Experts say a 10-member committee, and not just the President, makes decisions on how to use them and only a complete meltdown in governance could put the atomic bomb in the hands of extremists. "Pakistan's nuclear assets are not one man's property," said Maria Sultan, a defense analyst and director at the London-based South Asian Strategic Stability Institute. "Any (political) transition in Pakistan will have no effect on Pakistan's nuclear assets because it has a very strong custodial control."

The committee, known as the National Command Authority, is served by a military-dominated organization with thousands of security forces and intelligence agents whose personnel are closely screened. The nuclear facilities are tightly guarded. "The reality is that Pakistan's government exists on different levels. One of the levels it exists and works at is in the control of its nuclear weapons," said Patrick Cronin, director of the Institute for National Strategic Studies at the National Defense University in Washington.

Although one of Asia's poorer nations, Pakistan became the Islamic world's first atomic power through a combination of guile, determination and illegal procurement of technology on the international black market. It tested the bomb in 1998, a year before Musharraf took power, in response to a similar test by its historic rival India.

Heavily-armed assassins killed nine people in separate incidents late Sunday in the border town of Ciudad Juarez, local police said, following the slaying of 21 people the previous night - including a baby and a four-year-old boy - at a village dance in the town of Creel. Drug-related violence in Mexico has killed 2,682 people since the start of the year - nine more than in all of 2007 - with nearly half in Chihuahua state, daily El Universal reported Saturday.

Ciudad Juarez - across the Rio Grande from El Paso, Texas, where local drug gangs are battling the powerful Sinaloa cartel - has the highest murder toll, with some 800 so far this year, according to an AFP count. Federal authorities have deployed more than 36,000 soldiers across the country since early 2007, including 2,500 in Ciudad Juarez, in an effort to combat drug trafficking and related violence. But the murder rate has climbed dramatically in two years, from 1,410 in 2006.

Now he has been forced to resign, India fears that relations between the two nuclear rivals could now get even worse. While many Pakistanis despised Musharraf as a dictator, India enjoyed some of its best diplomatic relations in decades during his rule.

New Delhi's fear is that a weak civilian government in Islamabad will be unable to exert the same muscle that Musharraf did over Pakistan's army and the powerful military spy agency, the ISI, which India suspects has a hand in most attacks on its soil. "How the vacuum is handled by the civilian government, how much control they can exercise on the radical elements remains to be seen," a senior Indian foreign ministry official, who asked to remain anonymous, told Reuters.

The Indian government reacted cautiously to word that Musharraf had quit. "We have no comments to make on the resignation of President Musharraf of Pakistan," it said in a statement. "This is an internal matter of Pakistan." The two countries have fought three wars since independence in 1947 and nearly came to a fourth one in 2002. But since a peace process began in 2004 under Musharraf, there has been a string of improvements from a cross-border bus service to more trade and some progress over border disputes.

"THE U.S. IS NOT OUT OF THE WOODS. I think the financial crisis is at the halfway point, perhaps. I would even go further to say 'the worst is to come'," he told a financial conference. "We're not just going to see mid-sized banks go under in the next few months, we're going to see a whopper, we're going to see a big one, one of the big investment banks or big banks," said Rogoff, who is an economics professor at Harvard University and was the International Monetary Fund's chief economist from 2001 to 2004.

"We have to see more consolidation in the financial sector before this is over," he said, when asked for early signs of an end to the crisis. "Probably Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac - despite what U.S. Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson said - these giant mortgage guarantee agencies are not going to exist in their present form in a few years."

Rogozin urged NATO not to interfere in the conflict and added that Russia entered S.Ossetia to protect its nationals. "We do not consider ourselves in a state of war. WE ARE JUST KEEPING THE PEACE and helping our peacekeepers and the civilian population," he said. Rogozin, who said he briefed NATO military officials, said Russian troops had wrested control of Tskhinvali, the South Ossetian provincial capital.

THE WAR STARTED WHEN THE GEORGIAN AIR FORCE AND ARTILLERY STRUCK THE SLEEPING TOWN (TSKHINVALIAT) AT MIDNIGHT. More than 1,500 civilians perished in the very first hours of the shelling. At the same time, Georgian special forces shot 10 Russian peacekeepers who didn't expect such a betrayal from their Georgian colleagues.

"We take the view that NATO is not involved in the conflict," he told reporters. He said a cease-fire - as proposed by Saakashvili - can only happen if Georgian forces stop shooting and return to positions they held before Friday's offensive. "The troops would leave," a Russian lawmaker said, "sooner or later. But how much time it will take, it depends, definitely, on how Georgians will continue to behave," said the lawmaker, Konstantin Kosachev, chairman of a Russian parliament foreign affairs committee.

South Ossetia won de facto independence after a civil war in 1992 and Russia has granted citizenship to most of its residents.

