It is something for which I have prayed and offered up my sufferings since the meeting of Pope Paul VI and Patriarch Athenagoras in Jerusalem. I pray I live to see the day come when the Church, East and West, may share the "Cup of the Lord" together in peace, unity and fraternal charity!

Yours in Jesus and Mary,
Joseph F. Amarose
Sts. Peter & Paul Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church
Mount Carmel, Pennsylvania

The body of Jörg Haider, late head of the far-right Alliance for the Future of Austria (BZÖ), was pulled from a planned cremation last weekend at the request of his widow, Claudia Haider, according to an Austrian newspaper which says MRS. HAIDER IS UNSATISFIED WITH THE OFFICIAL VERSION OF HER HUSBAND'S DEATH.

Haider died in a sudden car accident on October 11, less than two weeks after his party was boosted in a contentious national election. He was speeding, drunk, and had reportedly just seen Stefan Petzner, his political protégé and rumored lover, at a gay bar. Petzner, 27, was abruptly sacked as Haider's successor on Wednesday after a radio interview all but confirmed the two men were lovers. Haider's affair with Petzner was an open secret in Austria.

"It has been an open secret for years that Haider was gay, and most Austrians would have preferred for it to remain a secret," a political science professor called Reinhold Gärtner, at Innsbruck Univerity, told the New York Times. "People are trying to turn Haider into a saint, and are quickly forgetting that he was a right-wing xenophobe."

The two companies will this week report massive third-quarter profits totalling nearly £12.6 billion, according to analysts' estimates. Shell, Europe's biggest oil company, is expected to report profits of £5.8 billion during the three months to the end of September, up nearly 20 per cent on the same period last year. BP is likely to report profits of about £6.8 billion for the third quarter of 2008, up 62 per cent on the same period in 2007, analysts said.

The huge profits mean the two companies together were making almost £6 million per hour over the three month period as they benefited from the high price of crude oil. In July oil reached a record $147 a barrel. However, the price has fallen amid the global economic slow down, dropping under $100 a barrel at the end of September and closing last week just above $60.

AA spokesman Luke Bosdet said extra profits for the oil companies should be passed on to the motorist by reducing petrol prices on forecourts, or should be put into developing alternative fuels. He also said BP and Shell should use the profits to invest in refining diesel to bring its price down to the same as petrol. Mr Bosdet said it was not the oil companies who were responsible for recent falls in petrol prices at the pumps.

GM IS RUNNING OUT OF CASH and ideas and pursuing merger talks with Chrysler, which is also talking to Nissan. Ford Motor Co this year celebrated the 100th anniversary of the Model T, an invention that significantly altered almost every aspect of American life from shopping to sex. But Americans are doing demonstrably less of the former when it comes to cars. Sales are braking quickly, and this month are expected to be at their lowest level in 25 years, industry experts predict.

According to JD Power, automakers will sell 10.8 vehicles at retail (fleet sales will add another 2.8 million). That's a drop of more than 15% from 2007. "Nobody's coming into the showrooms," notes a senior official from Volkswagen of America. Terrible sales, however, are only one part of the many difficulties that have engulfed American carmakers. GM, Ford and Chrysler, are also facing monumental financial challenges that have left them with poor credit ratings, making it prohibitively expensive to raise cash to finance auto sales.

GM is feverishly working on the Chevrolet Volt, an electric car that could go a long way towards changing the way Americans think about such cars. Even Chrysler is promising to deliver seven new models by 2010. That's if it can get there. JP Morgan predicts sales levels will sink again next year and recover only marginally in 2010. "The trick is making it through the current period," Cole says. A neat trick indeed.

The betting is that many with their hands out will be successful, especially with financial markets in a stomach-churning dive and predictions the economy is about to tumble into a deep recession. These groups argue that the credit squeeze is so severe and the risks to the economy so dire that their industries need financial support as well.

The Treasury is considering requests from a variety of industries, but has not decided whether to expand the program, officials said Saturday. Lobbying efforts are intensifying. "The institutions that are excluded play a vital role in the U.S. economy by providing liquidity to the market," Bartlett wrote Neel Kashkari, the Treasury Department official running the bailout program. Referring to U.S. subsidiaries of foreign companies, Bartlett said, "This is a global crisis and to not recognize the U.S. firms controlled by foreign banks or companies would create further impediment to the market's recovery."

The Treasury also is moving ahead to get bank stock purchases approved. It announced on Oct. 14 that it was spending $125 billion to buy stock in nine of the largest financial institutions. An announcement was expected Friday about a second round involving 20 to 22 other banks.

