In the splendor of St. Peter's Basilica, Pope Benedict XVI called for "soberness and solidarity" in 2009. During a year's end vespers service Wednesday evening, the pope said these times are "MARKED BY UNCERTAINTY AND WORRY FOR THE FUTURE" but urged people not to be afraid and to help each other.

In India, many were happy to see the end of 2008 after a series of terrorist attacks in several cities, culminating in the three-day siege in Mumbai that killed 164 people. "The year 2008 can best be described as a year of crime, terrorist activities, bloodshed and accidents," said Tavishi Srivastava, 51, an office worker in the northern Indian city of Lucknow. "I sincerely hope that 2009 will be a year of peace and progress."

In Athens, police said arsonists attacked at least 10 banks and two car dealerships amid the celebrations, but no arrests or injuries were reported. Cities in Greece had riots recently over the fatal shooting of a teenage boy by police.

In Tokyo, volunteers stirred huge pots of New Year's rice-cake soup and doled out blankets and clothing to the needy. Japan has long boasted a system of lifetime employment at major companies, but that has unraveled this year amid the financial crisis. "There's no work," Mitsuo Kobayashi, 61, muttered as he picked up a wool scarf, a coat and pants. "WHO KNOWS WHAT NEXT YEAR WILL BRING?"

The Year of the Rat, marked by an unprecedented, global financial crisis, will give way to a much more stable Year of the Ox, Chinese astrologists and feng shui masters predicted. "The soil represents a garden or a green field, a feng shui symbol for harmony, relaxation, and recovery," Raymond Lo, Hong Kong feng shui expert, told AFP.

The Chinese calendar moves in 60-year cycles, meaning the world will experience similar events in the new year to those that took place 60 years ago. In 1949, the People's Republic of China was established by communist leader Mao Zedong. Lo said that 2009's year of the Ox could similarly SEE A NEW WORLD ORDER BEING FORGED.

The Treasury report to a congressional panel overseeing the 700-billion-dollar rescue plan passed in early October said the extraordinary actions probably averted deeper problems. "Treasury, working with the Federal Reserve, the FDIC (Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.) and other regulators, has taken the necessary steps to prevent a financial collapse," the report said.

"The most important evidence that our strategy is working is that Treasury's actions, in combination with other actions, stemmed a series of financial institution failures. The financial system is fundamentally more stable than it was when Congress passed the legislation."

For the year, the S&P 500 dropped 38.5 per cent, marking its worst run since a marginally higher drop of 38.6 per cent in 1937. The Dow lost 33.8 per cent, its worst annual decline since the index fell 52.7 per cent in 1931.

"It was beyond most people's comprehension that such a thing could happen," said Marc Pado, chief market strategist at Cantor Fitzgerald. "No one thought the short-term could be this destructive." The financial sector was the worst performing, down 57 per cent overall, in a year in which several institutions ended up part-owned by the state to prevent a collapse of the system.

Pessimism has an uncanny knack of being self-fulfilling. No wonder almost every single quoted share in the world has gone down significantly, mostly by half, if not much more. Even the most solid companies, such as HSBC, which has no real exposure; or BP, which has significant oil reserves; or a company like Dell, which has an enormous amount of cash - the shares of these companies have traded down considerably. That is the barometer of our general pessimism.

The present condition has also been a wake-up call for those who have lost sight of understanding the businesses in which they invest. Before now, there were far too many people out there trying to profit from the shuffling of papers and commodities and derivatives and options and hedging: really sophisticated instruments - but all too clever by half.

It just goes to show that having all these smart theories and ingenious ideas is NO SUBSTITUTE FOR A SOLID BUSINESS SENSE BASED ON THE FUNDAMENTALS OF SUPPLY AND DEMAND, with particular reference to the efficiency of the workforce; all those basic components that people such as Warren Buffett emphasise and are often ridiculed for. Let this depressing climate also be a reminder that if you grow big, you can collapse big. The higher you climb the harder you fall.

