They voted overwhelmingly to maintain a 140-year-old ban on convicts taking part in elections because, they said, those who commit a crime have 'broken their contract with society'. The decisive stance plunged Parliament into an unprecedented stand-off against the European Court of Human Rights.

After six hours of impassioned debate, MPs voted by 234 to 22 - a majority of 212 - to defy a ruling from the ECHR that the ban must be overturned. Dozens of Conservative backbenchers lined up to insist that after decades of toeing the line, the time has come for Britain to tell unelected Strasbourg judges that they have overstepped their authority.

Experts said the vote left Britain's relationship with the European court in 'uncharted territory'. It places the Prime Minister under intense pressure to launch a defining challenge against Strasbourg. Proposing the cross-party motion which 'supports the current situation in which no prisoner is able to vote', former Tory shadow home secretary David Davis said: 'The general point is very clear in this country: that is that it takes a pretty serious crime to get yourself sent to prison. And as a result you have broken the contract with society to such a serious extent that you have lost all of those rights: your liberty and your right to vote.'

Last night's Commons decision sends an emphatic message to the European courts that MPs are not prepared to accept their rulings on votes for prisoners. It sets the scene for an unprecedented conflict between Parliament and the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), which is not used to having its diktats challenged. Exactly what happens next is unclear and fraught with difficulty for ministers - and David Cameron in particular.

Crowds are gathering outside the presidential palace, Tahrir Square and the offices of state TV in the city. The army said in what it called "Communique No 2" that it "confirms the lifting of the state of emergency as soon as the current circumstances end". It endorsed the transfer of President Mubarak's powers to his vice president, General Omar Suleiman, and guaranteed a free and fair presidential election, constitutional changes and "protection of the nation".

The army also urged "the need to resume orderly work in the government installations and a return to normal life, preserve the interests and property of our great people". The lifting of Egypt's state of emergency has been a key demand of the protesters. Meanwhile, the BBC's Jon Leyne in Cairo says Friday's mass protests could bring demonstrators into direct conflict with the army. It is the most dangerous moment so far in more than two weeks of protests, he adds.

Cairo resident Sherine Barakat told the BBC on Friday that she did not think there would be violence between the protesters and the army. "Yesterday in the square soldiers were saying: 'If you march to the palace, no officer will stand in your way'. I think the army will help the people," she said.

But it was more an act of protest than an effective start-up of a political party since Saudi Arabia has no elected parliament and parties and public dissent are banned by the Al Saud monarchy, which rules the world's No. 1 oil exporting country in alliance with Sunni Muslim clerics. There have been other attempts to form parties but analysts said the new "Islamic Umma" group appeared to be the first to be revealed publicly. They said members included Islamist intellectuals and lecturers, human rights activists and lawyers.

"You know well what big political development and improvement of freedom and human rights is currently happening in the Islamic world," the group of ten activists said in a letter to King Abdullah, obtained by Reuters and also posted on their website. "It's time to bring this development to the kingdom," they told the king, who is about 87 and now recuperating in Morocco after medical treatment in the United States.

Islamists and liberals both seek more political freedoms in Saudi Arabia and, while differing on details such as the rights of women, say that reform is their overriding goal. Any instability at the helm of Saudi Arabia, the strategic linchpin of US policy in the Middle East, could ripple across the Arab Gulf region and beyond.

Anti-government protests swept Tunisian President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali out of power, triggering a revolt in Egypt that has unraveled the autocracy of President Hosni Mubarak and paralyzed the country for two weeks. King Abdullah has tried to carry out some reforms since taking power in 2005, such as trying to overhaul a school system that focuses on religion, qualifying few graduates for jobs in the private sector. But diplomats and analysts say his room for maneuver is limited because of resistance from conservatives in key ministries and the religious elite which adheres to the austere Wahhabi school of Islam.

NBC News reported that a high-ranking source inside the president's office said that Mubarak would step down and the newly appointed vice president, Omar Suleiman, would take over. This was then confirmed by a second source. The news came following repeated warnings of a military crackdown or coup.

He was not present at Thursday's supreme council meeting, despite being the commander in chief of Egypt's armed forces. Suleiman, a former army general and intelligence chief named to his post after the protests erupted January 25, was also not there. A spokesman read a statement that the council was in permanent session to explore "what measures and arrangements could be made to safeguard the nation, its achievements and the ambitions of its great people."

