The Vatican press office confirmed that the Pope received the Palestinian diplomat in audience today, but did not offer any details of the meeting.

According to the French-language news agency I. Media, Armali delivered a message on behalf of the Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in which the leader requests an "active presence" on the part of the Holy See in the Middle East peace process.

According to the agency, the Palestinian diplomat recognized "the important role of the Vatican in the question of Jerusalem's status."

The BBC's Aleem Maqbool in Ramallah says it is the largest military incursion of Gaza for months, coming exactly two weeks after the Annapolis meeting that heralded a new round of peace negotiations. The incursion was launched not far from the Sufa crossing point into Gaza, an area regularly used by militants to launch rocket and mortar attacks at Israel.

Israeli government spokesman Mark Regev told the BBC the operation was designed to protect Israel's civilian population. "We've had over the last few months some 4,000 rockets fired from Gaza into Israeli territory, trying to kill Israeli civilians.

Professor Nicholas Wald, the director of the Wolfson Institute of Preventive Medicine in London, says hi-tech screening services which promise to detect early signs of heart disease, cancer and other conditions are being promoted by commercial organisations as a dubious way of reducing health risks. Clinics offering body scans, virtual colonoscopies of the bowel, and mole assessments for skin cancer have sprung up around the country charging up to £1,000 per test. One firm advertises its scans as an "MOT for the body". The scans have become fashionable gifts for people reaching milestone birthdays of 40, 50 or 60.

But critics say the scans often reveal abnormalities without being able to distinguish those that indicate serious disease. Many patients then need further checks, causing them sleepless nights with anxiety before they are cleared. At the same time, the scans deliver a hefty dose of radiation. John Giles, the medical director of Lifescan, said: "The science is very much on the side of screening. This is more a political, than a clinical, debate."

In a report "Recession Coming" released today, the bank's US team said the credit crunch had started to inflict serious damage on US companies. "As delinquencies and defaults soar, lenders are tightening credit for commercial, credit card and auto lending, as well as for all mortgage borrowers," said the report, written by the bank's chief US economist Dick Berner. He said the foreclosure rate on residential mortgages had reached a 19-year high of 5.59pc in the third quarter while the glut of unsold properties would lead to a 40pc crash in housing construction.

"We think overall housing starts will run below one million units in each of the next two years -- a level not seen in the history of the modern data since 1959," he said. The partial freeze on subprime mortgage rates announced last week by US treasury secretary Hank Paulson may help cushion the blow for some banks, but it could equally backfire by adding a "risk premium" that drives even more lenders out of the mortgage market.

Morgan Stanley is the first major Wall Street bank to warn that it may now be too late to stop a recession, though most have shifted to an ultra-cautious stance in recent weeks.

Nathaniel Abraham, an Indian national who describes himself as a "Bible-believing Christian," said in the lawsuit filed on Monday in the U.S. District Court in Boston that he was fired in 2004 because he would not accept evolution as scientific fact.

Abraham, who was dismissed eight months after he was hired, said he was willing to do research using evolutionary concepts but that he had been required to accept Darwin's theory of evolution as scientific fact or lose his job.

The Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination dismissed the case this year, saying Abraham's request not to work on evolutionary aspects of research would be difficult for Woods Hole because its work is based on evolutionary theories.

The law, passed late on Thursday, reflects concerns that rapid modernization and a growth in nuclear families is undermining a centuries-old social fabric of extended families."At least now the elderly can have a roof to live under and food to eat in their old age," Gyan Prakash Pilania, a Hindu nationalist MP, was quoted as saying in local news reports.

Under the law, Indians can face up to a month in jail if found guilty of parental neglect. The law also allows authorities to order children or relatives to pay a monthly maintenance allowance to the aged.

Welcome to the Qingping market in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou, where everything from turtles to insects are sold alongside fowl and freshly caught fish. An outbreak of the SARS virus in 2002 resulted in a local gourmet favorite -- the civet -- being banished to the black market. The raccoon-like animal was blamed for spreading SARS, which infected 8,000 people globally and killed 800.

But exotic wildlife and squalor have returned to the Qingping market, making health officials worried that another killer virus could emerge. "We face similar threats from other viruses and such epidemics can happen because we continue to have very crowded markets in China," said Lo Wing-lok, an infectious disease expert in Hong Kong.

