In the most complex scientific experiment ever undertaken, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) will be switched on Wednesday, accelerating sub-atomic particles to nearly the speed of light before smashing them together. "The LHC will increase the energy at which we can study particle interactions by a factor of four. According to present thinking, this should be enough to discover the HIGGS PARTICLE," Hawking told BBC radio.

"I think it will be much more exciting if we don't find the Higgs. That will show something is wrong, and we need to think again. I have a bet of 100 dollars that we won't find the Higgs," added Hawking, whose books including "A Brief History of Time" have sought to popularise study of stellar physics.

Physicists have long puzzled over how particles acquire mass. In 1964, a British physicist, Peter Higgs, came up with this idea: there must exist a background field that would act rather like treacle. The standard quip about the Higgs is that it is the "GOD PARTICLE" - it is everywhere but remains frustratingly elusive.

Though Sarkozy stressed the crime-fighting benefits of the database, he ordered the interior minister to open immediate talks about it to ensure that it "protect freedoms," according to an official in his office. The official was not authorized to be publicly named. Le Parisien daily's Tuesday edition quoted lawyer Jean-Marc Fedida as saying Edvige opens up "the possibility of tracking the entire population of France."

Edvige replaces an obsolete 1991 database that helped France's police surveillance agency track politicians, labor leaders and other activists - anyone who resorted to violence or supported the use of violence. But Edvige goes further, gathering personal information on health and sexual orientation, dropping the minimum age for surveillance from 18 to 13 and casting a wider net, allowing security officials to track anyone considered a "POSSIBLE THREAT TO PUBLIC ORDER."

Defenders insist Edvige is a measured response to France's changing security situation - particularly after a rise in youth violence and nationwide riots that shook poor minority neighborhoods in 2005. Jean-Pierre Dubois, the president of France's Human Rights League, called the database "THE PASSAGE TO A REAL SURVEILLANCE SOCIETY."

The storm was 120 miles (195 kilometers) west of Havana and moving west-northwest at 9 mph at 11 pm Miami time, according to the US National Hurricane Center. The US agency said the storm was starting to strengthen and may become a "major hurricane." Ike's winds strengthened to 80 miles per hour, the center said, and may increase in speed to 111 mph or higher in the central Gulf. The hurricane is forecast to bypass New Orleans and the offshore Louisiana oil and natural gas fields and strike the Texas coast on September 13.

There's "a significant chance that Ike will be the worst hurricane to hit Texas in 40 years," Jeff Masters, the director of meteorology at private forecaster Weather Underground Inc, said. "I am giving it a 50 percent chance of being a major hurricane at landfall."

Texas Governor Rick Perry issued a disaster declaration yesterday along the coast in preparation for Ike's landfall. As many as 7,500 national guardsmen are on standby for rapid deployment and 1,350 buses are available for evacuations, the governor's office said in a statement today.

With the stock market tumbling, the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office said the government takeover of Fannie and Freddie meant the companies should no longer be regarded as outside the public sector. Peter Orszag, CBO director, said: "It is the CBO view that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac should be directly incorporated into the federal budget."

The Bush administration appeared to be caught by surprise. A spokeswoman for the Office of Management and Budget told the Financial Times: "We are working through this issue with Treasury and other stakeholders." The White House could take a different view on Fannie and Freddie and exclude them from its budgets. But this would be difficult because the CBO is regarded as the leading independent authority on US finances and its assessments guide spending decisions by Congress.

The two mortgage companies have between them $5,400bn in liabilities, equal to the entire publicly traded debt of the US, alongside mortgage-related assets of about equal value. These will now all be accounted for by the CBO, although public accounting rules mean that its tally of US government debt may not necessarily increase by $5,400bn.

The CBO bombshell came as it raised its baseline estimate for the US budget deficit to $407bn this year and a record $438bn next year owing to falling revenues and higher spending, some of it related to the fiscal stimulus. The price of credit default swaps on five-year US government debt hit a record 18 basis points in early trading, according to CMA Datavision. This means that it costs $18,000 a year to buy insurance on $10m of US government debt.

