The dispute over the area, home to sensitive Jewish, Muslim and Christian holy sites, has derailed past peace talks and spilled into violence. Palestinians claim the sector as the capital of their future state. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's reaffirmation of his intention to hold on to east Jerusalem drew criticism from the Palestinians and was likely to increase friction with the Americans. The White House Mideast envoy is scheduled to arrive this week in another attempt to push peace efforts forward.

Netanyahu's defense minister, Ehud Barak of the centrist Labor Party, called for sharing Jerusalem with the Palestinians. But a government official said Barak's idea does not reflect the government's view. The Palestinians want to establish their future state in the West Bank and east Jerusalem, lands Israel captured in the 1967 Middle East war. Israel later annexed east Jerusalem in a move that is not recognized by the international community.

US-led negotiations broke down after just three weeks and Israel refused to renew a 10-month moratorium on new settlement housing. Palestinians said they would not return to the talks unless there was a total freeze in West Bank and east Jerusalem construction. Israel countered that such a condition had never been made before, and the issue should be part of the negotiations. Washington's special envoy to the Mideast, George Mitchell, is expected to meet with Israeli and Palestinian leaders this week.

The sum is enormous: 6 billion euros ($7.9 billion) is how much the Irish government wants to cut from the public finances next year. The drastic course of treatment, the fourth budget in two years, was passed by the Irish parliament late on Tuesday night. It will be a huge test of strength for the small country: The average Irish household will be 7,500 euros worse off by 2012, according to the Irish Independent.

The Dublin government has been congratulated and encouraged from across the European Union for being so brave in sticking to its austerity goals. The unemployed, low-income workers, pensioners, students - hardly any sector of society has been left unscathed. Yet this huge national sacrifice will not significantly improve the country's massive debt problem. The sometimes severe cuts to social welfare payments, public sector pay and state investment pale into insignificance when compared to the massive gaps in the Irish banks' accounts. That is why INVESTORS ARE CONTINUING, UNDETERRED, TO SPECULATE ON IRELAND'S EVENTUAL INSOLVENCY.

However, the high interest rates mean that IRELAND HAS NO PROSPECT OF PAYING BACK THE LOAN. There remains only the hope that the government won't have to avail of all the funds. But no expert believes that this will be possible - after all, the Irish banks have repeatedly sought fresh capital over recent months.

Bombs used against civilians; millions paid to corrupt officials; and a kidnapping industry that employs students during university vacations: The US diplomatic cables from the Nigerian cities of Abuja and Lagos paint an unusually bleak picture of the situation in the oil-rich Niger Delta. Hardly any of the international oil companies active in the delta publishes production figures, kidnappings and hostage-taking are a daily occurence and the civilian population is suffering - not least because they too are occasionally targets of the Nigerian Army's special forces.

The central government in Abuja has neglected the delta for decades. It has failed to build schools, hospitals and roads and has simply ignored the serious environmental problems. All that mattered was that the oil kept flowing - and continued to produce kickbacks for the political elite. "The Federal Government has not funded one road in the key Niger Delta States in the last 10 years," reads one February 2009 cable from the US Consulate in Lagos, citing a high-ranking politician.

In the face of such neglect, organized crime has become rampant in the delta. There are kidnappers who are in bed with the authorities and special military units that, while they sometimes fight rebels in the delta, frequently have a stake in the oil business. The rebels, although they stage attacks on the multinational oil companies, also sell oil and enjoy police protection. The political elite thrives on the chaotic situation.

A blizzard warning was in effect Sunday for Chicago and much of northern Illinois, all of Iowa, large sections of southern Minnesota and Wisconsin, and smaller areas in North Dakota, South Dakota, Missouri and Michigan, according to the National Weather Service. Most of the rest of the region was under a winter storm warning or a hard freeze watch. Wisconsin authorities issued a statewide no-travel advisory Saturday, citing blizzard and winter storm warnings in nearly every county.

