The government will run out of money in about two months' time, according to the US Treasury Department, unless Congress votes to raise the federal debt ceiling.

But while Democrats, along with most Republicans, agree on the need to avoid having the United States default on its debt, which likely would likely trigger a massive economic meltdown, some conservatives remain firmly against increasing the ceiling.

They insist instead that it is time for massive spending cuts and belt-tightening, and say that raising the debt ceiling further only forestalls needed austerity moves.

Illinois Senator Richard Durbin said the curtailment of government services today could "precipitate an economic crisis, driving up interest rates on mortgages, loans, businesses, families across America." Durbin called it a "political tactic that could kill our economic recovery and drive unemployment even higher."

Democrats noted that the last similar such standoff which led in 1995 to a brief government shutdown that was limited in scope, proved politically costly for Republicans after the public sided en masse with Democratic President Bill Clinton.

But then something happened. Since 1998, temperatures have been relatively flat. We've got more polar bears than ever, and Manhattan is buried under snow. For a planet-roasting crisis that threatened the human race with extinction, there doesn't seem to be much actual warming. So then the mantra became "climate change." The liberals formerly known as "warmists" began predicting that we would experience fundamental changes in our weather. Scientists at the University of East Anglia - the Harvard of climate change - said snow would be "a very rare and exciting event." Children wouldn't know what it was.

As for summers, in the wake of Katrina "change-ist" groups like realclimate.org predicted "global warming will make hurricanes even worse in the future." What happened? Nothing. Europe has had three winters in a row of snow and cold temperatures. In the Atlantic, "there has been a dramatic decrease in the number of hurricanes in the last five years," according to meteorologist Art Horn. "The total energy in all hurricanes around the world has plunged since 1993. The opposite of what was predicted."

So the new fall back is "global weirding." The site thedailygreen.com has a "Weird Weather Watch" page. The uber-liberal Huffington Post ran a story in August headlined "Global Weirding: Extreme Climate Events Dominate The Summer." "The extreme climate events all across the globe must say something about whether climate change is already upon us," the HuffPo insisted. "Extreme is the new normal." They quote a professor of "environmental studies and politics" from Oberlin College who says, "More hottest hots, driest dries, wettest wets, windiest wind conditions. So it's all part of a pattern."

Gore is on board, too. He's now merely claiming rising temperatures will "create all sorts of havoc, ranging from hotter dry spells to colder winters." Not "warming," but "weirding." Not "heating," but "havoc." Which is how global warming can cause more snow, less snow, no snow, avalanches, heat waves, cold snaps, wetter wets, drier dries, gingivitis, delirium tremens and irritable bowel syndrome. . . all at the same time!

Global warming - is there anything it can't do?

Well, the one thing it apparently doesn't do is help predict the weather. The UK's Met Office stopped giving seasonal forecasts last year after mis-predicting warmer winters three years in a row. Meteorologists without a warmist agenda like Piers Corbyn and AccuWeather's Joe Bastardi, on the other hand, continue to pay the bills by making predictions directly contrary to the "weirdos." Oddly, they don't have degrees in politics.

For a theory to be scientific, it must be fallible - capable of being proven false. If every weather condition can be used to "prove" global warming simply by being declared "weird," then it's not science. It's a joke. Which is exactly what the environmental movement has become.

"After President Mubarak steps down and a provisional government is formed, there is a need to dissolve the peace treaty with Israel," al-Bayoumi said. Egypt was the first Arab country to officially recognize Israel and sign a peace agreement with the Israeli government in 1979. It is also a major mediator of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The Muslim Brotherhood has recently come to light amid mass anti-government protests in Egypt. Some media voiced concerns that the banned Islamic movement could eventually take power in the riot-hit Arab country.

The deeply conservative Islamic movement, which wants to move Egypt from secularism and return to the rules of the Quran, failed to win a single seat in the 2010 Egyptian parliamentary election. The Muslim Brotherhood joined the anti-government protests in Egypt last week. The unrest, seen by many analysts as a major threat to repressive governments in the region, has already claimed the lives of at least 300 people and injured several thousand.

Processes that have been roiling beneath the surface for about a decade are suddenly bursting out in an intifada of freedom. Modernization, globalization, telecommunications and Islamization have created a critical mass that cannot be stopped. The example of democratic Iraq is awakening others, and Al Jazeera's subversive broadcasts are fanning the flames. And so the Tunisian bastille fell, the Cairo bastille is falling and other Arab bastilles will fall. The old order in the Middle East is crumbling. Just as the officers' revolution in the 1950s brought down the Arab monarchism that had relied on the colonial powers, the 2011 revolution in the square is bringing down the Arab tyrants who were dependent on the United States.

The second process is the acceleration of the decline of the West.

