There may be no end in sight for Europe's sovereign debt crisis, but at least one country still believes in the euro. The Chinese leadership has promised its support for the euro zone in its hour of need as part of a charm offensive aimed at strengthening ties with the European Union.

In a guest editorial published in Wednesday's edition of the German daily Suddeutsche Zeitung, Chinese Vice Premier Li Keqiang promised that China would support the EU in the fight against the euro zone's sovereign debt crisis. "China's support of the EU's financial stabilization measures and its help to certain countries in coping with the sovereign debt crisis are all conducive to promoting full economic recovery and steady growth," he wrote.

On Monday, he published another guest editorial in the Spanish newspaper El Pais ahead of a visit to Spain, in which he said China would continue to buy Spanish bonds. "We have confidence in the European financial market, and, in particular, the Spanish financial market," he wrote. The promise of help is likely to be welcome in Spain, which some observers fear may have to ask for help from the EU's rescue fund, as Ireland and Greece have already done.

In recent months, China, which has foreign-exchange reserves worth an estimated $2.5 trillion, has been buying up bonds from troubled euro-zone members such as Greece and Portugal. Beijing is seen as wanting to diversify its investments out of fears of a devaluation of the US dollar. Currently around 70 percent of its foreign-exchange reserves are believed to be in the US currency.

Though it has been inserted as text into the Congressional Record before, the supreme law of the land has never been read aloud before in the body known as "the People's House." The man responsible for the exercise, Representative Bob Goodlatte (Republican for Virginia) says it's more than just a simple civics lesson. "This is a very symbolic showing to the American people," said Goodlatte, "and it's a powerful message to members of Congress. We are a nation of laws, not of men."

In his speech to fellow lawmakers after taking the gavel, newly minted House Speaker John Boehner, Republican for Ohio, vowed to give the government back to the people, renew focus on the Constitution and provide transparency, honesty and accountability. "Hard work and tough decisions will be required of the 112th Congress," he said. "No longer can we fall short. No longer can we kick the can down the road. The people voted to end business as usual and today we begin to carry out their instructions."

The emphasis on the Constitution won't end with the reading of the document. The House on Wednesday approved a package of rules for the 112th Congress, put forward by Cantor, that includes a provision mandating that all bills cite their constitutional authority.

The crabs benefit from warm seas, but when winter hits and snow covers the beaches, they just can't handle the freezing temperatures, Tony Child, Thanet Coast Project manager, told the Star.

Meanwhile, about 50 jackdaw birds were found dead Wednesday on a street in Stockholm, Sweden. A veterinarian investigating the incident told the Associated Press their cause of death is unknown but that there were fireworks in the area Tuesday night. Along with shock from the fireworks, the vet listed cold weather and difficulty finding food as possible reasons for the deaths.

These recent animal deaths join the thousands of others in the last week in the United States. On Tuesday, 450 birds plummeted to their deaths in Louisiana for apparently no reason. Some of these grackles, starlings, brown-headed cowbirds and red-winged blackbirds may have flown into a power line, officials said. On New Year's Eve, more than 3,000 red-winged blackbirds inexplicably fell from the skies in Arkansas. Wildlife experts just west of where the blackbirds were found are still trying to figure out why 100,000 drum fish washed up on the shores of the Arkansas River.

Officials have acknowledged it is unlikely they will ever determine a cause.

The newly revealed policy, called ''Lowering the threshold of nuclear threats,'' may contradict China's strategy of no first use of nuclear weapons under any circumstances, and is likely to fan concern in the United States, Japan and other regional powers about Beijing's nuclear capability.

The People's Liberation Army's strategic missile forces, the Second Artillery Corps, ''will adjust the nuclear threat policy if a nuclear missile-possessing country carries out a series of air strikes against key strategic targets in our country with absolutely superior conventional weapons,'' according to the documents, copies of which were obtained by Kyodo News.

The World Bank said buyers of its 500 million yuan ($76 million), two-year bond were mainly Hong Kong-based financial institutions, companies and wealthy individuals. It said the money will go into its general fund, rather than being raised for a specific purpose. The yuan is not traded on global currency markets but Beijing has loosened controls and allows Hong Kong banks to use it. Hong Kong is Chinese territory but has its own currency and a Western-style legal system and often is used as a site for mainland companies to interact with foreign investors.

Beijing began allowing foreign companies to issue yuan debt last year. The Asian Development Bank, Caterpillar Inc (CAT) and McDonald's Corp have sold yuan-denominated debt to finance activities in China. Buyers of such bonds hope to gain from both interest payments and the growing strength of the yuan, which is rising against the US dollar.

China is set to gain a bigger say in the World Bank after a restructuring last year to boost the voting power of developing countries. If approved, China will be the third-biggest voting power after the United States and Japan. The World Bank provides low-interest loans and technical assistance to developing countries.