After fifty years of social change, the country seems hungry for political change. Everything fixed has been questioned: the role of husband and wife, the primacy of patriarchy, the divine command to "be fruitful and multiply." THE COUNTRY HAS NO COMPASS, AND NOBODY KNOWS WHERE WE ARE HEADED.

An old Roman senator would decry today's slogans of change. The ancient idea of sticking with tried and true principles, of adhering to tradition, was the very ground of Roman political understanding. That is why Julius Caesar appeared as a scandal and a horror. The Roman Senate had to get rid of him, because he was a change agent. WHAT WE LEARN FROM THE LATE ROMAN REPUBLIC GOES SOMETHING LIKE THIS: change signals crisis, and CRISIS RESULTS IN EMERGENCY POWERS GIVEN TO ONE MAN or one party. And emergency powers lead to tyranny – to a permanent state of unnatural, unstable relations between the people and their government.

McCain and Obama seem to be nice fellows. The problem is with the country as a whole, and the crisis that is approaching. While the Republican National Convention was ongoing, the economy was groaning. The financial floodgates are creaking. The international order is coming apart. Something is in the air. SOMETHING IS ABOUT TO SNAP. CHANGE IS COMING, AND IT'S NOT A GOOD CHANGE. What the candidates are talking about in this election may be completely irrelevant.

As a Russian diplomat explained last July, AMERICA IS ABOUT TO ENTER "A CRISIS OF ITS EXISTENCE."

The recent political rupture between Russia and the U.S. only makes matters worse, said Lee Hamilton, the former Indiana Democratic congressman who helped lead the 9/11 Commission and now chairs the independent group's latest study.

Efforts to reduce access to nuclear technology and bomb-making materials have slowed, thousands of U.S. chemical plants remain unprotected, and the U.S. government continues to oppose strengthening an international treaty to prevent bioterrorism, according to the report produced by the bipartisan Partnership for a Secure America.

"THE THREAT OF A NEW, MAJOR TERRORIST ATTACK ON THE UNITED STATES IS STILL VERY REAL," concludes the report to be released Wednesday, the same day a congressional commission will hold a hearing in New York on nuclear and biological terrorism threats.

Company spokeswoman Irina Yesipova said the launch date will be determined after talks between Russian and Iranian nuclear officials this month. Iranian officials have said that Bushehr would be launched this fall. The International Atomic Energy Agency declined comment.

David Albright, whose Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security tracks countries under nuclear suspicion, suggested that the steps referred to by Russia probably involved the loading of fuel into the reactor. Iran is paying Russia more than $1 billion to build the 1,000-megawatt light-water reactor. Construction has been held up by disputes between Tehran and Moscow, publicly described as centering on questions of payment and the schedule for shipping nuclear fuel. The United States and other Western nations that fear Iran is seeking to acquire nuclear weapons have criticized Russia for building Bushehr.

Washington softened its position after Iran agreed to return spent nuclear fuel to Russia to ensure it does not extract materials that could be used to make weapons. The United States and its Western allies also agreed to drop any reference to Bushehr in sanctions resolutions passed by the U.N. Security Council. Russia says the plant's contract is in line with all international agreements aimed at preventing nuclear weapons proliferation.

The trouble started with a Google search. A staffer at investment newsletter Income Securities Advisors Inc in Miami Lakes, Florida, entered the words "bankruptcy" and "2008" in the Internet search engine, according to President Richard Lehmann. ISA does this all the time, searching for overlooked information about companies in trouble, he said. Lehmann said the top item returned in the Google search was a story about United's bankruptcy filing that appeared on the South Florida Sun Sentinel Web site. The story referred to United's filing on Monday morning. United had filed for Chapter 11 protection on Monday, DECEMBER 9, 2002. Lehmann said that date was not on the story.

