According to the officials, this was likely to be especially true of Egypt, which has of late sought to get closer to Hamas and would like to see Hamas incorporated back into Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas's government. Israeli officials said that Jerusalem would be watching the sums pledged to the PA from the Arab world carefully and that the amount the individual countries actually paid would be a good indication of their real support for the Annapolis process.

Among the Arab countries that will be represented in Paris at the foreign ministerial level are Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Oman, the United Arab Emirates, Tunisia, Algeria, Lebanon, Morocco, Jordan and Egypt. Iraq, Syria and Yemen are sending ambassadors to the conference, meaning that they won't be pledging any money. Some 90 countries and global institutions like the World Bank are taking part in the conference.

European officials have said that the goal was to raise some $5.6 billion. Meanwhile, Palestinian Prime Minister Salaam Fayad said in an interview with AP that the PA needed a quick injection of cash to get through the next few months.

Fayad said in Paris he hoped the Arab states would pitch in, adding that Europe could not be expected to go much beyond the already considerable amount of aid it had been providing to the Palestinians. The EU gave the PA some $1.4 billion in 2007. Ahead of Monday's meeting, The European Union announced it would pledge $650 million (€448 million) in aid to the Palestinians for 2008.

In Chicago wheat and rice prices for delivery in March 2008 have jumped to an all-time record, soyabean prices are at a 34-year high and corn prices at an 11-year peak. Knock-on price rises are set to hit consumers in coming months, raising inflationary pressure and constraining the ability of central banks to mitigate the slowdown in their economies.

A first wave of surging cereal prices hit the wholesale market during the summer and has fed through the supply chain and contributed to rising inflation. The increase of eurozone food price inflation to 4.3 per cent in November was one of the main reasons for the jump in the zone's annual inflation rate from 2.6 per cent in October to 3.1 per cent, the highest in six years. In the US, annual food price inflation of 4.8 per cent in November contributed to a rise in the inflation rate to 4.3 per cent.

In the UK, food inflation was already running at an annual 5.1 per cent in October and analysts expect higher food prices to push overall inflation up in November. The UK figures are due to be published tomorrow. In trading on Friday, the new benchmark price of wheat for March delivery rose 26 cents to $9.795 a bushel, more than 4 per cent higher than the expiring December contract of $9.39.

The US Department of Agriculture has predicted that global corn stocks will fall to a 33-year low of just 7.5 weeks of consumption, while global wheat stocks will plunge to their lowest level in at least 47 years at 9.3 weeks.

Benchmark prices for corn are also more than 4 per cent higher than previously. The benchmark prices for soyabeans delivered in January rose on Friday to a 34-year high of $11.64 a bushel. Rice, also for January, has jumped to an all-time high of $13.310 a hundredweight.

Instead, the pope held up Mother Teresa - the Roman Catholic nun who devoted her life to serving the poor in India and elsewhere - as an example. "Every day, she lived next to misery, human degradation and death," the pope told thousands of faithful gathered in St. Peter's Square. "Yet, she offered the smile of God to everybody."

The pope, speaking during the traditional Sunday noon Angelus prayer, said real happiness cannot be found in cultures "that put individual happiness in the place of God, a mentality that has its emblematic effect in the quest for pleasure at all costs, in the spread of the use of drugs as an escape, a shelter in artificial paradises, which turn out to be completely illusory."

She spoke to The Associated Press ahead of Monday's conference of donor countries where the Palestinians hope to collect aid pledges of $5.6 billion over three years. Ferrero-Waldner couldn't say yet how much the
EU - a key donor to the Palestinians - would contribute in 2009 and 2010 but said it would be a "high level."

More than 200,000 people have died in the conflict between rebels and pro-government forces in Darfur. International mediation efforts have repeatedly failed to stop the violence. A 26,000-strong UN peacekeeping force is due to deploy in Darfur next year.

In an unconfirmed claim, he added that the Jem had also attacked Sudan's Defra oil field for a second time, shutting down its pumping station. This is the second time in a week that Jem rebels have said they have inflicted a heavy defeat on government troops, the BBC's Adam Mynott reports from Nairobi.