The sinking temperatures were considered even more treacherous than the snow in some places. North Dakota experienced wind chills of 20 degrees below zero Saturday, and the arctic air was expected to drop temperatures below zero by Sunday night throughout the Dakotas and in parts of Iowa, Minnesota and Wisconsin.

Eastern Minnesota's Oakdale area got 20 inches of snow Saturday, according to the National Weather Service. The storm was moving eastward, where it dumped about a foot of snow in Chippewa County in northwestern Wisconsin and was expected to drop 20 to 24 inches by Sunday morning in the Eau Claire area.

Economists surveyed by Dow Jones Newswires had expected a shortfall of $126.5 billion. November is traditionally a month for deficits. The Treasury report, detailing the government's spending programs, prompted an economic research firm, Macroeconomic Advisers, to lift its forecast for economic growth from October through December by four-tenths of a percentage point, to 2.7%.

Last month's red ink pushes up the deficit to $290.8 billion for the fiscal year, which began October 1. That figure is a little smaller than the deficit during the same period last year. But President Barack Obama's administration expects the deficit to top $1 trillion in this fiscal year. Washington has spent in excess of $1 trillion during each of the last two fiscal years, as revenues were reduced by the deep recession. At the same time, the economic slump and Wall Street bailout raised the government's expenses.

The administration last July said it was projecting a 2011 budget deficit of $1.416 trillion. But Michael Feroli, an analyst at JP Morgan Chase, said Friday he expects the budget gap to set a new record in fiscal 2011, reaching $1.5 trillion as the government pays for the extension of tax cuts.

"We are once again assured of the rectitude of our choice of the songun (army first) policy, and in strengthening a defence that relies on nuclear forces for deterrence," he said. Moments after his comments, the Russian foreign ministry issued a statement stating that "all sides must avoid taking any actions that can escalate the situation."

This year has seen military and security experts often warn about the prospects of "cyberwarfare". Few expected the most prominent assaults against large companies to come from a scattered group of anarchists and idealists with no identifiable leader, membership or nationality. The loose internet grouping that calls itself Anonymous has been notorious in web circles for years, particularly for its apparently random attacks on the music industry, Kiss singer Gene Simmons, YouTube and the Scientologists. Its wilfully illiterate grammar and black humour has permeated the internet far beyond the 4chan messageboard, which originally spawned it.

Even as the more serious matters of attacks on big companies were plotted this week, Anonymous followers in 4chan's open chat rooms chimed in with insults and jokes. But with what it has dubbed "Operation Payback" the group has mounted its most ideological crusade yet. Attempts to scupper WikiLeaks last week, as payment and web hosting companies pulled their support for the site amid intense political pressure, have made Julian Assange, the whistle-blowing website's imprisoned founder, the pin-up for Anonymous's campaign against censorship.

"WikiLeaks is a litmus test for freedom of speech and freedom of information," one Operation Payback participant told the Financial Times. Operation Payback has hit targets far and wide. As well as Amazon, the trader, and payment companies, websites belonging to the Swedish government; the Dutch police; Senator Joe Lieberman, a critic of WikiLeaks; and Sarah Palin, the former US vice-presidential candidate, were targeted.

The rules are much tougher than those agreed by the G20 countries, raising fears that bankers may emigrate to more lightly regulated countries. The bonus limits will apply to the entire global staff of European banks. However, non-European banks will only face restrictions on what they pay staff working for subsidiaries based in the European Economic Area (the European Union plus Norway and Iceland).

Some European banks have warned that the rules create an added incentive for their employees to relocate to Asian cities such as Singapore that have looser bonus rules, as well as lower tax rates and access to Asia's booming economies. Moreover, according to the BBC's business editor, Robert Peston, British banks HSBC and Standard Chartered have voiced concerns that they may lose Asian staff to non-European competitors because the bonus rules apply to their worldwide staff - including those in Asia.