At 10:43 a.m. the staffer posted a summary of the story from the Sun Sentinel site on the financial information service Bloomberg, Lehmann said. Bloomberg has its own journalists but also distributes information from third-party providers such as ISA, for which some subscribers pay extra. Lehmann said all Bloomberg users would have been able to see the headline, though. After trading around $12 a share Monday morning, the stock of United parent company, UAL Corp, dropped at least as low as $4.62 about five minutes after the ISA article was posted on the Bloomberg terminal. The shares fell as low as $3 before Nasdaq halted trading just before 11:07 a.m. EDT.

"It has the makings of the possibility of a manipulation," Professor David Mirza of Loyola University said of the mysterious reappearance of the story. Mirza, an economics professor, says the timing of the mistake is curious, coming at the same time the federal government announced a bailout of mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, leaving already-rattled investors with bankruptcy on the brain. "I'm sure the government is going to look very seriously into this," Mirza said. "Who released the story?" BUT WHY WOULD ANYONE WANT TO MANIPULATE THE MARKET? MIRZA SAYS FOR PROFIT - SELL THE STOCK HIGH AND BUY IT BACK LOW.

The Pentagon is set to notify the U.S. Congress of the proposed sale, which would be the first of the so-called Terminal High Altitude Area Defense, or THAAD, several people familiar with the matter said. Once notified of such a proposed arms sale by the administration, Congress has 30 days to review it but almost never blocks. In any case, deployment of the THAAD weapons system is "at least months away" and could take more than a year, said a congressional staff member familiar with the matter.

Kenneth Katzman, an expert on the Gulf at the Congressional Research Service, said the UAE has been eager for a "sophisticated antidote" to Iran's missile capabilities. "The UAE has been concerned for many years about possible retaliation against it for U.S. or Israeli strike on Iran's nuclear facilities," he said. For Iran, Katzman added, UAE could be an attractive target because of its billions of dollars of infrastructure investments.

Police have not replied to questions whether the broadcasts are being coordinated with Israel, which officially controls the site but allows the Muslim Wafq to administer affairs there. The terrorist party's television network is the only one broadcasting the one-hour prayer service. Its Al Aqsa television station frequently airs programs calling for jihad against Israel.

The Arab world has mounted a massive public relations campaign in recent years to try to disprove a Jewish connection with the Temple Mount, which is the site of the destroyed First and Second Temples. Arab workers over the past several years have hauled away tons of debris from the area, containing priceless archaeological artifacts dating back to the Temple eras. THE PALESTINIAN AUTHORITY (PA) HAS INSISTED THAT THE TEMPLE MOUNT BE INCLUDED AS PART OF A NEW ARAB COUNTRY IT WANTS TO ESTABLISH.

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Housing Finance Agency Director James Lockhart yesterday placed the two firms in a government-operated conservatorship, ousting their chief executives and eliminating their dividends. The Treasury may purchase up to $200 billion of stock in the firms to keep them solvent.

"Some of this is a stopgap to try to prevent the mortgage market from falling apart," former Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis President William Poole said on Bloomberg Radio. The federally chartered, shareholder-owned structure, with risks covered by taxpayers, is "an unacceptable situation," he said, projecting the Treasury may need to cover as much as $300 billion of losses.

"THIS IS NOT A PERMANENT SOLUTION -- THEY'VE NOT SAVED FANNIE AND FREDDIE, WHAT THEY'VE DONE IS THEY'VE BOUGHT 15 MONTHS," said Bill Ackman, founder of Pershing Square Capital Management in New York, which has sold short the two companies, or bet on declines in their securities. "It's a band aid. They haven't permanently recapitalized the companies."

In an embarrassment for the LSE, the exchange said that no orders can be entered or executions of those trades occur. The LSE plans to bring back trading in a "controlled way", but couldn't say how long that will take. The computer crash left the exchange's customers fuming on a day of heavy trading following the US government's bail-out of mortgage lenders Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae.

Simon Denham, founder of Capital Spreads, said; "It (trading) went down at 8.44 am. This happens on the LSE two or three times a year, but I can't remember it ever having been down this long. I don't know what excuse they will give - for the second biggest stock exchange in the world its pretty poor."

