McComas is principal investigator for the SWOOPS solar wind sensor onboard the Ulysses spacecraft, which measured the decrease. Ulysses, launched in 1990, circles the sun in a unique orbit that carries it over both the sun's poles and equator, giving Ulysses a global view of solar wind activity. "What we're seeing is a long term trend, a steady decrease in pressure that began sometime in the mid-1990s," explains Arik Posner, NASA's Ulysses Program Scientist in Washington DC. Flagging solar wind has repercussions across the entire solar system—beginning with the heliosphere.

The heliosphere is a bubble of magnetism springing from the sun and inflated to colossal proportions by the solar wind. Every planet from Mercury to Pluto and beyond is inside it. The heliosphere is our solar system's first line of defense against galactic cosmic rays. High-energy particles from black holes and supernovas try to enter the solar system, but most are deflected by the heliosphere's magnetic fields.

But any extra cosmic rays can have consequences. If the trend continues, astronauts on the Moon or en route to Mars would get a higher dose of space radiation. Robotic space probes and satellites in high Earth orbit face an increased risk of instrument malfunctions and reboots due to cosmic ray strikes. Also, there are controversial studies linking cosmic ray fluxes to cloudiness and climate change on Earth. That link may be tested in the years ahead.

Most preventive screening looks for explosives or metals that pose a threat. But a new system called MALINTENT turns the old school approach on its head. This Orwellian-sounding machine detects the person — not the device — set to wreak havoc and terror. MALINTENT, the brainchild of the cutting-edge Human Factors division in Homeland Security's directorate for Science and Technology, searches your body for non-verbal cues that predict whether you mean harm to your fellow passengers.

It has a series of sensors and imagers that read your body temperature, heart rate and respiration for unconscious tells invisible to the naked eye — signals terrorists and criminals may display in advance of an attack. But this is no polygraph test. Subjects do not get hooked up or strapped down for a careful reading; those sensors do all the work without any actual physical contact. It's like an X-ray for bad intentions.

Most preventive screening looks for explosives or metals that pose a threat. But DHS says this is not Big Brother. Once you are through the FAST portal, your scrutiny is over and records aren't kept. "Your data is dumped," said Burns. "The information is not maintained — it doesn't track who you are."

"I see a danger of nations looking more inward, rather than toward a shared future," he said at the opening of the UN General Assembly's annual debate. He spoke of a "challenge of global leadership" to tackle the world's worsening financial, energy and food crises. "We see new centers of power and leadership - in Asia, Latin America and across the newly developed world," Ban told more than 120 heads of state or government, including Presidents George W. Bush of the United States and Nicolas Sarkozy of France.

"IN THIS NEW WORLD, our challenges are increasingly those of collaboration rather than confrontation," he added. "Nations can no longer protect their interests, or advance the well-being of their people, without the partnership of the rest." On the world's current financial crisis, the UN secretary general stressed the need to "restore order to the international financial markets".

And like many in Vienna, the project where Karakoe empties bins and sweeps the streets is now also home to a mix of native-born Austrians and immigrants of Turkish and Yugoslav descent, the vast majority of whom carry Austrian passports.

Polls predict the populist far-right Freedom Party headed by Heinz-Christian Strache, and a splinter party, Alliance for Austria's Future founded by Freedom's former leader Joerg Haider, could mop up around a quarter of votes between them - a 10-point gain from two years ago. Freedom still demands a halt to immigration and a ministry for repatriating foreigners: "If you want an apartment, all you need is to be wearing a headscarf," Strache said earlier this month, ACCUSING SOCIAL DEMOCRATS OF MAKING PUBLIC HOUSING MORE ACCESSIBLE TO IMMIGRANTS THAN TO NATIVE AUSTRIANS.

Under Haider, the Freedom Party won enough votes to form a coalition with the conservatives that lasted from 2000-2005. Anti-Muslim and anti-Semitic sentiment is not uncommon, if rarely public IN THE COUNTRY WHICH ONLY RECENTLY ACKNOWLEDGED IT WAS A WILLING PART OF HITLER'S THIRD REICH.

Freedom's broader platform - focusing on social policy issues in addition to the nationalist and immigration agenda - is helping it draw support from a wider base, said Richard Luther at Britain's Keele University. "THERE IS ALSO PUBLIC DISSATISFACTION WHICH IS LINKED TO INFLATION AND THE CREDIT CRUNCH," he said. This comes on top of frustration with the dysfunctional outgoing government of Social Democrats and mainstream conservatives.

It will acquire the equities and investment banking businesses from the US bank which filed for bankruptcy protection last week. Nomura said it expects to save the jobs of a "significant proportion" of the 2,500 Lehman staff in those businesses. It said its priority was to get them up and running under the Nomura name.

Lehman Brothers had an estimated 5,000 workers in the UK. However, it is not yet clear where the 2,500 jobs that have been saved across the two regions will be located. PricewaterhouseCoopers, the administrators of the Lehman's business in Europe, said it was "delighted" by the deal. The Japanese bank is also going to acquire Lehman's assets in Asia.

