Preparations for the visit began this week with the first of a series of conferences to discuss activities to promote Christian tourism to Israel. Among the participants were incoming tour operators specializing in the Christian market, the Israel Hotel Association and representatives of the municipalities that will be included in the Catholic leader's itinerary. Three million tourists visited the State of Israel in 2008, noted the ministry in its statement to the media. Of those, two million were Christians, half of whom were pilgrims. Most of the tourists visited Christian and Jewish sites in Jerusalem, Galilee and Bethlehem.

Marketing activities are expected to include preparation of promotional material to be distributed to journalists accompanying the Pope, who is the spiritual leader of the worldwide Roman Catholic Church. The ministry will also arrange tours and visits to tourist sites for the papal delegation and the media.

"The Pope's visit to the Holy Land is an important and very significant visit that represents a strategic anchor for pilgrimage tourism to Israel in the coming years," noted Tourism Minister Ruchama Avraham-Balila. She added that the visit would also strengthen Israel's image as a central point for pilgrimages and tourism, "especially in this period when the tourism industry is dealing with the ramifications of the global economic crisis."

In the world of American government, the trillion is the new billion. There was a time when only astro-physicists and accountants practising in Zimbabwe had any use for a word which - in the US at least - means a million millions.

Barack Obama is not the only extraordinary phenomenon to rise to prominence in this country in the last year or so - the trillion is right up with him. Suddenly it is popping up in newspaper headlines with extraordinary frequency, even though it is surely a number so far beyond our everyday conceptual grasp that it conveys practically nothing.

Take Mr Obama's stimulus package for example, which ended up at $787bn (or just over three-quarters of a trillion if you prefer). That is the equivalent of spending $1m a day every day starting from the birth of Christ and going on through the present day. Still, since we have only just started on the trillion scale a bit of a breathing space should now follow. IT IS THE QUADRILLION NEXT BY THE WAY.

Now that really IS a lot of money.

Mr Chavez said the mill, owned by a subsidiary of US food giant Cargill, was not distributing rice at government-set prices. He also threatened to nationalise the country's largest food processor and private company, Polar. Venezuela has already set quotas and prices for 12 basic foods. Under the measure, 80% of all rice produced must be basic white rice. The measure also includes 95% of all cooking oil, coffee and sugar. Producers of items such as powdered milk, cheese and tomato sauce are also affected. Last week President Chavez ordered troops to rice processing plants after accusing producers of sidestepping the law on controlled prices by producing a higher grade of rice.

Cargill, which operates one rice-processing plant in Venezuela, said the mill does not produce the plain rice that is under regulation. "Prepare the decree, we are going to expropriate Cargill. We are not going to tolerate this," Mr Chavez said. Mr Chavez is attempting to reduce the cost of the basic shopping basket of ordinary Venezuelans at a time of soaring inflation, says the BBC's Will Grant in Caracas.

But business leaders and food producers are furious at what they see as a further attack on their ability to turn a profit, our correspondent says. The move against Cargill is unlikely to be viewed favourably in Washington either, which angered Venezuela last month by criticising its human rights record, our correspondent adds.

The new idea is for the Bank to buy government debt, bringing down the cost of borrowing over the long term and also providing extra money for banks to lend on to consumers and stimulate economic growth. WE ARE IN NEW TERRITORY because as it approaches zero, the interest rate that the Bank normally uses to control monetary policy becomes useless.

Chancellor Alistair Darling is expected to set out in a letter to Bank Governor Mervyn King the maximum amount of government debt the Bank will be allowed to buy, possibly as much as £100bn, although it could initially be as low as £25bn. Simply, no-one has any idea exactly what the Bank and the Treasury will do and how much it will cost, because IT'S NEVER BEEN DONE BEFORE.

"IT'S NOT KNOWABLE," says Goldman Sachs economist Ben Broadbent. "For it to work, at least very effectively, you need banks to lend the money on. AND THAT'S NOT ASSURED."

Instead, the news agenda has been dominated by Obama's latest domestic policies, the Pakistan terror attack and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's visit to the Middle East. The Washington Post and New York Times ran pieces on Mr Brown's visit but neither gave him prominent billing. Both noted that the Prime Minister and Obama had pledged co-operation to tackle the economic crisis. Meanwhile, The Wall Street Journal ran an article under the headline 'Brown Urges Faith In Free Markets'.

