In his second encyclical - the most authoritative statement a pope can issue - the pontiff will denounce the use of "tax havens" and offshore bank accounts by wealthy individuals, since this reduces tax revenues for the benefit of society as a whole.

It will focus on humanity's social and economic problems in an era of globalisation. Pope Benedict intends to argue for a world trade and economic system "regulated in such a way as to avoid further injustice and discrimination", Ignazio Ingrao, a Vatican watcher, said yesterday.

The encyclical, drafted during his recent holiday in the mountains of northern Italy, takes its cue from Pope Paul VI's encyclical Populorum Progressio (On the Development of Peoples), issued 40 years ago. In it the pontiff focused on "those peoples who are striving to escape from hunger, misery, endemic diseases and ignorance and are looking for a wider share in the benefits of civilisation". He called on the West to promote an equitable world economic system based on social justice rather than profit.

This week the Italian centre-left Government of Romano Prodi began a concerted crackdown on tax evaders, saying that it would target individuals with second homes and other signs of "conspicuous wealth". If the black economy is included, unpaid taxes amount to 27 per cent of Italy's gross domestic product.

Mr Prodi, a devout Catholic, urged church leaders to speak out on tax evasion, telling the Catholic magazine Famiglia Cristiana that a third of Italians heavily evaded taxes, which were needed to plug Italy's huge budget deficit. "Why, when I go to Mass, is this issue almost never touched upon in homilies?" Mr Prodi asked, adding: "If memory serves, St Paul exhorted the faithful to obey authority."

BOTH THE U.N. SECURITY COUNCIL AND THE INTERNATIONAL ATOMIC ENERGY AGENCY HAVE FOUND IRAN IN BREACH OF ITS OBLIGATIONS UNDER THE NUCLEAR NON-PROLIFERATION TREATY. The IAEA reports that Iran ignored the Security Council's February deadline to stop enriching uranium and has even expanded its nuclear program.

As Iran's Atomic Energy Organization moves toward its announced goal of operating 50,000 uranium enrichment centrifuges in Natanz, THE WORLD BANK IS FUNDING NINE GOVERNMENT PROJECTS IN IRAN TOTALING $1.35 BILLION -- ONE OF WHICH OPERATES IN ISFAHAN, WHERE IRAN'S NUCLEAR PROGRAM IS HEADQUARTERED.

While the World Bank is part of the U.N. family, the bank's board is disconnected from the policies of key U.N. agencies -- especially the Security Council and the IAEA. THE UNITED STATES REMAINS THE TOP INVESTOR IN THE WORLD BANK, CONTRIBUTING $950 MILLION IN 2006 AND $940 MILLION THIS YEAR. IN JUNE THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES APPROVED ANOTHER $950 MILLION. Meanwhile, the bank will disburse $220 million to Iran this year, with more than $870 million in the pipeline for 2008, 2009 and 2010.

Presidents Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton and Bush all certified that Iran is a state sponsor of terrorism. The Treasury Department's Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence spends considerable effort locating Iranian assets to freeze.

ONE HAS TO WONDER WHY A COUNTRY THAT EXPORTS 2.6 MILLION BARRELS OF OIL A DAY NEEDS WORLD BANK DEVELOPMENT ASSISTANCE. Iran's oil export revenue nearly doubled between 2003 and 2005, from $23.7 billion to $46.6 billion. That number grew to $50 billion last year. Iran's real gross domestic product grew 4.8 percent in 2004 and 5.6 percent in 2005. Why does Iran need World Bank aid?

Furthermore, the bank's investment in Iran stands in stark contrast to its work in Iraq. IRAQ WAS A FOUNDING MEMBER OF THE WORLD BANK IN 1945, YET IT TOOK THE BANK 2 1/2 YEARS AFTER THE FALL OF SADDAM HUSSEIN TO APPROVE ONE DEVELOPMENT PROJECT. To date, the board has approved only four projects, totaling $399 million, for the new Iraqi government -- and little of that money has been spent.

