The awards programme was broadcasted on the MTV network throughout the country through cable and satellite television. The Radio City Hall audience readily acquiesced to Black's invitation to pray to the devil. In a video posted on YouTube, Black encouraged the large audience to join in by saying, "let me see those horns." Black, dressed in a "muscle suit" continued by asking the awards ceremony audience to join hands during "the prayer." He then held hands with actress Leighton Meester while he prayed aloud.

Black's prayer went basically unnoticed among most conservative and Christian media circles - perhaps because they feel the comedian was simply joking as he displayed his contempt for Christianity with the prayer invocation. In fact, this would be in keeping with Black's previous behaviour.

But regardless how one looks at Black's actions, it sets a dangerous precedent. Author and King's College professor Paul McGuire labels Black's prayer to Satan as "just the tip of the iceberg of what is happening in our nation and in the entertainment industry." The conservative commentator contends that "although it is hidden, SATANISM IS ONE OF THE FASTEST GROWING RELIGIONS IN AMERICA." He adds: "WE CAN EXPECT TO SEE SATANISTS DEMANDING AND GETTING THE SAME RIGHTS AS ANY OTHER RELIGION."

His propaganda machine is making up false statements to accuse conservative media, but refuses to present any evidence that these false statements were ever made. Anita Dunn is the White House spokesperson Obama put in charge of watching Fox News all day long.

Since the administration is watching and Fox News wants to have a dialogue, Fox News has installed a dedicated direct line for the White House to call their studio in case Dunn wants to phone and deny any criticism made by Fox News. So far, no calls, no denials. They can't deny that Fox News tells the fair and balanced truth.

Many Democrats and independents are ignoring the accusations that Fox News lies, and to their surprise are finding that Fox gives fair and unbalanced news. The people claiming that Fox lies either never watched, or are just intent on smearing Fox. Fox News presently is by far the most popular cable news source. OBAMA ALSO WANTS TO LIMIT FREEDOM OF INTERNET NEWS because so many Americans have lost confidence in the ONE-SIDED LIBERAL MAINSTREAM NEWS MEDIA.

Last week clouds gathered over much of the country, but the rains have come too late to bring much relief. Aid agencies have warned that with them will come flooding, cholera, malaria and hypothermia. In the arid north, pastoralists have watched as their cattle collapsed from exhaustion and thirst, and those that survive now face floods. The people are scarcely holding on and the number of armed skirmishes over water and livestock is rising.

Even in usually greener regions the drought has taken its toll. Four consecutive harvests have failed in the southeast while the Rift Valley, Kenya's breadbasket, is a wasteland of withered crops. There are fears that heavy rains will wash away the topsoil, taking with it precious maize seeds. In Nairobi emaciated cattle led by desperate Masai herdsmen graze by the roadside. The economy is also threatened by plummeting tea and coffee production, while tourists who visit the country's money-spinning safari parks return with tales of landscapes littered with carcasses.

Drought is nothing new to this part of Africa, but what is different is the frequency with which it hits. The cycle of drought used to come around every ten years but now it is almost constant. Many attribute the changing patterns to climate change. Kenya's fractious coalition Government, forced together last year after a violent election, has been accused of hindering rather than helping the situation by failing to safeguard the country's strategic grain reserve.

They will be among the first to take up an option allowing Anglicans to join an "ordinariate" that brings them into full communion with Roman Catholics while retaining elements of their Anglican identity. The Pope's move is regarded by some Anglicans as one of the most dramatic developments in Protestant christendom since the Reformation gave birth to the Church of England 400 years ago.

Archbishop John Hepworth, the twice-married Primate of the Traditional Anglican Communion, who led negotiations with the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in Rome, said he was "profoundly moved" by the Pope's decision and would immediately seek the approval of the group's 400,000 members worldwide to join.

He described the development as "a moment of grace, perhaps even a moment of history". As fully-fledged Anglicans also seek refuge from liberalism in the shelter of Rome, it is feared that the proposal could deal a deadly blow to the 77 million-strong Anglican Communion, which already faces schism over homosexual ordination.

Hundreds of deer were discovered either dead or so badly injured they had to be put down by wildlife experts. In the country's rural Salzburg province, 90 per cent of pheasants and 80 per cent of hares were killed in the hail storms.

Sepp Eder, the hunting chief, said: "Animals sought shelter in farms, in fields of grain but the hail was so heavy it smashed right into them. It may take five years for animal numbers to recover, if they ever do so." Farmers are believed to have suffered more than £60 million in damages to crops and buildings.