State TV announced that the supreme council had expressed its "support of the legitimate demands of the people." General Hassan al-Roueini, military commander for the Cairo area, told thousands of protesters in central Tahrir Square, "All your demands will be met today."

Pall Einarsson, a professor of geophysics at the University of Iceland, says the area around Bardarbunga is showing signs of increased activity, which provides "good reason to worry". He told the country's national TV station that a low number of seismometer measuring devices in the area is making it more difficult to determine the scale and likely outcome of the current shifts.

But he said there was "every reason to worry" as the sustained earthquake tremors to the north east of the remote volcano range are the strongest recorded in recent times and there was "no doubt" the lava was rising. The geologist complained that the lack of coverage from measuring devices means he cannot accurately detect the depth and exact location of the increased number of localised earth movements.

Respected volcano watcher Jon Frimann, said on his volcano watch blog: "After the Eyjafjallajokull volcano eruption in the year 2010 it seems that geologists in Iceland take earthquake swarms more seriously then they did before." He explained the Icelandic Met Office had on Sunday warned of the increased risk of a eruption in north-west side of Vatnajokull glacier due to the high earthquake activity in the area, and added: "It is clear that only time is going to tell us if there is going to be a eruption in this area soon or not."

The last recorded eruption of Bardarbunga was in 1910, although volcanologists believe its last major eruption occurred in 1477 when it produced a large ash and pumice fallout. It also produced the largest known lava flow during the past 10,000 years on earth. It is the second largest volcano on Iceland and is directly above the mantle plume of molten rock.

The America that so many of us grew up deeply loving is literally being ripped to shreds in a thousand different ways. Unfortunately, those in power have not had any real answers for us in decades. The Democrats don't have any real answers, the Republicans don't have any real answers and the Federal Reserve sure as heck does not have any real answers. In fact, it seems like almost everything that our leaders actually do "accomplish" only makes things worse. The vast majority of Americans are quite busy being entertained by "bread and circuses", but meanwhile our country is literally falling apart.

The following are 20 facts that will make you really mad if you stop and think about them for a while...

#1 Since the Federal Reserve was created in 1913, the US dollar has declined in value by over 95 percent.

#2 The difference between the budget that the "big spending Democrats" are proposing and the budget that the "big spending Republicans" are proposing is only about 32 billion dollars. Considering the fact that our national budget deficit is going to run about 1.5 trillion dollars this year, 32 billion dollars is not a whole lot to cut.

#3 Japan now manufactures about 5 million more automobiles than the United States does.

#4 China has now become the world's largest exporter of high technology products.

#5 The US government currently owes China 895 billion dollars and we are constantly sending government officials over there to beg them to lend us even more money.

#6 The President of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, Dennis Lockhart, says that the Federal Reserve is not responsible for the rising cost of living...

#7 The price of food is going up, the price of gasoline is going up, but home values continue to go down. According to CoreLogic, national home prices were 5.46 percent lower in December 2010 than they were in December 2009.

#8 In Osceola County, Florida 66.5% of all home mortgages are underwater. In Clark Country, Nevada 71.1% of all home mortgages are underwater.

#9 There are approximately 28 million Americans that would like full-time jobs but that don't have full-time jobs.

#10 In a recent interview, Donald Rumsfeld said that he takes "great pride in the structures that the Bush administration put in place that this Obama administration criticized and ran against and now have retained: military commissions and indefinite detention and (the prison at) Guantanamo Bay, Cuba."

#11 The number of net jobs gained by the US economy during this past decade was smaller than during any other decade since World War 2.

#12 The Obama administration and the Federal Reserve are both declaring that the US economy is in recovery mode, and yet an all-time record of 43.6 million Americans were on food stamps during the month of November.

#13 According to a report published in The American Journal of Medicine, medical bills are a major factor in more than 60 percent of the personal bankruptcies in the United States. Of those bankruptcies that were caused by medical bills, approximately 75 percent of them involved individuals that actually did have health insurance.

#14 A Super Bowl television ad that encouraged people to look up John 3:16 was rejected by Fox Sports because they felt that it was "too offensive".

#15 In Houston, Texas a couple named Bobby and Amanda Herring that had been feeding homeless people for over a year has been banned by the city from doing so. They were told that they needed a permit to feed the homeless and city officials say that they are not going to get one.

