According to statistics provided WND by the Alliance for American Manufacturing, or AAM. "In the Super Tuesday states, 'It's the economy, stupid,' is what voting is going to be all about," Kerri Houston, senior analyst at AAM, told WND. "It's also about 'It's the defense, stupid'," Houston said, "given how many U.S. defense suppliers have now been outsourced overseas."

"The Department of Defense now has graveyards full of broken-down equipment, including tanks, airplanes and missile launchers that are out of action for lack of a part," she continued. "Republicans who have opposed unions for decades don't want to talk about outsourcing as a problem, because they are afraid the unions would come back if the jobs came back, and the Republicans are happy to see Democrats denied campaign contributions that would be coming out of union dues," Houston emphasized.

"But when the military can't find steel, tires or metal parts, and military procurement demands the Department of Defense look for a U.S. manufacturer, we're out of luck," she said. "The part the military needs may today only be made in China."

"The whole idea of the Bush tax refund being an economic stimulus is going to be received with skepticism in the Super Tuesday states," Houston cautioned. "The U.S. Treasury has to borrow from China the money to use in paying out the tax refund," she noted.

During a heated Knesset debate Sunday, MK Zeev claimed that the proposed legislation was aimed at assisting homosexuals and lesbians who want to start a family. He said that if it was up to him he would put gays in rehabilitation centers "along with drug addicts and alcoholics". Zeev went as far as comparing the gay movement to a "plague that may destroy Jewish Israel", adding that this "plague" should be dealt with "just as the Health Ministry is dealing with bird flu."

Zeev added that gay people must be made aware of "how their lifestyle is destroying our existence. We propose numerous bills to help barren women become more fertile, but on the other hand we allow this immorality," he said.

Sa'ar Netanel, a member of Jerusalem's Council and the Open House organization, responded to Zeev's comments by saying that, "What we need is institutions to detoxify him and his ilk from their bigotry and ignorance."

As expected, the Jerusalem municipality decided to cancel school in the capital for the day due to the slippery streets. Major thoroughfares in the city were opened for traffic, but the city still requested that drivers not risk the slippery streets with private vehicles. 100 snow ploughs were deployed around the city and were clearing the roads, especially those leading to hospitals and emergency facilities.

Higher elevations throughout the country are likely to be covered with snow over the next two days, according to Israel Meteorological Service forecaster Uri Batz. About 10cm is expected to accumulate in Jerusalem by the end of Wednesday and another 10 by late Thursday. Friday's forecast calls for very cold and windy weather, but no additional snow.

Batz said the Carmel hills, near Haifa, would probably get a light layer of snow, something that hasn't happened since 2000. Even Eilat residents will likely be able to enjoy the sight of snow on the tops of the Edom Mountains across the Jordanian border. The snow could take as long as a week to disappear, he said. The forecaster said that with strong winds, the temperature in the capital could plummet to as low as -9ºC, causing any water on the roads and sidewalks to freeze.

More than 1 million people have fled their homes in Somalia, which is convulsed by fighting between Ethiopian-backed government forces, Islamist insurgents and an assortment of warlords. "I've never seen anything like Somalia before," Guillermo Bettocchi, representative of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, said during a visit to London. "The situation is very severe. It is the most pressing humanitarian emergency in the world today -- even worse than Darfur," he told reporters, referring to the war in western Sudan, which has driven 2.5 million from their homes.

A bomb attack which killed three aid workers in Somalia on Monday underlined the difficulty in delivering aid in the anarchic country that has been wracked by clan violence for 17 years, he said. Fifteen percent of the population suffer acute malnutrition while health services are very limited and sanitation, water and shelters are extremely poor, Bettocchi said.

Fourteen out of 15 U.N. "flash appeals" for help last year were a response to devastation caused by droughts, floods and hurricanes, U.N. Undersecretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator John Holmes said. "That is five more than in any other year," Holmes said during a visit to European Union headquarters in Brussels. "We are seeing them (disasters) increase in intensity and number," he told a news conference, saying weather events could not always be directly linked with climate change.