CenterPoint Energy Inc, the power company for most of the Houston area, still had about 767,000 customers in Texas without power early Monday, down from 2.15 million at the height of the storm.

CenterPoint predicted its team of 11,000 restoration workers would return power to most of the Houston area by Thursday. The company could not estimate when it will return service to homes and businesses along the Gulf Coast, including Galveston where the storm made landfall early on September 13.

Entergy Corp, the other hard-hit power provider in Texas, said 52,000 customers were still without power in eastern Texas, down from the 392,000 affected.

George W Bush, in his last speech to the assembly as US president, is expected to focus on his rescue plan for US financial institutions. Tensions between Russia and the West in the wake of the Georgia conflict are also expected to come up. Mr Bush will speak shortly after UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon opens the session. French President Nicolas Sarkozy and Iranian leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad are also due to speak later on Tuesday.

THERE IS AN UNUSUAL AIR OF ANXIETY AT THE UN THIS YEAR, BBC's Bridget Kendall reports. Leaders have been hastily rearranging meetings so that they can focus on the financial crisis. Mr Bush is expected to discuss his administration's $700bn plan to buy back much of the bad debt held by US banks and financial institutions.

African leaders are concerned that the crisis means less funding for fighting poverty. Friction between Russia and the West, mounting violence in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and concerns over nuclear work in North Korea have all added to a sense of crisis, our correspondent adds.

In a rare public intervention, the spy author criticised ministers for voting to extend the time limit that terror suspects can be held without charge to 42 days. His comments come only weeks ahead of a key vote in the House of Lords that could see peers throw out the Government's controversial 42-day proposals. The writer said he was furious that the Government had been allowed to get away with a sustained attack on civil liberties.

"PARTLY, I'M ANGRY THAT THERE IS SO LITTLE ANGER AROUND ME AT WHAT IS BEING DONE TO OUR SOCIETY, SUPPOSEDLY IN ORDER TO PROTECT IT," said the 76-year-old in an interview in Waterstone's magazine. "WE HAVE BEEN TAKEN TO WAR UNDER FALSE PRETENCES, AND STRIPPED OF OUR CIVIL RIGHTS IN AN ATMOSPHERE OF PANIC. Our lawyers don't take to the streets as they have done in Pakistan."

"OUR MPS ALLOW THEMSELVES TO BE DELUDED BY THEIR OWN SPIN DOCTORS, AND END UP BELIEVING THEIR OWN PROPAGANDA."

In a week, the financial crisis of 2008 changed everything — and now comes the cleanup: if the Administration's $700 billion Wall Street bailout plan is approved by Congress, the United States will see changes to its political economy that were unimaginable a week ago. Among them:-

A MASSIVE TRANSFER OF POWER TO THE TREASURY DEPARTMENT.
Secretary Henry Paulson is requesting unprecedented powers to resolve and dispose of billions of dollars of mortgages and mortgage-backed securities that would turn the Feds into the liquidator of last resort for business deals gone bad. Those powers, should Congress grant them, would come on top of authority Paulson was quietly granted earlier this summer to resolve the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac messes.

A SUDDEN SHIFT IN TAXPAYERS' FINANCIAL PRIORITIES.
To put the bailout plan in some kind of perspective: Paulson would rule over a pile of assets that exceeds the annual Pentagon budget of $507 billion by nearly 50%. For at least the next year, and perhaps for years after, Treasury's spending authority will make it harder for the next President to fulfill campaign promises and pump money into new priorities.

AN ABRUPT REFOCUSING OF THE PRESIDENTIAL RACE.
Once again it's about the economy, and financial markets and how they are best regulated. There will also be discussion of whether anyone on Wall Street will be forced to pay a price for the wreckage taxpayers are now being told they will have to clean up. What seems more certain is this: though virtually no one was calling for it, A NEW ERA OF BIG GOVERNMENT HAS ARRIVED.

A DISMAYING FINAL CHAPTER FOR GEORGE W. BUSH.
Conservatives who hoped the Bush team would leave a legacy of smaller government, freer markets and fewer regulations can officially kiss that hope goodbye. Government officials report that the President, whatever his ideological reservations about the Treasury's next move, cleared the way for the bailout in the face of what looked like certain economic meltdown. Congress must still approve the bailout — but no one wants to take responsibility for what may come in the absence of action; the plan is likely to go through.

OF COURSE, THESE CHANGES ARE JUST FOR STARTERS. THERE IS NO TELLING WHAT THIS WEEK MAY BRING.

"The big detail we want to know is how is the government going to buy these securities, and what they will pay, how that reverse auction will work," said Giri Cherukuri, head trader at OakBrook Investments LLC in Lisle, Illinois. "AND THE BIG QUESTION IS, 'WILL THIS BRING US OUT OF THE WOODS?'"

