"The great and swift decline in America's influence is one of the most important motivations for Israelis to wage such a barbaric attack on Gaza, in a bid to try and make use of the last days of (President) Bush's mandate and the neo-conservatives," he says. The audio, about 22 minutes long, is titled: "A Call for Jihad to Stop the Aggression on Gaza. The message of Sheikh Osama Bin Laden to the Muslim Ummah."

"Israelis are in a rush to get rid of their enemies in Gaza, and replace them with (Palestinian President Mahmoud) Abbas and his administration, in order for him to protect their backs. They thus carried out this horrific butchery before the end of Bush's term in office before the American weakness shows even more."

Its release came on the 19th day of Israel's military campaign in the Gaza Strip targeting Hamas militants, which Palestinian doctors say has left 940 people dead, less than half of whom were combatants. Bin Laden says Mr. Bush has left President-elect Barack Obama with "two bitter choices," and wonders aloud whether the next American leader will be able to keep up the fight against al Qaeda and other terrorist groups.

Israel showed no signs of slowing its bruising 19-day-old offensive against Gaza's Hamas rulers, striking some 60 targets in the strip bordering southern Israel. One airstrike hit an overcrowded cemetery, spreading body parts and rotting flesh over a wide area. The army said the airstrike targeted a weapons cache hidden near the graveyard.

The rocket fire from Lebanon caused no injuries, but sent residents scurrying to bomb shelters. There was no immediate claim of responsibility. Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed guerrilla group that fought a monthlong war with Israel in 2006, denied involvement in last week's attack, and speculation focused on small Palestinian groups.

The Israeli military said it targeted the source of the rockets, and that it regarded the Lebanese government and military responsible for preventing attacks on Israel. The government of Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Saniora condemned the attack.

China's National Bureau of Statistics said on Wednesday that the economy expanded by 13 per cent in 2007, a sharp increase from the 11.9 per cent growth rate the authorities had previously stated. With only the US and Japan larger than China, the new figures highlight the rapid transformation that the Chinese economy has undergone during the past 30 years since Mao-era controls were eased, although it is experiencing the toughest period in a decade as a result of the global financial crisis.

GERMANY'S ECONOMY HAS ALSO SLOWED SHARPLY, perhaps contracting by as much as 2 per cent in the fourth quarter, its statistical office said. First estimates, indicating that gross domestic product fell by between 1.5 per cent and 2 per cent compared with the previous three months, emphasise the downturn. That is likely to intensify fears Germany's recession will be the worst since the second world war, dragging down economies continent-wide. That would pressure policymakers to beef-up emergency rescue packages.

The command's "Joint Operating Environment (JOE 2008)" report, which contains projections of global threats and potential next wars, PUTS PAKISTAN ON THE SAME LEVEL AS MEXICO. "In terms of worse-case scenarios for the Joint Force and indeed the world, two large and important states bear consideration for a rapid and sudden collapse: Pakistan and Mexico."

"The Mexican possibility may seem less likely, but the government, its politicians, police and judicial infrastructure are all under sustained assault and press by criminal gangs and drug cartels. How that internal conflict turns out over the next several years will have a major impact on the stability of the Mexican state. Any descent by Mexico into chaos would demand an American response based on the serious implications for homeland security alone."

The report is one in a series focusing on Mexico's internal security problems, mostly stemming from drug violence and drug corruption. In recent weeks, the Department of Homeland Security and former U.S. drug czar Barry McCaffrey issued similar alerts about Mexico.

But by the time the final dance has been held at one of the many inaugural balls the costs for the day will be a staggering £110m. President Bush declared a state of emergency in Washington - because so many people were expected to attend the inauguration.

In doing so he paved the way for unlimited funding to be released to those local authorities responsible for staging the event. A president mostly uses the power to declare a state of emergency during a crisis, such as a hurricane or other natural disaster. The bulk of the cost for the event will be on security with more than 10,000 police and troops forming a ring of steel around Washington DC.

Visitors have been told to use public transport and be in their place at least three hours before the service begins. U.S. intelligence services said such a high profile event would be perfect for a terrorist attack, but they have no specific intelligence that anything has been planned. Obama will use the same Bible used by Abraham Lincoln during the swearing in ceremony.

In northern Minnesota, temperatures dropped to 40 degrees Fahrenheit below zero, and record lows near that were recorded in North Dakota as single-digit and sub-zero temperatures spread through a broad swath of the country's northern and central tiers.

As the bitter cold moved south and combined with snow and ice in some areas, the sudden plunge in temperature fueled farmer fears that vulnerable young wheat plants could suffer, and ranchers fretted over how to keep weight on cattle and hogs for market. "Everything is harder when it is cold," said Kevin Gilbert, a hog producer in Ionia, Iowa, where single-digit temperatures were forecast to fall to 18 degrees Fahrenheit below zero on Thursday.

