Lieberman's remarks came a week after Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak announced a decision to restart his country's nuclear program. On Wednesday, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad announced that his country had begun operating 3,000 centrifuges for the enrichment of uranium.

"If Egypt and Saudi Arabia begin nuclear programs, this can bring an apocalyptic scenario upon us," Lieberman told the Post. "Their intentions should be taken seriously and the declarations being made now are to prepare the world for when they decide to actually do it."

Lieberman also said PAKISTAN WAS A MAJOR THREAT to Israel due to the political instability there and the fact that the country had missiles, nuclear weapons and a proven capability. "We hope there will be stability and the [Pakistani] nuclear weapons won't fall into radical hands," he said. "If the Taliban or [al-Qaida leader Osama] bin Laden get control [of Pakistan] they will have nuclear weapons for terror use and they don't hide their opinions about Israel."

Lieberman, whose office is in charge of coordinating Israel's efforts against the Iranian threat, blasted International Atomic Energy Agency chief MOHAMED ELBARADEI as a major obstacle to the West's efforts to impose further sanctions on Iran.

"HE IS PART OF THE PROBLEM, NOT PART OF THE SOLUTION," Lieberman said. "ElBaradei's behavior has not succeeded in solving anything like North Korea or Libya's nuclear programs. And instead of criticizing Iran, he finds it right to criticize Israel." Lieberman said ElBaradei was delaying the UN Security Council's consideration of a new round of sanctions by not publishing the new IAEA report on the status of Iran's nuclear program. "They [the IAEA and ElBaradei] are allowing Iran to stall for time and to launder its nuclear program," Lieberman said.

Lieberman said Israel needed to ignore ElBaradei and to work on its own - together with other Western countries - to impose sanctions on the Islamic Republic. He said the international community finally understood that IRAN WAS NOT JUST A THREAT TO ISRAEL BUT TO THE ENTIRE FREE WORLD.

The S&P500 was down 3 per cent for the week. In London, the FTSE100 fell 3.7 per cent on the week, while the FTSE Eurofirst 300 was down 3.1 per cent, their worst performances since the credit squeeze took hold at the end of July. The technology-heavy Nasdaq 100 experienced its worst week since April 2002, losing 6.8 per cent as market turmoil hit a sector that has been a haven from the credit crisis.

Bond markets priced in the near certainty of a quarter-point interest rate cut when the Fed meets in December, and a 75 per cent chance of a second such cut at its January meeting. The yield on the two-year Treasury note fell to 3.41 per cent, its lowest level since February 2005.

"Treasuries are strictly in flight-to-quality mode, and investors are waiting for the next shoe to drop," said Kevin Flanagan, fixed-income strategist at Morgan Stanley. "THIS IS ROUND TWO AND THERE WILL PROBABLY BE A ROUND THREE."

Rodolfo Garcia, the government's chief peace negotiator, said both sides were hopeful that a deal on creating an ancestral homeland for 3 million Muslims in the south of the mainly Catholic state would be signed early next year. "We have overcome a very contentious issue on territory and we're very optimistic that we might be able to hammer out an ancestral domain agreement by early 2008," Garcia told Reuters.

The two sides have agreed on boundaries for the homeland and how to share wealth from the region's mineral deposits, forests and farmlands. Muslims in the south of the Philippines have been fighting for their own territory for decades. The insurgency has killed 120,000 people and displaced at least 2 million since the late 1960s. It has also stunted development in one of the most resource-rich parts of the archipelago with large deposits of gold, nickel and copper.

Australia, Canada, the European Union, New Zealand, Sweden, the United States and the World Bank have promised to provide hundreds of millions of dollars to rehabilitate war-torn areas once a peace deal is signed.

The Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) said in a bulletin released on 7 November that POOR GLOBAL PRODUCTION OF WHEAT means worldwide prices reached a record high in September 2007 and remained volatile in October.

Mauritania and Senegal are the two countries in the region which rely the most on international markets rather than domestic farming. Wheat is a staple food in both but all of it is imported. Mauritania grows just 30 percent of the food its 3 million people need and imported WHEAT PRICES HAVE EXPLODED BY OVER 75 PERCENT THERE THIS YEAR, FROM US$200 FOR A TON TO US$356, according to the food monitoring group FEWSNET.

If the price continues as it is, people will need to switch to local cereals, or they simply won't have access to food. The situation is being compounded in Senegal and Mauritania and in northern Nigeria by poor harvest of millet, sorghum and maize which are the traditional cereals grown in the region. In northern Nigeria, sorghum production was curtailed by an early end to the rainy season, while in Mauritania, Senegal and Nigeria rains started too late in the year for maize to grow well.

The immediate concerns are currently limited to the wheat and rice importing countries, but experts say a potential production deficit in Nigeria, Africa's most populous country, could trigger a wider regional crisis later in the year.