David Buk of BGC Partners said: "The first we heard was that there was a technical glitch earlier this morning. This seems to have been followed by a flurry of activity from banks and insurance companies who tried to place a significant volume through the system at the same time. As far as I'm aware, it's the longest that the stock exchange has been shut down. I'm surprised that a sophisticated market like this doesn't run in duplication - it's not quite as advanced as they'd have us believe."

The world will end. That much is a certainty. But it may not be soon. And in all probability it will not come to a shuddering, fiery, boiling, cataclysmic end on Wednesday this week. MAINSTREAM CHRISTIANITY MOVED AWAY FROM THIS TYPE OF THOUGHT, but large numbers of believers returned to it at various times. "It isn't just the lunatic fringe, it's an integral part of all Christianity. But in mainstream Christianity it is put into perspective that it may happen 'one day'," says Stephen J Hunt, a sociologist of religion and author of Christian Millenarianism: From the Early Church to Waco. "BUT CERTAIN GROUPS AND MOVEMENTS BELIEVE IT IS IN THEIR GENERATION. THEY ARE SAYING WE HAVE GOT THE TRUTH AND NOBODY ELSE HAS."

The great periods of millenarianism - Europe around the year 1000, the English Civil War, the Industrial Revolution on both sides of the Atlantic, and the 20th Century - have been periods of intense turbulence. Putting an eschatological spin on current events is extremely tempting.

"A lot of fundamentalists are what we call 'sign watching'. If there's another tornado in Florida it must be a punishment," says Dr Hunt. Sometimes the links to the temporal world can be tortuous to say the least. A common theme on the fringes of Christian millenarianism is A REVIVED ROMAN EMPIRE LED BY THE ANTICHRIST AND CONSISTING OF 10 EUROPEAN NATIONS. The theme is drawn out from the description of a beast with 10 horns in the book of Revelations. It was historically linked to the EU, but now there are 27 members attention has shifted to the 10-nation Western European Union.

And end of the world believers, whether religious or not, have one thing going for them. The world will, one day, end.

Investors hoped the largest bail-out in US history would prop up the country's housing market and ultimately help to end the credit crunch, analysts said. London, Paris, Frankfurt and Tokyo markets all rose by more than 3%. US PRESIDENT GEORGE BUSH SAID THE TWO MORTGAGE LENDERS HAD POSED "AN UNACCEPTABLE RISK" TO THE ECONOMY.

"The markets are certainly going to rally today because investors are going to say 'Maybe we can see light at the end of the tunnel in terms of the credit crunch'", said Graham Neale of private stockbrokers Killick & Co. "There have been calls on the US administration for some time to act more decisively but it has been playing it quite poker-faced so the news is a positive surprise for the markets. WHETHER IT WILL ACTUALLY PROVE TO BE THE END OF THE CREDIT CRUNCH IS DIFFICULT TO SAY."

In morning trading, London's FTSE 100 index, was 3.8%. It had lost 7% last week - its worst showing in more than six years. UK banking stocks were buoyed by the news from the US, some adding as much as 15%. House builders also gained on hopes that the move could signal a turnaround in the sector. Germany's Dax-30 index was 3.7% ahead and France's Cac-40 added 4.6%. Meanwhile Japan's Nikkei index closed up 3.4%, while the Hang Seng index added 4%. And key indexes in Singapore, Australia and Taiwan were also higher.

The three words - immediately corrected - were during an exchange with ABC's George Stephanopoulos on "This Week," when he was trying to criticize the quiet smear campaign suggesting he is a Muslim. But illustrating the difficulty of preventing false rumors about his faith from spreading, anti-Obama groups within one hour of the interview had sliced it out of context and were sending it around via email. They also were blogging about it.

Mr. Obama, who is a Christian and often proudly speaks about how his faith has influenced his public service, said he finds it "deeply offensive" that there are efforts "coming out of the Republican camp to suggest that perhaps I'm not who I say I am when it comes to my faith." The exchange came after Mr. Obama said that Republicans are attempting to scare voters by suggesting he is not Christian, which McCain campaign manager Rick Davis said was "cynical."