UN forces last week tried to counter North Korean claims that the exercises were a smokescreen for an invasion by promising to keep the hotline open, giving Pyongyang advance warning of anything that could cause a misunderstanding. North Korea's official KCNA news agency quoted an army spokesman as saying: "It is nonsensical to maintain the normal channels of communication when the South Korean puppets are in a frenzy about these military exercises, levelling their guns at fellow countrymen in league with foreign forces."

Severing military communications had an immediate effect on workers trying to reach South Korea's investment zone at Kaesong in North Korea. Some 726 South Koreans could not reach their factories in Kaesong on Monday because all crossings require clearance on the military hotline.

The communist state also warned that any attempt to shoot down a rocket it plans to launch soon would be an act of war. Even by its own standards, Pyongyang's rhetoric has been exceptionally bellicose during recent months. The reclusive state has torn up its non-aggression pacts with the South, vowed not to recognise a tense maritime border and last week said it could not guarantee the safety of South Korean passenger aircraft in its airspace.

President Barack Obama's order Monday opening the door for federal taxpayer dollars to fund expanded embryonic stem cell research again brings those often colliding interests to the fore. Cardinal Justin Rigali, chairman of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops' Committee on Pro-Life Activities, called Obama's move "A SAD VICTORY OF POLITICS OVER SCIENCE AND ETHICS."

"This action is morally wrong because it encourages the destruction of innocent human life, treating vulnerable human beings as mere products to be harvested," Rigali, the archbishop of Philadelphia, said in a statement. On the other side is the Reverend Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite, a United Church of Christ minister and a professor at Chicago Theological Seminary. "There is an ethical imperative to relieve suffering and promote healing," she said. "This is good policy for a religiously pluralistic society that cares about human suffering and the relief of human suffering."

Obama alluded to religion in announcing the changes, saying, "As a person of faith, I believe we are called to care for each other and work to ease human suffering. I believe we have been given the capacity and will to pursue this research and the humanity and conscience to do so responsibly."

Some religious traditions teach that because life begins at conception, any research that destroys a human embryo, as this research does, IS TANTAMOUNT TO MURDER and is never justified. The Roman Catholic Church and the Southern Baptist Convention are among those that oppose the research. Under Jewish law, an embryo is genetic material that does not have the status of a person. According to the Talmud, THE EMBRYO IS "SIMPLY WATER" IN THE FIRST 40 DAYS OF GESTATION. Healing and preserving human life takes precedence over all the other commandments in Judaism.

"Our government has forced what I believe is A FALSE CHOICE BETWEEN SOUND SCIENCE AND MORAL VALUES," Obama declared as he signed documents changing US science policy and removing what some researchers have said were shackles on their work. "It is about ensuring that scientific data is never distorted or concealed to serve a political agenda - and that we make scientific decisions based on facts, not ideology," Obama said.

Researchers said the new president's message was clear: Science, which once propelled men to the moon, again matters in American life. Opponents saw it differently: a defeat for morality in the most basic questions of life and death. "THE ACTION BY THE PRESIDENT TODAY WILL, IN EFFECT, ALLOW SCIENTISTS TO CREATE THEIR OWN GUIDELINES WITHOUT PROPER MORAL RESTRAINTS," said Family Research Council President.

In a crowded ornate East Room, there were more scientists in the White House than Alan Leshner, CEO of the American Association for the Advancement of Science had seen in his 30 years in Washington. "More happy scientists than I've seen," he added.

Asia excluding Japan probably lost about $9.6 trillion, while the Latin American region saw the value of financial assets drop by about $2.1 trillion, said Claudio Loser, a former International Monetary Fund director and the author of the report that was commissioned by the ADB. The report didn't give a breakdown of asset declines in other regions.

"The loss of financial wealth is enormous, and the consequences for the economies of the world will unfortunately be commensurate," said Loser, now the Latin American president of strategic advisory firm Centennial Group Inc. "There are serious economic and political stumbling blocks that may well cause the recovery to be costly and slow to consolidate."

Some of the world's biggest financial companies including Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc and Merrill Lynch & Co have collapsed as banks and other financial institutions reported almost $1.2 trillion of losses and writedowns since the start of 2007. Global stock markets lost about $28.7 trillion in 2008, and another $6.6 trillion has been wiped from the value of world equities in 2009.

The best and brightest of the US foreign policy community reflexively designate the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) as the institution for trans-Atlantic cooperation. These scholars, diplomats, and politicians - from both parties - are America's Atlanticists. Unlike the neoconservatives, they think in multilateral terms, value the Europeans as long-standing allies, and believe in international law. Barack Obama is certainly no exception.

Yet the Atlanticists err by clinging so stubbornly to NATO for so many diverse purposes. As much as it has struggled to reinvent itself since the days of the East-West conflict, NATO remains a US-dominated military alliance with a Cold War mindset. Not only is NATO ill-equipped to confront the plurality of new challenges in the post-Cold War (and now post-American) world order, it has become counterproductive to the task it was originally created to do - namely to guarantee security in Europe.