And although they have made no such threat, the rules may encourage the two banks to move their corporate headquarters to Asia in order to avoid having to apply the rules to employees located outside Europe. The rules will not apply to Switzerland, a major international banking centre that is not part of the European Economic Area.

Foreign Minister Carl Bildt said a "terrorist attack" which could have been "truly catastrophic" had failed. A local news agency, TT, said it had received a threatening e-mail shortly before the blasts, which called for "mujahideen", or Islamist fighters, to rise up in Sweden and Europe.

Attacking the country over caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed drawn by Swedish artist Lars Vilks as well as Sweden's military presence in Afghanistan, the email promised Swedes would "die like our brothers and sisters". Sweden has some 500 soldiers deployed in Afghanistan as part of the international military force.

Climate-change skeptics are gleefully calling Cancun's weather the latest example of the "Gore Effect" - a plunge in temperature they say occurs wherever former Vice President Al Gore, now a Nobel Prize-winning environmental activist, makes a speech about the climate. Although Gore is not scheduled to speak in Cancun, "it could be that the Gore Effect has announced his secret arrival," jokes former NASA scientist Roy W Spencer.

The reaction: ClimateGate was "bad enough," says Duncan Davidson in Wall Street Pit, but Cancun's weather is particularly "inconvenient" for global-warming alarmists. It's a reminder that global temperatures have "flatlined" despite rising carbon dioxide levels, "which is decidedly chilling against the concept of hampering economic growth to limit Co2 emissions."

Grow up, says Tony Juniper in The Independent. "Sure, it's cold outside," but "the trend data show that the world is warming, that the climate is changing, and that the release of greenhouse gases is the cause." The longer we use every cold snap as an excuse to put off reducing emissions, "the bigger the risk we run".

The Stuxnet worm, named after initials found in its code, is the most sophisticated cyberweapon ever created. Examination of the worm shows it was a cybermissile designed to penetrate advanced security systems. It was equipped with a warhead that targeted and took over the controls of the centrifuge systems at Iran's uranium processing center in Natanz, and it had a second warhead that targeted the massive turbine at the nuclear reactor in Bashehr.

Stuxnet was designed to take over the control systems and evade detection, and it apparently was very successful. Last week President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, after months of denials, admitted that the worm had penetrated Iran's nuclear sites, but he said it was detected and controlled. The second part of that claim, experts say, doesn't ring true.

Eric Byres, a computer expert who has studied the worm, said his site was hit with a surge in traffic from Iran, meaning that efforts to get the two nuclear plants to function normally have failed. The web traffic, he says, shows Iran still hasn't come to grips with the complexity of the malware that appears to be still infecting the systems at both Bashehr and Natanz. "The effort has been stunning," Byres said. "Two years ago American users on my site outnumbered Iranians by 100 to 1. Today we are close to a majority of Iranian users."

Ralph Langner, the German expert who was among the first to study and raise alarms about Stuxnet, said he was not surprised by the development. "Here is their problem. They should throw out every personal computer involved with the nuclear program and start over, but they can't do that. Moreover, they are completely dependent on outside companies for the construction and maintenance of their nuclear facilities. They should throw out their computers as well. But they can't," he explained. "They will just continually re-infect themselves."

"With the best of expertise and equipment it would take another year for the plants to function normally again because it is so hard to get the worm out. It even hides in the back-up systems. But they can't do it," he said. And Iran's anti-worm effort may have had another setback. In Tehran, men on motorcycles attacked two leading nuclear scientists on their way to work. Using magnetic bombs, the motorcyclists pulled alongside their cars and attached the devices. One scientist was wounded and the other killed. Confirmed reports say that the murdered scientist was in charge of dealing with the Stuxnet virus at the nuclear plants.

The group offers free software to let anyone help take down websites they believe are the "enemies" of WikiLeaks, targeting MasterCard, Visa, PayPal, Amazon and others. But is it legal? Experts told FoxNews.com that several international laws ban just this sort of activity. In the UK, laws combating what is called "distributed denial of service," or DDoS, "have been in place since 2006 and could result in you being sent to jail for up to ten years. Similar laws have also been present in Sweden since 2007," wrote Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant for security firm Sophos, in a blog post on his site.