A day after America's last two big investment banks, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, ended Wall Street's swashbuckling era by securing Federal Reserve approval to become commercial banks, all eyes shifted to Washington. U.S. lawmakers and Bush administration officials were hammering out details of a deal they hope will end the worst U.S. financial crisis since the Great Depression.

But with one-third of the U.S. Senate and the entire U.S. House of Representatives up for re-election on November 4, lawmakers will want to sound tough on such hot-button issues as the pay of reckless executives.

The Hong Kong Observatory raised its strong warning wind signal number 3 with Typhoon Hagupit edging west-northwest at about 30 kph toward the south China coast. "The observatory will consider the need for the No. 8 gale or storm signal around dusk today," it said. The highest signal is 10.

Hong Kong kindergartens were closed for the day and the city's bustling container ports and terminals were due to suspend operations in the afternoon. In the Philippines, the coastguard rescued 21 people from three cargo and fishing vessels that sank in rough waters as Hagupit passed the north coast on Monday. In total, three people were killed and four were missing.

Tropical storms in the region gather intensity from the warm ocean waters and frequently develop into typhoons that hit Taiwan, Japan, the Philippines and southern China during a season that lasts from early summer to late autumn.

BUT ON WALL STREET, SPECIALIZED INSURANCE KNOWN AS CREDIT DEFAULT SWAPS ARE TURNING A BAD SITUATION INTO A CATASTROPHE. When historians write about the current crisis, much of the blame will go to the slump in the housing and mortgage markets, which triggered the losses, layoffs and liquidations sweeping the financial industry. But CREDIT DEFAULT SWAPS - complex derivatives originally designed to protect banks from deadbeat borrowers - are adding to the turmoil.

"This was supposedly a way to hedge risk," says Ellen Brown, the author of the book 'Web of Debt'. "I'm sure their predictive models were right as far as the risk of the things they were insuring against. But what they didn't factor in was the risk that the sellers of this protection wouldn't pay… That's what we're seeing now."

Brown is hardly alone in her criticism of the derivatives. FIVE YEARS AGO, BILLIONAIRE INVESTOR WARREN BUFFETT CALLED THEM A "TIME BOMB" AND "FINANCIAL WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION" and directed the insurance arm of his Berkshire Hathaway Inc to exit the business. Recent events suggest Buffett was right. The collapse of Bear Stearns. The fire sale of Merrill Lynch & Co Inc. The meltdown at American International Group Inc. IN EACH CASE, CREDIT DEFAULT SWAPS PLAYED A ROLE IN THE FALL OF THESE FINANCIAL GIANTS.

VIRTUALLY NO SEGMENT OF THE U.S. ECONOMY HAS BEEN SAFE from a rolling tide of job losses, stock market declines and home foreclosures that have knocked a range of industries to their knees. "We are certainly seeing more companies, particularly among insurance and financial institutions, going through unprecedented times fighting for survival," said Randall Eisenberg, senior managing director for restructuring advisor FTI Consulting.

Companies in more industries than ever are finding themselves in distress, ranging from retailers, home builders and restaurants, to financial firms, transportation providers and energy companies. But at the same time, the turmoil has created unprecedented opportunities for distressed or vulture investors, and those attorneys, consultants and other experts who help companies sort out their problems.

"We're going to take those assets which are probably very valuable, but can also be digested by buyers in relatively manageable bites, and we will simply start to market them," Edward Liddy, who was appointed AIG's chief executive last week, said in an interview on the CNBC financial news channel.

"I hope within the next seven to 10 days to be out there with a plan that lists everything that's for sale and maybe even execute some of those transactions by then," said Liddy, a former CEO of insurer Allstate Corp. He said he hoped AIG would be able to pay back the Federal Reserve loan "as quickly as possible." If the loan is not repaid, the U.S. government has the right to take an almost 80 percent stake in the company.

The jump to an intraday high of $130 a barrel – a rise of about $40 a barrel from last week's low – was exacerbated by a weakening US dollar and data showing weaker supplies from Mexico, Nigeria and Saudi Arabia in recent weeks and surging imports by China.

Investors who had bet that oil prices would continue falling were forced to close their positions ahead of Monday's expiry of the October oil futures contract at the New York Mercantile Exchange, traders and analysts said. THE PROCESS IS KNOWN AS SHORT COVERING. THE INVESTORS HAD LITTLE OPTION BUT TO COVER THEIR SHORT POSITIONS AT ANY PRICE. IF THE POSITIONS HAD NOT BEEN CLOSED, THEY WOULD HAVE TO TAKE PHYSICAL DELIVERY OF BARRELS OF OIL.

But in a highly unusual statement, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the main regulator of US commodity markets, said it was "closely monitoring" the large surge in oil prices for signals of market manipulation. "CFTC enforcement staff will scour today's trading activity to determine whether anyone engaged in illegal manipulation activity," said Stephen Obie, head of the regulator division of enforcement. Traders in New York said at least one hedge fund was facing losses after being caught on the wrong side of the oil price move.