As the Dutch political scientist Peter van Ham argues, "NATO's instruments have become blunt and outdated in the light of today's non-traditional security challenges and techniques." Yet, he notes, contrary to expectations its portfolio has only expanded: "Whereas not too long ago the main question was how the European Union could use NATO's military tools... the debate is now how should NATO draw upon the resources of the European Union, the United Nations, the World Bank, as well as non-governmental organizations."

Dozens were described as having pain 'in extremity' while others suffered from nausea, muscle weakness, fever, dizziness and numbness. The vaccine is being given to girls under a Government programme to prevent women from developing cervical cancer. Ministers say it will ultimately save 700 lives a year.

Some have dubbed it the 'promiscuity jab' because it is given to girls to protect against the sexually-transmitted HPV virus which causes 70 per cent of cervical tumours. Last night campaigners called for the vaccination campaign to be suspended in the light of the published side-effects.

But Government health experts insisted the Cervarix vaccine was safe and that the total of 1,340 reports was to be expected, given that more than 700,000 girls were vaccinated last year.

Each bullet wound or broken bone details the viciousness with which the cartels battle a government crackdown and each other. Slain policemen lie next to hit men in the rows of zipped white bags.

Workers toil up to 12 hours a day, sometimes seven days a week, to examine the remains. When Tijuana coffin makers fell behind during the December holidays, the morgue there crammed 200 bodies into two refrigerators made to hold 80. "There are times here when there are so many people, so many cadavers, that we can't keep up," says the Tijuana morgue director, Federico Ortiz.

Ciudad Juarez, a city of 1.3 million across the border from El Paso, Texas, has a modern, estimated $15 million morgue and crime lab thanks to international support after another notorious spate of killings — the Women of Juarez. More than 400 women have been raped, strangled and dumped in the desert since 1993. The morgue has seven doctors, including two hired in the last two weeks. Still, the procession of the dead is staggering. Plans are under way to double the morgue's size next year.

AIG needed immediate help from the Federal Reserve and Treasury to prevent a "catastrophic" collapse that would be worse for markets than the demise of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc, according to the 21-page draft AIG presentation circulated among federal and state regulators, the agency reported. "What happens to AIG has the potential to trigger a cascading set of further failures which cannot be stopped except by extraordinary means," the agency quoted the presentation.

AIG warned its failure could cripple money-market funds, force European banks to raise capital, cause competing life insurers to fail and wipe out the taxpayers' stake in the firm, the agency said. The presentation said without more US help, investment losses would mean "AIG will not be able to repay its obligations" and that cash previously provided by the US, which controls a 79.9 percent stake in the insurer, could be lost, it added.

AIG could not be immediately reached by Reuters for comment.

Opening the unusual presidential call to reporters by saying that there was "just one thing I was thinking about as I was getting on the 'copter," he said it wasn't he who started the federal government's intervention into the nation's financial system.

"I did think it might be useful to point out that it wasn't under me that we started buying a bunch of shares of banks. It wasn't on my watch. And it wasn't on my watch that we passed a massive new entitlement – the prescription drug plan - without a source of funding. And so I think it's important just to note when you start hearing folks throw these words around that we've actually been operating in a way that has been entirely consistent with free-market principles and that some of the same folks who are throwing the word 'socialist' around can't say the same." The phone call came after the president was asked aboard his plane: "Are you a socialist as some people have suggested?"

"Let's just take a look at what we've done," Obama said, ticking off efforts his administration has made to stabilize the economy. But he acknowledged that, as he told Joe the Plumber, HE PLANS TO TRY TO SPREAD THE WEALTH AROUND.

Ever since oil began its 69 percent plunge from a record $147.27 a barrel in July, traders have been looking for a bottom. Now that the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries reduced supplies 13 percent since September, inventories are falling 1.4 million barrels a day, according to PVM Oil Associates Ltd, the world's biggest broker of energy trades between banks. OPEC will limit exports again when the group meets March 15, according to a survey by Bloomberg News.

OPEC states have more of an incentive than ever to restrict output because the combination of declining prices and the global recession will reduce earnings 59 percent this year to $402 billion, according to the US Energy Department. Crude demand will drop for a second year, the first back-to-back decline since 1983, the International Energy Agency said.

OPEC ministers from Venezuela, Algeria and Qatar said stricter limits may be needed at the March 15 summit in Vienna. While Saudi Arabia, the world's largest exporter, has yet to express a view, King Abdullah and Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi said last year that $75 IS A FAIR PRICE FOR PRODUCERS AND CONSUMERS.

"Close them down, get them out of business," Shelby, the senior Republican on the Senate Banking Committee, said on the ABC television program 'This Week With George Stephanopoulos.' "If they're dead, they ought to be buried." While the Alabama senator did not say which banks should shut down, he suggested that Citigroup might be on that list, saying the bank has "always been a problem child."