Soft red winter wheat areas in the southern Midwest were also threatened, Palmerino said. Frigid temperatures, coupled with a lack of snowcover, can kill off parts of the wheat plant if the ground lacks adequate protective snow and soil moisture.

He is widely expected to lift restrictions imposed by President Bush in August 2001 who was opposed to the destruction of embryos for scientific research. This limited federal funding to stem cell lines created before that date. IT WOULD SIMPLY TAKE AN EXECUTIVE ORDER - not legislation - for President Obama to reverse the Bush restrictions. Although the Obama transition team has not made specific promises on stem cells, the change is widely anticipated. The Bush restrictions led to some bizarre complications for scientists according to Professor David Schaffer, of the University of California, Berkeley.

"To work with non-federal stem cell lines means we have to separate labs, separate lab books, separate personnel, payroll even building facilities and infrastructure to be able to be able to conduct work on the better non-registry lines that have derived since that time." Professor Schaffer, the co-director of the Berkeley Stem Cell Center, says the restrictions have slowed down their work.

A seismic shift in White House policy on stem cells seems likely, but the state of the economy could still leave scientists frustrated that President Obama won't back words with cash.

The girl died with fractures to all her limbs, Bradford Crown Court heard. The couple, both 21, are accused of repeatedly assaulting Sanam over a month-long period. They deny murder. Continuing the prosecution's opening of the case, Julian Goose QC said: "Sanam died as a result of really serious injuries, deliberately inflicted upon her, over a period of up to four weeks before her death.

The court also heard how tiny handprints and bloodstains were found inside cupboards at the home in Huddersfield and also at a property on Howley Walk in Batley, West Yorkshire, where they had lived. Mr Anwar, who is not Sanam's father, admitted to police he put the girl in the cupboard to punish her and said Miss Navsarka did the same thing, the court heard. The court has been told Sanam had 107 separate external injuries when she died. The trial continues.

China has a $2 trillion foreign currency reserve but it also suffers from a huge disparity between the rich and poor: WHILE 0.4 PER CENT OF THE PEOPLE HOLD 70 PER CENT OF THE WEALTH OF THE COUNTRY, a fifth of the population - more than 300 million Chinese - have daily incomes of less than one dollar. This extreme concentration of wealth is a serious problem for the Chinese Government and threatens its grip on power.

FIRST, IT MEANS THAT THERE ARE TOO FEW CONSUMERS TO SUSTAIN A DOMESTIC MARKET. So "the workshop of the world" is particularly reliant on the fortunes of the world economy. The Chinese Government announced yesterday that exports had fallen at their fastest rate in a decade, declining by 2.8 per cent in December, on top of a 2.2 per cent year-on-year fall in November. China's exporters are collapsing, pulling down other businesses with them. The Government claims that unemployment is running at 4 per cent in urban areas; but the official figures cannot be believed. According to some serious statisticians, the unemployment rate may have already passed 20 per cent. This makes the severity of the economic crisis in China much sharper than in the US and Europe.

SECOND, GROWING UNEMPLOYMENT AND STAGNANT WAGES WILL STOKE THE RISING RESENTMENT AGAINST THE SUPER-RICH, THREATENING THE POSITION OF THE RULING CLASS. The Government regards the tens of millions of peasant workers who will return to the cities after the Chinese holiday season to closed factories and no jobs as an urgent threat. Chinese peasants have a long tradition of rebellion.

The evidence can already be seen: from Los Angeles to the shores of Lake Geneva, China's super-rich are anxiously snapping up real estate, paying with cash. The more turmoil there is - as unemployment shakes the social order - the more capital will flee China. This will exacerbate the vicious cycle. So the Chinese Government is trapped by a terrible dilemma. It can act to help ordinary Chinese (in the manner of Roosevelt's New Deal in the 1930s) or the bureaucratic-capitalist class. But it cannot do both.

Elia Enrico Richetti, chief rabbi of Venice, said in an editorial in a Jesuit journal that the main reason for the rabbis' decision to boycott was the reintroduction last year of a Holy Week prayer for the conversion of the Jews. "If (to the prayer) we add the pope's recent statements on dialogue being useless because the Christian faith is superior, it is clear that we are moving toward the cancellation of 50 years of Church history," he wrote in the Jesuit journal Popoli.

Last year the Vatican revised a contested Latin prayer used by traditionalist Catholics on Good Friday, the day marking Jesus Christ's crucifixion. But Jews criticized the new version because it still says they should recognize Jesus Christ as the savior of all men. It asks that "all Israel may be saved" and Jews said it kept an underlying call to conversion that they had wanted removed.

Relations between Catholics and Jews made great advances under the 27-year-long pontificate of the late Pope John Paul, who died in 2005. He was the first pope to visit a synagogue and led the Vatican to diplomatic relations with Israel. But many Jews have said they sense that the clock is being turned back under the papacy of Benedict, who has made the revitalization of traditional Catholic identity one of his goals. Catholic-Jewish dialogue began in earnest after the 1962-1965 Second Vatican Council, with which it repudiated the concept of collective Jewish guilt for Christ's death.