#16 A study by the World Institute for Development Economics Research found that the bottom half of the world population owns approximately 1 percent of all global wealth.

#17 Approximately 1 billion people throughout the world go to bed hungry each night.

#18 During Barack Obama's first two years in office, the US government added more to the US national debt than the first 100 US Congresses combined.

#19 An increasing number of investors are betting that the US government will default on its debt. In fact, trading of US credit default swap contracts has more than doubled over the last several weeks.

#20 The fastest growing portion of the federal budget is interest on the national debt.

Some of the key food producing provinces in China are facing their worst drought in 200 years. Flooding has absolutely devastated agricultural production in Australia and Brazil this winter. Russia is still trying to recover from the horrific drought of last summer. Global weather patterns have gone haywire over the past 12 months, and this is putting immense pressure on a global food system that was already on the verge of a major breakdown.

Food stockpiles all over the world are disturbingly low at this point. If a major global famine broke out not even the United States would be able to last for long. The US government is supposed to be keeping a lot of food stockpiled in the event of an emergency, but that is just not happening.

Right now a desperate scramble for food is beginning. Quite a few nations that used to be huge food exporters are now importing a lot of their food. Prices for staples such as wheat, corn and soybeans are absolutely soaring, and the UN is projecting that they will continue to rise rapidly throughout 2011. Unless something dramatically changes, the global food situation is only going to get tighter and tighter and tighter as this decade rolls along. So who is going to decide who gets fed and who doesn't?

The following are 14 facts that make you wonder if the coming global food shortage has already begun....

#1 According to the US Department of Agriculture, US corn reserves will drop to a 15 year low by the end of 2011.

#2 The United Nations says that the global price of food hit another new all-time high in the month of January.

#3 The price of corn has doubled in the past six months.

#4 The price of wheat has roughly doubled since the middle of 2010.

#5 According to Forbes, the price of soybeans is up about 50% since last June.

#6 The United Nations is projecting that the global price of food will increase by another 30 percent by the end of 2011.

#7 Due to all of the unprecedented flooding, the winter wheat crop in Australia has been absolutely devastated.

#8 This winter Brazil was hit by some of the worst flooding that nation has ever seen. This has substantially hampered food production in that country.

#9 Russia, one of the largest wheat producers on the entire globe, is still feeling the effects of last summer's scorching temperatures. In fact, Russia is actually importing wheat this winter to sustain its cattle herds.

#10 China is busy preparing for a "severe, long-lasting drought" that is projected to have a huge impact on several provinces. In fact, Chinese state media says that the eastern province of Shandong is dealing with the worst drought it has seen in 200 years. The provinces being affected by this severe drought grow approximately two-thirds of the wheat in China.

#11 It appears that Chinese imports of corn will be about 9 times larger than the US Department of Agriculture originally projected them to be for 2011.

#12 Approximately 1 billion people around the world go to bed hungry each night.

#13 Somewhere in the world someone starves to death every 3.6 seconds, and 75 percent of those are children under the age of five.

#14 As food has become increasingly scarce around the world, many companies have started using whatever kinds of "fillers" that they can think of in their "food" products. For example, Raw Story is reporting that some companies in China have actually been mass producing "fake rice" that is made partly of plastic. According to one Chinese Restaurant Association official, eating three bowls of this fake rice is the equivalent of consuming an entire plastic bag.

Let us pray that this is not the beginning of a major global food crisis, because hunger and starvation are horrible things. Starving to death is a fate that nobody should ever have to go through.

Colonels from the two Koreas, still technically at war since their 1950-53 civil conflict ended in a truce, not a treaty, talked for two days but failed to get past the first hurdle of the preliminary meeting - setting the agenda for senior discussions. "The talks have collapsed; they haven't even agreed on a date for their next meeting," the official told Reuters, referring to the first meeting since the North's attack on the southern island of Yeonpyeong in November, which killed four people and raised the threat of possible all-out war.

The South's Defence Ministry said in a statement that the North's representatives had "unilaterally walked out of the meeting room." In Washington, Pentagon spokesman Colonel Dave Lapan called news of the walkout unfortunate and said the United States had actively encouraged dialogue between the two Koreas as a way to reduce tensions on the peninsula.