For some 60 years the West gave the world imperfect but stable order. It built a kind of post-imperial empire that promised relative quiet and maximum peace. The rise of China, India, Brazil and Russia, like the economic crisis in the United States, has made it clear that the empire is beginning to fade. And yet, the West has maintained a sort of international hegemony. Just as no replacement has been found for the dollar, none has been found for North Atlantic leadership. But Western countries' poor handling of the Middle East proves they are no longer leaders. Right before our eyes the superpowers are turning into palaver powers.

The Arab liberation revolution will fundamentally change the Middle East. The acceleration of the West's decline will change the world. One outcome will be a surge toward China, Russia and regional powers like Brazil, Turkey and Iran. Another will be a series of international flare-ups stemming from the West's lost deterrence. But the overall outcome will be the collapse of North Atlantic political hegemony not in decades, but in years. When the United States and Europe bury Mubarak now, they are also burying the powers they once were. In Cairo's Tahrir Square, the age of Western hegemony is fading away.

These armies are strong enough to maintain law and order as long as they stay out of politics; thus the revolutions can remain peaceful. That is what the United States should insist on while encouraging corrupt and repressive rulers who are no longer tolerated by their people to step aside and allow new leaders to be elected in free and fair elections.

The main stumbling block is Israel. In reality, Israel has as much to gain from the spread of democracy in the Middle East as the United States has. But Israel is unlikely to recognize its own best interests because the change is too sudden and carries too many risks. And some US supporters of Israel are more rigid and ideological than Israelis themselves. Fortunately, Obama is not beholden to the religious right, which has carried on a veritable vendetta against him. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee is no longer monolithic or the sole representative of the Jewish community. The main danger is that the Obama administration will not adjust its policies quickly enough to the suddenly changed reality.

I am, as a general rule, wary of revolutions. But in the case of Egypt, I see a good chance of success. As a committed advocate of democracy and open society, I cannot help but share in the enthusiasm that is sweeping across the Middle East. I hope President Obama will expeditiously support the people of Egypt. My foundations are prepared to contribute what they can. In practice, that means establishing resource centers for supporting the rule of law, constitutional reform, fighting corruption and strengthening democratic institutions in those countries that request help in establishing them, while staying out of those countries where such efforts are not welcome.

The writer (George Soros) is chairman of the Soros Fund Management and the Open Society Foundations, which support democracy and human rights in more than 70 countries.

In drought years, the Amazon region changes from being a net absorber of carbon dioxide into a net emitter. The scientists, from the UK and Brazil, suggest this is further evidence of the Amazon's vulnerability to rising global temperatures. They also suggest the days of the Amazon forest curbing the impact of rising greenhouse gas emissions may be coming to an end.

The 2010 drought saw the Amazon River at its lowest levels for half a century, with several tributaries completely dry and more than 20 municipalities declaring a state of emergency. Research leader Simon Lewis, from the University of Leeds, said, "It's difficult to detect patterns from just two observed droughts, but to have them close together is concerning," he told BBC News. Both droughts were associated with unusually warm seas in the Atlantic Ocean off the Brazilian coast.

A single collision between two satellites or large pieces of "space junk" could send thousands of pieces of debris spinning into orbit, each capable of destroying further satellites. Global positioning systems, international phone connections, television signals and weather forecasts are among the services which are at risk of crashing to a halt.

This "chain reaction" could leave some orbits so cluttered with debris that they become unusable for commercial or military satellites, the US Defense Department's interim Space Posture Review warned last year. There are also fears that large pieces of debris could threaten the lives of astronauts in space shuttles or at the International Space Station. The report, which was sent to Congress in March and not publicly released, said space is "increasingly congested and contested" and warned the situation is set to worsen.

Bharath Gopalaswamy, an Indian rocket scientist researching space debris at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, estimates that there are now more than 370,000 pieces of junk compared with 1,100 satellites in low-Earth orbit (LEO), between 490 and 620 miles above the planet.

The February 2009 crash between a defunct Russian Cosmos satellite and an Iridium Communications Inc satellite left around 1,500 pieces of junk whizzing around the earth at 4.8 miles a second. A Chinese missile test destroyed a satellite in January 2007, leaving 150,000 pieces of debris in the atmosphere, according to Dr Gopalaswamy. The space junk, dubbed "an orbiting rubbish dump", also comprises nuts, bolts, gloves and other debris from space missions. "This is almost the tipping point," Dr Gopalaswamy said. "No satellite can be reliably shielded against this kind of destructive force."

"These high prices are likely to persist in the months to come," FAO economist Abdolreza Abbassian said. The index is now at its highest level since the FAO started the measure in 1990 and higher than June 2008 when the cost of food sparked violent protests in countries including Cameroon, Haiti and Egypt. The individual group components of the index, apart from meat, all registered rises in January.