THE WORLD BANK'S BOARD IS NOT ONLY DISCONNECTED FROM THE SECURITY COUNCIL'S POLICIES BUT IS ALSO AT ODDS WITH THE IRAN POLICIES OF BRITISH PRIME MINISTER GORDON BROWN, FRENCH PRESIDENT NICOLAS SARKOZY AND GERMAN CHANCELLOR ANGELA MERKEL. As the Treasury acts to dry up funding for Tehran, the World Bank is providing support to the Iranian government through 2010.

This summer the bank has gotten a president who works well with allies -- former deputy secretary of state Robert Zoellick. It would be prudent for Zoellick to realign the bank's policies with Security Council resolutions on Iran. AS LONG AS THE SECURITY COUNCIL CONDEMNS THE ACTIONS OF AHMADINEJAD, THE WORLD BANK SHOULD SUSPEND FUNDING FOR HIS GOVERNMENT.

The eminent socialist Gregorio Peces-Barba Martínez, one of the authors of the current Spanish national constitution, made headlines in Spain Wednesday when HE THREATENED THE CATHOLIC CHURCH WITH A "NEW STATUS" IN SPANISH SOCIETY if it didn't stop attacking his new "Education for Citizenship and Human Rights" program for Spanish public schools.

"Education for Citizenship", which purports to instruct students in matters of ethics, IS IN REALITY A VAGUELY-WORDED PROGRAM THAT SEEKS TO INDOCTRINATE CHILDREN WITH THE SEXUAL IDEOLOGY AND SOCIAL AGENDA OF THE SPANISH LEFT, INCLUDING THE ACCEPTANCE OF HOMOSEXUALITY. The program's stated goals include teaching children to reject "existing discrimination for reason of sex, origin, social differences, affective-sexual, or whatever other type" and to exercise a "critical evaluation of the social and sexual division of labor and racist, xenophobic, sexist, and homophobic social prejudices."

The Spanish Catholic bishops have responded with condemnations of the program, including an official statement that says that the program "implies a serious wound to the original and inalienable right of parents and schools, in collaboration with them, to choose the moral formation that they want for their children. This is a right recognized by the Spanish Constitution (article 27.3). The government cannot supplant the society as an educator of the moral conscience." It goes on to state that "the educational centers of the government, losing their obligatory ideological neutrality, will impose on whomever has chosen the Catholic religion and morality another moral formation that hasn't been chosen by them."

The archbishop of Madrid, Antonio Marí¡ Rouco Varela, later clarified that "no one rejects the idea of having an obligatory course on citizenship, which is good," but added that "the concrete form" in which the government has developed the course "IS AN ETHICAL-MORAL EDUCATIONAL PROGRAM THAT NEGATES RELIGION".

The bishops, COMPLAINED PECES-BARBA, "ASSUME A TRADTIONAL ANTI-MODERN AND CLERICAL CULTURE THAT IS OPPOSED TO MANY LEGAL CONCLUSIONS OF THE DEMOCRATIC GOVERNMENT, AND THAT IT INTENDS TO SELL AS THE TRUTH THAT SETS US FREE. NOW IT IS EDUCATION FOR CITIZENSHIP, BEFORE IT WAS DIVORCE, ABORTION, THE TEACHING OF RELIGION, AND HOMOSEXUAL MARRIAGE."

The socialist added that the Catholic Church must back down from criticism of its plan or suffer consequences. "If this new climate is not obtained in the next legislature," he wrote, "it will be necessary TO ADDRESS THE TOPIC OF THE ACTIONS AND SITUATION OF THE CHURCH AND ESTABLISH A NEW STATUS, THAT PUTS THEM IN THEIR PLACE AND THAT RESPECTS THE AUTONOMY OF THE CIVIL AUTHORITY."

The warning, made in the Spanish socialist newspaper "El Pais", followed on the heels of a speech by Spanish President Emelio Zapatero on July 22, who said, in defence of the Education for Citizenship program that, "no faith can impose itself on the law", a statement understood as a reference to the Church, and subsequently cited by Peces-Barba in his article. ACCORDING TO SPANISH MEDIA SOURCES, THE RULING SOCIALISTS ARE EAGER TO MAKE CHANGES TO THE EXISTING LEGAL STATUS OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH IN THAT COUNTRY.

