Barak, during a series of meetings at the Defense Ministry, said, "We should be prepared for an upswing in hostilities in Gaza. The big ground operation is a reality and it is tangible. We are not eager to embark upon such an operation, but we are not put off by it either."

According to defense sources, the goals of such an operation - reportedly in the planning stages for weeks if not months - would not "merely" be to reduce the threat of rocket fire and rocket manufacturing in the Gaza Strip, but would also likely entail paralyzing the Hamas government's ability to operate, and even include "regime change."

Barak spoke with Quartet envoy Tony Blair and Egyptian intelligence head Omar Suleiman and said Israel could not tolerate the current level of rocket fire in the South without offering a wider response. Barak also offered hints as to his plans, telling local community leaders gathered at Sapir Academic College outside Sderot that "the solution to Kassams will be a lot quicker than many people think." And the Foreign Ministry, in talking points sent to its representatives abroad, instructed them to say that when Israel left the Gaza Strip in 2005 it did so without the intention of ever returning, but that the continuation of terrorist attacks was likely to place the country in a position where it may have no other choice.

Several of the vaccinations included the controversial mercury-based preservative thimerosal, points out the National Autism Association, which sees the ruling as confirmation of the claims of many parents.

"This case echoes the stories of thousands of children across the country," said NAA President Wendy Fournier. "With almost 5,000 similar cases pending in vaccine court, we are confident that this is just the first of many that will confirm what we have believed for so long - vaccines can and do cause children to regress into autism." Fournier called on the Centers for Disease Control "to acknowledge that the current vaccine schedule is not safe for every child and as with the administration of any medicine, individual risks and susceptibilities must be considered for each patient."

A CDC panel, meanwhile, voted unanimously Wednesday to recommend flu shots for all school-age children. The move would compel private insurers to cover the costs and require the CDC to make the vaccine available to anyone who can't afford it. The NAA criticized the CDC decision, noting thimerosal is still found in flu shots recommended for children and pregnant women. Thimerosal in vaccines is suspected of causing brain damage and weakening the immune system, making some children susceptible later to infection from measles, mumps and rubella shots.

Prices were supported by comments Thursday from Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, who said the American economy is not immediately threatened with stagflation, a combination of economic weakness and rising inflation. Investors chose to see the comments as confirmation of their beliefs that the Fed will continue cutting interest rates to try to shore up the economy.

Lower U.S. interest rates tends to weaken the dollar, and crude futures offer a hedge against a falling dollar. "Due to the weakening dollar and the rising fear of inflation, investors have put money into commodities, oil included," said Victor Shum, an energy analyst with Purvin & Gertz in Singapore. "Commodities, as tangible assets, do not face as much inflationary threat as opposed to holding a currency," Shum said. "Even though the value of money is changing, the asset continues to have an intrinsic value."

The dollar has been plagued by uncertainty about the course of the U.S. economy even after U.S. Federal Reserve Bank Chairman Ben Bernanke said Thursday that the American economy was not "anywhere near" the dangerous situation of the 1970s. With the economy slowing and inflation rising, fears have grown that the country could be headed for the dreaded twin evils of stagnant growth and rising prices known as stagflation.
The euro's peak Friday was above the previous record of $1.5229 that it reached on Thursday.

The euro topped $1.50 for the first time since its 1999 introduction early Wednesday, then surged above $1.51 after markets took comments from Bernanke as a sign that yet more U.S. rate cuts are on the way. Lower interest rates can jump-start a nation's economy, but can weigh on its currency as traders transfer funds to countries where they can earn higher returns.

Adm. Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters the deployment should not be viewed as threatening or in response to events in any single country in that volatile region. "This is an area that is important to us, the eastern Med," he said when asked about news reports of the ship movements. "It's a group of ships that will operate in the vicinity there for a while," adding that "it isn't meant to send any stronger signals than that. But it does signal that we're engaged, we're going to be in the vicinity and that's a very, very important part of the world."

Another military officer, speaking on condition of anonymity because full details about the ship movements are not yet public, said a Navy guided missile destroyer, the USS Cole, was headed for patrol in the eastern Mediterranean and that it is accompanied by two refueling ships. The Cole is equipped to engage in a variety of offensive actions, including anti-aircraft and land attack missions.

The decision to send the ships appeared to be a not-too-subtle show of U.S. force in the region as international frustration mounts over a long political deadlock in tiny, weak Lebanon. The U.S. blames Syria for the impasse, saying Syria has never given up its ambitions to control its smaller neighbor.

Ivan pelted the Indian Ocean island's east coast with winds of more than 125 mph (200 kph) early last week, making it one of the largest cyclones ever to hit Madagascar. "The latest toll states that 83 deaths are registered all over the country," said Colonel Jean Rakotomalala, head of the National Office for Disaster and Risk Management (BNGRC).

Six cyclones struck Madagascar last year, killing at least a 150 people and destroying homes and crops in the island's worst season on record. The world's fourth largest island is prone to frequent cyclones and tropical storms. The season's first cyclone, Cyclone Fame, killed at least 13 people.