The Cereal Price Index averaged 245 points in January reflecting rises in the price of wheat and grain. This was driven higher by flooding in Australia, which is a major wheat exporter. Rises were particularly high for dairy products, up 6.2% from December. Prices were driven higher by a combination of lower supply and increasing demand in emerging economies such as China and India. The Meat Price Index held steady at 166 points despite falling prices in Europe where a large amount of animal feed was found to have been contaminated with dioxin.

The high price of food is thought to have been a factor in recent political unrest in both Algeria and Tunisia in the form of anti-government demonstrations, protests which have spread to neighbouring Egypt and Jordan. Recently, white sugar futures hit a record high because of concerns about the damage Cyclone Yasi could cause to the Australian cane crop. World Bank President Robert Zoellick has asked global leaders to "put food first" and tackle the problem of price volatility.

Commodities prices have been on the rise generally with copper hitting a record high of $10,000 a tonne. Oil was also up on Thursday with Brent crude rising to $103.37 a barrel.

He said that rising food and fuel prices in recent months had already hit poorer countries and had already led to the massive anti-government protests in Egypt and in Tunisia. Rising social and political instability within nations had become a distinct possibility he said with "dangerous" imbalances likely to sow the seeds of the next crisis.

Unbalanced recovery across countries and social strains within countries with high unemployment and widening income gaps were proving a great challenge to governments, he said. He told his audience: "We face the prospect of a lost generation of young people, destined to suffer their whole lives from worse unemployment and social conditions. Creating jobs must be a top priority not only in the advanced economies, but also in many poorer countries."

What will come next: a democratic era that might transform the Middle East or a descent into chaos that could see the rise of an Islamist order that will undo Egypt's relationship with the West, threaten Israel and give new life to radical movements across the region.

Has a grim sunset been mistaken for a glorious dawn? For days now, articulate, English-speaking members of Egypt's middle class have been reassuring the world that their protests are not about to be hijacked by Islamists. But the secular middle class, which has thrown its weight behind Nobel peace laureate Mohamed ElBaradei is disorganised and lacks a wide social base. Egypt's political future will, instead, likely be decided by the Muslim Brotherhood, which has the assets needed to conduct mass politics effectively: a million-strong membership, deep organisational roots across small-town Egypt, and a nationwide network of schools, hospitals and charities.

Founded in 1928, the Brotherhood fired the imagination of the global jihadist movement. Abdullah Azzam, Osama bin Laden's ideological mentor, was a Brotherhood leader from Jordan; the al-Qaeda chief's Egyptian deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, also has a Brotherhood past. In recent years, though, the group claims to have reinvented itself as a democratic party, like the Adalet ve Kalkinma Partisi, which rules Turkey. Mohamed Badei, the Brotherhood's supreme leader, has said that the party considers democratic institutions legitimate, respects laws guaranteeing the equality of women, and will protect minority rights.

But experts are divided on whether the Brotherhood has a new face, or is wearing a mask. Some have characterised the reinvented Brotherhood as the Fabians of the Islamist movement; others suggest that it has used deception to disguise its true agenda. The truth is that no one knows for certain: words alone mean little, after all, for even the most rabid theocratic leaders in Iran don't say they want to persecute women or religious minorities.

Authorities said they were surprised to learn at daybreak that no one had been reported killed by Cyclone Yasi, but cautioned that bad news could eventually emerge from communities still cut off after the overnight storm, which left several thousand people homeless.

Emergency services fanned out to assess damage across a disaster zone stretching more than 190 miles in Queensland state, using chain saws to cut through debris blocking roads. The main coastal highway was a slalom course of downed trees and power lines, surrounded by scenes of devastation: Roofs peeled back from houses, fields of sugar cane and banana shredded and flattened, once-green expanses stripped to brown soil.

"Nothing's been spared. The devastation is phenomenal, like nothing I've ever experienced," David Brook, the manager of a resort at Mission Beach, where the core of the storm hit the coast around midnight, told Australian Broadcasting Corp radio. "Vegetation has been reduced to sticks," said Sgergeant Dan Gallagher, a Mission Beach police officer. At Tully, about 12 miles inland along the storm's path, the main street was littered with twisted pieces of metal that were once house roofs and jagged shards of glass from shattered shopfront windows. Queensland state Premier Anna Bligh said one in three houses in the town of 3,500 people either were demolished by the storm or had the roof ripped off.

Tens of millions of people stayed home. The hardy few who ventured out faced howling winds that turned snowflakes into face-stinging needles. Chicago's 20.2 inches of snow was the city's third-largest amount on record. In New York's Central Park, the pathways resembled skating rinks.