"The only thing I could do was hug my kids and run away with my wife as water reached our chest," the 33-year-old said Saturday. "I heard people screaming from houses just few steps from my house." The death toll, now at 49, is expected to rise since scores of people are still missing and hundreds of families are homeless or trapped by the flood waters, said Hamid el-Kharashi, a police chief in the remote southern province of Hadramut.

Damage from the storm, which first struck Thursday, has been extensive in Hadramut — Yemen's largest province — because most homes are made of mud brick. The government has struggled to distribute relief supplies because the floods have washed out many roads. The province of Mouhra, sandwiched between Hadramut and the border with Oman to the northeast, was also affected by the storm. On Friday, Mouhra deputy governor, Salem Numier, said floods had cut off main roads and caused power outages. There was also a shortage of food and medicine, he said.

The proposal describes the need to "…develop a software/hardware suit that would enable a multi-robot team, together with a human operator, to search for and detect A NON-COOPERATIVE HUMAN SUBJECT. The main research task will involve determining the movements of the robot team through the environment to maximize the opportunity to find the subject, while minimizing the chances of missing the subject. If the operator is an active member of the search team, the software should minimize the chance that the operator may encounter the subject."

Paul Marks at The New Scientist points out that given the propensity to adapt this kind of military style technology for domestic purposes such as crowd control, the proposal is somewhat concerning. "…how long before we see packs of droids hunting down pesky demonstrators with paralysing weapons? Or could the packs even be lethally armed?" Marks asks.

Marks interviewed Steve Wright, an expert on police and military technologies, from Leeds Metropolitan University, who commented: "THE GIVEAWAY HERE IS THE PHRASE 'A NON-COOPERATIVE HUMAN SUBJECT'. What we have here are the beginnings of something designed to enable robots to hunt down humans like a pack of dogs. Once the software is perfected we can reasonably anticipate that they will become autonomous and become armed.

Earlier this year another top robotics expert, Noel Sharkey, Professor of Artificial Intelligence and Robotics at the University of Sheffield, warned listeners to the Alex Jones show that the world may be SLEEPWALKING INTO A POTENTIALLY LETHAL TECHNOCRACY and has called for safeguards on such technology to be put into place.

Professor Sharkey stated: "If you have an autonomous robot then it's going to make decisions who to kill, when to kill and where to kill them. The scary thing is that the reason this has to happen is because of mission complexity and also so that when there's a problem with communications YOU CAN SEND A ROBOT IN WITH NO COMMUNICATION AND IT WILL DECIDE WHO TO KILL, AND THAT IS REALLY WORRYING TO ME."

The Dow Jones index recovered from a near 6pc fall at the start to down 3.6pc at 8378.95, while the S&P500 closed 3.4pc lower and the Nasdaq was off 3.2pc. Before the market even opened, FUTURES TRADING IN ALL THREE INDICES WAS SUSPENDED AFTER EACH MARKET FELL BY ITS MAXIMUM DAILY LIMIT.

Volatility ruled the day as short-term traders and long-term investors fled major markets on fears over the health of the US economy amid rising job losses, a fall in house prices and worries that gross domestic product data out next Friday might confirm that America is also in the grips of a recession.

All eyes will remain on the US next week, as the Federal Open Markets Committee meets on Tuesday and Wednesday to discuss whether or not to further cut interest rates from their current 1.5pc, while on Friday, the government will release third-quarter gross domestic product figures, revealing whether the US economy has started to move into a recession as many fear.

GEORGE W. BUSH HAS GROWN OLD, ERRATIC AND ROSY IN THE EIGHT YEARS OF HIS PRESIDENCY. Little remains of his combativeness or his enthusiasm for physical fitness. On this sunny Tuesday morning in New York, even his hair seemed messy and unkempt, his blue suit a little baggy around the shoulders, as Bush stepped onto the stage, for the eighth time, at the United Nations General Assembly.

He talked about terrorism and terrorist regimes, and about governments that allegedly support terror. He failed to notice that the delegates sitting in front of and below him were shaking their heads, smiling and whispering, or if he did notice, he was no longer capable of reacting. The US president gave a speech similar to the ones he gave in 2004 and 2007, mentioning the word "terror" 32 times in 22 minutes. At the 63rd General Assembly of the United Nations, George W. Bush was the only one still talking about terror and not about the topic that currently has the rest of the world's attention.

"Absurd, absurd, absurd," said one German diplomat. A French woman called him "yesterday's man" over coffee on the East River. There is another way to put it, too: BUSH WAS A LAUGHING STOCK IN THE GRAY CORRIDORS OF THE UN. BUT THE RIDICULE WAS A NEW THING. IT MARKED THE END OF RESPECT.

