The 38-year-old, from Crediton, Devon, works at Landscore Primary School and claims headteacher Gary Read told her he was not happy about Jasmine making religious statements. Mrs Cain said after the meeting she emailed 10 friends from her church congregation asking them to pray about the situation and was shocked to discover that Mr Read had managed to obtain a copy of the email.

She was summoned to a second meeting and told she was being investigated for professional misconduct for allegedly making claims against the school and its staff. The Christian Institute is providing legal support for Mrs Cain as the investigation could result in disciplinary action, including dismissal.

Spokesman Mike Judge said: "A five-year-old girl and her mother have been slammed for nothing more than expressing their Christian faith. I am particularly concerned about the way in which Mrs Cain's private email to her church friends ended up in the hands of the headteacher. THIS IS THE LATEST IN A SERIES OF CASES WHERE CHRISTIANS ARE BEING PERSECUTED FOR THEIR RELIGIOUS BELIEFS."
Mr Read said the school will be releasing a statement later.

With reference to protectionist ambitions in certain EU states, Czech Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek underlined the importance that "all measures taken in member states need to respect common rules." Libération blogger Jean Quatremer notes that Topolanek called this conference "because he had little choice," under pressure from French President Nicolas Sarkozy and despite Germany's reluctance to attend a new summit.

The summit has been called amid an increasingly tense relationship between Prague and Paris. Meanwhile, on his BBC blog, Mark Mardell reports that the Czech EU Presidency has called a second emergency EU summit in Prague in May to examine jobs and unemployment.

"Most of the obstacles preventing us from consolidating an agreement have already been solved," Nunu said, adding that the agreement would ensure an end to the fighting with Israel and the opening of the crossings into Gaza. Hamas would accept an 18-month truce if Israel stopped its "aggression," i.e. attacks, lifted its blockade and opened the Israeli border crossings with the Gaza Strip, the official said earlier Thursday.

Hamas was trying to find out which specific construction and agricultural materials Israel plans to bar from entering the Gaza Strip. Israel is concerned the raw materials will be used to manufacture weapons and bunkers. In addition, Hamas is interested in securing a written agreement with Israel, while Israel wants an oral agreement.

The delegation "has decided to stay until the Egyptian side gets answers from the Israelis about all their questions and demands," he said.

The US Geological Survey said the 7.0-magnitude quake struck at 1:34 am (1734 GMT; 2:34 pm Wednesday EST) approximately 195 miles (315 kilometers) from Manado, the northernmost city on Sulawesi island. It was centered 20 miles (30 kilometers) beneath the ocean floor and followed by several aftershocks.

The temblor was felt strongest on the nearby island of Talaud. Rustam Pakaya, a government crisis center official, said all the injuries and most of the damage occurred in Melonguane and Kabaruan towns. Patients in one hospital had to be evacuated to a clinic after one of the corridors collapsed, he said. Elsewhere, a church tower came tumbling down. More than 30 other buildings and homes sustained cracks.

There are few left who don't think the current economic crisis is bad. Still, there is still room for surprise when it comes to degree. When it comes to the economy in the European Union, new evidence published on Thursday shows that THE CRISIS HAS HIT THE INDUSTRIAL SECTOR WITH UNFORESEEN FORCE.

Eurostat, which compiles statistics on the European Union economy, announced that production had plummeted at the end of 2008. In December, the amount of goods rolling off the conveyor belts was 2.6 percent lower than November - and fully 12 percent lower than during the same time period a year ago.

The numbers confirm a Financial Times Deutschland article, citing an internal EU report, that both construction and manufacturing in Europe were being hit hard. In describing the downturn, Günter Verheugen, the European Union's Industry Commissioner, did not mince words: "THE EXTENT AND SPEED OF THE CRISIS IS COMPLETELY NEW," he told the paper.

The Dow Jones Industrial average fell almost 400 points Tuesday on the news, and the Asian equity markets followed. This steep decline is symptomatic of THE UNEASE THAT PERMEATES FINANCIAL MARKETS.

It's not just the amount of money that is troubling. The MARKETS WERE ALSO DISTRESSED BY A LACK OF DETAIL, especially on how to deal with so-called toxic assets - loans with diminished and uncertain value. The previous Treasury secretary, Henry Paulson, proposed to buy toxic assets, then discovered the difficulties of pricing and so switched to purchases of banks' preferred stock to infuse capital into the banks.

Geithner promised "to consult closely with Congress" as he moved forward, but Congress has not held hearings on implementing the program, even though it would leverage $1 trillion of Federal Reserve funds and close to that in private-sector funds. The public fears that the $2 trillion dollar bank bailout fund would be just throwing good money after bad.

The implicit reason for going beyond Congress is: "TRUST US, WE KNOW WHAT WE ARE DOING." YET GEITHNER UNDERMINED THAT MESSAGE BY STATING THAT ALL OF THIS IS UNCHARTED TERRITORY AND THAT MISTAKES WOULD CERTAINLY BE MADE. Neither the message nor the messenger reassures financial markets. Quite the opposite.