It is a 1,700 per cent increase on the cost of the current surveillance regime. Last night LibDem home affairs spokesman Chris Huhne described the sum as 'eye-watering'. 'There is already enough concern at the level of Government snooping,' he said. 'In an era of tough spending choices, IT CANNOT BE A JUSTIFIED RESPONSE to the problems we face as a country to lavish millions of pounds a year on state spying.'

'The increase in money spent on tapping phones and emails is all the more baffling when Britain is still one of the few countries not to allow intercept evidence in court, even in terrorist cases.' State bodies including councils are already making one request every minute to spy on the phone records and email accounts of members of the public.

The number of snooping missions carried out by police, town halls and other government departments has rocketed by 44 per cent in two years to a rate of 1,381 new cases every day.

Many are waiting for the publication of a Code of Practice by Rome to flesh out the detail of what is on offer before deciding whether to go. More than 440 took the compensation package on offer and left the Church of England, most for Rome, after the General Synod voted to ordain women priests in 1992. Some subsequently returned.

The Pope has made it it significantly more attractive for Anglicans to move over this time by allowing them to retain crucial aspects of their Anglican identity and allowing them to set up seminaries which will, presumably, train married men for the Catholic priesthood.

But any serving clergyman would face a marked loss of income. A job as a clergyman in the Church of England comes with a stipend of £22,250 and free accommodation. Catholic priests earn about £8,000, paid by their parish and sometimes topped up by a diocese.

Confidential negotiations on how to implement the Lisbon Treaty have produced proposals to allow the EU to negotiate treaties and even open embassies across the world. A letter conferring a full "legal personality" for the Union has been drafted in order for a new European diplomatic service to be recognised as fully fledged negotiators by international bodies and all non-EU countries.

According to one confidential paper, the first pilot "embassies" are planned in New York, Kabul and Addis Ababa. The move is highly symbolic in Britain as it formally scraps the "European Community", the organisation in which Britons originally voted to remain in the country's only referendum on Europe 34 years ago. Mark Francois, Conservative spokesman on Europe, said that the deal showed why the British should have been given a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty.

"As we have long warned, the Lisbon Treaty increases the EU's power at the expense of the countries of Europe," he said. "The new power a single legal personality would give the EU is a classic example. It illustrates why it is wrong for Labour to try to deny the British people any say on this Treaty at all."

In their lifetimes, they have seen their Christian faith purged from schools their taxes paid for, and mocked in movies and on TV. They have seen their factories shuttered in the thousands and their jobs outsourced in the millions to Mexico and China. They have seen trillions of tax dollars go for Great Society programs, but have seen no Great Society, only rising crime, illegitimacy, drug use and dropout rates.

They watch on cable TV as illegal aliens walk into their country, are rewarded with free educations and health care and take jobs at lower pay than American families can live on – then carry Mexican flags in American cities and demand US citizenship.

They see Wall Street banks bailed out as they sweat their next paycheck, then read that bank profits are soaring, and the big bonuses for the brilliant bankers are back. Neither they nor their kids ever benefited from affirmative action, unlike Barack and Michelle Obama.

They see a government in Washington that cannot balance its books, win our wars or protect our borders. The government shovels out trillions to Fortune 500 corporations and banks to rescue the country from a crisis created by the government and Fortune 500 corporations and banks.

America was once their country. They sense they are losing it. And they are right.

The case centres around Pfizer's criminal "off-label marketing" of four drugs, including the painkiller Bextra. After whistleblowers filed lawsuits in three states, the US Justice Department took an interest in the case and prosecuted Pfizer for criminal acts.

In the settlement, Pfizer admitted to a felony crime and agreed to pay $2.3 BILLION IN FINES and other fees. The investigation of Pfizer reportedly turned up evidence that Pfizer engaged in kickback payments to doctors for nine drugs, including Viagra and Lipitor. Part of the reason the penalty against Pfizer was so large is because THE COMPANY WAS CONSIDERED A "REPEAT OFFENDER" IN PROMOTING DRUGS FOR UNAPPROVED USES (which is a violation of federal law).

So-called "off-label" marketing of drugs is rampant in the pharmaceutical industry. Although the FDA, drug companies and many conventional doctors claim the drug industry is guided by a "gold standard" of scientific scrutiny, the truth is that pharmaceuticals are routinely marketed and prescribed for health conditions for which they have never even been studied... much less actually approved by the FDA. The fact that this continues today makes a mockery of any "scientific credibility" the pharmaceutical industry claims to possess.