Israel said it was responding to rocket fire by Gaza militants, which killed one Israeli in the southern border town of Sderot on Wednesday, and it threatened to launch a larger-scale offensive unless the barrage stopped.
"The more Qassam (rocket) fire intensifies and the rockets reach a longer range, they (the Palestinians) will bring upon themselves a bigger holocaust because we will use all our might to defend ourselves," Vilnai told Army Radio.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has so far been wary of launching a major ground offensive, which could incur heavy casualties and derail U.S.-backed peace talks with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. But domestic pressure is growing.

Defence Minister Ehud Barak sought to prepare the way for an offensive by sending confidential messages to world leaders, including Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who plans to visit the region next week.

He pledged to help those who had been displaced, lost their property or lost their jobs during the violence in which some 1,500 people died. Many Kenyans have been celebrating the power-sharing deal between Mr Odinga and President Mwai Kibaki. But some of those displaced question whether ethnic hatreds can be healed.

"It's become a habit of saying 'peace, peace, peace' every now and then and after peace we see flames of fire," a woman living in a displacement camp in the western town of Eldoret told the BBC. Mr Odinga said the agreement was "just a piece of paper" - the most important thing was the will behind it. "It means we recognise Mr Kibaki as president and he recognises that there were some flaws in the elections," he told the BBC.

POWER-SHARING DEAL
- New two-party coalition government to be set up
- Cabinet posts to be divided equally between parties
- Raila Odinga to take new post of prime minister, can only be dismissed by National Assembly
- Two new deputy PMs to be appointed, one from each member of coalition

"There has to be trust and confidence developed on both sides. It is important for us to forge a firm foundation for a united country," he said. He hoped for a new constitution within a year and fresh elections within two as Mr Annan had given the coalition a maximum life of two years, after which it should be reviewed.

The Israelis say their attacks are a response to the firing of Palestinian rockets into southern Israel. There are no signs of either the Israeli army or the Palestinian militants backing down, and the people in Israeli border towns and across the Gaza Strip are bracing themselves for more violence, he adds. Palestinian rocket fire killed one man in the Israeli town of Sderot on Wednesday, and has since injured others.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said his country could not make peace with people who were murdering its citizens. "The only requirement we have from the Palestinians is stop killing innocent Israelis, stop shooting Qassam rockets at the civilian centres of Israel so that we'll be able to do business together," he said.

The report, released Thursday by the Pew Center on the States, said the 50 states spent more than $49 billion on corrections last year, up from less than $11 billion 20 years earlier. The rate of increase for prison costs was six times greater than for higher education spending, the report said. Using updated state-by-state data, the report said 2,319,258 adults were held in U.S. prisons or jails at the start of 2008 - one out of every 99.1 adults, and more than any other country in the world.

The steadily growing inmate population "is saddling cash-strapped states with soaring costs they can ill afford and failing to have a clear impact either on recidivism or overall crime," said the report. Susan Urahn, managing director of the Pew Center on the States, said budget woes are prompting officials in many states to consider new, cost-saving corrections policies that might have been shunned in the recent past for fear of appearing soft on crime.

"We're seeing more and more states being creative because of tight budgets," she said in an interview. "They want to be tough on crime, they want to be a law-and-order state - but they also want to save money, and they want to be effective. For some groups, the incarceration numbers are especially startling," the report said. "While one in 30 men between the ages of 20 and 34 is behind bars, for black males in that age group the figure is one in nine."

The nationwide figures, as of Jan. 1, include 1,596,127 people in state and federal prisons and 723,131 in local jails - a total 2,319,258 out of almost 230 million American adults. The report said the United States is the world's incarceration leader, far ahead of more populous China with 1.5 million people behind bars. It said the U.S. also is the leader in inmates per capita (750 per 100,000 people), ahead of Russia (628 per 100,000) and other former Soviet bloc nations which make up the rest of the Top 10.

Paul held Bernanke to task over his refusal to address the decline of the dollar and its clear link to inflation. "INFLATION COMES FROM THE UNWISE INCREASE IN THE SUPPLY OF MONEY CREDIT....to argue that we can continue to debase the currency, which is really the policy of that you're following, purposely debasing value of currency - which to me seems so destructive....it just puts more pressure on the federal reserve to create capital out of thin air in order to stimulate the economy and usually that just goes into mal-investment," said Paul. He highlighted the fact that the M3 money supply was rising at a rate of 16 PER CENT AND THAT THIS WAS THE REAL RATE OF INFLATION.

"History is against you," Paul told Bernanke, "History is on the side of hard money - if you look at stable prices you have to look at the only historic sound money that's lasted more than a few years - fiat money always ends, gold is the only thing where you get stable prices," he added, pointing out that despite the price of oil's rapid ascent, it had remained flat when compared to the price of gold.