"There would be great unease" at the prospect of such a government, said one Capitol Hill source. He predicted that a governing coalition of parties from the Right could embolden the left flank of the Democratic party and turn up pressure, particularly in the US Congress, to pass measures that made clear demands on Israel. He distinguished, however, between a Netanyahu-led right-wing coalition and Netanyahu-led national unity government.

Still, many political analysts say there's no doubt the Obama administration would prefer to see a national-unity government headed by Livni. "The impression in Israel is that the Obama administration has already made its preference known and that its preference is for Kadima - and that impression isn't going anywhere," said Georgetown University professor and Israel expert Michael Oren. "They'd rather work with a centrist government than a right-wing government."

China has used the dollars it accumulates selling manufactured goods to US consumers to accumulate THE WORLD'S LARGEST HOLDING OF TREASURIES. However, the increasing US budget deficit and its potential impact on the dollar have raised questions about the future Chinese appetite for US debt. Luo Ping, a director-general at the China Banking Regulatory Commission, said after a speech in New York on Wednesday that China would continue to buy Treasuries in spite of its misgivings about US finances.

Except for US Treasuries, what can you hold?" he asked. "Gold? You don't hold Japanese government bonds or UK bonds. US TREASURIES ARE THE SAFE HAVEN. FOR EVERYONE, INCLUDING CHINA, IT IS THE ONLY OPTION." Mr Luo, whose English tends toward the colloquial, added: "We hate you guys. Once you start issuing $1 trillion-$2 trillion [$1,000bn-$2,000bn in USA]... we know the dollar is going to depreciate, SO WE HATE YOU GUYS BUT THERE IS NOTHING MUCH WE CAN DO."

The problem wasn't the lighting in the East Room. The President was running down A LIST OF REPORTERS PRESELECTED TO ASK QUESTIONS. The White House had decided in advance who would be allowed to question the President and who was left out.

Presidents are free to conduct press conferences however they like, but the decision to preselect questioners is an odd one, especially for a White House famously pledged to openness. We doubt that President Bush, who was notorious for being parsimonious with follow-ups, would have gotten away with prescreening his interlocutors. Mr. Obama can more than handle his own, so our guess is that this is AN ATTEMPT TO DISCIPLINE REPORTERS WHO AREN'T WHITE HOUSE FAVORITES.

Few accounts of Monday night's event even mentioned the curious fact that the White House had picked its speakers in advance. WE HOPE THAT OMISSION WASN'T OUT OF FEAR OF BEING LEFT OFF THE LIST THE NEXT TIME.

Friedrich Wilhelm Kriesel, a brigadier general and the head of the Bundeswehr's Strategic Reconnaissance Unit, has been deployed to the front lines of a battle that has recently come in for special attention from the Bundeswehr. The general's task is to prepare for the wars of the future, parts of which could be waged on the Internet. Kriesel seems to be the right man for the job. With about 6,000 soldiers under his command, his unit already operates like an intelligence service.

Strictly isolated from the public at the Tomburg barracks in Rheinbach, a picturesque town near Bonn, 76 members of his staff are busy testing the latest methods of infiltrating, exploring and manipulating - OR DESTROYING - COMPUTER NETWORKS. The unit, known by its harmless-sounding official name, Department of Information and Computer Network Operations, is preparing for an electronic emergency, WHICH INCLUDES DIGITAL ATTACKS ON OUTSIDE SERVERS AND NETWORKS.

The uniformed hackers from Rheinbach are Germany's answer to a growing threat which has begun to worry governments, intelligence agencies and military officials around the world. Now that computers have made their way into practically every aspect of life, their susceptibility to attacks has risen dramatically. IN THE UNITED STATES, EXPERTS HAVE BEEN WARNING FOR YEARS AGAINST AN "ELECTRONIC PEARL HARBOR," A "DIGITAL SEPTEMBER 11" OR A "CYBERGEDDON."

The crash, which happened Tuesday in low-earth orbit, involved one of the satellites owned by closely held Iridium Satellite LLC and a crippled Russian military satellite that apparently stopped functioning years ago, according to U.S. government and satellite-industry officials. THE COLLISION CREATED TWO LARGE CLOUDS OF DEBRIS floating roughly 480 miles above Siberia, and prompted space scientists and engineers to assess the likelihood of further collisions.

The accident could have implications for U.S. space budgets and policy, partly because it comes amid a Pentagon campaign to increase spending on systems to protect U.S. high-tech space hardware by keeping better track of the thousands of pieces of debris and other satellites circling the Earth. As more and more satellites are blasted into orbit, the challenges of keeping them from hitting debris or each other are growing. MILITARY PLANNERS ALSO WORRY ABOUT ENEMIES JAMMING, DISABLING OR POTENTIALLY EVEN RAMMING U.S. SATELLITES.