The icy blast downed tree limbs and power lines, leaving more than 500,000 people without power in Oklahoma, where shelters opened throughout the region for those driven from cold and dark homes, and national guardsmen and volunteers were transporting food and water to hard-hit areas."This particular storm is now the worst in company history in terms of customers affected," said Brian Alford, spokesman for Oklahoma Gas and Electric.

Crews were sent from Texas, Louisiana, Indiana and Mississippi to help repair power lines, which snapped seemingly as quickly as they could be repaired. The storm also shut down electricity service to more than 102,000 people in Missouri, more than 11,000 people in Illinois and about 5,000 in Kansas. In all, ice storm warnings were issued from Texas up through Oklahoma and Kansas and east across Missouri into Illinois, with up to an inch of ice accumulation possible in some areas. Iowa and Arkansas were also affected.

Missouri Gov. Matt Blunt declared a state of emergency, calling out the state National Guard to aid communities hit by the storm. "We are only just beginning to see the devastation from this series of storms," he said.

The ravenous creatures - which are capable of stripping vegetation in minutes - are laying eggs in remote areas in the north-east of the country. The Ministry of Agriculture says it is spraying affected areas from the ground and from aircraft. The insects can eat their own weight in food every day, which means a single swarm can consume as much food as several thousand people.

Locust swarms have been spotted in many areas in the Horn of Africa, but it is the first time since the early 1960s that large concentrations have moved into Kenya, our reporter says. Africa experienced devastating swarms in 2004 when they swept across northern and western Africa, leaving 60% of Mauritania's population - 400,000 people - needing food aid.

Now comes the "FREEZE," the brainchild of TREASURY SECRETARY HENRY PAULSON. It sounds good: For five years, mortgage lenders will freeze interest rates on a limited number of "teaser" subprime loans. Other homeowners facing foreclosure will be offered assistance from the Federal Housing Administration.

But unfortunately, the "freeze" is just another fraud - and like the other bailout proposals, it has nothing to do with U.S. house prices, with "working families," keeping people in their homes or any of that nonsense. The sole goal of the freeze is to prevent owners of mortgage-backed securities, many of them foreigners, from sueing U.S. banks and forcing them to buy back worthless mortgage securities at face value.

The ticking time bomb in the U.S. banking system is not resetting subprime mortgage rates. THE REAL PROBLEM IS THE CONTRACTUAL ABILITY OF INVESTORS IN MORTGAGE BONDS TO REQUIRE BANKS TO BUY BACK THE LOANS AT FACE VALUE IF THERE WAS FRAUD IN THE ORIGINATION PROCESS.

And, to be sure, FRAUD IS EVERYWHERE. It's in the loan application documents, and it's in the appraisals. The problem isn't just subprime loans. It is the entire mortgage market. As home prices fall, defaults will rise sharply - period. THE GOAL OF THE FREEZE MAY BE TO DELAY or excuse once the foreclosure occurred. They could say, "Fraud? What fraud?! You knew the borrower's real income and asset information later when he refinanced!"

AS CHIEF OF GOLDMAN SACHS, PAULSON was involved, to degrees as yet unrevealed, in the mortgage securitization process during the halcyon days of mortgage fraud from 2004 to 2006. PAULSON BECAME THE U.S. TREASURY SECRETARY ON JULY 10, 2006, after the extent of the debacle was coming into focus for those in the know. GOLDMAN SACHS IS THE ONLY MAJOR INVESTMENT BANK IN THE UNITED STATES THAT HAS EMERGED AS YET UNSCATHED FROM THIS DEBACLE.

The success of its strategy must have resulted from fairly substantial bets against housing, mortgage banking and related industries, WHICH ALSO MEANS THAT GOLDMAN SACHS SAW THIS COMING AT THE SAME TIME THEY WERE BUNDLING AND SELLING THESE LOANS.

It is truly amazing that right now everyone in the country is deferring to Paulson and the heads of Countrywide, JPMorgan, Bank of America and others as the best group to work out a solution to this problem. NO ONE IS TALKING ABOUT THE FACT THAT THESE PEOPLE CREATED THE PROBLEM AND PROFITED TO THE TUNE OF HUNDREDS OF BILLIONS OF DOLLARS FROM IT.