On The New York Post website, the prime minister appeared to be an afterthought in a piece about Obama's reaction to terrorists attacking the Sri Lanka cricket team. USA Today covered Brown's meeting with Obama, once again lining on the economy. Channels ABC and CNN have given Mr Brown's visit rather muted coverage. But the trip did not even merit a mention a link on seminal political site Drudge or on gossip site Gawker.

The beleaguered PM has also faced an assault by the French who claim he gloated at beating President Nicolas Sarkozy to meet Barack Obama. Despite having a military plane on 24 hour standby to fly to the U.S.A, the French president was trumped by his British counterpart to become 'leader' of Europe. It came as the French media suggested that Mr Sarkozy's diplomatic humiliation was caused by his arrogant mocking of Anglo-Saxon economic policies.

Iran's Shahab-3 missiles have a range of up to 1,250 miles, putting Israel within striking distance. Jafari was quoted as saying that Iran is now a mighty military power to be reckoned with. Meanwhile, Iranian Foreign Minister Manuchehr Mottaki said Wednesday that its Russian-built Bushehr nuclear power plant would definitely become active in the summer of 2009.

Speaking in parliament in Teheran, Mottaki said it was the government's duty to finish the project, which he said would be a significant political achievement, particularly considering the heavy international pressure imposed on the Islamic republic to curb its nuclear activities.

On Wednesday, Ahmadinejad urged the United States to change its "satanic" ways if it is serious about wanting change. "Change means giving up your satanic, coercive and aggressive ways and instead adopting more human morals. If you accept this invitation, it will be to the benefit of yourself and your nation," Ahmadinejad told a crowd in northwestern Iran. He did not mention Obama by name but was clearly referring to the new president's administration.

Panarin might be easy to ignore but for the fact that he is a dean at the Foreign Ministry's school for future diplomats and a regular on Russia's state-guided TV channels. And his predictions fit into the anti-American story line of the Kremlin leadership. "THERE IS A HIGH PROBABILITY THAT THE COLLAPSE OF THE UNITED STATES WILL OCCUR BY 2010," Panarin told dozens of students, professors and diplomats Tuesday at the Diplomatic Academy — a lecture the ministry pointedly invited The Associated Press and other foreign media to attend.

Panarin didn't give many specifics on what underlies his analysis, mostly citing newspapers, magazines and other open sources. He also noted he had been predicting the demise of the world's wealthiest country for more than a decade now. But he said the recent economic turmoil in the US and other "social and cultural phenomena" led him to nail down a specific timeframe for "The End" — WHEN THE UNITED STATES WILL BREAK UP INTO SIX AUTONOMOUS REGIONS AND ALASKA WILL REVERT TO RUSSIAN CONTROL.

One instructor asked Panarin whether his predictions more accurately describe Russia, which is undergoing its worst economic crisis in a decade as well as a demographic collapse that has led some scholars to predict the country's demise. Panarin dismissed that idea: "The collapse of Russia will not occur." But Alexei Malashenko, a scholar-in-residence at the Carnegie Moscow Center who did not attend the lecture, sided with the skeptical instructor, saying Russia is the country that is on the verge of disintegration. "I CAN'T IMAGINE AT ALL HOW THE UNITED STATES COULD EVER FALL APART," Malashenko told the AP.

According to official reports, one of 66 satellites owned by Iridium, a US telecoms company, and the Russian Cosmos-2251 satellite, launched in 1993 and believed to be defunct, collided on February 10 about 800 kilometers (500 miles) above Siberia.

However, Major General (Retired) Leonid Shershnev, a former head of Russia's military space intelligence, said in an interview published by the Moskovsky Komsomolets newspaper on Tuesday that the US satellite involved in the collision was used by the US military as part of the "dual-purpose" Orbital Express research project, which began in 2007.

Shershnev claims the US military decided to continue with the project to "develop technology that would allow monitoring and inspections of orbital spacecraft by fully-automated satellites equipped with robotic devices." The February collision could be an indication that the US has successfully developed such technology and is capable of manipulating 'hostile satellites,' including their destruction, with a single command from a ground control center, the general said.

In a speech to both Houses of Congress, Mr Brown will call on the US not to turn in on itself, warning that the financial problems facing them are global and can be dealt with only if they "seize the moment" and resort to international co-operation. The Prime Minister will attempt to speak on behalf of the European Union as a whole when he says that - for the first time in living memory - the entire region is united in wanting to work with America.

Aiming his message in particular at any Congressmen harking back to transatlantic rifts with France and Germany over the Iraq invasion, he will say: "There is no old Europe, no new Europe, there is only your friend Europe."