Nearly two dozen cities already have signed up to participate in a pro-life campaign that will stage prayer vigils outside their abortion businesses 24 hours a day for the 40-day period from Sept. 26 through Nov. 4 - a total of 960 hours of prayer, officials say. And that's from just the first day of the week-long sign-up period.

"God is amazing," said Shawn Carney, a spokesman for the campaign called 40 Days for Life. "That is more communities than we ever originally expected to participate in this ambitious pro-life initiative, and there are still six days left for communities to register. WE CAN'T WAIT TO SEE WHAT GOD HAS IN STORE FOR AMERICA THIS FALL!"

As WND has reported, the 40 Days is an intensive pro-life effort that will focus attention on prayer and fasting, as well as the 40 days of round-the-clock peaceful prayer vigils at abortion facilities, officials said.

There also will be intensive community outreaches designed to draw more people into the effort to defeat ABORTION IN AMERICA, WHICH HAS COST BY MOST ESTIMATES MORE THAN 40 MILLION LIVES SINCE IT WAS LEGALIZED BY THE U.S. SUPREME COURT IN ROE V. WADE IN 1973.

QINGLIAN HE testified before the commission on China's "perception management." China's information control is carried out through controlling editors and reporters. ALL CHINESE MEDIA, including newspapers, periodicals, news agencies, TV stations, broadcasting, the movie industry and art performances, ARE CATEGORIZED AND MANAGED AS "MOUTHPIECES" OF THE RULING COMMUNIST PARTY.

"As part of China's political institutions, information and mind control has been conducted for more than half century since the Chinese Communist Party took power in 1949," said He, a former Chinese government propagandist and now a senior researcher at 'Human Rights in China'. "'Mind control' includes indoctrination from kindergarten to college through officially compiled textbooks, as all teachers are categorized as 'educators of CCP'. These controls are exercised by the Party's Central Department of Propaganda", she said.

THE GOVERNMENT DISINFORMATION THEMES INCLUDE THAT THE UNITED STATES IS A "KEY ENEMY OF CHINA," THAT THE U.S. INTERVENES AND RESTRAINS CHINA AND BACKS INDEPENDENCE FORCES IN TAIWAN AND TIBET, she said. Other disinformation themes include the notion that the U.S. is a world hegemonic power, fears a stronger China and therefore seeks to "contain" China.

"Economic reform and Opening Policy from 1979 have never shaken or changed mechanism of the control," she said. Information control is crucial to communist rule and has been used by Beijing "to mislead the Chinese population from values of human rights and democracy, and from truth as well," she said.

The military said it had lost 26 soldiers and killed around 31 militants in three days of fighting on the volatile island of Jolo. Thursday saw the heaviest toll after militants ambushed a military convoy. The military said the arrival of extra forces would bring to 4,000 the number of troops stationed in the area.

Government troops, backed by US military trainers, have been fighting Islamist militants affiliated to various groups who have been hiding in the island's mountainous terrain for several months. The stakes were raised last month after 14 marines were killed on nearby Basilan island, with 10 of them beheaded.

Militants from Abu Sayyaf and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) were suspected of being behind the attacks. The MNLF, which signed a peace deal with the government in 1996, claimed responsibility for Thursday's ambush, saying it was in retaliation for earlier army offensives.

But military officials have also blamed Abu Sayyaf, the group behind the Philippines' worst terror attack - a ferry bombing in 2004 that killed more than 100 people. The US has listed Abu Sayyaf as a terrorist organisation and says it has links to Al-Qaeda, as well as the regional militant group Jemaah Islamiah.

Bees are dying across the world at a terrifying rate. The apian epidemic started in the United States, where entire populations of honey bees have simply vanished in the phenomenon known as colony collapse disorder (CCD). At least a quarter of America's 2.5 million honeybee colonies have been wiped out already, and CCD has spread to Brazil, Canada and parts of Europe.