Holmes cited growing demand for food in China and India, a shift towards more meat-oriented diets and the use of foodstuffs in biofuels as driving what he called a structural change in food prices that put some staples beyond the reach of the poor. A recent rise in wheatflour prices in Afghanistan had hit poor people hard, and similar humanitarian consequences of food price inflation were feared in Pakistan and Bangladesh, he said.

"This poses a double challenge for the World Food Programme. Not only is the price increasing but the need is going up because of the hunger," he said.

The plan will be unveiled today as part of sweeping regulatory reforms designed to prevent a repeat of the Northern Rock debacle, the BBC has learned. He will also make the Bank of England's loans to a troubled bank rank first in the queue of creditors. There will be a 12 week consultation period on the new legislation.

"It's unclear whether the devastating run on the Rock could have been prevented by the kind of clandestine help which the Bank may in future be able to provide," said the BBC's business editor Robert Peston. "Such secrecy would only apply where such emergency lending is temporary and limited in nature. The Treasury believes that the Rock probably needed too much money for too long for the Bank of England to be able to keep the rescue operation out of the public domain."

The Fed action Wednesday pushed the funds rate to 3 percent. It followed a three-fourths of a percentage point cut on Jan. 22, a day after financial markets around the world had plummeted on fears that the U.S. economy was heading into a recession. That decrease had been the biggest one-day move in more than two decades. The House, worried about the possibility of a downturn, overwhelmingly approved a $146 billion economic stimulus bill on Tuesday. Passage in the Senate could be slowed by an effort to expand the measure.

Whatever the Fed does Thursday, analysts said that further rate cuts are likely until the central bank is sure that the economy is back on a sound footing. Bernanke pledged in a speech on Jan. 10 to take decisive action to combat a slowdown. Many economists believe the funds rate could fall to 2.5 percent before the Fed stops easing. "It is clear that the Fed has moved into a crisis-fighting posture," said David Jones, chief economist at DMJ Advisors.

However, the country has been battling with the national energy crisis, forcing the state power company Eskom to stop exporting power to the neighbouring countries. This development has taken a great toll on the economy and business in general. The companies - AngloGold Ashanti, Gold Fields and Harmony together with the world's biggest platinum miner, Anglo Platinum - took the painful decision after Eskom said it could not guarantee power supplies. Their fear evolves around miners being trapped underground.

It also follows Eskom's communication to their Key Industrial Consumers (KIC), including Gold Fields to "reduce their energy consumption to the minimum load possible." A decision was taken to put no shifts down last night and no shifts were put down this morning. Eskom said "KIC loads will be reduced to 'survival levels' or switched out totally for the next two to four weeks."

Gold Fields said this will have a "serious effect" on its South African operations, which produce approximately 7000 ounces per day.

With tribal violence and score-settling spreading across the nation of 36 million people, President Mwai Kibaki appealed to all Kenyans to maintain peace. But opposition leader Raila Odinga warned Kenya was "drifting into a state of anarchy."

Reuters reporters in Naivasha said two helicopters dive-bombed the crowd several times, firing what police said were rubber bullets at a mob of about 600 people brandishing machetes and clubs at members of another tribe. The incident came as police trucks prepared to evacuate ABOUT 300 LUO refugees to safety from the mainly KIKUYU CROWD. The helicopter attack drove the Kikuyu crowd back.

Those being bugged include people suspected of illegal fly-tipping as councils use little known powers to carry out increasingly sophisticated surveillance to catch offenders. The report, by Sir Paul Kennedy, the Interception of Communications Commissioner, has fuelled fears that Britain is becoming a state where private communications are routinely monitored.

David Winnick, a Labour member of the Commons home affairs committee, said greater legal protection was needed to prevent abuse of surveillance powers. Britain already has more CCTV cameras per person than any other country in the world. Referring to George Orwell's vision of a surveillance state, Mr Winnick added: "TO WALK BLINDFOLDED INTO 1984 IS NOT ANYTHING THAT ANYBODY IN THEIR RIGHT MIND WOULD WANT."

The report shows that in the last nine months of 2006, there were 253,557 applications to intercept private communications under surveillance laws. It is understood that most were approved. This did not include warrants personally issued by the Foreign Secretary and the Northern Ireland Secretary - thought to be several thousand - which are kept secret. In that period 122 local authorities sought to obtain people's private communications in more than 1,600 cases. Councils are among more than 600 public bodies with the power to monitor people's private communications.

