yet knows what kind of Middle East will emerge from Cairo's embattled streets: a newly democratic one, an increasingly radicalized one, or perhaps one in which authoritarian regimes tighten their grip. Events in Cairo are unfolding too rapidly to predict, but one possible outcome could be a more visibly anti-American drift.

The US invasion of Iraq, undertaken ostensibly to spread democracy in a region of the world where it has failed to take root, has produced an elected government. But the latest one, installed in December, was formed only after Iran intervened to break months of deadlock, confirming its role as a major player in Iraq. The last 50,000 US troops are due to leave by the end of the year, and it seems unlikely the Iraqi government will allow the US military to retain even a small long-term presence.

To some extent, other regional powers are already filling the vacuum, including an increasingly assertive, confident Turkey, as well as tiny Qatar, determined to punch above its weight.

The group will now be called just "Rothschild," while the division previously named "investment banking" has been renamed "global financial advisory." Staff at the London office were told about the rebranding in an internal meeting yesterday.

Sian Westerman, in charge of marketing at the bank, told The Daily Telegraph: "Whenever we talked about ourselves we found we were often describing what didn't do as much as what we did. So we'd say investment banking but immediately follow that with the fact we don't sell shares, we're not conflicted or self-serving, which felt very negative. We decided to badge the division as it is: financial, advisory and global."

Experts have warned that the investment bank brands are continuing to be severely damaged by big bonuses and on-going "banker bashing" by the politicians. NM Rothschild was founded in 1811. The group has advised on deals including Cairn Energy and Walmart.

In most instances, symptoms include diarrhoea, stomach cramps and a feeling of general unwellness that will last for up to a week. While unpleasant, they'll generally clear up without medical intervention. But there can be complications, especially among the young, elderly and infirm. In 2008, 15,000 people suffering from the bug were hospitalised and 76 died. Because symptoms can take up to ten days to show, identifying the source of infection is difficult.

What was interesting was that there was no link between the positive results they found on the meat itself and on the external packaging. The wrapping on some chickens tested positive even though the meat inside was negative. This clearly suggests that the item had become contaminated at some stage between packaging and the chicken's arrival on the shelves. Experts say the problem is such that shoppers handling packaged chicken should take the same precautions as if handling the raw meat itself.

Given these high levels of cross-contamination, it is being suggested that one way to tackle the problem would be to chemically wash the chicken carcasses, ahead of packaging. In New Zealand, an anti-microbial wash is used which has markedly reduced contamination. Producers in the US use a chlorine rinse. FSA officials are in talks with the food industry, but chemical washes for fresh chicken are not permitted in the EU and new regulations would be required.

In a tribute to former President Ronald Reagan, the potential 2012 White House contender said leaders in Washington had lost sight of the values that made Reagan a Republican icon and a hero to conservatives - a belief in limited government, low taxes and personal freedoms.

"This is not the road to national greatness, it is the road to ruin," Palin said of the growth in government spending, budget deficits, joblessness and housing foreclosures under Obama. "The federal government is spending too much, borrowing too much, growing and controlling too much," she said.

Palin said Obama had revived the era of big government, and she ridiculed the infrastructure spending and investment he outlined in his recent State of the Union speech."The only thing these investments will get us is a bullet train to bankruptcy," the 2008 vice presidential candidate said in a speech at the Ronald Reagan Ranch Center in Santa Barbara, California, part of two days of festivities marking the late president's 100th birthday.