Bee populations are also sharply reduced in Britain, with some keepers reporting the abandonment of more than half their hives. Defra insists that this is not due to CCD, but many beekeepers fear that the mysterious affliction has arrived here.

There are many theories about the cause of the population plunge - parasites, GM crops, pesticides, global warming, and even radiation from mobile phones interfering with bee navigation - but no conclusions. The implications for humanity of the disappearing bee are enormous: honeybees pollinate about 80 per cent of flowering crops, which in turn furnish one third of the human diet.

The economic contribution that bees make to agriculture and horticulture in this country has been estimated at £1 billion, yet the looming threat to the bee population has been all but ignored.

We need bees. When Tolstoy had given up everything else - meat, tobacco, religion - he still loved his bees. Einstein is said to have calculated, perhaps apocryphally: "If the bee disappeared off the surface of the globe then Man would have only four years of life left. No more bees, no more pollination, no more plants, no more animals, no more life."

Bees are not as cute as dolphins or as obviously useful as cows, yet as they perish in ever increasing numbers, they are trying to tell us something, and we had better listen.

The Fed, in a short statement, said it will provide "reserves as necessary" to help the markets safely make their way. The central bank did not provide details but said it would do all it can to "facilitate the orderly functioning of financial markets."

THE FED PUSHED $38 BILLION IN TEMPORARY RESERVES INTO THE SYSTEM FRIDAY, ON TOP OF A SIMILAR MOVE THE DAY BEFORE.

Financial markets in the United States and around the globe have been shaken by fears about spreading credit problems that started with home mortgages for those with tarnished credit histories. Investors are worried that these problems will infect the larger financial system and possibly hurt the U.S. economy.

These new claims come as a fourth suspected case of foot and mouth disease is being investigated - 16 miles from the original outbreak. Andrew King, a former department head of the Institute of Animal Health in Pirbright, Surrey, said biosecurity was so tight that the outbreak had to have been caused deliberately.

"As far as I am concerned the authorities have failed to find any chink in the armoury of the establishment's biosecurity," he said. "What you are left with is human movement, which is not a matter for the institute, it's a police matter. It's very, very unlikely that it could be spread by accident." He added: "It has to be regarded as a bit fishy."

Government officials have established a 3km (1.8 mile) exclusion zone around a farm thought to be near Wotton, close to Dorking in Surrey - 16 miles from the original outbreak.

By the close of trade in Japan, the Nikkei share index was down 406.5 points, or 2.4%, at 16,764.1.

Japan's central bank followed the European Central Bank in pumping money into the market to boost liquidity.

In London the benchmark FTSE 100 opened nearly 2% lower, the French Cac opened down 1.83%, and German Dax down 1.9%. It comes a day after the FTSE closed down nearly 2%, and following an overnight decline of close to 3% on the Dow Jones index in New York.

The Bank of Japan injected one trillion yen ($8.5bn; £4.2bn) into the financial system on Friday.

The Reserve Bank of Australia on Friday added more than twice the usual amount of money into the banking system, injecting A$4.95bn ($4.19bn; £2.08bn) in its regular morning money market operation.

Central banks in Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines intervened to sell dollars to support their currencies.

Analysts say that a credit crunch - when it becomes harder for banks, companies and consumers to get access to loans and cash to run their operations - is a serious occurrence that could lead to a recession.

The declines in the US markets came despite attempts by President George W Bush to calm market fears.

Around 8,000 of nearly 16,500 murder victims in 2005, or 49 percent, were black Americans, according to the report released by the statistics bureau of the Department of Justice. Broken down by gender, 6,800 black men were murdered in 2005, making up more than half the nearly 13,000 male murder victims.

Black women made up 35 percent, or 1,200, of the nearly 3,500 female homicide victims. Young black men aged between 17 and 29 bore a disproportionately high burden in the grim statistics, making up 51 percent of African-American murder victims. The percentage of white male murder victims in the same age group was 37 percent. More than half the murders of blacks took place in densely populated urban areas.