Even countries with good harvests could have food shortages, he said. "Good harvests in one country in West Africa does not necessarily mean food security for the people that live there as West Africa's highly integrated markets mean food moves freely from one country to another."

Good production in Niger coupled with a deficit in Nigeria would means a large part of the grain grown in Niger will pass over the border, and Niger could be left with a shortage as happened in the major crisis in 2005. In that instance, much of the grain grown in Niger was found to have been used to feed chickens in some of Nigeria's vast chicken farms, even as people starved in Niger.

They say no volcanic explosion is imminent -- that already happened 642,000 years ago, creating the volcanic crater known as a caldera where part of Yellowstone Lake sits. But SATELLITE READINGS SHOW JUST HOW VOLCANICALLY ACTIVE THE AREA REMAINS, the researchers reported in the journal Science. From the middle of 2004 through 2006, the floor of THE CALDERA ROSE 7 INCHES AT A RATE OF 2.8 INCHES A YEAR -- the biggest rise ever measured, they reported.

"There is no evidence of an imminent volcanic eruption or hydrothermal explosion. That's the bottom line," University of Utah seismologist Robert Smith said in a statement. "A lot of calderas worldwide go up and down over decades without erupting."

Yellowstone is North America's largest volcanic field, produced by what is known as a hotspot, a plume of hot and molten rock squirting up from 400 miles beneath the planet's surface. Monstrous eruptions took place there starting 2 million years ago but activity bubbles along much more calmly now -- akin to similar volcanic fields such as the Campi Flegrei just outside Naples in Italy.

Beneath the field lies what is known as a magma chamber, which is actually similar to a wet sponge in structure.

"Our best evidence is that the crustal magma chamber is filling with molten rock," Smith said. "But WE HAVE NO IDEA HOW LONG THIS PROCESS GOES ON before there either is an eruption or the inflow of molten rock stops and the caldera deflates again."

The unrest in the Muslim West African state's dusty seaside capital, which followed afternoon prayers, erupted after similar protests in southeastern towns this week in which at least one protester was killed and several were injured. The protests were triggered by sharp rises in the prices of grains and other basic foodstuffs.

Record prices for grains and other crops is making life difficult for millions in West Africa, one of the poorest parts of the world, and is raising fears of severe food shortages. Unprecedented oil prices have increased transport costs, while the explosion in biofuels, subsidised by some Western countries for being less environmentally damaging than fossil fuels, has also contributed to the rise.

An accelerating slide in the U.S. dollar this week has been driven by a growing conviction that the U.S. Federal Reserve will be forced into further steep interest rate cuts. And as dollar losses against the yen started to spiral on Friday, fears have risen of a mass unwinding of the yen "CARRY TRADE" -- currency trades funded by cheap, low interest rate yen and estimated to be worth up to $200 billion.

Sudden losses on these trades -- which thrive when currency market volatility is low -- could force speculative hedge funds to cut other market bets to fund those losses, and also reverse the flood of Japanese money invested overseas in recent years. "The potential for a further carry unwind -- presuming we are now in a second wave of risk aversion -- is quite high now," said Michael Metcalfe, senior strategist at State Street.

The global financial system supercharged historically low central bank interest rates in recent years in several ways but there were three powerful injections.

ONE WAS THROUGH REPACKAGING BANK LOANS into securities for sale to a wide range of investors, freeing up bank balance sheets to allow them to lend more. Those markets are NOW IN MELTDOWN after a U.S. mortgage market bust called into question valuations of these complex instruments.

THE SECOND was via leveraged buyouts by the likes of private equity firms, WHO USED CHEAP CREDIT TO RAISE CASH AND PUMPED BILLIONS INTO STOCK MARKETS VIA A WAVE OF TAKEOVERS. The credit squeeze has put much of this activity on ice.

And THE THIRD AMPLIFIER WAS CURRENCY CARRY TRADES, with cheap yen financing at its core. Now that too looks at risk.

"Carry trades do not work in this sort of environment, they work in a low-volatility stable environment," said David Brickman, credit strategist at Lehman Brothers. "Therefore carry trades get unwound and dollar/yen has further to go." Japan's top financial diplomat Hiroshi Watanabe earlier this year guessed investors might have borrowed between 10 and 20 trillion yen: at current exchange rates, anywhere up to $200 billion.

THE BANK FOR INTERNATIONAL SETTLEMENTS IN JUNE WARNED THAT THIS WAS AN ACCIDENT WAITING TO HAPPEN.

Most journalists find it difficult to take seriously that TENS OF MILLIONS OF AMERICANS, filled with fantasies of revenge and empowerment, long to leave a world they despise. These Armageddonites believe that they alone will get a quick, free pass when they are "raptured" to paradise, no good deeds necessary, not even a day of judgment.