"We are hopeful they can work out whatever differences there were and resume talks as soon as possible," Lapan said. Seoul said the offer for senior-level military talks still stood, but on the condition the North "takes responsible steps regarding" last year's attacks, a ministry official said.

"For thieves their hands will be cut off for a first offence, and their foot for a subsequent offence," the book says. Diagrams are given to teenagers detailing where the amputations should be made, The Telegraph reports. Investigative TV show "Panorama" on BBC One will reportedly present evidence Wednesday night that the textbooks were uncovered at a network of 40 private schools that teach a Saudi Arabian national curriculum.

Textbooks claiming Jews were transformed into pigs and apes have been distributed to up to 5,000 students at weekend schools across England, according to The Telegraph. Another book for 6-year-olds says that people who don't believe in Islam will suffer "hellfire" in death. The TV show also found that some private Muslim schools are promoting extremist sentiments on their websites.

Britain's Education Secretary Michael Gove said such sentiments would not be tolerated. But researchers warn the education system is "not equipped" to handle threats from extremist organizations. The country's new "free schools" - run by parents, teachers and charities - can be used to indoctrinate students, according to Policy Exchange, a conservative think tank based in London. BBC says it has uncovered evidence that links the schools to the Saudi embassy, but the embassy vehemently denies any connection. Michael Gove, the Education Secretary, said last night that extremism, homophobia and anti-Semitism would not be tolerated in schools.

The combined group would have headquarters in New York and Frankfurt, with Deutsche Boerse shareholders holding about 60 percent of the combined company and NYSE shareholders holding the rest. The companies disclosed their talks on Wednesday. "I think these consolidations are the wave of the future - with aspects we haven't even seen yet - once the derivatives markets are required to be more like exchanges," former SEC Chairman Harvey Pitt told CNBC. "Securities regulators should welcome these consolidations, but competition regulators may be concerned."

Not everyone was so enthused about it, however. Ken Langone, co-founder of Home Depot and a former NYSE director, told CNBC. "The listed exchanges are losing market share dramatically. They're less relevant with electronic trading that's now prevalent throughout the industry. It seems to me that the only sense for the merger here is to cut costs."

Earlier in the day, LSE said it would buy TMX, forming the world's fourth-largest exchange and a top centre for trading mining and energy shares, with $4.1 trillion of stock changing hands a year. The exchanges are looking to regain market share lost to upstart electronic trading platforms. Other exchanges could face similar pressure to merge, analysts said.

It was believed to be first big protest in that area and the first deadly use of force by security forces since January 28. In Cairo, dozens of museum workers, university professors and members of a music syndicate protested separately over poor pay. Workers in Suez and Ismailia carried out similar protests. In Port Said, hundreds of people from a poor neighbourhood set a government building alight to complain about the local authority's failure to build proper housing.

Demonstrators continued to occupy Tahrir Square in central Cairo, keeping up the pressure on Mr Mubarak to step down immediately, while others gathered outside parliament for a second day. Kamal Abbas, head of the Centre for Trade Union and Workers' Services, a civil society group, said tens of thousands of workers had downed tools. "These strikes are happening because in the last two days there has been a lot of news about the amounts of money which those in power stole from the country," he said "All this has led the workers to say, what about us, we are on very small salaries and we too want to live."

The protests have cost the country billions, Samir Radwan, the finance minister, told the Financial Times. He said about 75 billion pounds ($13 billion) was wiped off the stock market before it closed on January 27, while there was a run on banks when they reopened on Sunday. "Frankly, we were frightened that the run would be on foreign currency, the run was on the Egyptian currency but it has fizzled out," he said.

America's closest ally in the Gulf made clear that the Egyptian President must be allowed to stay on to oversee the transition towards peaceful democracy and then leave with dignity. "Mubarak and King Abdullah are not just allies, they are close friends, and the King is not about to see his friend cast aside and humiliated," a senior source in the Saudi capital told The Times.

There are reports of widespread industrial action, and of protests outside Cairo turning violent. The Egyptian government has announced plans for a peaceful transition which see President Mubarak staying in office until elections in September, but opposition groups fear the government is stalling for time and will fail to enact meaningful changes.

Mr Gibbs said: "The government has not taken the necessary steps that the people of Egypt need to see. That's why more and more people come out to register their grievances. If there's some notion on the government side that you can put the genie back in this bottle, I think that's gone a long time ago." He added that the US was reviewing its aid programme to Egypt, and the government's restraint and reform would determine "what that aid will look like".