In a report to the UN General Assembly, Vitit Muntarbhorn, a Thai law professor who has never been allowed to visit North Korea, said that its government is using public executions as a means of intimidating the population, and using spies to infiltrate and expose religious communities.

His report came two days after the World Food Programme said that two thirds of North Koreans do not have enough to eat, in the country's worst crisis since as many as three million people died of famine a decade ago.

"Sadly, even though the harvest was getting better, we have had devastating floods in 2006 and 2007," Mr Muntarbhorn said in New York. "OVER THE PAST YEAR WE HAVE HAD VERY WORRYING INFORMATION OF A VERY CHRONIC FOOD SHORTAGE."

"IT HAS BEEN DECIDED NOT TO JOIN THE GOVERNMENT," Roi Lachmanovich, a spokesman for Shas leader Eli Yishai, said in a telephone interview today."THE DECISION IS FINAL."

The rebuff came after Livni late yesterday said she'll announce on Oct. 26 whether she expects to form a government and take over as prime minister or ask President Shimon Peres to call early elections. Shas's 12 seats in the 120-person parliament could give her the support she needs for a majority.

The Fed's report, released Thursday, showed commercial banks averaged a record $105.8 billion in daily borrowing over the past week. That surpassed the old record - a daily average of $99.7 billion - from the prior week. On Wednesday alone, $107.5 billion was drawn, an all-time high.

Since the Bear Stearns debacle in March, the Fed has taken a series of unprecedented steps to get lending - the economy's oxygen - flowing more freely again. The central bank has repeatedly tapped its Depression-era authority to be a lender of last resort not only to financial institutions, but also to other types of companies.

CRITICS WORRY THE FED'S ACTIONS COULD PUT BILLIONS OF TAXPAYERS' DOLLARS AT RISK.

Large numbers of Palestinian worshipers in addition to religious and national figures were present at Al-Aqsa Mosque during the early morning hours to guard the Mosque against any possible attack by Israeli settlers. THE SETTLERS ATTEMPTED TO STORM AL-AQSA MOSQUE from Al-Silsila gate, but the massive presence of Jerusalemite Palestinians at the holy Mosque made the Israeli police ask the settlers to refrain from entering the Mosque.

Foundation leader Zaki Ighbareyah called for Muslims to "pour to Al-Aqsa for prayers" in response to the alleged incidents. "We published photographs of Israeli groups breaking into Al-Aqsa, and today they are talking publicly about invading the holy compound," Ighbareyah said in a statement. He also described the attitudes of those involved as "provocative."

"We consider this incident an attack on Al-Aqsa and a provocation of the feelings of Muslims around the world," particularly since it "is carried out under the guard and approval of the Israeli government," he said. One group of about 400 entered the mosque on Wednesday morning while another group of about 250 arrived after noon on the same day. The incident was documented by photographs that seemed to show extremists within various parts of the facility.

The head of Palestinian Authority (PA)'s Waqf Department in Jerusalem also denounced what he called "provocations" and accused the Israeli military of "creating tension by allowing extremists to break into Al-Aqsa, while guarding them." HE SAID HE FEARED THAT THE "CONSEQUENCES OF SUCH ACTIONS COULD AFFECT THE ENTIRE REGION."

The £1,500 test, which should be available as early as next year, will allow couples at risk of passing on gene defects to conceive healthy children using IVF treatment. Unlike current tests it takes just weeks from start to finish and is suitable for couples at risk of almost any condition.

The "genetic MoT" will transform the range of inherited disorders that can be detected in embryos and the speed and accuracy of such tests. At present only 2 per cent of the 15,000 known genetic conditions can be identified in this way. It involves creating embryos by IVF and removing a single cell from each when they are two days old. The cells are tested using a technique known as karyomapping before a healthy embryo is implanted.

That contradicts advice from the American Medical Association, which recommends doctors only use treatments to which patients have given their informed consent. "IT SEEMS LIKE DOCTORS ARE DOING THINGS THEY SHOULDN'T BE DOING," said Irving Kirsch, a professor of psychology at the University of Hull, who has studied the use of placebos. Kirsch was not linked to the research, published Friday in the British Medical Journal.

"Doctors may be under a lot of pressure to help their patients, but this is not an acceptable shortcut," he said. Placebos were defined in the study as treatments whose benefits derived from patients' beliefs they would work, not from the actual drug itself. They included painkillers, vitamins, antibiotics, sedatives and sugar pills. Studies have shown that patients given a fake treatment can often improve, despite the pill having no known impact on their condition.