Shami Chakrabarti, the director of Liberty, said: "It beggars belief that in a nine-month period, based on these figures, the entire City of Westminster could have had their phones tapped - YET BRITAIN REMAINS ONE OF THE FEW WESTERN COUNTRIES THAT WON'T ALLOW THIS EVIDENCE TO BE USED IN COURT - to prosecute criminals and terrorists."

Everybody seems to be listening in. A total of 653 state bodies - including 474 councils - have the power to intercept private communications. Bugging is usually carried out by MI5, MI6, GCHQ and the police and most people are targeted on suspicion of terrorism or serious crime. But under laws that came into force eight years ago hundreds of public bodies can carry out surveillance. These include the Financial Services Authority, the Ambulance Service and local fire authorities and prison governors.

Scientists from Oxford University say the effect of nutrition on behaviour has been underestimated. They say increases in consumption of "junk" food over the past 50 years have contributed to a rise in violence. The university will lead the £1.4m study in which 1,000 males aged 16 to 21 from three young offenders' institutions in England and Scotland will be randomly allocated either the vitamin-and-mineral supplements or a placebo, and followed over 12 months.

In a pilot study of 231 prisoners by the same researchers, published in 2002, violent incidents while in custody were cut by a more than a third among those given the supplements. Overall, offences recorded by the prison authorities fell by a quarter. John Stein, professor of physiology at Oxford University, said: "If you could extrapolate from those results you would see a reduction of a quarter to a third in violent offences in prison. You could reduce violent offences in the community by a third. That would have a huge economic benefit."

"Our initial findings indicated that improving what people eat could lead them to behave more sociably as well as improving their health. This is not an area currently considered in standards of dietary adequacy. We are not saying nutrition is the only influence on behaviour but we seem to have seriously underestimated its importance." The theory behind the trial is that when the brain is starved of essential nutrients, especially omega-3 fatty acids, which are a central building block of brain neurons, it loses "flexibility". This shortens attention spans and undermines self-control.

The Ministry of Justice is backing the three-year study, which will start in May. David Hanson, the Prisons minister, said he hoped it would shed further light on the links between nutrition and behaviour. The Food Standards Agency says there is not enough evidence to show harm from additives or benefit from fish-oil supplements.

On the one side of the road hundreds of angry men had gathered, armed with machetes, clubs and metal poles. On the other, scores of desperate families huddled together. Only a thin line of a dozen or so policemen stood between the hunters and their prey. "They killed our people," said Francis Mbogo, calmly gesturing with his machete to across the road. "So now we will do likewise. We are just revenging." Warning shots were fired as the would-be lynch mob surged forward, baying for blood.

A tall man pushed his way to the front. "Listen to me," he demanded, wielding a wooden staff studded with nails. "We have been waiting to see if the government can do anything. They have done nothing. So now we have made our plans." Yesterday's scene was on the main road through Kenya's flower town, Naivasha. The armed gang was ethnic Kikuyus and the fleeing families were Luos and Luhyas. But similar scenes have been repeated through the Rift Valley, with different groups playing different parts in four days of appalling tribal violence that has left at least 100 people dead and many more homeless.

In Naivasha, the families gathered on the north side, mainly Luos and Luhyas, had been chased out of their homes - and the armed gang on the south were not going to let them go back. Another, older man tried to be heard. As he started speaking, the crowd hushed. "We don't want bloodshed," said Leonard Sindani. "We want peace." The crowd murmured its approval. "But they must go. If they stay we will deal with them. There is no going back. This is the final plan." The crowd roared its approval. "You tell them they must go," Mr Sindani shouted. He waved his wooden club for good measure and others joined in: "You tell them! You tell them!"

Before December's election, the Karakita slum had been a cosmopolitan mix of different tribes. Only Kikuyus, the crowd said, could now live in the Karakita slum that stood behind them. People from all over Kenya came here to seek work in the flower farms that line the shore. More than one third of all cut flowers sold in Europe are grown in Naivasha.

Rogue trader Jerome Kerviel was DRAMATICALLY FREED FROM CUSTODY LAST NIGHT in a dramatic day of twists and turns which saw the serious charge of attempted fraud against him being dropped. In the space of two hours last night, 31-year-old Kerviel went from facing a hefty seven years in prison for the biggest bank fraud in history to a maximum of three years for relatively minor offences.