The annual drop, triggered by a broadening global economic malaise that has punctured China's unprecedented economic boom, was the biggest in the index's 18-year history, wiping out nearly $3 trillion in market value — not far off the total value of the country's $3.4 trillion annual gross domestic product.

Shanghai's benchmark composite Index dropped 0.66 per cent today to end the year at 1,820.8 points. The index had glanced an annual low of 1,664 points in late October, down from a 2007 record peak of 6,124 points.

AUSTRALIAN shares posted a 41 per cent loss with the S&P/ASX 200 index ending the year at 3,722.3.
JAPAN'S Nikkei average ended 2008 down 42 per cent — the worst in its 58-year history.
NEW ZEALAND'S benchmark NZX 50 index slipped 33 per cent for the year to end at 2,715.71.

If it seems like disasters are getting more common, it's because they are. But some disasters seem to be affecting us in worse ways — and not for the reasons you may think. Floods and storms have led to most of the excess damage. The number of flood and storm disasters has gone up 7.4% every year in recent decades, according to the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (between 2000 and 2007, the growth was even faster, with an average annual rate of increase of 8.4%). Of the total 197 million people affected by disasters in 2007, 164 million were affected by floods.

It is tempting to look at the line up of storms in the Atlantic Ocean (Hanna, Ike, Josephine) and, in the name of everything green, blame climate change for this state of affairs. But there is another inconvenient truth out there: We are getting more vulnerable to weather mostly because of where we live, not just how we live. In recent decades, people around the world have moved en masse to big cities near water. The population of Miami-Dade County in Florida was about 150,000 in the 1930s, a decade fraught with severe hurricanes. Since then, the population of Miami-Dade County has rocketed 1,600%, to 2,400,000.

What's changed is what we've put in storms' way. Crowding together in coastal cities puts us at risk on a few levels. First, it is harder for us to evacuate before a storm because of gridlock. And in much of the developing world, people don't get the kinds of early warnings that Americans get. So large, migrant populations — usually living in flimsy housing — get flooded out year after year. That helps explain why Asia has repeatedly been the hardest hit area by disasters in recent years.

Secondly, even if we get everyone to safety, we still have more stuff in harm's way than ever before. So each big hurricane costs more than the big one before it, even after adjusting for inflation.

Over the weekend, the mercury at Fairbanks International Airport dropped to 39 degrees below zero. Areas in the Interior outside the city were even colder; 46 below on the Yukon Flats, 41 below in Fort Yukon and 44 below in Central, according to the weather service. Rick Thoman, lead forecaster at the National Weather Service office in Fairbanks, said temperatures rose a few degrees on Sunday, but that was it.

"The temperature will probably continue to go up and down randomly," he said. "With no clouds and no wind on the valley floor, temperatures are pretty much probably going to be stuck." Fairbanks had experienced a relatively mild winter prior to Christmas. It had only dropped to 30 below once, in early December.

The index of leading shares will close down by 32% on a year ago. Banks have been hit hard over the past 12 months, with HBOS and Royal Bank of Scotland losing roughly 90% of their share value, while Lloyds TSB and Barclays have lost about 70% of their value.

"The problems that started to emerge in 2007 always meant that 2008 was going to be a volatile year, but few could have predicted just how traumatic it would have turned out," analyst Henk Potts of Barclays Wealth told the BBC Radio Five Live's Wake Up To Money programme.

Egypt is divided, and so is much of the Arab and Muslim world. A proper response to the Israeli air raids on the Gaza Strip - launched in response to rockets being fired into Israel from Hamas militants based in the Gaza Strip - has proven elusive.

Both Egypt and Saudi Arabia officially support the Fatah Party of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. In the summer of 2007, however, the radicals from Hamas wrested control of the Gaza Strip from Fatah. Syria and Iran have thrown their support behind Hamas - and they have both accused Egypt of being Israel's accomplices. Palestinians in refugee camps in Lebanon charge Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak with being a traitor.

