The changes created "a very serious risk that fewer people will be able to get food," particularly in the developing world, said Jacques Diouf, head of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization. The agency's food price index rose by more than 40 percent this year, compared with 9 percent the year before - a rate that was already unacceptable, he said. New figures show that the total cost of foodstuffs imported by the neediest countries rose 25 percent, to $107 million, in the last year.

At the same time, reserves of cereals are severely depleted, FAO records show. World wheat stores declined 11 percent this year, to the lowest level since 1980. That corresponds to 12 weeks of the world's total consumption - much less than the average of 18 weeks consumption in storage during the period 2000-2005. There are only 8 weeks of corn left, down from 11 weeks in the earlier period.

Diouf blamed a confluence of recent supply and demand factors for the crisis, and he predicted that those factors were here to stay. On the supply side, these include the early effects of global warming, which has decreased crop yields in some crucial places, and a shift away from farming for human consumption toward crops for biofuels and cattle feed. Demand for grain is increasing with the world population, and more is diverted to feed cattle as the population of upwardly mobile meat-eaters grows.

"We're concerned that we are facing the perfect storm for the world's hungry," said Josette Sheeran, executive director of the World Food Program, in a telephone interview. She said that her agency's food procurement costs had gone up 50 percent in the past 5 years and that some poor people are being "priced out of the food market."

To make matters worse, high oil prices have doubled shipping costs in the past year, putting enormous stress on poor nations that need to import food as well as the humanitarian agencies that provide it. "You can debate why this is all happening, but what's most important to us is that it's a long-term trend, reversing decades of decreasing food prices," Sheeran said.

Already "unusual weather events," linked to climate change - such as droughts, floods and storms - have decreased production in important exporting countries like Australia and Ukraine, Diouf said. "In the U.S., Australia, and Europe, there's a very substantial capacity to adapt to the effects on food - with money, technology, research and development," Howden said. "In the developing world, there isn't."

Until recently, however, even the most sophisticated laboratories could make only small snippets of DNA -- an extra gene or two to be inserted into corn plants, for example, to help the plants ward off insects or tolerate drought. Now researchers are poised to cross a dramatic barrier: the creation of life forms driven by completely artificial DNA. Scientists in Maryland have already built the world's first entirely handcrafted chromosome -- a large looping strand of DNA made from scratch in a laboratory, containing all the instructions a microbe needs to live and reproduce.

In the coming year, they hope to transplant it into a cell, where it is expected to "boot itself up," like software downloaded from the Internet, and cajole the waiting cell to do its bidding. And while the first synthetic chromosome is a plagiarized version of a natural one, others that code for life forms that have never existed before are already under construction.

The cobbling together of life from synthetic DNA, scientists and philosophers agree, will be a watershed event, blurring the line between biological and artificial -- and forcing a rethinking of what it means for a thing to be alive.

The two sides reached agreement last week on a schedule to finish building the plant after years of delays. Some Western countries fear Iran is trying to build nuclear weapons but Tehran says its programme is for peaceful power generation only.

The UN has demanded that Iran halt uranium enrichment but has approved the Russian nuclear fuel deliveries. Russia's foreign ministry said it had received assurances from Tehran that the fuel would not be used anywhere but at Bushehr. The foreign ministry statement urged Iran to stop enriching uranium, saying there was no longer any need.

But a senior Iranian official said his country would not halt uranium enrichment under any circumstances, Reuters news agency said. Iran has always insisted it has the right to develop the full nuclear cycle, including making the fuel for reactors. Russia has played its Bushehr card skilfully, says our diplomatic correspondent, but risks significant additional tensions with Washington.

Lately, its financial wizardry has stood out even more as it thrived, even as most of its rivals were saddled with billions of dollars in write-downs and credit losses. But fame and fortune have their price. Goldman has increasingly been attracting more attention than the secretive firm desires, including unwanted scrutiny from regulators and lawmakers. "They're the top of the heap. Their success is eye-popping. Their latest record earnings in the face of big losses taken by most of the other investment banks is impressive in itself," said Harvard Business School professor Samuel Hayes. "It inspires a lot of envy. There's a lot of resentment."

Goldman is expected to report a record $11 billion of annual profit on Tuesday, including billions of gains from bets against the subprime mortgage market. Rivals, such as Morgan Stanley (MS.N: Quote, Profile, Research) and Merrill Lynch & Co Inc (MER.N: Quote, Profile, Research), have ousted top executives and are expected to cap the year with money- losing quarters. And while year-end bonuses are expected to be flat or smaller across Wall Street, Goldman payouts will rise to roughly $18 billion. On average, that is about $600,000 per employee, or double the average paid at other firms.

The disparity of results has some accusing Goldman of having an unfair edge or of hiding its mistakes. The presence of former Goldman CEO Hank Paulson as U.S. Treasury Secretary has one New York tabloid columnist convinced Goldman gets inside information on the bond market.

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.