His remarks follow Tuesday's call by US Vice-President Joe Biden for the Egyptian government to lift its longstanding state of emergency, and to stop harassing journalists and activists. The BBC's North America editor, Mark Mardell, says the Obama administration is clearly ratcheting up the pressure.

The sad truth is that we were once the wealthiest, most prosperous nation on the planet, but now we are deeply drowning in debt. America has become a debt pig that is deeply addicted to debt-fueled prosperity. We had more than any other nation on the planet by far, but that was never good enough for us. We always had to have more. So we borrowed and borrowed and borrowed. Now, average household debt is far larger than average household income, state and local governments across the nation are on the verge of default and our national government has piled up the biggest mountain of debt in the history of the world.

Just read the statistics compiled below. Is there anyone out there that can deny that America has become a fat, bloated debt pig that is completely and totally out of control?

So I hope that you enjoyed the spectacle of Super Bowl Sunday, because there won't be too many more times like this. The greatest debt-fueled party in the history of the world is rapidly coming to an end, and pretty soon it will be time to start turning out the lights.

The following are 17 statistics about debt in America that are almost too outrageous to believe....

#1 The US national debt is now well over 14 trillion dollars and it is being projected that the US government will have the biggest budget deficit ever recorded this fiscal year.

#2 It is estimated that the US national debt will increase by $150,000 per US household between 2009 and 2021.

#3 During Barack Obama's first two years in office, the US government added more to the US national debt than the first 100 US Congresses combined.

#4 Unfunded liabilities for entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare are estimated to be well over $100 trillion, and nobody in the US government seems to have any idea how we are actually even going to come close to meeting all of those obligations.

#5 When you add up all forms of debt in the United States (government debt, business debt and consumer debt) it comes to approximately 360 percent of GDP. This represents the biggest debt bubble in the history of the world by far.

#6 Today, state and local government debt has reached an all-time high of 22 percent of US GDP.

#7 Unfunded pension benefit liabilities at the state government level - the amount state governments owe in promised retirement benefits beyond what they have collected - exceed $3 trillion.

#8 Average household debt in the United States has now reached a level of 136% of average household income. In China that figure is only 17%.

#9 Today, 46% of all Americans carry a credit card balance from month to month.

#10 Of US households that have credit card debt, the average amount owed on credit cards is $15,788.

#11 Americans now owe more than $887 billion on student loans, which is even more than they owe on credit cards.

#12 A staggering 25 percent of all American adults now have a credit score below 599.

#13 According to a survey released very close to the end of 2010, 55 percent of all Americans are now living paycheck to paycheck. The sad truth is that most of us are maxed out.

#14 1.5 million Americans filed for bankruptcy in 2010. That represented the fourth yearly increase in bankruptcy filings in a row.

#15 One out of every 45 US households was hit with a foreclosure filing in 2010.

#16 The number of American families that were actually booted out of their homes and into the streets set a new all-time record in 2010.

#17 Even as the suffering of the poor is going up the generosity of the wealthy is going down. It turns out that America's wealthiest individuals gave a lot less money to charity in 2010.

Doku Umarov, the self-styled leader of Russia's Islamist terror movement, claimed full responsibility for the suicide bombing of Moscow's busiest airport last month, an attack that left thirty six people dead. "This special operation was carried out on my orders and, if Allah wills it, more of these special operations will be carried out in future," he said by video. "There are hundreds of our brothers ready to sacrifice their lives to assert the word of Allah."

Umarov had earlier appeared in another video alongside a man he identified as a suicide bomber but had stopped short of claiming responsibility for the airport bombing. This time, he was more explicit, vowing to intensify his campaign of terror by conducting "deeper and more aggressive" attacks. "We can carry out operations at any time where and when we want," he warned, wagging his finger aggressively every few minutes in a mostly rambling speech.

The 46-year-old terrorist urged the Kremlin to abandon the North Caucasus, its southern flank, altogether explaining that his campaign of terror was meant to turn the area into an Islamist Emirate with him as its Emir. The Kremlin is adamant that it will never relinquish the North Caucasus, a predominantly Muslim area riven by chronic poverty that includes Chechnya and a string of other small internal republics.