The Nikkei index has dropped 11pc in barely two weeks, recording the worst start to the year since 1945. It is down 24pc from its peak and is now in the grip of a fully fledged bear market. Yields on five-year government bonds have dropped to 0.86pc as investors search for safety.

A wave of selling has swept across Asia in recent days as it becomes clear the US downturn will cause more damage than originally thought, but Japan has been hit doubly hard as the yen surges against the dollar, euro, sterling and the yuan. Mr Fukuda said the government would "respond if necessary" to prevent a stock market rout. It is hard to see what the government can do. Massive deficits over the past 15 years have left the country with little margin for fiscal action.

Toshihiko Fukui, the Bank of Japan's governor, said contagion from the US sub-prime crisis was "growing beyond our initial expectations".

Iran's foreign minister claimed it was designed to give Israel a green light "to perpetrate new crimes" against Palestinians. Lebanon's most senior Shi'ite cleric accused Bush of "war crimes." A prominent jihadist web site called the President "this criminal, butcher and murderer of our blood."

But Bush was also harshly criticized - albeit in more circumspect language - in countries with close ties to Washington, including some from the very countries that rolled out the red carpet for the visiting President. Commenting on the two main purposes of the tour, even the most liberal Arab press questioned the sincerity of Bush's efforts to establish a Palestinian state and criticized his campaign to pressure Iran over its nuclear program. On occasion, senior Arab officials contradicted or disputed Bush's pronouncements even before he left their countries.

Perhaps the unkindest cut of all was an editorial in the Saudi Gazette, comparing back-to-back visits by Western leaders to Riyadh this week. "It would be difficult to argue that French President Nicolas Sarkozy's visit to the Kingdom was not in almost every way a success," the paper said, adding, with an unmistakable swipe at Bush: "It's refreshing to see a Western leader come to the Kingdom speaking of peace rather than just issuing warnings on the state of affairs in the region."

"We ought to be celebrating President George Bush's declaration that a Palestinian state is 'long overdue,'" said the Arab News in Jidda. "It is impossible to feel any excitement about Bush's words, because no Palestinian, no Arab believes he will, or can, deliver. We have the Bush record with its damning testimony of failure and disaster. That is the reason for the skepticism and the cynicism."

U.N. spokesman Luis Zaqueu said although Mozambique's emergency services were well-prepared, the scenario could change as raging waters engulfed agricultural lands and wrecked infrastructure like roads and bridges in the centre of the southern African country. "Because the rains started earlier than predicted and the high water levels -- which are getting higher each moment -- the situation is likely to be worse than in 2000-2001," Zaqueu told Reuters. The U.N World Food Programme (WFP) said food distribution in affected areas needed to be increased as many badly hit towns and villages already face food shortages.

Zimbabwe faces the threat of renewed flooding which has destroyed homes and put new pressure on the country's ailing economy, disaster management authorities said on Wednesday. Floods have also damaged Zimbabwe's livestock and crops -- especially the staple maize -- heightening fears of food shortages in a country that has failed to feed itself since 2000, when President Robert Mugabe seized white-owned farms to resettle landless blacks.

Zimbabwe is currently grappling with a severe economic crisis and the highest inflation rate in the world, at almost 8,000 percent, as well as shortages of food, fuel and foreign currency. Mugabe has pinned recovery hopes on the current agricultural season, but floods threaten to compound the crisis.

The freak weather has led to extreme flooding and created chaos on the roads. More than 500 accidents have been reported as motorists struggle to drive in the storms. Dubai Police's Control and Command Room said there had been two deaths in separate accidents due to the incessant rain, which reached 36.4mm yesterday afternoon.

Streets and roundabouts across Dubai have been flooded, and motorists were stuck in traffic for two to five hours. People across the Gulf could even see a rare snowfall, an event Saudis usually only see on television or during travels overseas.

The plan - currently being implemented by the Bush administration with the formation of the Transatlantic Economic Council in April 2007 - appears to be following a plan written in 1939 by a world-government advocate who sought to create a Transatlantic Union as an international governing body. An economist from the World Bank has argued in print that the formation of the Transatlantic Common Market is designed to follow the blueprint of Jean Monnet, a key intellectual architect of the European Union, RECOGNIZING THAT ECONOMIC INTEGRATION MUST INEVITABLY LEAD TO POLITICAL INTEGRATION.