The storm that resulted from two clashing air masses was, if not unprecedented, extraordinarily rare for its size and ferocious strength. "A storm that produces a swath of 20-inch snow is really something we'd see once every 50 years - maybe," National Weather Service meteorologist Thomas Spriggs said. Across the storm's path, lonely commuters struggled against drifts 3 and 4 feet deep in eerily silent streets, some of which had not seen a plow's blade since the snow started a day earlier. Parkas and ski goggles normally reserved for the slopes became essential for getting to work.

In the winter-weary Northeast, thick ice collapsed several structures, including a gas station canopy on Long Island and an airplane hangar and garages near Boston. In at least two places, workers heard the structures beginning to crack and narrowly escaped. In Middletown, Connecticut, the entire third floor of a building failed, littering the street with bricks and snapping two trees. Acting Fire Marshal Al Santostefano said two workers fled when they heard a cracking sound.

The famous freeway appeared as if rush hour had been stopped in time, with three lanes of cars cluttering the pavement amid snow drifts that stood as high as the windshields. Bulldozers worked to clear the snow from around the cars, which were then plucked out by tow trucks one by one. Rolling blackouts were implemented across Texas, including in Super Bowl host city Dallas, due to high demand during a rare ice storm.

Louis Uccellini, director of the government's National Centers for Environmental Prediction, said the storm also drew strength from the La Nina (la NEEN'-ya) condition currently affecting the tropical Pacific Ocean. La Nina is a periodic cooling of the surface temperatures of the tropical Pacific Ocean, the opposite of the better-known El Nino (el NEEN'-yoh) warming. Both can have significant impacts on weather around the world by changing the movement of winds and high and low pressure systems.

The protesters are demanding that President Hosni Mubarak, who has ruled for 30 years, step down immediately. He has said that he will serve out his current presidential term, which ends in September, but will not run for re-election. On Wednesday three people died in clashes with supporters of President Mubarak.

Hundreds were wounded as groups fought pitched battles in Cairo, in the worst violence in nine days of protests. The unrest has left about 300 people dead across the country over more than a week, according to UN estimates. Cairo's Tahrir Square has been the main focus of the protests.

Opposition supporters say many in the pro-government camp were paid by the authorities to demonstrate, and allowed into the square by the troops surrounding it. The two sides pelted each other with stones in running battles lasting for hours. Egyptian troops refused to intervene, but fired into the air to try to disperse people. On Wednesday, they called for demonstrators to return to their homes, a call which was reiterated by Vice-President Omar Suleiman.

The Chinese carried out further tests as recently as last year, however, leading to further protests from Hillary Clinton, the US Secretary of State, secret documents show. Beijing justified its actions by accusing the Americans of developing an "offensive" laser weapon system that would have the capability of destroying missiles before they left enemy territory.

The disclosures are contained in the latest documents obtained by the Wikileaks website, which have been released to The Telegraph. They detail the private fears of both superpowers as they sought mastery of the new military frontier. The "star wars" arms race began in January 2007 when China shocked the White House by shooting down one of its weather satellite 530 miles above the Earth. The strike, which resulted in thousands of pieces of debris orbiting the earth, raised fears that the Chinese had the power to cause chaos by destroying US military and civilian satellites.

In February 2008, America launched its own "test" strike to destroy a malfunctioning American satellite, which demonstrated to the Chinese it also had the capability to strike in space. America stated at the time that the strike was not a military test but a necessary mission to remove a faulty spy satellite. The leaked documents appear to show its true intentions

The warning continued: "Any purposeful interference with US space systems will be interpreted by the United States as an infringement of its rights and considered an escalation in a crisis or conflict. The United States reserves the right, consistent with the UN Charter and international law, to defend and protect its space systems with a wide range of options, from diplomatic to military."

States such as North Korea, Syria and Iran are developing long-range missiles capable of hitting targets outside the region, records of top-level security briefings obtained by WikiLeaks show.

Long-running hostilities between India and Pakistan - which both have nuclear weapons capabilities - are at the root of fears of a nuclear conflict in the region. A classified Pentagon study estimated in 2002 that a nuclear war between the two countries could result in 12 million deaths. Secret records of a US security briefing at an international non-proliferation summit in 2008 stated that "a nuclear and missile arms race [in South Asia] has the direct potential to lead to nuclear war in the world's most densely populated area and a region of increasing global economic significance. The same briefing gave warning that development of cruise and ballistic missiles in the Middle East and Asia could enable rogue states to fire weapons of mass destruction into neighbouring regions.

The leaked documents also disclose alarming details of the chemical and biological weapons programmes being pursued by rogue states such as Syria and North Korea. Syria - which backs the Lebanese terrorist group Hezbollah - is believed to be developing chemical weapons using the lethal nerve agents sarin and VX, which shut down the nervous system in under a minute if inhaled or absorbed through the skin.