The gauges for sugar and meat prices advanced to records. Sugar climbed for a third year in a row in 2010, and corn jumped the most in four years in Chicago. Food prices may rise more unless the world grain crop increases "significantly" in 2011, the FAO said November 17. At least 13 people died last year in Mozambique in protests against plans to lift bread prices.

"There is still, unfortunately, the potential for grain prices to strengthen on the back of a lot of uncertainty," Abdolreza Abbassian, senior economist at the FAO, said by phone from Rome today. "If anything goes wrong with the South American crop, there is plenty of room for them to increase."

White, or refined, sugar traded at $752.70 a metric ton at 11:53 a.m. on NYSE Liffe in London, compared with $383.70 at the end of June 2008. Corn, which added 52 percent last year on the Chicago Board of Trade, was at $6.01 a bushel, down from $7.57 in June 2008. Soybeans were at $13.6325 a bushel, against $15.74 at the close of June 2008.

The cost of food climbed 25 percent from a year earlier in December, based on the FAO figures, after Chinese demand strengthened and Russia's worst drought in a half-century devastated grain crops. The agency's food-price indicator rose from 206 points in November. Last month's year-on-year rise compares with the 43 percent jump in food costs in June 2008. Record fuel prices, weather-related crop problems, increasing demand from the growing Indian and Chinese middle classes, and the push to grow corn for ethanol fuel all contributed to the crisis that year.

The financial services industry, politicians and the media needed to understand as a matter of urgency that in the wake of the financial crisis financial regulatory power had shifted to the European Union and was now vested in various new organisations created by Brussels. If the evolution of British regulation and the transfer of banking and insurance supervision to the Bank of England had any relevance it was only to the extent that it might serve as a distraction and prevent us from engaging properly where we should be engaged with the new European structures.

Obviously it mattered for the new UK regime to be effective but we deceived ourselves if we thought this was where the material impact on business would come from. The speaker might have exaggerated for effect but the fundamental point is valid. The response of European governments to the financial crash has been to create a series of EU bodies which will have the power to pass binding rules on the financial services industry across the Continent, and to do so by majority vote and without the need for enabling domestic legislation.

The paper's Wednesday edition reported that the US Ambassador in Paris, Craig Stapleton - a friend and business partner of former US president George Bush - urged Washington in 2007 to penalise the EU and particularly countries which did not support the use of GM crops. "Country team Paris recommends that we calibrate a target retaliation list that causes some pain across the EU since this is a collective responsibility, but that also focuses in part on the worst culprits."

"The list should be measured rather than vicious and must be sustainable over the long term, since we should not expect an early victory. Moving to retaliation will make clear that the current path has real costs to EU interests and could help strengthen European pro-biotech voices," said Stapleton, who co-owned with Bush the Texas Rangers baseball team.

Germany, along with many European neighbours, opposed the use of the US biotech firm's genetically-modified corn, MON 810 and eventually banned the corn in 2009.

The numbers, revealed in a study by multi-faith group Faith Matters, have led to claims that the country is undergoing a process of 'Islamification'. Lauren Booth, the sister-in-law of former Prime Minister Tony Blair, attracted a lot of publicity when she announced she had adopted the Islamic faith last year.

But the organisation's report argued that most converts saw their religion as 'perfectly compatible' with living in Britain. It said: 'Converts do not represent a devious fifth column determined to undermine the Western way of life - this is a group of normal people united in their adherence to a religion which they, for the most part, see as perfectly compatible with Western life.'

The survey, conducted by Kevin Brice from Swansea University, asked converts for their views on the negative aspects of British culture. They identified alcohol and drunkenness, a 'lack of morality and sexual permissiveness', and 'unrestrained consumerism'. More than one in four accepted there was a 'natural conflict' between being a devout Muslim and living in the UK. Nine out of ten women converts said their change of religion had led to them dressing more conservatively. More than half started wearing a head scarf and 5 per cent had worn the burka.

The birds found in Beebe, Arkansas, three days earlier, were thought to have died from blood clots and internal injuries that were blamed on a fireworks display. It is not known whether the Louisiana birds suffered the same fate. The discovery, along a stretch of road a quarter of a mile long in Pointe Coupee Parish, has only deepened the mystery.

Scientists are still trying to find out what killed over 100,000 fish that washed up on the River Arkansas around 100 miles away just two days before the bird incident. Nancy Ledbetter, of the Arkansas Game & Fish Commission, said officials were awaiting test results. She said: "We still don't believe the (fish and bird deaths) are related." She also said that she did not believe the incidents in Louisiana and Arkansas were related.

One former oil man warned then-candidate Obama back in 2007. "I said, Senator, if you don't do something in your first term, if you're successful, to increase hydrocarbon production in this country you will be on your knees in 2012," said John Hofmeister, former president of Shell Oil.