In an upbeat message at a time of plummeting stock markets, repossessions and redundancies in the US as in Britain, Mr Brown will predict a doubling in the size of the world economy over the next two decades, with sharp growth in business opportunities, prosperity, jobs and incomes.

The 14.9 per cent rise to 480.7 billion yuan (£50 billion), up 62.5 billion yuan from 2008, was announced in advance of the annual meeting of the rubber-stamp parliament, the National People's Congress. It is slightly smaller than the increase in recent years, suggesting that the government is focusing its spending on boosting the wider economy. But after rises of 17.8 per cent in 2007 and 17.6 per cent in 2008, it still amounts to a rise of more than half since 2006.

In addition, the United States claims that real spending is significantly higher, as many costs, including major arms purchases, are kept off the officially announced budget. China is known to be upgrading its nuclear arsenal and has all but confirmed plans to build its first aircraft carrier, but it is unclear whether these heavy cost loads are included in the budget.

"The primary aim of the concerted action by crime fighting authorities is to seize and confiscate prohibited items like music in order to move effectively and extensively against the spread of right wing extremism," the BKA said in a statement.

More than 60 years after World War Two and the Nazi Holocaust, RIGHT-WING RADICALISM IS STILL A PROBLEM IN GERMANY, particularly in the former communist eastern part of the country where unemployment is nearly double the rate in the west.

The BKA said last year that neo-Nazis appeared to have shifted their tactics and stepped up violent attacks. Government figures show anti-Semitic crimes rose at the end of last year. The BKA said the search began earlier Wednesday and was being carried out in all 16 federal states. A BKA spokeswoman could not say for now if any arrests had been made.

"Clearly this kind of activity is unhelpful and not in keeping with the obligations entered into under the 'road map'," Clinton said, referring to the long-stalled peace plan. "It is an issue that we intend to raise with the government of Israel and the government at the municipal level in Jerusalem," she added at a joint news conference with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

Officials say they intend to have 7,000 troops and police in position by the end of the week. Rival gangs are battling for control of the city, which is a key entry point for drug smuggling into the US. Attorney General Eduardo Medina Mora said the troops were there in support of the local authorities. "Ciudad Juarez worries us deeply," he said in an interview with Reuters news agency.

"It is the reason why there is a response by the federal government to support the request of local authorities. Public safety is a shared responsibility among the federal, state governments and municipalities." He added: "In areas where drug traffickers have a lot of influence, sadly there is a risk that they will have an interest in influencing the formation of public power, particularly the local authority. This is something that concerns us."

Last month, the police chief in Ciudad Juarez, Roberto Orduna, stepped down after drugs gangs threatened to kill at least one police officer every two days until he quit.

Reports say Sudan's capital, Khartoum, was tense as people awaited the decision, with fears of unrest. The UN estimates some 300,000 people have died and millions been displaced in six years of conflict in the region. The spokeswoman for the court in The Hague, Laurence Blairon, said Mr Bashir was suspected of being criminally responsible for "murdering, exterminating, raping, torturing and forcibly transferring large numbers of civilians and pillaging their property".

She said the violence in Darfur was the result of a common plan organised at the highest level of the Sudanese government, but there was no evidence of genocide. The court would transmit as soon as possible to the government of Sudan a request for his arrest and surrender, she added. It is the ICC's first ever warrant issued against a sitting head of state.

The Constitution, he said, gives Congress, not the private Federal Reserve, "the authority to coin money and regulate the value of the currency." Now he's introduced another new plan, to "reform the manner in which the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System is audited by the Comptroller General of the United States and the manner in which such audits are reported."

Throughout its nearly 100-year history, the Federal Reserve has presided over the near-complete destruction of the United States dollar," the Texas Republican said. "Since 1913 the dollar has lost over 95 percent of its purchasing power, aided and abetted by the Federal Reserve's loose monetary policy. How long will we as a Congress stand idly by while hard-working Americans see their savings eaten away by inflation? Only big-spending politicians and politically favored bankers benefit from inflation," he said.

"No one oversees the Fed. The Fed is held accountable to absolutely nobody. But Senator Dorgan (as with everyone else in Congress) has no one to blame but himself. Ever since the Marxist, E. Mandell House, convinced President Woodrow Wilson to create the Federal Reserve in 1913, the Congress of the United States has had virtually nothing to do with the way our fiscal policies are managed. The Fed (which is not even a government agency, but rather A PRIVATE CORPORATION CONSISTING OF MOSTLY FOREIGN BANKERS) dictates America's financial policies," Baldwin said.