The dispute around the August 20 vote has stoked tension between Karzai and the West and complicated US President Barack Obama's decision on whether to send thousands more US troops to Afghanistan to fight a resurgent Taliban. Obama, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon all welcomed Karzai's decision to accept the run-off.

"It is now vital that all elements of Afghan society continue to come together to advance democracy, peace and justice," Obama said in a statement. "We look forward to a second round of voting, and the completion of the process to choose the president of Afghanistan." The White House said the president had taken no decision on whether to wait for the new poll before announcing a new strategy for Afghanistan. A decision would be taken "in the coming weeks."

Karzai, who is a Pashtun, Afghanistan's largest ethnic group, is almost certain to win the run-off but the level of mass fraud alleged in the first round will inevitably cast a shadow over the new vote.

It comes amid splits among Anglicans worldwide over homosexuality and the ordination of women. But Archbishop of Canterbury Dr Rowan Williams said he did not think it was a "commentary on Anglican problems". Causes of discord in the worldwide Anglican communion have included the election of an openly gay bishop and the blessing of same-sex unions.

In the Church of England, the ordination of women as priests, and the prospect of their appointment as bishops, has led many Anglicans to consider joining the Roman Catholics. Two senior opponents of women bishops said they would announce their reaction to the Vatican move in February.

The measure, known as an Apostolic Constitution, was shown to leaders of the Church of England just two weeks ago. Under its terms announced by the Vatican, groupings of Anglicans would be able to join "personal ordinariates". This would allow them to enter full communion with the Catholic church, but also preserve elements of the Anglican traditions including the possible use of Anglican prayer books.

He told the Major Economies Forum in London, which brings together 17 of the world's biggest greenhouse gas-emitting countries, there was "no plan B". World delegations meet in Copenhagen in December for talks on a new treaty.

The United Nations (UN) summit will aim to establish a deal to replace the 1997 Kyoto treaty as its targets for reducing emissions only apply to a small number of countries and expire in 2012. Mr Brown warned that negotiators were not reaching agreement quickly enough and said it was a "profound moment" for the world involving "momentous choice. In Britain we face the prospect of more frequent droughts and a rising wave of floods," he told delegates. "The extraordinary summer heatwave of 2003 in Europe resulted in over 35,000 extra deaths."

In recent days there have been a number of warnings that progress is stalling. Rajendra Pachauri, head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, told Newsweek magazine "the prospects that states will actually agree to anything in Copenhagen are starting to look worse and worse". The Major Economies Forum is not part of the formal UN process and so firm commitments are unlikely to come from the meeting. It is seen instead as a gathering where countries can explore options and positions in a less pressured environment.

This is nearly treble the official £805billion figure used by the Treasury and equal to a staggering 157 per cent of national output. Alistair Darling has warned national debt will rise to £1.4trillion over the next few years. But the new report insists this is far too low and accused the Government of hiding its real scale by omitting massive bills from its figures.

Author, Tory MP Brooks Newmark, claims the 'hidden liabilities' include Private Finance Initiative projects, the banking bailouts and public sector pensions. His report came as the CBI warned another £120billion needed to be cut from public spending amid fears of a 'VW recession' that will see the economy struggle for years.

Mr Newmark, MP for Braintree in Essex, warns in his book The Hidden Bombshell that these are only 'cautious assumptions' and overall debt could be even higher. 'The truth is the national debt is far higher than the Prime Minister is willing to acknowledge. To continue to ignore this is both economically irresponsible and economic with the truth.' He adds: 'The Chancellor has called for greater transparency from the banks and corporations. It is time that he applied the same principles to the national finances and end the "Do as I say, not do as I do" culture of this government.'

The storm is roaring roaring towards the popular tourist town of Cabo San Lucas on the Baja California Peninsula today. Its howling winds have been measured at 145mph - bringing it down to a dangerous Category Four storm. Over the weekend winds reached up to 180mph - a potentially catastrophic Category Five.
Forecasters said they expected Rick to make landfall by midweek as a Category 1 or Category 2 hurricane, with winds ranging from 74 mph (120 kph) to 110 mph (177 kph).

Forecasters called on all those in Mexico's southern Baja California peninsula and along the mainland coast to closely monitor the storm, adding Rick would remain an extremely dangerous hurricane for the next day or two before losing some punch over cooler waters.