McCain, appearing on 'Fox News Sunday,' echoed that sentiment without identifying banks. McCain, who lost the US presidential election in November, accused the Treasury Department of avoiding the "hard decision" to let "these banks fail."

Obama made clear in an interview published Sunday in The New York Times that he did not want big banks to fail, saying his administration "would take more significant action to deal with those institutions."

That painful time during Ronald Reagan's presidency is a grim marker of how bad things can get. Yet the current recession could slice deeper into the US economy. If it lasts into April - as it almost surely will - this one will go on record as the longest in the post war era. The 1981-82 and 1973-75 recessions each lasted 16 months. Unemployment hasn't reached 1982 levels and the gross domestic product hasn't fallen quite as far. But the hurt from this recession is spread more widely and uncertainty about the country's economic health is worse today than it was in 1982.

Back then, if someone asked if the nation was about to experience something as bad as the Great Depression, the answer was, "Quite clearly, 'No,'" said Murray Weidenbaum, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers in the Reagan White House. "You don't have that certainty today," he said. "It's not only that the downturn is sharp and widespread, but a lot of people worry that it's going to be a long-lasting, substantial downturn."

CONSUMER CONFIDENCE IS IN FREE FALL. BANKS ARE IN PERIL. The overall economy, as measured by the GDP, shrank at a 6.2 percent annual rate in the final three months of last year, the worst drop since the first quarter of 1982. The unemployment rate, at 8.1 percent in February, hasn't reached the 10.8 percent reported in November 1982, but the recession is not over. It's not only blue-collar workers who are feeling the greatest anguish. Americans who are trapped in houses worth less than their mortgages are suffering. So, too, are people whose personal wealth is tied to the stock market. PERSONAL WEALTH IS DWINDLING IN THE US and the effects of the financial meltdown have been felt around the world.

The bank did not provide a specific estimate, but bank officials said its economists would be publishing one in the next several weeks. Until now, even extremely pessimistic forecasters have predicted that the global economy would eke out a tiny expansion but had warned that even a growth rate of 5 percent in China would be a disastrous slowdown, given the enormous pressure there to create jobs for the country's rural population.

The World Bank also warned that global trade would contract for the first time since 1982, and that the decline would be the biggest since the 1930s. In a report prepared for a meeting next week of finance ministers from the 20 industrialized and large developing countries, the World Bank said the economic crisis that started with junk mortgages in the United States was causing havoc for poorer countries around the world, not only stifling their growth but also choking off their access to credit as well.

Central European countries like Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic are hurting from diminished exports to Western Europe as well as a severe credit crunch among major European banks, which have suffered huge losses on U.S. mortgages and mortgage-backed securities. East Asian countries are reeling from plunging global trade. Demand for inexpensive manufactured goods has plunged in the United States. That slump has hit many Asian countries directly and indirectly, through falling demand by China for raw materials and component products.

David Wilkerson, author of 'The Cross and the Switchblade,' a book about his ministry to troubled New York street kids that was later made into a movie starring Pat Boone, tells readers of his blog this weekend that he is "compelled by the Holy Spirit to send out an urgent message" about his prediction. "AN EARTH-SHATTERING CALAMITY IS ABOUT TO HAPPEN," he writes. "It is going to be so frightening, we are all going to tremble – even the godliest among us." Wilkerson's vision is of fires raging through New York City.

"It will engulf the whole megaplex, including areas of New Jersey and Connecticut. Major cities all across America will experience riots and blazing fires – such as we saw in Watts, Los Angeles, years ago," he explains. "There will be riots and fires in cities worldwide. There will be looting – including Times Square, New York City. What we are experiencing now is not a recession, not even a depression. WE ARE UNDER GOD'S WRATH. In Psalm 11 it is written, 'If the foundations are destroyed, what can the righteous do?'"

"God is judging the raging sins of America and the nations," claims Wilkerson. "He is destroying the secular foundations." Wilkerson urges everyone to stockpile a 30-day supply of food and other necessities to deal with the catastrophe he foresees. "I do not know when these things will come to pass, but I know it is not far off," Wilkerson concluded in his message. "I have unburdened my soul to you. Do with the message as you choose."

"We will retaliate (over) any act of intercepting our satellite for peaceful purposes with prompt counterstrikes by the most powerful military means," the official Korean Central News Agency quoted a spokesman of the General Staff of the Korean People's Army as saying.

If countries such as the United States, Japan or South Korea try to intercept the launch, the North Korean military will carry out "a just retaliatory strike operation not only against all the interceptor means involved but against the strongholds of those countries," it said. "Shooting our satellite for peaceful purposes will precisely mean a war," it added. North Korea earlier announced it is preparing to put a communications satellite into space, but outside observers suspect it may in fact be a test-firing of a long-range ballistic missile.

The United States, Japan and South Korea have said that even if Pyongyang calls the launch a missile test, it would violate existing UN Security Council resolutions. North Korea has demanded a stop to this month's US-South Korean exercises, and said earlier it cannot guarantee the security of South Korean civilian airplanes flying through its territorial airspace while they are under way.