THESE END-TIMERS HAVE GREAT INFLUENCE OVER THE U.S. GOVERNMENT'S FOREIGN POLICY. They are thick with the Republican leadership. At a recent conference in Washington, congressional leader Roy Blunt, for example, has said that their work is "part of God's plan." At the same meeting, where speakers promoted attacking Iran, former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay glorified "end times." INDEED THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION OFTEN CONSULTS WITH THEM ON MIDEAST POLICIES.

AMERICAN FUNDAMENTALISTS STRONGLY SUPPORTED THE DECISION TO INVADE IRAQ IN 2003. THEY CONSISTENTLY SUPPORT ISRAEL'S HARD-LINE POLICIES. AND THEY ARE BEATING THE DRUMS FOR WAR AGAINST IRAN. Thanks to these end-timers, American foreign policy has turned much of the world against us, including most Muslims, nearly a quarter of the human race.

Conservative Christian writer Gary North estimates the number of Armageddonites at about 20 million. Many of them have an ecstatic belief in the cleansing power of apocalyptic violence. They are among the more than 30% of Americans who believe that the world is soon coming to an end. Armageddonites may be a minority of the evangelicals, but THEY HAVE VOCAL LEADERS AND CONTROL 2,000 MOSTLY FUNDAMENTALIST RELIGIOUS RADIO STATIONS.

On foreign policy issues, they are violently against the pending Law of the Seas Treaty, indeed any treaty which possibly circumscribes U.S. power to go it alone. They want illegal immigrants expelled and oppose more immigration. They fear China's growth. They despise Europeans for not being more warlike. The UN figures prominently in their fears, and the Left Behind books present its Secretary General as the Antichrist. Domestically, they strongly support the USA PATRIOT Act and all of President Bush's actions, legal or illegal.

Theologian Richard Fenn writes, "Silent complicity (by mainline churches) with apocalyptic rhetoric soon becomes collusion with plans for religiously inspired genocide. THEIR DEATH-WISHING 'RELIGION' IS ACTUALLY ANTI-CHRISTIAN and should be challenged openly by traditional Christians.

"With the release of the British High Court judgement overnight that found that 'An Inconvenient Truth' was littered with nine inconvenient untruths, IT IS CLEAR THAT AL GORE EMBELLISHED THE TRUTH TO CREATE DRAMATIC EFFECT."

"Given that the Oscar Award was presented in the documentary category and not the drama category, the only appropriate action now is for the Academy to rescind the Award as it was clearly INAPPROPRIATELY CLASSED AS A DOCUMENTARY.

"The truth, as inconvenient as it is to Al Gore, is that HIS SO-CALLED DOCUMENTARY CONTAINED CRITICAL DISTORTIONS THAT ARE QUITE CONTRARY TO THE PRINCIPLES OF GOOD DOCUMENTARY JOURNALISM. GOOD DOCUMENTARIES SHOULD BE FACTUALLY CORRECT. CLEARLY THIS DOCUMENTARY IS NOT.

"If the integrity of the Academy Awards is to remain intact, it is wholly appropriate that Al Gore be stripped of his 'Best Documentary' film Oscar. If the Academy wishes to acknowledge the work of people like Al Gore they should form a new category of film called 'Political Drama'. That's how 'An Inconvenient Truth' should be categorised", Dr Newman said.

"There are definitely some inaccuracies," Marciano added. "The biggest thing I have a problem with is this implication that Katrina was caused by global warming." Marciano went on to explain that, "global warming does not conclusively cause stronger hurricanes like we've seen," pointing out that "by the end of this century we might get about a 5 percent increase."

The case stems from a father's claims that the film is brainwashing propaganda, who told The Telegraph, "I am determined to prevent my children from being subjected to political spin in the classroom."

The Business and Media Institute has extensively critiqued the media's coverage of global warming in Fire & Ice, which covers a hundred years of coverage of global warming. While journalists have warned of climate change for more than 100 years, the warnings switched from global cooling to warming to cooling and warming again. Marciano also sarcastically said, "the Oscars, they give out awards for fictional films as well."

Some dastardly scientists with environmental and political motives MANIPULATED LONG TERM SCIENTIFIC DATA to create an illusion of rapid global warming. Other scientists of the same environmental whacko type jumped into the circle to support and broaden the "research" to further enhance the totally slanted, bogus global warming claims. Their friends in government steered HUGE RESEARCH GRANTS their way to keep the movement going. SOON THEY CLAIMED TO BE A CONSENSUS.

Environmental extremists, notable politicians among them, then teamed up with movie, media and other liberal, environmentalist journalists to create this wild "scientific" scenario of the civilization threatening environmental consequences from Global WARMING UNLESS WE ADHERE TO THEIR RADICAL AGENDA.