"I cannot see how we can continue to accept the policy of deliberately destroying the value of money as an economic value," said Paul, adding that the policy was "immoral," and would lead to a reduction in American's living standards and "the middle class being wiped out." Asked how he could defend a policy of deliberately depreciating the dollar, Bernanke stumbled through his response and was basically forced to agree with Paul's point.
Paul's comments come on the day that the dollar hit its all time low against the Euro.

EARLIER THIS WEEK, FORMER FED CHAIRMAN ALAN GREENSPAN LAID THE GROUNDWORK FOR THE FURTHER COLLAPSE OF THE GREENBACK BY ENCOURAGING GULF STATES TO ABANDON THEIR DOLLAR PEG.

Over the past year, anecdotal evidence for a cooling planet has exploded. China has its coldest winter in 100 years. Baghdad sees its first snow in all recorded history. North America has the most snowcover in 50 years, with places like Wisconsin the highest since record-keeping began. Record levels of Antarctic sea ice, record cold in Minnesota, Texas, Florida, Mexico, Australia, Iran, Greece, South Africa, Greenland, Argentina, Chile -- the list goes on and on.

No more than anecdotal evidence, to be sure. But now, that evidence has been supplanted by hard scientific fact. ALL FOUR MAJOR GLOBAL TEMPERATURE TRACKING OUTLETS (Hadley, NASA's GISS, UAH, RSS) have released updated data. All show that over the past year, GLOBAL TEMPERATURES HAVE DROPPED PRECIPITOUSLY.

The total amount of cooling ranges from 0.65C to 0.75C -- A VALUE LARGE ENOUGH TO WIPE OUT MOST OF THE WARMING RECORDED OVER THE PAST 100 YEARS. All in one year's time. For all four sources, IT'S THE SINGLE FASTEST TEMPERATURE CHANGE EVER RECORDED, EITHER UP OR DOWN.

Finance minister of the group, which supplies 40 percent of the global crude demand, will meet to study the proposal, the organization's President Chakib Khelil said. Khelil, however, did not say when the ministers are scheduled to discuss the proposal amid the ongoing depreciation of the dollar. The idea was floated by Tehran and Caracas since the dwindling dollar has fallen 16.2 percent against a basket of major currencies since two years ago. Iran, the OPEC's second largest exporter, has already cut all of its ties with the greenback with respect to oil transactions.

Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim Al Thani had also said earlier that amid concerns about the weakness of the US dollar in recent months, the oil-rich Persian Gulf littoral state would shift Qatari riyal from the US currency over the next six months. "The dollar lost a lot of value and energy worldwide is priced in the dollar, so all the producers are affected by the development on the dollar. This is a cycle so we have to live with it," Abdullah Bin Hamad Al-Attiyah said.

The UAE is also likely to follow the lead, as Kuwait did last May.

French and German officials sought yesterday to play down the significance of the abrupt postponement - both by Paris - of two meetings between the countries' most senior politicians. Privately, and not so privately, the talk in both capitals is of a serious rift in the single most important national partnership in Europe. Officials blame an increasingly difficult relationship between President Nicolas Sarkozy and Chancellor Angela Merkel.

With France scheduled to take the presidency of the European Union in July, the Franco-German tiff could not be timed worse. There have also been tensions over the management of the euro and on foreign and defence policy. France has repeatedly criticised the monetary policy of the European Central Bank while ignoring its European commitments to restrain its budget deficit. Germany has refused to join a French-sponsored EU military mission to Darfur.

At the heart of the quarrel - not yet an overt crisis - is the strained relationship between the two leaders. German officials say that the hyperactive and boastful behaviour of the French President - and his over-familiar personal style - has irritated Ms Merkel. French officials suggest M. Sarkozy finds Ms Merkel too cautious and too ponderous. French diplomats also complain that M. Sarkozy - in his determination to shake up all aspects of French government - wants to play down the Paris-Berlin relationship that has been the bedrock of France's domestic and European policy for half a century. "For Sarkozy, the West very much means UK and the US," one French source said.

Known as ADIA (pronounced ah-DEE-ah), the fund recently formed a small team that is now buying big stakes in Western companies. This unit masterminded ADIA's $7.5 billion investment in Citigroup, the nation's largest bank, in November. It has also taken a large position in Toll Brothers, one of the country's biggest home builders. ADIA is the largest of the world's sovereign wealth funds, giant pools of money controlled by cash-rich governments, particularly in Asia and Middle East. But Abu Dhabi, the wealthiest of the seven Arab emirates, says little about its fund. Few outsiders know for sure where ADIA invests - or even how much money it controls. And secrecy breeds hyperbole; some estimates of the fund's size surpass $1 trillion.

The United States is not a big buyer of Abu Dhabi's oil, most of which goes to Asia, but the surplus is a vivid reminder of the American economy's own fiscal imbalance, to say nothing of its diminishing global stature, a theme that underpins much of the political worry surrounding sovereign fund investments. "In the short run, that they are investing here is good," Senator Bayh said. "But in the long run it is unsustainable. Our power and authority is eroding because of the amounts we are sending abroad for energy and consumer goods."