A rebel report that they had taken over a Chinese-run oil field was denied by the Chinese embassy in Khartoum, which did, however, confirm there had been fighting.

Storm warnings are in force in a dozen central and north-eastern US states. More than 200 flights were cancelled at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport. More than 100,000 customers are without electricity in parts of Pennsylvania. Up to 12in (30cm) of snowfall is forecast around Pittsburgh on Sunday, said the National Weather Service.

Around Indianapolis, up to 7in (18cm) of snow is expected and 8in (20cm) is forecast in the Boston area. The snowfall comes less than a week after an ice storm claimed 38 lives in the Midwest. Tens of thousands of people in the affected areas of Oklahoma, Kansas and Missouri still have no electricity.

The northern New York state community of Peru had 18 inches of snow, and high winds on Monday morning whipped up fallen snow across the state, the National Weather Service said. In Michigan, Ann Arbor measured 10.5 inches and parts of Indiana had 14 inches.

Tens of thousands of Palestinians participated in a main rally organized by Hamas in the center of Gaza City in what was seen as one of the movement's biggest shows of force.

Shouting, "We won't recognize Israel," the Hamas supporters burned Israeli flags and chanted slogans against the US. The rally was held in the same square where thousands of Fatah supporters attended a memorial for Yasser Arafat last month. Hamas officials estimated that nearly 250,000 Palestinians participated in the rally as opposed to less than 50,000 who showed up for the Arafat event. Fatah representatives claimed that the Hamas rally was a "failure" because of the "small" number of participants.

Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh said his movement would pursue the "resistance" as the only option to "liberate Palestine." He said the large turnout was an indication of the increased number of Palestinians who believed in Hamas and didn't accept Israel's right to exist.

The commander of British forces in Basra, Major General Graham Binns, said the city had been pulled from the grip of its enemies. "I now formally hand it back to its friends," he said. "We will continue to help train Basra security forces. But we are guests in your country, and we will act accordingly."

David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, who was present at the ceremony said: "Our aim is to see an Iraq run by Iraqis for all Iraqis. "But he acknowledged that Britain was not handing "a land of milk and honey" to the Iraqis, and conceded that the region had several problems which needed to be tackled. "This remains a violent society whose tensions need to be addressed, but they need to be addressed by Iraqi political leaders and it is politics that is going to have to come to the fore in the months and years ahead," he told the BBC this morning.

Basra's 15,000-strong police force remains riddled with officers loyal to the Mehdi Army, the Shia militants who have clashed repeatedly with British troops during their four years here.

Mr King responded by telling her she did not understand banking and insisted there was nothing to worry about. The confrontation took place in 2005 when Mr King went to the House of Lords to address Conservative peers. Mr King said the situation was being monitored by the Bank of England and was under control.

After the meeting, Baroness Shephard, who was then a director of Coventry Building Society, pursued Mr King to raise the question of Northern Rock. She told him: "I am a director of a building society and we turn ourselves inside and out to make sure that nothing can go wrong with our finances. We simply cannot understand how building societies that become banks, like Northern Rock, can undercut us with their borrowing rates all the time. What is happening? Where are they getting the money from?"

Mr King dismissed Baroness Shephard, who was a Treasury Minister in Margaret Thatcher's government and Education Secretary under John Major, telling her: "Northern Rock operates under different rules because it is a bank." Baroness Shephard retorted: "I hope there is not going to be a day of reckoning."

A Bank of England spokesman said: "We have no comment."

In a move Vatican officials say is meant to "reflect a return to the story of the nativity as told by Matthew," Joseph, Mary and THE INFANT JESUS WILL BE SHOWN IN JOSEPH'S NAZARETH CARPENTRY WORKSHOP AND NOT IN THE BETHLEHEM STABLE. The nativity scene will feature three rooms, including the workshop, complete with "the typical work tools of a carpenter," a "covered patio" and the "inside of a pub with its hearth," the London Telegraph reported.