Those pushing the resolution, which will come before the Republican National Committee at its January meeting, say elected leaders need to be reminded of core principles. They said the RNC must take the dramatic step of wading into policy debates, which traditionally have been left to lawmakers.

"We can't be a party of small government, free markets and low taxes while supporting bailouts and nationalizing industries, WHICH LEAD TO BIG GOVERNMENT, SOCIALISM AND HIGH TAXES AT THE EXPENSE OF INDIVIDUAL LIBERTY AND FREEDOMS," said Solomon Yue, an Oregon member and co-sponsor of a resolution that criticizes the US government bailouts of the financial and auto industries.

The strain that caused a severe epidemic in Australia, killing six children, has arrived here as the UK struggles with its worst flu outbreak for eight years. Experts have warned that infections in Britain and Ireland will increase from January to March.

A sharp rise in the number of flu-like illnesses has already been reported by the Health Protection Agency. Soaring infections have caused havoc at A&E departments in NHS hospitals in the past two weeks as thousands of GPs' surgeries have been closed over the Christmas holiday period. The flu season began a month earlier than last year and coincided with widespread outbreaks of the norovirus "winter vomiting bug".

Now the arrival of the H3N2 Brisbane 10 strain will put further pressure on the health service. Latest figures show that among the over-65s, 45 in every 100,000 people now have flu, up from 18 just a week ago. This year's outbreak is well on course to be the worst since 1999/2000, when 22,000 people died. Officially, an outbreak does not become an epidemic until the rate is higher than 200 per 100,000 people.

The index fell to 38, from November's revised 44.7 figure, though it had been expected to rise. The dismal job market appears to have outweighed falling oil prices in consumers' minds, analysts said. Meanwhile, October house prices in 20 US cities fell by a record yearly rate, according to a key home price survey.

The index shows that the price of homes is continuing to fall across the US with many areas showing record price falls. David Blitzer, of Standard & Poor's said that "home prices are back to their March 2004 levels".

In the UK, house prices in England and Wales fell by a further 1.9% in November as activity in the market dropped again, according to the Land Registry. This pushed the annual drop in property prices to 12.2% - the 15th consecutive monthly decrease, the figures show.

Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor acknowledged that the Pope's remarks made in an end-of-year address to the Curia, the Vatican's central administration, had been "quite difficult to interpret". But he said the Pope's remarks had not been intended to condemn anyone.

He said the Pope's remarks about "human ecology" were aimed at emphasising the primacy of the family at the heart of society. "He wasn't condemning anyone or any person," he said.

As the army said it was ready to launch a ground incursion and tanks and infantry forces massed on the border, Israeli officials claimed the military "has made preparations for long weeks of action." Ehud Olmert, the Israeli Prime Minister, upped the stakes further today when he said he had informed Shimon Peres, the country's ceremonial president, that the current aerial phase of the operation was the "the first of several stages approved by the security cabinet".

There were signs that Hamas was feeling the strain with claims that its leader-in-exile was ready to renew a ceasefire that expired ten days ago. Rhetoric from Jerusalem has hardened, however, with Meir Sheetrit, the Interior Minister, claiming "there is no room for a ceasefire" with Hamas until the threat of rocket fire had been removed.

Ehud Barak, the Defence Minister, said Israel was in an "all-out war against Hamas", while Brigadier-General Dan Harel, the Israeli deputy chief of staff, said that his forces would erase every trace of Hamas from Gaza's crowded cities. "After this operation there will not be a single Hamas building left standing in Gaza, and we plan to change the rules of the game," the general said. "We are hitting not only terrorists and launchers, but also the whole Hamas Government and all its wings. We are hitting government buildings, production factories, security wings and more."

The Egyptian Foreign Minister launched an attack on Iran, the Shia state known to support and arm Hamas and Hezbollah, in southern Lebanon. In a message aimed at Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah on Egyptian television, he said: "You are a man who used to enjoy respect, but you have insulted the Egyptian people." In Iran, a hardline student group started recruiting volunteers to fight Israel after the country's supreme religious leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said that anyone who died in the defence of Gaza would be deemed a martyr.