It was unclear what brought about the dramatic change in attitude but earlier in the day, it emerged Kerviel - accused of covering up losses of £3.7 billion - had told investigating officers that he was simply doing his job and at worst could only be accused of trying to boost his career. His legal team were last night jubilant as their client was released on bail and allowed to go to a secret location. He now faces charges of breach of trust, forgery and falsifying computer records. All day his lawyers had been arguing that the junior trader was being used as a scapegoat to cover Societe Generale's investment failures. Elisabeth Meyer, Kerviel's lawyer, described his release as "a great victory" adding: "It's only justice being done".

His lawyers immediately began a robust defence of his activities saying he had not personally profited from his dealings and his intention was only to raise his profile in the cut-throat world of banking. And they dropped the bombshell that other traders broke the rules too, HINTING THAT THEIR CLIENT'S RECKLESS PRACTICES WERE MORE WIDESPREAD IN THE INDUSTRY THAN REALISED. "He has not embezzled anyone, he hasn't taken a cent for himself and he was just doing his job as best he could," said his lawyer Christian Charriere-Bournazel.

In a further twist yesterday, the French market watchdog announced that a member of Societe Generale's board had OFF-LOADED £85.75MILLION IN THE BANK'S SHARES JUST TWO WEEKS BEFORE THE SCANDAL BROKE. American Robert A Day sold the shares on January 9th - long before the banks management became aware of a problem. There was no immediate suggestion of any wrongdoing by Mr Day.

However, Jean-Claude Marin, the head of the Paris prosecutors office, announced in a press conference yesterday: "EUREX ALERTED SOCIÉTÉ GÉNÉRALE IN NOVEMBER 2007 ABOUT THE POSITIONS TAKEN BY JÉRÔME KERVIEL.

During hours of police questioning, Kerviel told investigators that in December HE WAS £1BILLION IN THE BLACK. He has blamed his bosses for the huge losses by closing his position when they uncovered the deception on January 18th.

The power crisis, the worst in China for many years, has been caused by an acute shortage of the supply of coal, the country's staple fuel. Brownouts have affected about half of China's 31 provinces and regions. The snow has caused MORE THAN 100,000 HOUSES TO COLLAPSE -- killing ten people -- and DAMAGED 400,000 OTHER HOMES, Xinhua reported. The worst weather in 50 years pummelled swaths of central, southern and eastern China as migrant workers and students, business travellers and officials assigned to provincial postings battled for tickets to join their families for the lunar new year holiday.

Officials struggled to control an estimated 200,000 travellers at the station - A NUMBER EXPECTED TO SWELL TO 600,000 OVER THE NEXT COUPLE OF DAYS. Temporary shelter was being arranged for the migrant workers in schools and conventions centres. Soldiers were deployed to stand guard around the station and police barked orders through bullhorns to try to maintain order.

What is even more extraordinary is that the legions of commuters have now been told it will be over a week before tickets go back on sale on February 7. The date is the start of Chinese New Year - the nation's biggest annual holiday. There was A THREAT PROTESTS OR WORSE COULD BE SPARKED BY THE WORKERS, who already have a long list of grievances, such as rising living costs, poor working conditions and low salaries that often go unpaid. But so far, the scene in Guangzhou, which rarely sees snow, was relatively calm.

The China Meteorological Administration (CMA) early Monday issued A RED ALERT FOR SEVERE SNOWSTORMS FORECAST FOR CENTRAL AND EASTERN CHINA. The snow, the worst in a decade in many places, is putting more pressure on already strained transport, communications and power grids. There has also been an economic cost -- 22 billion yuan (3 billion dollars), said the official Xinhua news agency.

So they resort to metaphors. Optimist Jacob Frenkel, a former IMF official and head of the Israeli central bank who is now vice chairman of insurer AIG, said repeatedly THAT THE WORLD ECONOMY IS A GIANT OIL TANKER THAT IS NOT EASILY TURNED.

Kenneth Rogoff, another former IMF official who now teaches economics at Harvard, retorted that it was MORE LIKE THE TITANIC.