As WND previously reported, a key step in advancing this goal was the creation of the Transatlantic Economic Council by the U.S. and the EU through an agreement signed by President Bush, German Chancellor Angela Merkel - the current president of the European Council - and European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso at a White House summit meeting last April. Writing in the Fall 2007 issue of the Streit Council journal "Freedom and Union," Rep. Jim Costa, D-Calif., a member of the TPN advisory group, AFFIRMED THE TARGET DATE OF 2015 FOR THE CREATION OF A TRANSATLANTIC COMMON MARKET.

Costa said the Transatlantic Economic Council is tasked with creating the Transatlantic Common Market regulatory infrastructure. THE INFRASTRUCTURE WOULD NOT REQUIRE CONGRESSIONAL APPROVAL, like a new free-trade agreement would. Writing in the same issue of the Streit Council publication, Bennett also confirmed that what has become known as the "MERKEL INITIATIVE" would allow the Transatlantic Economic Council to integrate and harmonize administrative rules and regulations between the U.S. and the EU "IN A VERY QUIET WAY," WITHOUT INTRODUCING A NEW FREE TRADE AGREEMENT TO CONGRESS.

Today, the website of the Transatlantic Economic Council openly proclaims the TEC is "a political body to oversee and accelerate government-to-government integration between the European Union and the United States of America."

These sensors would track everything from heart rate, respiration rate, body temperature, facial expressions, and blood pressure to brain signals and galvanic skin response. Yes, galvanic skin response is what drives a lie detector.

Redmond sees this system as a way for companies and, um, governments to monitor "group activities." "In particular, the system can monitor user activity, detect when users need assistance with their specific activities, and identify at least one other user that can assist them," the patent application reads, in classic patent speak. "Assistance can be in the form of answering questions, providing guidance to the user as the user completes the activity, or completing the activity such as in the case of taking on an assigned activity." In other words: If you don't do your duty, the system will make sure your duties are assigned to someone else.

The system is designed to provide its unique brand of "assistance" as workers slave away on various computing devices, including desktops, laptops, and cell phones. But it doesn't just track your physical use of such devices. It also monitors things like "frustration and stress." Plus, all this personal information is safely stored away for future use. According to Microsoft, that's a good thing.

If you ask us, we'd feel safer under the care of the Hal 9000.

Lawrence Wright, writing for the New Yorker, suggests "THAT THIS KIND OF MONITORING IS ALREADY GOING ON. He spoke to an AT& T employee, Mark Klein, who claimed that he installed data switching systems in the company's exchange that copied all internet traffic to the National Security Agency." Klein "claimed that he installed data switching systems" for this very purpose.

But all of that pales in comparison with the high-tech snoop system now in place. If you use a telephone, send email, or cruise the web you have a virtual electronic Stasi informer looking over your shoulder at all times. NOT EVEN ORWELL IMAGINED SUCH AN EFFECTIVE AND FEARSOME SYSTEM FOR MONITORING CITIZENS.

In the not too distant future, our Volksgerichtshof, or People's Court, will likely parallel in ominous ways the one created by Hitler and the Nazis to convict citizens of "political offenses" and high treason against the fascist state. SUCH A KANGAROO COURT IS BUT ONE "TERRORIST EVENT" AWAY FROM CONVENING. Our domestic Gitmos in the guise of FEMA camps await. In the meantime, our rulers are quietly assembling the evidence against you.

The group, which advocates for individuals' legal rights based on the U.S. Constitution, said federal government pandemic plans were confusing and could emphasize a police and military approach to outbreaks of disease, instead of a more sensible public health approach.

"Rather than focusing on well-established measures for protecting the lives and health of Americans, policymakers have recently embraced an approach that views public health policy through the prism of national security and law enforcement," the ACLU report reads. The ACLU said it was worried that the plan called for military and police involvement in enforcing a quarantine.

The ACLU experts said they were especially disturbed by an October executive order from President George W. Bush that directed HHS to establish a task force to plan for potential catastrophes like a terrorist attack, pandemic influenza or a natural disaster that would ensure full use of Department of Defense resources. The Bush order does not specify what the Department of Defense role would be, but also mentions military medical research facilities that have played a role in health for decades.

"Pandemic planning today tends to emphasize mandatory vaccination and forced treatment," the ACLU's Tania Simoncelli told a news conference. "It also means that sick people are being treated as criminals and enemies of the state rather than individuals in need of care."

Brazil M3 +17.0%
Canada M3 +12.9%
China M2 +18.5%
Euro zone M3 +12.3%
Hong Kong M3 +31.5%
India M3 +21.5%
U.S. M3 +15.8%

In our opinion, the commodity macro cycle is all about population of the world and its growth. In 2005, the WORLD POPULATION WAS ABOUT 6.5 BILLION PEOPLE, and it has been growing slightly more than 75 MILLION PEOPLE PER ANNUM SINCE 2000, or about 1.2% per year.