Now their ridiculous manipulated science has been accepted as fact and become a cornerstone issue for CNN, CBS, NBC, the Democratic Political Party, the Governor of California, school teachers and, in many cases, well informed but very gullible environmentally conscientious citizens. Only one reporter at ABC has been allowed to counter the Global Warming frenzy with one 15 minute documentary segment.

However, Global Warming, i.e. Climate Change, is not about environmentalism or politics. It is not a religion. It is not something you "believe in." It is science; THE SCIENCE OF METEOROLOGY. THIS IS MY FIELD OF LIFE-LONG EXPERTISE. AND I AM TELLING YOU GLOBAL WARMING IS A NON-EVENT, A MANUFACTURED CRISIS AND A TOTAL SCAM. I say this knowing you probably won't believe a me, a mere TV weatherman, challenging a Nobel Prize, Academy Award and Emmy Award winning former Vice President of United States. So be it.

I have read dozens of scientific papers. I have talked with numerous scientists. I have studied. I have thought about it. I know I am correct. There is no run away climate change. The impact of humans on climate is not catastrophic.

In time, a decade or two, the outrageous scam will be obvious. As the temperature rises, polar ice cap melting, coastal flooding and super storm pattern all fail to occur as predicted everyone will come to realize we have been duped. The sky is not falling. AND, NATURAL CYCLES AND DRIFTS IN CLIMATE ARE AS MUCH IF NOT MORE RESPONSIBLE FOR ANY CLIMATE CHANGES UNDERWAY. I strongly believe that the next twenty years are equally as likely to see a cooling trend as they are to see a warming trend.

JOHN COLEMAN, the founder of The Weather Channel - currently works with KUSI in San Diego.

He has been guided by Fr John Walsh, a former RAF chaplain who celebrated mass at Chequers, and Fr Mark O'Toole, the cardinal's secretary. His path to Rome will come as no surprise because his wife Cherie and four children are Catholics and the family have worshipped together for years.

Mr Blair, in one of his final acts as prime minister, met Pope Benedict XVI at the Vatican when he told him of his wish to leave the Church of England. The imminent conversion was disclosed by the respected Catholic newspaper The Tablet, which predicted the service would be held this month. He decided to remain an Anglican because of the potential complexities of conversion while in office.

Some lawyers believe the 1829 Emancipation Act, which gave Roman Catholics full civil rights, may still prevent a Catholic from becoming prime minister. Clauses in the Act state that no Catholic adviser to the monarch can hold civil or military office.

To complete his conversion, Mr Blair must recite the Catholic creed and state: "I believe and profess all that the holy Catholic Church believes, teaches, and proclaims to be revealed by God."

Last month, Congress passed and President Bush signed into law an increase in the government's borrowing ceiling to $9.815 trillion. It was the fifth debt limit increase since Bush took office in January 2001. Those increases have totaled $3.865 trillion.

The national debt is the total of the annual budget deficits plus money that the government borrows from the Social Security and other government trust funds.

The total national debt is actually higher than $9 trillion because it includes borrowing by some agencies that are not covered by the congressional debt limit. That total was $9.086 trillion on Tuesday.

It took the country from George Washington until Ronald Reagan to reach the first $1 trillion in debt.

Coupled with storms and high tides, the wave could leave swathes of the east coast under water, according to the Environment Agency. A combination of gale force winds off the coast of Scotland and high tides are expected to cause floods which could breach sea defences. The surge is expected to hit the Norfolk, Suffolk and Essex coastline from early tomorrow morning. About 8,000 properties in Great Yarmouth and 1,800 in Lowestoft could be at risk.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown has called a special COBRA Cabinet Office meeting to coordinate an emergency reponse. John Healey, minister of state for local communities, said: "COBRA will be on full alert throughout the night, and the Prime Minister will be keeping in close touch and keeping on top of things." The spokesman likened the current conditions to those leading up to the floods of 1953. More than 300 people were killed when a surge from the North Sea flooded almost 100,000 hectares of eastern England.

"In 1953, there was a 3.2-metre surge and also high tides and a storm. It's comparable but we're much better prepared now," he said. Nine severe weather warnings have been issued covering coastal areas from the north-east to Anglia. There are also 10 flood warnings and 24 flood watches in place. The Dartford Creek and Thames barriers were closed at 8pm to cope with the expected high water.

From January to September, Japanese exports to China totalled 12.756 trillion yen ($113.1 billion), slightly topping the 12.568 trillion yen of exports to the United States. Given that China-bound exports are surging while shipments to the United States have been sluggish largely because of US housing loan problems, the gap is likely to widen in the final three months of this year, economists say.

The fate of the US economy, though, will remain more important for Japan for some time, economists say, because a large part of Japan's exports to China consists of machine parts that are assembled and then sold to the United States and other countries.

"It's true that demand from China is very strong," said Takumi Tsunoda, economist at Shinkin Central Bank. This year, Japan's exports to China look set to top 16 trillion yen, twice the level of just five years ago.