Also on the list were Princess Michael of Kent, The Duke and Duchess of Gloucester and The Duke and Duchess of Kent. Aabid Hussain Khan, from Bradford, West Yorkshire, had compiled pictures, maps and details of the opening hours of official residences from information available on the internet. There were also details of London landmarks including the Houses of Parliament, Tower Bridge and the underground as well as the New York and Washington metros and a home-made video of the Washington Memorial and World Bank in the US.

A counter-terrorism source said: "They had details of explosives and poisons along with information about London landmarks and a computer folder on Royal residences. We would be foolish to rule out the fact that they may have been planning an attack." Detective Chief Superintendent John Parkinson, Head of the Counter Terrorism Unit in Leeds, said the men posed a "very real threat".

He added: "Let there be no doubt, these are dangerous individuals. These men were not simply in possession of material which expressed extremist views. They were also in possession of material that was operationally useful to anyone wishing to carry out an act of violence or terrorism."

The retreating Moro Islamic Liberation Front rebels took dozens of civilians hostage in Kolambugan town, said Brig. Gen. Antonio Supnet, head of an army brigade that drove away the rebels. Officials said 23 civilians were killed in Kauswagan and in neighboring Kolambugan. At least three soldiers were killed, army commanders said. Supnet said more than 20 houses were burned in Kauswagan alone and hundreds of displaced villagers were streaming into evacuation centers in nearby Iligan city.

Military chief Gen. Alexander Yano said government troops launched an offensive in response to Monday morning's attack by about 300 guerrillas on the coastal towns in Lanao del Norte province. TV footage showed mayhem in one smouldering village as residents ran for cover, jumping over the fences of their roadside houses. Burned-out vehicles littered the street. A photographer said up to 100 people escaped in dozens of boats to Iligan because the main highway was blocked.

The escalation of fighting on Mindanao island came amid uncertainty over a fragile peace process after the Supreme Court blocked a preliminary agreement with Muslim rebels calling for an expanded autonomous region. Rebel spokesman Eid Kabalu confirmed the attack, but said it was carried out by a key commander, Abdullah Macapaar, also known as Bravo, without the knowledge of the group's leadership.

The agreement, which was supposed to be signed this month but was blocked by the Supreme Court, calls for more than 700 new villages to be added to an existing Muslim autonomous region, subject to the approval of residents in a plebiscite next year. The Supreme Court acted on a petition filed by Christian politicians wary of losing land and power to Muslims.

"Irrigating with wastewater isn't a rare practice limited to a few of the poorest countries," said researcher Liqa Raschid-Sally, a researcher for the International Water Management Institute (IWMI). "It's a widespread phenomenon, occurring on 20 million hectares (50 million acres) across the developing world, especially in Asian countries, like China, India and Vietnam, but also around nearly every city of sub-Saharan Africa and in many Latin American cities as well."

The IWMI said wastewater was most commonly used to produce vegetables and cereals, especially rice. The study looked at 53 cities in Latin America, the Middle East, Africa and Asia. In a report released to coincide with an annual water conference in Sweden, it found 80 percent were using untreated or partially treated wastewater.

"In over 70 percent of the cities studied, more than half of urban agricultural land is irrigated with wastewater that is either raw or diluted in streams," the institute said.

Authorities in Bihar, one of India's poorest states, are asking rich and poor alike to switch to eating rats in a bid to reduce the dependence on rice. They even plan to offer rats on restaurant menus. "Eating of rats will serve twin purposes - it will save grains from being eaten away by rats and will simultaneously increase our grain stock," Vijay Prakash, an official from the state's welfare department, told Reuters.

Officials say almost 50 PERCENT OF INDIA'S FOOD GRAINS STOCKS ARE EATEN AWAY BY RODENTS in fields or warehouses.

Jitan Ram Manjhi, Bihar's caste and tribe welfare minister, said rat meat was a healthy alternative to expensive rice or grains, and should be eaten by one and all. "We are very serious to implement this project since the food crisis is turning serious day by day," Manjhi, who has eaten rats, told Reuters. In Bihar, rat meat is already eaten by Mushars, a group of lower caste Hindus, as well as poorer sections of society.

UK growth will be slightly negative or zero in the next two or three quarters, but a major recession is unlikely, the BCC says in its latest forecast. But prospects will be worse if interest rates are not cut soon, it adds. The BCC predicts UK unemployment will rise by between 250,000 and 300,000 in the next 18 months to two years. That could take the jobless total to more than two million for the first time since Labour came to power in 1997.

"Over the next two or three quarters, we expect UK GDP growth to be slightly negative or zero, satisfying the conditions of technical recession," the BCC says. "But the bigger danger of a major UK recession can and must be prevented," it adds. "Our central scenario envisages that the UK Bank Rate would be cut to 4.75% in [the fourth quarter of] 2008, followed by an additional cut to 4.5% in [the first quarter of] 2009."