If we assume that 1.2% more people are added net to world population each year, it is easy to see that the demand for raw materials will continue to rise at a substantial rate. Add to this the fact that ABOUT 50 MILLION MORE INDIVIDUALS PER YEAR JOIN THE GLOBAL DEVELOPING ECONOMIES AND BEGIN TO MAKE ENOUGH MONEY TO DEMAND MORE GOODS, MORE SERVICES, AND A RICHER DIET. Using these figures, it is easy to see demand for grains and industrial commodities rising at 2-3 % per year. This is huge growth since the global production of energy, grains, and raw materials has not typically grown more than about 1% a year, if at all.

As we all know if demand rises and supply is relatively flat, price is the mechanism by which goods are rationed. Prices must rise...and rise they will. Many argue that prices have already risen, so price increases must be over. In our opinion, prices can fall for a few weeks, or even months in some cases, but long-term price decreases are looking extremely unlikely, especially if you believe the money supply growth figures mentioned above. In our opinion and in the opinion of many economists RAPIDLY EXPANDING LIQUIDITY LEADS TO MORE PRICE INFLATION.

Why does Bush feel the need to use both the words "sovereign" and "independent"? You would think that if a country enjoyed one of these attributes, the other would come automatically. Well, not really - and not only in the case of Palestine's desire to gain genuine independence and end Israeli control of its land, air, water, people and natural resources. In fact, one of the major concerns of ordinary citizens and mass political movements in much of the Arab world today is the sense of living in independent Arab states that are not fully sovereign, because they do not fully control their own resources or foreign policy.

This sense of feeling disenfranchised within your own borders is one of the major driving forces for Islamist and other political movements in the Arab world. In Lebanon, for example, the most powerful criticism the Hezbollah-led opposition makes of the Fouad Siniora government is that it is an American puppet, and that it transforms Lebanon into an agent for American plans and goals. Many in the Arab world feel that their governments are not fully free to make decisions that are in the best interest of their people, but rather must succumb to Israeli, American, European or other pressures.

The sense of clipped sovereignty is not only a consequence of Western and Israeli pressures; in some cases, citizens complain that other Arab governments, or Iran, are the ones who dictate policies to Arab leaders. The sense of thwarted rights is also felt at the personal level, by many Arabs who feel that they do not enjoy the full rights and privileges of citizenship, due to the abuse of power by small ruling elites and the many people in society who revolve around those elites.

The common Arab self-perception of being independent but not sovereign reflects several different feelings: that others make decisions for us, that we do not fully control our own resources, or that we are so dependent on others for money, security, food or technology that we suffer profound vulnerabilities that erode our sovereignty.

"Meat and milk from clones of cattle, swine and goats and their offspring are as safe to eat as food from conventionally bred animals," said Randall Lutter, the FDA's deputy commissioner for policy. The FDA based its decision on dozens of studies conducted around the world that found that meat and milk from clones is biologically indistinguishable from the meat and milk offered in stores and restaurants today.

The action opens the door for products from cloned cattle, pigs and goats to enter the food supply without special labeling. The FDA, in releasing their final risk assessment on the safety of cloning technology, asked producers to continue keeping cloned cattle, pigs and goats out of the food supply during a transition period of unspecified length to give the market time to adjust.

But products from the offspring of clones can be sold to the public immediately, the federal agency said.

The change may have occurred already, not least because US markets are beset by credit woes, according to research by McKinsey Global Institute, a think-tank affiliated to the consultancy.

The surprise announcement Tuesday afternoon caps a high-stakes academic firefight between fiercely secular scholars and the former professor Pontiff. The Vatican released a statement saying it now viewed the visit as "inopportune" in light of protests they say could damage the pontiff's image. But by backing out under pressure from his secular foes, the 80-year-old Pope may yet have the last word in this battle over the meaning of "reason" in today's intellectual debate. For the whiff of censorship toward A FIGURE WHO IS WELCOMED IN MYRIAD SETTINGS ACROSS THE WORLD - both for his position and his intellect - MAY OFFER AMMUNITION FOR BENEDICT'S BELIEF THAT HE IS SOMETHING OF A "POPE UNDER SIEGE" IN THE FACE OF THE PREVAILING SECULAR WINDS OF HIS TIMES.

