Shares in the oil and gas company, which raised $9bn from the world's biggest initial public offering so far this year, surged to Rmb48.60 at the start of trading from an offer price of Rmb16.70.

The massive demand for the PetroChina offering is the latest sign of the stock market frenzy in mainland China where share prices have increased almost six fold over the past two years. PetroChina attracted $456bn of subscriptions from retail and institutional investors in China.

However, the surge in the company's share price was greeted by some analysts as a further sign that a dangerous bubble is developing in the mainland stock market, created by a mixture of capital controls and substantial liquidity. The company's mainland shares are now trading at a premium of around 150 per cent to its Hong Kong shares.

Bill Gross, the chief investment officer of Pacific Investment Management, said US mortgage delinquencies and defaults would rise in 2008. "THERE ARE $1 TRILLION WORTH OF SUB-PRIMES, ALT-AS [SELF-CERTIFIED] AND BASICALLY GARBAGE LOANS," HE SAID, ADDING THAT HE EXPECTS SOME $250BN IN DEFAULTS. "WE'VE ONLY BEGUN TO SEE THE PAIN FROM RISING MORTGAGE PAYMENTS," he added. Brian Gendreau, an investment strategist at ING, commented: "Financials are 20 per cent of the S&P 500 and if that sector doesn't do well all bets are off. PEOPLE JUST DON'T KNOW WHAT'S ON THE BALANCE SHEETS."

The banks remain unwilling to lend to each other, preferring to rebuild their balance sheets and "hoard liquidity" to buttress themselves against any shocks from repatriating off-balance-sheet losses from their special investment vehicles (SIVs). However, this tightening up has led to a vicious circle. Making credit tougher has exacerbated the problems of struggling mortgage holders in America; default rates then rise and make the banks even more exposed to losses as credit agencies downgrade their assets.

This seems to be what happened at Citigroup. The admission that it was unable to assure investors that a potential $11bn write-down for sub-prime mortgages would not grow has led to this fresh fit of extreme nervousness. Huge write-downs by Merrill Lynch ($7.9bn) and UBS ($3.4bn) have not helped.

Samir Shah at Landsbanki Securities said: "People thought most of the bad news had been priced in. IT SEEMS WE'RE ENTERING A SECOND PHASE OF THE CREDIT SQUEEZE. We're going back to a place where liquidity is drying up and volatility is increasing."

The Chancellor, Alistair Darling, also pleaded for calm. "We are experiencing an unparalleled period of financial uncertainty caused by the problems in the US housing market," he said. "I believe that we can get through that. Many banks in this country have very strong balance sheets after years of making very good profits."

Meanwhile, on the continent, newspaper reports named two German banks - WestLB and a small specialised bank for professional people - as possible next victims of the crisis.

If they had, they may well have been charged with a criminal offence, and would not have had a legal leg to stand on in court. The UK places great emphasis on respecting the religious convictions of patients - and increasingly the doctors who treat them too.

There is nothing medics can do when an adult refuses treatment on religious grounds, says Vivienne Nathanson, head of ethics at the British Medical Association. "It's something we just have to live with - the alternative would be to change the law, change the human rights law," she says. "It's just too important that we all as individuals are able to make our own decisions."

King Abdullah arrived in Italy on Monday for a two-day visit that also involves meetings with Italian government officials. But all eyes are on Tuesday's encounter between Pope Benedict XVI and the custodian of Islam's most holy sites. The Vatican has diplomatic ties with Muslim states, but not Saudi Arabia, home to Islam's most sacred mosques.

The historic encounter is expected to focus on two issues: the rights of Christians in Saudi Arabia and the wider relations between Christianity and Islam. Most of the 1.2 million Christians in the kingdom are Catholics who are allowed to worship only in private places. The Vatican has often stressed the need for reciprocity in its request to build churches, noting that Muslims are free to worship in many Christian countries.

In September last year, the pontiff incurred the wrath of many Muslims around the world for comments associating Islam with violence. He later apologised and made efforts to reach out to other religions. Last month, 138 MUSLIM RELIGIOUS LEADERS WROTE TO THE POPE, stressing that the time for polite ecumenical dialogue had passed, with religious violence on the rise, and SAYING THAT THE COMMON FUTURE OF THE TWO FAITHS WAS AT STAKE.

The bug - ESBL E coli - causes around 30,000 cases of blood poisoning and urinary tract infection each year. It is known to have killed hundreds of people over the past five years, although some experts put the annual death toll as high as 4,000. THE "SUPER E COLI" IS THOUGHT TO HAVE DEVELOPED A HIGH DEGREE OF RESISTANCE TO ANTIBIOTICS THROUGH THEIR USE IN INTENSIVE LIVESTOCK OPERATIONS.

Its spread from farm to farm has mirrored the rise in the number of infections and deaths in the human population. Experts at the Health Protection Agency are investigating a possible link between the bugs found in livestock and the sale of meat and milk. Dr Georgina Duckworth, who compiled a report for the agency on the emergence of the E coli, concluded: "The findings show evidence of people carrying these bacteria in their gut. If this is found to be commonplace in the general population this may point towards the food chain being a potential source."