"It's the same story in the USA, where they take a tough line on those who engage in denial-of-service attacks against websites. For instance, last year saw the jailing of a man who launched a DDoS attack against the Scientology website," he added.

Attorney General Eric Holder said Thursday that authorities were investigating the cyberattacks. "We are aware of the incidents... and I'll simply say we're looking into them," Holder told reporters after meeting European Union officials on a range of issues, including terrorism, airline security, cybersecurity and privacy. The anonymous group behind 'Operation: Payback' released a video Thursday defending its actions, describing the efforts to bring down a variety of websites as "a peaceful campaign."

"We have decided to write to you, the media, and all citizens of the free world to inform you of our intentions, potential targets, and our ongoing peaceful campaign for Freedom of Expression. Anonymous is peacefully campaigning for Freedom of Expression everywhere, in all forms, for all platforms." It may be peaceful, but it sure isn't legal, Daliah Saper, a principal with Saper Law Offices, told FoxNews.com.

"This is the leadership team that crafted the first comprehensive financial reform bill to put an end to the bailouts, wind down the taxpayer funding of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and enforce a strong audit of the Federal Reserve," Bachus said in a statement.

Paul, in an interview last week, said he plans a slate of hearings on US monetary policy and will restart his push for a full audit of the Fed's functions. "We are ready to hit the ground running, and I look forward to continuing our work in the next Congress," Bachus said.

Paul, who has introduced legislation to abolish the Fed, became nationally known during his 2008 presidential campaign. His campaign to audit the Fed picked up steam as the central bank deployed trillions of dollars in emergency loans in the midst of the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. Paul's bill gained the support of 320 of 435 members of the House and a portion of the measure ended up in the Dodd-Frank financial regulatory overhaul enacted this year.

A feature of the skyline surrounding the Somerset town, the tree has been visited by thousands retracing the steps said to have been taken by Joseph of Arimathea, who some say was Jesus' great uncle. According to legend, Saint Joseph travelled to the spot after Christ was crucified, taking with him the Holy Grail of Arthurian folklore.

He is said to have stuck his wooden staff - which had belonged to Jesus - into the ground on Wearyall Hill before he went to sleep. When he awoke it had sprouted into a thorn tree, which became a natural shrine for Christians across Europe. To add to its sacred status, the tree 'miraculously' flowered twice a year - once at Christmas and once at Easter. It survived for hundreds of years before it was chopped down by puritans in the Civil War, but secret cuttings of the original were taken and planted around the town.

It is from one of the new plants that a replacement tree was planted in the original spot over 50 years ago. Yesterday residents of Glastonbury wept as they surveyed the damage done to the tree on Wednesday night. Katherine Gorbing, curator of the town's abbey, said: 'The mindless vandals who have hacked down this tree have struck at the heart of Christianity.

Every winter a sprig of thorns from one of the town's trees is sent to the Queen to be used as a table decoration on Christmas Day. Experts had verified that the tree - known as the Crategus Monogyna Bi Flora - originated from the Middle East.

The Times says another day of protest against rising tuition fees descended into confrontation on London's streets. The trouble culminated in a breakaway mob chasing and attacking the royal car, the paper continues.

"Rioters attack prince in car," exclaims the Daily Telegraph. The paper says demonstrators kicked the Prince of Wales's Rolls-Royce as it travelled to the Royal Variety Performance in central London.

"Student demo yobs in shameful attack on Charles and Camilla," proclaims the Sun, calling it a "battle royal". The paper says the royal couple appeared to gasp in shock as their vehicle was kicked and punched, and spattered with paint.

"With terror written across her face, the Duchess of Cornwall comes under fire from a snarling mob of student fees rioters." That is how the Daily Mail describes the moment Prince Charles and Camilla's car is attacked by protesters.