But Hofmeister says the administration has punted on domestic production. Instead of expanding it, the oil industry says the administration has roped off some 85 percent of the outer continental shelf, leaving the industry few places to go. The president of the American Petroleum Institute, Jack Gerard, argues that "if we open areas that are currently off limits to development, we could create more than 500,000 jobs throughout the economy, and generate an additional $150 billion in government revenue by 2025."

There is one inescapable fact. The US now uses about 20 million barrels of oil a day but produces only 7 million. Hofmeister argues that bolstering that sum to 10 million barrels per day of domestic production would help hold down the price of oil. "Every sector of the economy depends on affordable energy - every business owner, every worker, every household and family member, and every consumer depends on affordable, reliable supplies of oil and natural gas," Gerard said.

Global energy consumption is predicted to grow by 50 percent in the next 25 years, which will keep prices rising unless supply increases.

Although these tags indicate that the bird was part of a long-term research project into migration patterns, residents and local reporters told Saudi Arabia's Al-Weeam newspaper that the matter seemed to be a 'Zionist plot.' The accusations went viral, with hundreds of posts on Arabic-language websites and forums claiming that the 'Zionists' had trained these birds for espionage.

The Sinai regional governor last month suggested that a shark that killed and maimed tourists on its Red Sea port may have been intentionally released by Israeli agents in order to sabotage the country's tourist industry. 'What is being said about the Mossad throwing the deadly shark in the sea to hit tourism in Egypt is not out of the question. But it needs time to confirm,' Mohamed Abdel Fadil Shousha said, according to the Sun.

Over the past year the oil import costs for the 34 mostly rich countries that make up the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development have soared by $200 billion to $790 billion at the end of 2010, according to an analysis by the International Energy Agency. The increase, due to high crude prices, is equal to a loss of income of about 0.5 per cent of OECD gross domestic product, according to the IEA. "Oil prices are entering a dangerous zone for the global economy," said Fatih Birol, the IEA's chief economist. "The oil import bills are becoming a threat to the economic recovery. This is a wake-up call to the oil consuming countries and to the oil producers."

Oil prices have edged closer to $100 a barrel in recent weeks and Brent crude hit $95 a barrel for the first time in 27 months on Monday as the economic recovery has gathered pace. OECD countries account for about 65 per cent of all global oil imports, he said. "Oil exporters need clients with healthy economies but these high prices will sooner or later make the economies sick, which would mean the need for importing oil will be less."

In the very short term, therefore, "it may not be a bad idea that the producers are ready to increase production and show their understanding that these high prices are not good for the global economy," he added. "It is a very telling story. 2010 rang the first alarm bells and 2011 price levels could bring us to the same financial crisis times that we saw in 2008."

The Met Office eventually issued a public warning about the early onset of winter a month later, just days before snow and ice covered much of Britain and temperatures plummeted to the lowest on record. Motoring organisations and passenger groups said yesterday that the delay hampered preparations for winter. It has also been disclosed that the BBC is so concerned about the accuracy of the Met Office's predictions that it has decided to publish independent assessments of the forecasters' performance on its website

Roger Harrabin, an environment analyst at the BBC, told the Radio Times: "The trouble is that we simply don't know how much to trust the Met Office. How often does it get the weather right and wrong. And we don't know how it compares with other, independent forecasters. Can we rely on them if we are planning a garden party at the weekend? Or want to know if we should take a brolly with us tomorrow? Or planning a holiday next week?"

"In a few year's time hopefully we'll all have a better idea of whom to trust. By then the Met Office might have recovered enough confidence to share with us its winter prediction of whether to buy a plane ticket or a toboggan." The decision to publish the assessment was welcomed by rival forecasters. The Met Office stopped making its long-term forecasts public in March after a series of major gaffes. In 2009 a predicted "barbecue summer" became a washout, while a subsequent forecast of a "mild winter" turned out to be one of the coldest in 30 years.

According to eyewitnesses, a green Skoda car pulled up outside the church shortly after midnight. Two men got out, one of them talked shortly on his mobile phone, and the explosion occurred almost immediately after they left the scene. On the back of the Skoda was a sticker with the words "the rest is coming".

It was reported that the bomb, locally made, had 100kg of explosives in addition to having nails, glass and iron balls inside. The strength of it not only caused glass panes to be shattered in all the neighborhood, but also made body parts fly into the building's fourth floor, and to the mosque facing the church.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility but officials hastily blamed either Al-Qaida or the Israeli Mousad of being behind the blast, but none of them mentioned the Egyptian state security which is viewed by Copts as the real culprit. After the blast, traumatized Copts were angered by chants of "Allah Akbar" from Muslims and began hurling stones at the mosque. Immediately security forces which were absent during the car blast and the ensuing events, appeared and starting shooting tear gas at the Copts, and they in turn hurled stones at them, said an eyewitness. Fifteen Copts were rounded up from their homes by the authorities.