"But if the Bank of England's Monetary Policy Committee decides not to cut rates in the next three to six months, growth prospects would be worse. Whatever happens to interest rates," the BCC says, "a marked slowdown in UK activity is highly likely over the next 18 months".

This extends to Ukraine and its ideas of joining NATO, energy-rich and Western-leaning Azerbaijan, as well as the strategically important countries of the Caspian and Central Asia, north of Afghanistan.

LESSON TWO is that no matter how much the US and its European allies attempt to increase their energy security by seeking new routes to Caspian oil and gas resources not controlled by Russia or Iran, Moscow will do its utmost, even kill thousands in a war, to block Western access. Russia's increasing dominance of Europe's energy imports, overwhelming stake in world natural gas supplies and designs for a 'gas OPEC' should not be challenged.

LESSON THREE is more broad. In the context of post Group of Eight summit calls from Moscow to fundamentally overhaul global security and economic institutions that are too dependent on 'one country and one currency', Russia's invasion of a small neighbouring country is a demonstration of contempt for a world order that does not respect Russia as it should.

The weekly financial newspaper said that such a move could wipe out existing holders of the agencies' common stock, with preferred shareholders and even holders of the two entities' $19 billion of subordinated debt also suffering losses. An insider in the Bush administration told Barron's that Fannie and Freddie "are being jawboned" by the Treasury Department and their new regulator, the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), to raise more equity. But government officials don't expect the agencies to succeed, Barron's reported.

If the government-sponsored enterprises fail to raise fresh capital, the administration is likely to mount its own recapitalization, with Treasury infusing taxpayer money into the agencies, according to the Barron's source. The paper reported the infusion would take the form of a preferred stock with such seniority, dividend preference and convertibility rights that Fannie's and Freddie's existing common shares "effectively would be wiped out, and their preferred shares left bereft of dividends."

The report called an equity injection by the government A QUASI-NATIONALIZATION -- WITHOUT HAVING TO PUT THE AGENCIES' LIABILITIES ON THE US BALANCE SHEET, AND THUS DOUBLING THE US DEBT.

"Whether I win or lose, the nation must lose," Musharraf, 65, said in an hour-long televised address in which he passionately defended his nine-year record in office. "The honor and dignity of the country will be affected and in my view, the honor of the office of president will also be affected." Prolonged jockeying and uncertainty over Musharraf's position had hurt Pakistan's financial markets and raised concerns in Washington and among other allies that it was distracting from efforts to tackle militancy.

Musharraf seized power in a 1999 coup but has been isolated since his allies lost parliamentary elections in February. The new coalition government, led by the party of assassinated former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, said early this month that it planned to impeach Musharraf. The powerful army, which has ruled for more than half the country's 61-year history, has publicly kept out of the controversy over its old boss.

The ruling coalition had prepared impeachment charges against Musharraf focusing on violation of the constitution and misconduct.

The Telegraph can disclose that the Government is pushing ahead with plans for a national road-pricing scheme, including testing "spy in the sky" technology. Eight areas of the country have been selected by ministers for secret pay-per-mile trials which will begin in 2010 and are expected to pave the way for tolls on motorways. Motorists face paying up to £1.30 a mile during peak periods on the busiest roads.

Initially, in January 2010, one hundred cars in each area will trial the new technology – in many cases entailing placing black boxes to allow their movements to be tracked - but members of the public will be invited to join the pilots in June 2010. The Government is close to signing contracts with four companies who will run the national trials, testing not only the technology which will be fitted to the cars, but also the bureaucracy needed to run a system including sending out bills.

When the scheme was first floated by the Blair administration 1.8 million people signed a petition on the Downing Street website calling on the Government to abandon the scheme. Last night, Peter Roberts, who led the initial protests, said: "IF THE GOVERNMENT WAS TRUE TO ITS WORD AND WAS KICKING ROAD PRICING INTO THE LONG GRASS, WHY IS IT RUNNING TRIALS? MINISTERS HAVE SAID THAT NATIONAL ROAD PRICING IS NO LONGER ON THE AGENDA. So either they are wasting millions of pounds of taxpayers' money or they are not being honest with voters."

Pat Klein said he and three others from his Vision Beyond Borders group spent Sunday night at the airport in the south-western city of Kunming after customs officers took the Bibles from their checked luggage. "I heard that there's freedom of religion in China, so why is there a problem for us to bring Bibles?" said Klein, whose Sheridan, Wyoming-based group distributes Bibles and Christian teaching materials around the world. The Bibles were printed in Chinese, he told The Associated Press in a telephone interview.

In China, Bibles are legally printed at just one plant — the world's largest — run by a communist government-backed Christian association, and are available in many bookstores. But THE OFFICIALLY ATHEISTIC GOVERNMENT prohibits proselytizing and is worried that if the spread of religion goes unchecked, BELIEVERS MIGHT ULTIMATELY CHALLENGE THE COMMUNIST PARTY'S AUTHORITY.