Industry officials say Iridium has identified the Russian craft as a Cosmos series satellite launched in 1993, weighing more than a ton AND INCLUDING AN ONBOARD NUCLEAR REACTOR. More than 220 active commercial satellites now orbit the globe, in addition to hundreds of military, spy and scientific satellites. Commercial satellites provide businesses with everything from data and video transmissions to support for consumer navigation devices.

He said the Bank may have to start printing money within weeks in a desperate attempt to pull the country out of its economic dive. City analysts described the scale of THE COLLAPSE OUTLINED IN THE BANK'S QUARTERLY INFLATION REPORT AS 'BREATHTAKING'. The pound tumbled against the dollar and the euro in the wake of the grim predictions.

By this summer the economy will be shrinking at an annual rate of around 4 per cent, according to the Bank's best guess. But output could fall far more than this if the Government fails to stabilise the fractured banking system, charts released by the Bank in the Inflation Report showed. The BANK'S WORST-CASE SCENARIO IS A 6 PER CENT ANNUAL PLUNGE in the second or third quarters of this year, exceeding the worst falls since records began more than half a century ago.

Mr King indicated SUCH A CATASTROPHIC DECLINE IS FAR FROM IMPOSSIBLE, warning the risks to the Bank's forecasts are 'weighted heavily to the downside'. Even under the Bank's central outlook for 2009, the economy will shrink twice as much as the Treasury forecast in November.

Soybean prices have plunged about 40% since last July amid a global commodities crash. For Argentine growers, the pain has been especially acute. Leftist President Cristina Kirchner, who once disparaged soybeans as "practically a weed," taxes them heavily and maintains a heavy hand in the economy. On top of that, THE WORST DROUGHT TO HIT ARGENTINA IN 70 YEARS is scorching the fields during the growing season.

"ALL OF OUR WORST NIGHTMARES ARE HAPPENING, ONE AFTER ANOTHER," says Julio Mayol, an agronomist employed by Mr. Grobocopatel's privately held company, Grupo Los Grobo SA. For almost six years, rising commodities prices and favorable weather were a boon to corporations and governments throughout Latin America.

But that cycle has taken a sudden, vicious turn. Prices of soybeans, copper and oil - the region's meal tickets - have tumbled as the global economic crisis undercuts demand. Big natural-resource investments, including a $1 billion refining project in Peru and a $2 billion mining expansion in Brazil, are being reviewed or shelved. Farmers who bet that grain prices would continue rising are seeing their tractors and harvesters repossessed. THE INTERNATIONAL MONETARY FUND PROJECTS THE REGION WILL GROW JUST 1.1% THIS YEAR, INSUFFICIENT FOR ITS BURGEONING POPULATION.

Sarkozy has encouraged French carmakers to return production to France, saying "IT IS NOT JUSTIFIABLE" FOR A FRENCH AUTOMOBILE MAKER TO PRODUCE A CAR IN THE CZECH REPUBLIC TO BE SOLD IN FRANCE. European leaders fear a new wave of protectionism is starting to sweep across the continent, and that an every-man-for-himself attitude will prevail as countries move to approve massive economic stimulus packages. The worries were triggered by news of a French plan to bail out its automobile industry to the tune of billions of euros and recent protectionist remarks made by President Nicolas Sarkozy.

On Tuesday in Brussels, the Czech Republic, which currently holds the six-month rotating presidency of the European Union, said it would call on EU member states to address the issue at a special summit in February. Czech Finance Minister Miroslav Kalousek called on EU leaders to send "a clear no to protectionism" and to coordinate their economic stimulus programs.

Germany's new economy minister, Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, said he viewed French moves to prop up the country's automobile industry skeptically. "The move made by the French yesterday must be measured by the definition of protectionism," he said.

One of the toughest things for us to do is to anticipate discontinuity. Whether on a personal level or on a global economic level, WE TYPICALLY PROJECT THE FUTURE BY EXTRAPOLATING FROM THE PAST. Most of the time this works well, but occasionally we experience a discontinuity that we failed to anticipate. The collapse of civilization is such a case. It is no surprise that many past civilizations failed to grasp the forces and recognize signs that heralded their undoing. More than once it was shrinking food supplies that brought about their downfall.

Does our civilization face a similar fate? Until recently it did not seem possible, but our failure to deal with the environmental trends that are undermining the world food economy - most importantly falling water tables, eroding soils, and rising temperatures - forces the conclusion that SUCH A COLLAPSE IS POSSIBLE. These trends are taking a significant toll on food production: In six of the last eight years world grain production has fallen short of consumption, forcing a steady drawdown in stocks. World carryover stocks of grain (the amount remaining from the previous harvest when the new harvest begins) have dropped to only 60 days of consumption, a near record low. Meanwhile, in 2008 world grain prices have climbed to the highest level ever.

IN MANY COUNTRIES THE SOCIAL ORDER HAS ALREADY BEGUN TO BREAK DOWN in the face of soaring food prices and spreading hunger. Deadly food riots broke out in a number of countries in 2008. In Egypt several people died in fights in government-subsidized bread lines. Food riots in Yemen turned deadly, taking at least a dozen lives. In Cameroon the food riot death toll was twice as high.