The letter, which was signed by several notable members of the Physics faculty, cites a 1990 speech made by Benedict, then the Vatican Cardinal in charge of Church doctrine, describing the Church's 17th century heresy trial against Galileo as "reasonable and fair." The famed Tuscan-born astronomer had been prosecuted for affirming that the Earth was not the center of the universe, but in fact orbited the Sun along with the other planets. Two years after the then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger's speech, Pope John Paul II expressed regret for how the Church had treated Galileo, whose heliocentric theories have long since been proven correct. The future Pope's words, reads the text of the professors' letter, "OFFEND AND HUMILIATE US AS SCIENTISTS FAITHFUL TO REASON AND AS TEACHERS WHO DEDICATE OUR LIVES TO THE ADVANCEMENT AND SPREAD OF KNOWLEDGE."

The truth is that neither Benedict nor his secular critics in Rome are all that interested in revisiting the debates of the past; there is plenty of fresh intellectual manna now to tussle over. The public skirmishes occur on the now familiar terrain of bioethics, abortion, Darwin, and separation of church and state. But being a lifelong man of study and reflection, BENEDICT ALSO SEES THE SOURCE FOR MUCH OF THE CONFLICT IN HOW IDEAS GERMINATE AND SPREAD ON UNIVERSITY CAMPUSES.

Biographers say his experience as a professor during the student upheavals of the late 1960s - WHERE HE BELIEVED A GODLESS PURSUIT OF PERSONAL FREEDOM WAS SPIRALING OUT OF CONTROL - helped shape his view of contemporary secular culture and the current state of academia. FORTY YEARS LATER, HE APPEARS ONLY MORE CONVINCED THAT SOMETHING IS AWRY. In the same Regensberg lecture that criticized Islam for lacking a fundamental belief in reason, the Pope was also sending a warning to the West that reason itself was suffocating faith and destroying its historical identity. BY OFFERING HIMSELF UP AS VICTIM OF THE LA SAPIENZA PROFESSORS HE CAN CITE FURTHER EVIDENCE FOR THIS ARGUMENT RIGHT IN HIS OWN BACKYARD.

He said militant attacks and plots in Europe over recent years had made the US aware of the "real risk that Europe will become a platform for terrorists". Mr Chertoff said it was likely security checks on travellers from Europe would be increased.

He said it was important to increase security checks on passengers from Europe - most of whom are currently able to enter the United States without being screened first because of a visa waiver programme. But Mr Chertoff added that immigration checks should not affect travel and trade - an important part of the US economy. As the fifth anniversary of the creation of his Homeland Security department approaches, Mr Chertoff said the US was now a safer place because of the security strategies that had been adopted.

"This is a wonderful opportunity to examine the sun's North Pole at the onset of a new solar cycle," says Arik Posner, NASA Ulysses program scientist. "We've never done this before." Launched in Oct. 1990 from the space shuttle Discovery, Ulysses is a joint mission of the European Space Agency and NASA. Unlike other spacecraft, Ulysses is able to fly over the sun's poles, looking down on regions that are difficult to see from Earth.

Ulysses has flown over the sun's poles three times before in 1994-95, 2000-01 and 2007. Each flyby revealed something interesting and mysterious, but this one may be most interesting of all. "Just as Earth's poles are crucial to studies of terrestrial climate change, the sun's poles may be crucial to studies of the solar cycle," explains Ed Smith, Ulysses project scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Many researchers believe the sun's poles are central to the ebb and flow of the solar cycle. Consider the following: When sunspots break up, their decaying magnetic fields are carried toward the poles by vast currents of plasma. This makes the poles a sort of "graveyard for sunspots." Old magnetic fields sink beneath the polar surface two hundred thousand kilometers deep, all the way down to the sun's inner magnetic dynamo. There, dynamo action amplifies the fields for use in future solar cycles.

One big puzzle revealed by previous flybys is the temperature of the sun's poles. In the previous solar cycle, the magnetic north pole was about 80,000 degrees or 8% cooler than the south. Why should there be a difference? No one knows. Ulysses also discovered the sun's high-speed polar wind. "At the sun's poles, the magnetic field opens up and allows solar atmosphere to stream out at a million miles per hour," says Smith.

By flying around the sun, covering all latitudes in a way that no other spacecraft can, Ulysses has been able to monitor this polar wind throughout the solar cycle--and it is acting a bit odd. Posner explains: "Eleven years ago, during a similar 'sea change' between solar cycles, the polar wind spilled down almost all the way to the sun's equator. But this time it is not. The polar wind is bottled up, confined to latitudes above 45 degrees.

Is this a detail of little importance or a major anomaly, signaling new things to come? Again, no one knows, and that's why now is a good time to visit the sun's North Pole. "We'll be monitoring the magnetic field above the north pole to see what it's like during the change of solar cycles."

The flyby is underway. Stay tuned to Science@NASA for results.