One wonders why journalists are allowing this corralling of the press? Would they have allowed George W. Bush to pre-pick journalists like that? Would they meekly sit by and allow themselves to be systematically ignored, their freedom to ask questions silenced by any Republican? Would journalists so eagerly vie with one another for the favor of Bush like they are Obama's?

For her part, it seems that Carol Marin is starting to wonder at the "bizarro world" that is being invented BY THE PLIANT AND SMITTEN OBAMA LOVING PRESS CORPS. "The press corps, most of us, don't even bother raising our hands any more to ask questions because Obama always has before him a list of correspondents who've been advised they will be called upon that day."

"Will the rest of the press retake their manhood and again become the tough guys they have always claimed to be or are they going to stay so smitten by Obama and their love for "THE ONE" that they will allow themselves to continue being forced into a subservient role? One has a sinking suspicion that THE PRESS IS ALLOWING ITSELF TO BECOME OBAMA'S LAPDOG EXTRAORDINAIRE."

The new program, designed to improve U.S. security, has been voluntary since August, but became mandatory Monday. Travelers are being asked to fill out the forms at least 72 hours in advance of travel. There were no signs of confusion Monday as the new system was implemented at London Heathrow's sprawling Terminal 5 — departure point for many U.S.-bound flights. The rules cover the citizens of 35 countries — from nations in Europe and Asia, to Australia and New Zealand — who don't require a visa to enter the U.S.

Derwood Staeben, U.S. consul general in London, said nearly all applications would be approved in less than 10 seconds. He said travelers would not be required to give any more information than is already requested on the paper immigration forms, which are being replaced. "The important change is that we're automating the existing process and requiring it to be done in advance," he said. "The response time is generally about four seconds." There is no fee for the service, he said, and THE TRAVEL AUTHORIZATION IS VALID FOR TWO YEARS.

Professor John Banzhaf, the so-called "FATHER OF POTTY PARITY" sent a letter to the Presidential Inaugural Committee warning of potential lawsuits. He says women, who take longer in the restroom, could be forced to wait in longer lines than men, and that amounts to discrimination.

Banzhaf says waiting in long lines is not just an inconvenience. It can trigger medical problems. He's asking the Presidential Inaugural Committee to make the toilets gender-neutral so that women do not have to wait longer than men.

Four hundred years on, the United Nations has decided to declare this year, 2009, an international year of astronomy. Events are being held around the world. The BBC has been given rare access to the Pope's observatory at his home outside Rome. THE OBSERVATORY AT CASTEL GANDOLFO AND ITS STAFF WILL PLAY A KEY ROLE IN THE EVENTS OF THIS YEAR OF ASTRONOMY. The catholic priests who run the centre have strong views on everything from life on other planets, to whether the Star of Bethlehem actually existed.

Meanwhile, in London, a 400-year-old set of "moon maps" created by a little-known Englishman are to go on display to mark the launch of the International Year of Astronomy. Experts say they prove their creator - Thomas Harriot - beat Galileo to become the first man to view the moon through a telescope. The Italian philosopher has long been credited with achieving the feat, in December 1609. But papers at West Sussex Record Office show Harriot managed it months earlier. Dr Allan Chapman, a science historian at Oxford University, said Harriot's composite drawing of the moon marked "the birth of modern cartography".

"Thomas Harriot was not only the first person ever to draw an astronomical body with a telescope on 26 July 1609, he rapidly developed to become an absolutely superb lunar cartographer," he said. "There weren't equivalent lunar drawings to be done for another 30 years. Tragically no-one knew of it until relatively recent times, so Galileo gets all the credit. Harriot was a wealthy gentleman with no desire for fame and fortune, unlike Galileo."

Astronomer Sir Patrick Moore said: "I'm sorry Harriot isn't better known over here... after all we all know Galileo. But Harriot was first... and his map of the moon is better than Galileo's."

According to Olmert, Bush's acquiescence, and his insistence that Rice back down from the resolution, made Rice sizzle. "She was left pretty embarrassed," Olmert told the Associated Press. After Olmert explained the resolution, and Israel's position on it, to Bush, the President called Rice to change the vote.

"He gave an order to the Secretary of State, and she did not vote in favour of it - a resolution she prepared, phrased, organized and manoeuvred for. She was left pretty embarrassed and abstained on a resolution she arranged," Olmert said.

At this week's cabinet meeting, Olmert slammed international calls for IDF restraint in Gaza. "For many years we've demonstrated restraint. We reined our reactions. We bit our lips and took barrage after barrage," said Olmert in remarks at the opening of the weekly meeting of government ministers. "No country in the world – not even those who preach morality to us – would have shown similar patience and self-control."