Richard Young, the organic food group's policy adviser, said: "ALL THE INDICATIONS ARE THAT INFECTIONS CAUSED BY THIS TYPE OF E COLI ARE INCREASING AT AN ALARMING RATE." In February 2005, the Daily Mail revealed the discovery of the superbug among sick and dying calves on a farm in Wales. By this March, Government vets had found similar strains on farms in Cheshire, Wiltshire and Somerset.

A spokesman for Defra, the food and farming department, said INFECTED ANIMALS MIGHT HAVE CAUGHT ESBL E COLI FROM HUMANS, from contact with sewage or from their food.

Kelud spewed white ash as high as 500 meters, Saut Simatupang, head of the agency, said today in a telephone interview. "The eruption isn't over," Simatupang said. "What we saw this morning was a small eruption." The temperature in Kelud's crater lake rose to 60.7 degrees Celsius (141 Fahrenheit) from 43.9 degrees yesterday. At a depth of 15 meters (49 feet) the temperature jumped to 66.1 degrees Celsius from 45.9.

Latest:- A top scientist, Surono, who is monitoring Mount Kelud said the temperature of its crater lake had now reached 76 degrees Celsius (168 Fahrenheit), - a rise of more than 25 Celsius (77 F) over the last 24 hours, indicating a blast could be imminent. The spike indicated magma within the volcano was very close to breaking through to the surface, possibly sending a torrent of mud, ash and rock known as lahar pouring down the mountain.BR>
Scientist Agus Budianto said that pressure of the energy rising inside Kelud was now three to four times as strong as that which triggered the last eruption in 1990, which killed at least 34 people. Budianto said that that explosion created a blockage which magma has not been able to fully break through, resulting in a column of steam rising from the surface of the crater lake, a new phenomena for Kelud. Water temperature at Kelud's crater lake is predicted to have soared to more than 90 degrees Celsius at the depth of 15 metres, more than double compared to 40 degrees ahead of the volcano's most recent eruption in 1990.

The Turkish government recently submitted a request to the Jerusalem municipality for the planned 3-meter high memorial that would be located close to the Golden Gate and be topped by the Turkish flag.

While the municipality has not yet discussed the proposal, rightist councilmen have already expressed opposition. Councilman Yair Gabbay (National Religious Party) has asked the city's legal adviser to nix the project on the grounds that according to the city's master plan, all construction is forbidden within 70 meters of the Temple Mount. The plot the Waqf has allocated to Turkey is a mere five meters from the mount.

Sources in the Jerusalem Municipality said that the proposal would be examined according to the usual legal criteria.

Jonathan Evans, the head of MI5, announced the figure - an increase of 400 since November 2006 - in a speech in Manchester. He said children as young as 15 were involved in terrorist-related activity.

Chang'e I, following the instructions of the Beijing Aerospace Control Center (BACC), started braking at 11:15 am at a position around 300 km away from the moon and entered the moon's orbit at around 11:37 am after completing the braking, according to the BACC.

"It turns the satellite into a real circumlunar one, marking a new milestone in China's aerospace history and also the first move of the country's deep space explorations," said Sun Laiyan, deputy head of the Commission of Science Technology and Industry for National Defense. "So far, each step in the lunar probe project has been completed almost perfectly."

The launch of the orbiter kicks off the first step of China's three-stage moon mission, which will lead to a moon landing and launch of a moon rover in around 2012. In the third phase, another rover will land on the moon and return to earth with lunar soil and stone samples for scientific research at around 2017.

China carried out its maiden piloted space flight in October 2003, making it only the third country in the world after the former Soviet Union and the United States to have sent men into space. In October 2005, China completed its second manned space flight, with two astronauts on board.

The launch of Chang'e I came shortly after Japan launched its first lunar probe, Kaguya, in mid-September, while India is planning to send its own lunar probe into space next April, sparking off concerns of a space race in Asia. But Luan Enjie, chief commander of China's lunar orbiter project, said that, "China will not be involved in a moon race with any other country and in any form, China will, in pursuing its policy of peaceful use of airspace, share the achievements of the lunar exploration with the whole world," he told Xinhua.

This could destabilise the US housing market and may also lead to further turmoil in financial institutions, who collectively own $1 trillion (£480.6bn) worth of sub-prime debt. Cleveland, Ohio, is an industrial city on the banks of Lake Erie in the US "rust belt". It is the sub-prime capital of the United States. One in ten homes in the city is now vacant, and whole neighbourhoods have been blighted by foreclosed, vandalized and boarded-up homes.

There have already been 1.7 million foreclosure proceedings in the US in the first eight months of 2007, and up to 2 million families are expected to lose their homes over the next two years, according to estimates by the US Congress's Joint Economic Committee.

The region, which includes the Central Highlands coffee belt, has been hit hard by storms and floods since early October, which have killed nearly 200 people, caused property and crop damage of $300 million and delayed the coffee harvest by two weeks.

Flooding since Oct. 26 has killed 46 people in nine central provinces and Danang city, reports from provincial disaster management committees said. Weather forecasters said Typhoon Peipah, which crossed the Philippines island of Luzon early on Monday, would bring rain again to central Vietnam.