Moving the Christmas story 70 miles north from Bethlehem to Nazareth WAS INSPIRED BY MATTHEW 1:24-25 AS RENDERED IN THE CATHOLIC BIBLE TRANSLATION: "When Joseph woke up he did what the angel of the Lord had told him to do: he took his wife TO HIS HOME; he had not had intercourse with her when she gave birth to a son; and he named him Jesus."

THE KING JAMES VERSION OF THE SAME PASSAGE DOES NOT TRANSLATE THE GREEK AS "HOME."

Pier Carlo Cuscianna, director of technical services for Vatican City, told Catholic News Service he knew of the "polemic" in the press over the unconventional nativity display, but, he said, "I am certain Matthew reflected well on the meaning of home in the passage used by Vatican officials to create the new design."

In the better known story from Luke's gospel, the focus is on Joseph and Mary going from Nazareth to Joseph's ancestral home of Bethlehem to register for a census. Unable to find lodging, they join farm animals in a stable or cave where Mary gives birth and places the baby in a manger. Local shepherds, alerted in the fields by angels, come to the stable to pay homage. Matthew tells of the wise men, the slaughter of male children by King Herod, the family's flight to Egypt and return to Nazareth.

MATTHEW, LIKE LUKE, STATES JESUS WAS BORN IN BETHLEHEM, BUT A VATICAN SPOKESMAN SAID, "IT WAS TIME FOR A CHANGE, AND A RETURN TO ST. MATTHEW'S GOSPEL."
Another Vatican spokesman told the London Daily Mail placing the nativity in Joseph's workshop BETTER REFLECTS THE EXPERIENCE OF ORDINARY PEOPLE.

The nativity scene at St. Peter's, inaugurated by Pope John Paul II in 1982, officially opens on Dec. 24 and will remain until Feb. 2.

"The tragic events in Colorado this past weekend underscore the fact that anti-Christian hostility is reaching a new, more violent level," Cass told WND. "Churches used to be sanctuaries that were regarded as sacred, now all church leaders must be prepared to effectively defend themselves and use deadly force if necessary to protect their congregations from violent acts."

He said a brief search found the following shootings, before last weekend's attacks:

August 12, 2007: A lone gunman, Eiken Elam Saimon, opened fire in a Missouri Micronesian church, killing a pastor and two other churchgoers.

May 20, 2007: A standoff between police and a suspect in the shootings of three people in a Moscow, Idaho, Presbyterian Church ended with three dead, including one police officer.

Although not at a church building, the Oct. 2, 2006, attack in Lancaster County, Pa., by a gunman who killed five girls and then himself at an Amish school targeted a religious site.

May 21, 2006: Louisiana. Four were killed by a man at Jesus Christ Church.

Feb. 26, 2006: Michigan. Two people were killed at Zion Hope Missionary Baptist Church by a man who reportedly went to the church looking for his girlfriend. He later killed himself.

April 9, 2005: A 27-year-old airman died after being shot at a church in College Park, Ga., where he had once worked as a security guard.

March 12, 2005: A man walked into the services of the Living Church of God in Milwaukee and open fired immediately, killing seven people.

Oct. 5, 2003: A woman opened fire in Turner Monumental AME church in Kirkwood, east of Atlanta, killing the pastor and two others.

Sept. 16, 1999: Seven young people were killed when a man opened fire during a prayer service for teen-agers at the Wedgewood Baptist Church in Fort Worth, Texas.

Tradition records that even as King Solomon built the First Temple, he already knew, through Divine inspiration, that eventually it would be destroyed. Thus Solomon, the wisest of all men, oversaw the construction of a vast system of labyrinths, mazes, chambers and corridors underneath the Temple Mount complex.

He commanded that a special place be built in the bowels of the earth, where the sacred vessels of the Temple could be hidden in case of approaching danger. Midrashic tradition teaches that King Josiah of Israel, who lived about forty years before the destruction of the First Temple, commanded the Levites to hide the Ark, together with the original menorah and several other items, in this secret hiding place which Solomon had prepared.