WE ARE ON THE CUSP OF A MAMMOTH FINANCIAL CRISIS, and the Federal Reserve and the U.S. Treasury are trying to limit the liability of their banking friends under the guise of trying to help borrowers. AT STAKE IS NOTHING SHORT OF THE CONTINUED EXISTENCE OF THE U.S. BANKING SYSTEM.

At an event to commemorate the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UNDR), the Nobel Laureate said the detention of suspected al Qaeda and Taliban members at the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, was a 'huge blot on a democracy'. "Whoever imagined that you would hear from the United States and from Britain the same arguments for detention without trial that were used by the apartheid government," Tutu told a news conference in Cape Town.

Tutu is chairman of the Elders, a group of prominent international statesmen that includes former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, anti-apartheid icon Nelson Mandela and his Mozambican-born wife Graca Machel. His remarks come amid a growing outcry over alleged abuses at Guantanamo, which in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States was used as a mass detention centre for suspected violent Islamic radicals.

"The Iranians continue their push for nuclear weapons in specific ways, including the acquisition and development of missiles," said a senior Israeli security official who has access to classified Israeli defense material and intelligence reports on Iran. "Iran hides its nuclear weapons program but it continues nonetheless," he told WND, indicating the U.S. estimate may have been "politically motivated."

The official said the U.S. estimate has "many holes in it." He said Israel is "gravely concerned" the report may remove the U.S. military option against Iran from the table, and is likely to be the foundation for Russian and Chinese vetoes against further sanctions on Iran scheduled to be discussed tomorrow at the United Nations. The official expressed skepticism about the findings in the NIE report. "We are skeptical about the report's findings. It's not as if the American intelligence are regarded as brilliant performers in that region," the official was quoted as telling the Telegraph.

Meanwhile, at today's Knesset session, lawmakers here blasted the report and questioned America's commitment to Israel and its front against Iran.

"It cannot be that Bush is committed to peace as was declared at Annapolis, and then the Americans propagate such an intelligence report which contradicts the information we have proving Iran intends to obtain nuclear weapons," stated Minister Yitzhak Cohen, a member of the Shas party, a key coalition partner in Olmert's government.

Cohen compared the NIE report to what he said were faulty reports released by the U.S. during the Holocaust that Jews were not being killed in spite of information possessed by American intelligence of the existence of concentration camps.

"In the middle of the previous century the Americans received intelligence reports from Auschwitz on the packed trains going to the extermination camps. They claimed then that the railways were industrial. Their attitude today to the information coming out of Iran on the Iranians' intention to produce a nuclear bomb reminds one of their attitude during the Holocaust," stated Cohen.

The survey is a blow to Gordon Brown's attempts to play down the significance of the constitutional agreement. It will also revive debate over the UK's role in Europe 72 hours before the reform treaty is signed in Lisbon. The negative mood is echoed across Europe. An EU-wide TNS poll in March showed 75 per cent of voters in the 27 member states want a referendum. In the UK the figure was 83 per cent.

John Redwood, the Tory party's competitiveness guru, said: "It is time he owned up to how much power this treaty is transferring and gave the British people a vote."

The survey will be seized on by campaigners who are gearing up for parliamentary warfare when the treaty reaches the Commons and Lords for formal ratification next year. EU leaders have admitted it is nearly identical to the earlier constitution which was rejected by Dutch and French voters. Mr Brown's euroscepticism did not stop him endorsing the new treaty or rejecting calls for the Government to honour Labour's 2005 manifesto commitment to put it to a referendum.

The Swiss investment bank had already said in October that the crisis had cost it about $3.5bn. The firm said these losses meant it might now make an overall loss in 2007. UBS also revealed that it had received a $9.7bn injection of funds from the Government of Singapore Investment Corporation. A Middle East investor - reported to be the Oman government - has put a further $1.7bn into the bank.

BBC business editor Robert Peston said that the fact UBS had felt the need to raise so much new capital was "all you need to know about the gravity of what has occurred, both for UBS and for the world financial system".

"It's further evidence of the transfer of financial power from the western economies to the great cash generating economies of Asia, Russia and the Middle East - which are able to dictate the terms on which they prop up our important institutions," he added.

One of the firms to have seen an explosion in the number of Polish recruits is JCB in Staffordshire. A worker at the company, who did not wish to be named, said: "To be fair, they (the Poles) are good workers and they do put in the effort and the hours. But you can't help feeling that these jobs could be going to local men who are crying out for work."

A spokesman for the company said employees were appointed on the basis of skills and ability.