Peipah killed five people in the northern Philippine province of Isabela and forced 500 people from their homes, disaster officials said. The Vietnamese government said a new wave of floods could hit in the next two to three days.

At the invitation of the White House, Chief Rabbis Yonah Metzger and Shlomo Amar, as well as the Chief Rabbi of Haifa and Chairman of the Chief Rabbinate Communications Committee Rabbi She'ar-Yashuv Cohen departed Saturday evening for a series of meetings to explain the Jewish connection to the Temple Mount.

The rabbis are invited to series of meetings set up by the Bush administration ahead of the Annapolis Conference aimed at trying to gauge Israel's "red lines" and examine the possibility of relinquishing the Temple Mount to Islam.

Despite the fact that many rabbis both visit and encourage other Jews to visit the site in the manner permitted by Jewish law, the chief rabbinate holds the position that Jews should not visit the Temple Mount site, which is Judaism's holiest. A large sign is affixed to the path leading to the Mount saying it is "forbidden for Jews to visit the Mount according to Jewish law."

All three rabbis agree that the Temple Mount must remain under Jewish sovereignty. However, the chief rabbis believe the mount should be closed to all until the Temple is rebuilt, whereas Rabbi Cohen believes it should be open to Jewish worship and a synagogue should be constructed there.

The new warning comes after it emerged that one of the UK's top five banks has been forced in recent weeks to order a review of its security arrangements because of fears that it was being targeted by a terrorist cell.

The FT has learnt that at the end of August two people escaped arrest outside the London headquarters of Lloyds TSB in Gresham Street after being identified on what security sources believe may have been a terrorist planning exercise. The individuals were challenged after being seen taking photographs of the building, but ran towards a car and drove away.

A spokesman for Lloyds TSB said on Friday: "We take the security of our staff and buildings very seriously. We aim to have the best possible security arrangements in place and to maintain a high level of vigilance at all times. MI5, the security service, warned earlier this year that terrorist "attack planning" would increase in 2007.

Scientists sometimes refer to the effect a hotter world will have on this country's fresh water as the other water problem, because global warming more commonly evokes the specter of rising oceans submerging our great coastal cities. By comparison, the steady decrease in mountain snowpack - the loss of the deep accumulation of high-altitude winter snow that melts each spring to provide the American West with most of its water - seems to be a more modest worry.

But not all researchers agree with this ranking of dangers. Last May, for instance, Steven Chu, a Nobel laureate and the director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, one of the United States government's pre-eminent research facilities, remarked that DIMINISHED SUPPLIES OF FRESH WATER MIGHT PROVE A FAR MORE SERIOUS PROBLEM THAN SLOWLY RISING SEAS.

The snowpack in the Sierra Nevada, which provides most of the water for Northern California, was at its lowest level in 20 years. Chu noted that even the most optimistic climate models for the second half of this century suggest that 30 to 70 percent of the snowpack will disappear. "THERE'S A TWO-THIRDS CHANCE THERE WILL BE A DISASTER," CHU SAID, - AND THAT'S IN THE BEST SCENARIO."

In the Southwest this past summer, the outlook was equally sobering. A catastrophic reduction in the flow of THE COLORADO RIVER - which mostly consists of snowmelt from the Rocky Mountains - has always served as a kind of thought experiment for water engineers, a risk situation from the outer edge of their practical imaginations.

SOME 30 MILLION PEOPLE DEPEND ON THAT WATER. A greatly reduced river would wreak chaos in seven states: Colorado, Utah, Wyoming, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada and California. An almost unfathomable legal morass might well result, with farmers suing the federal government; cities suing cities; states suing states; Indian nations suing state officials; and foreign nations (by treaty, Mexico has a small claim on the river) bringing international law to bear on the United States government.

In addition, a lesser Colorado River would almost certainly lead to a considerable amount of economic havoc, as the future water supplies for the West's industries, agriculture and growing municipalities are threatened. As one prominent Western water official described the possible future to me, IF SOME OF THE SOUTHWEST'S LARGEST RESERVOIRS EMPTY OUT, THE REGION WOULD EXPERIENCE AN APOCALYPSE, "AN ARMAGEDDON."

Above ground, this city in the North China Plain is having a party. Economic growth topped 11 percent last year. Population is rising. A new upscale housing development is advertising waterfront property on lakes filled with pumped groundwater. Another half-built complex, the Arc de Royal, is rising above one of the lowest points in the city's water table.

"People who are buying apartments aren't thinking about whether there will be water in the future," said Zhang Zhongmin, who has tried for 20 years to raise public awareness about the city's dire water situation.

For three decades, water has been indispensable in sustaining the rollicking economic expansion that has made China a world power. Now, China's galloping, often wasteful style of economic growth is pushing the country toward a water crisis. Water pollution is rampant nationwide, while water scarcity has worsened severely in north China - even as demand keeps rising everywhere.

China is scouring the world for oil, natural gas and minerals to keep its economic machine humming. But trade deals cannot solve water problems. Water usage in China has quintupled since 1949, and leaders will increasingly face tough political choices as cities, industry and farming compete for a finite and unbalanced water supply.