This location is recorded in our sources, and today, there are those who know exactly where this chamber is. And we know that the ark is still there, undisturbed, and waiting for the day when it will be revealed. An attempt was made some few years ago to excavate towards the direction of this chamber. This resulted in widespread Moslem unrest and rioting. They stand a great deal to lose if the Ark is revealed - for it will prove to the whole world that there really was a Holy Temple, and thus, that the Jews really do have a claim to the Temple Mount.

When it comes to climate change, America's image in the world is hardly the best. Wherever countries are trying to limit emissions of greenhouse gases, the US -- and especially the administration of President George W. Bush -- is seen as a dangerous spoil-sport, doing what it can to torpedo far-reaching climate agreements.

It is a role, recent US statements lead one to hope, the country may be tired of playing. The climate change conference currently being held on the Indonesian island of Bali is the beginning of a process to find an international climate change agreement to succeed the soon-to-expire Kyoto Protocol. American diplomats there have been doing their best to sound as though the US wants to be part of the solution.

For the moment, however, it continues to look as though the White House would have to make a 180 degree change of course. This Wednesday, Democrats in Congress released a report accusing the White House of having manipulated climate science for years.

"The Bush administration has engaged in a systematic effort to manipulate climate change science and mislead policymakers and the public about the dangers of global warming," the report, from the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, said.

The Vatican's doctrinal office issued guidelines on the missionary policy of the Roman Catholic Church, saying there is "growing confusion which leads many to leave the missionary command of the Lord unheard and ineffective. Often is it maintained that any attempt to convince others on religious matters is a limitation of their freedom," said the document issued by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

The office head, American Cardinal William Levada, told a Vatican news conference that the "work of evangelization belongs to the very nature of the church" and that it was both the "desire and duty" of Christians to share the gift of faith.

With the fall of Communism and subsequent end to bars on religious practice across Eastern Europe, the Russian Orthodox Church has accused Catholics of improperly seeking converts in traditionally Orthodox areas - a claim the Vatican has always rejected. Roman Catholics have also faced tensions in several states in India, accused by Hindu nationalists of aggressive attempts to convert Hindus.

The Vatican restated its position that the church "severely prohibits forcing people to embrace the faith or leading or enticing them by improper technique; by the same token, she also strongly defends the right that no one be deterred from the faith by deplorable ill treatment." It also said that should a non-Catholic Christian seek to become a Catholic "this is to be respected as the work of the Holy Spirit and as an expression of freedom of conscience and religion."

The Rev. Agostino Di Noia, undersecretary of the doctrinal office, said in an interview with Vatican Radio that "it seemed to us that the church's freedom to evangelize was being questioned, as if it were an intrusion on other people's freedom of religion."

Earlier, the EU and US agreed that industrialised countries would not set firm emissions targets at this stage. The "Bali roadmap" initiates a two-year process of negotiations designed to agree a new set of emissions targets to replace those in the Kyoto Protocol. "I think we have come a long way here," said Paula Dobriansky, head of the US delegation. "In this, the United States is very committed to this effort and just wants to really ensure we all act together."

The US acceptance came just minutes after it had signalled it would reject the compromise, a statement that drew boos from delegates in the conference hall. The EU had earlier thrashed out the compromise text with developing countries including China. They had complained that language on reducing their emissions was too strong, and would commit them to measures that could retard their economic development.

They also wanted the West to pledge more action on transferring clean technology to developing societies. "This is a real breakthrough, a real opportunity for the international community to successfully fight climate change," said Indonesian Environment Minister Rachmat Witoelar, who served as conference president. "Parties have recognised the urgency of action on climate change and have now provided the political response to what scientists have been telling us is needed." Talks have been intense, and the meeting has run more than a day beyond its scheduled close, with several night-time sessions.

Environmental groups and some delegates have criticised the draft as being weak and a missed opportunity. France's Deputy Ecology Minister Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet acknowledged the deal amounted to far less than the EU had wanted. But, she told the AFP news agency: "The public can understand that we brought the United States into the negotiations. It's a framework that is quite weak but which still moves forward."