Firearms were involved 77 percent of the time in homicides involving black people and around 60 percent of the time in murders of whites. Most murder victims -- 93 percent of blacks and 85 percent of whites -- were killed by someone of their own race. Gang violence was involved in around five percent of homicides with black victims against seven percent for white victims.

In percentage terms, whites were twice as likely to be killed by a current or former partner than blacks -- 12 percent of whites were murdered by a life partner against six percent of blacks. Blacks were also at greater risk of rape or sexual assault than any other ethnic group except American Indians, the report showed.

A bastard so sick of how splintered we are politically - thanks mainly to our ineptitude in Iraq - that we have forgotten who the enemy is. It is not Bush and it is not Hillary and it is not Daily Kos or Bill O'Reilly or Giuliani or Barack. IT IS GLOBAL TERRORISTS WHO USE ISLAM TO JUSTIFY THEIR HIDEOUS SINS, INCLUDING BLOWING UP WOMEN AND CHILDREN.

Iraq has fractured the U.S. into jigsaw pieces of competing interests that encourage our enemies. WE ARE DEEPLY DIVIDED AND DIVISION IS WEAKNESS.

Most Americans today believe Iraq was a mistake. Why? Not because Americans are "anti-war." Americans loved the 1991 Gulf War. It raged for just 100 hours when George H.W. Bush ended it with a declaration of victory. He sent a half-million troops into harm's way and we suffered fewer than 300 deaths. America likes wars shorter than the World Series.

Bush I did everything right, Bush II did everything wrong - but he did it with the backing of Congress. Because the war has been a botch so far, Democrats and Republicans are attacking one another, when they aren't attacking themselves. The dialog of discord echoes across America.

Turn back to 9/11. Remember the community of outrage and national resolve? America had not been so united since the first Day of Infamy - 12/7/41. We knew who the enemy was then. We knew who the enemy was shortly after 9/11.

Because we have mislaid 9/11, we have endless sideshow squabbles about whether the surge is working, if we are "safer" now, whether the FBI should listen in on foreign phone calls, whether cops should detain odd-acting "flying imams," whether those plotting alleged attacks on Fort Dix or Kennedy airport are serious threats or amateur bumblers. We bicker over the trees while the forest is ablaze.

AMERICA'S FABRIC IS PULLING APART LIKE A CHEAP SWEATER. What would sew us back together? Another 9/11 attack. The Golden Gate Bridge. Mount Rushmore. Chicago's Wrigley Field. The Philadelphia subway system. The U.S. is a target-rich environment for al Qaeda. Is there any doubt they are planning to hit us again?

If it is to be, then let it be. It will take another attack on the homeland to quell the chattering of chipmunks and to restore America's righteous rage and singular purpose to prevail. The unity brought by such an attack sadly won't last forever. The first 9/11 proved that.

The rabbis were referring to a series of moves the past week in which the prime minister directed his security forces to bulldoze a synagogue near Judaism's third holiest site, destroy another synagogue near Judaism's second holiest site, boot a rabbi and his mobile yeshiva from Hebron - the world's oldest Jewish city - and forcibly remove two Jewish families from a Hebron Jewish market.

Olmert's actions are "anti-Jewish and hostile to Judaism in spite of the fact that he speaks Hebrew and dwells in the Land of the Patriarchs," read a statement by the Rabbinical Congress for Peace, a coalition of more than 350 Israeli rabbinic leaders and pulpit rabbis.

One of the synagogues destroyed this week was constructed so Jews can pray at Joseph's Tomb, Judaism's third holiest site, believed to be the burial place of the biblical patriarch Joseph - the son of Jacob who was sold by his brothers into slavery and later became the viceroy of Egypt.

The rabbis commented: "Our Sages tell us that there are three places in Israel that absolutely no one can contest its legal Jewish ownership because the Bible clearly records the sale and purchase of these places by Jews.

One is the area around the Cave of the Patriarchs as written in Genesis 23:16-18: "And Abraham weighed out to Ephron the money that he had mentioned - four hundred silver shekalim in negotiable currency. And Ephron's field - and the cave within it and all the trees in the field, within all its surrounding boundaries, was confirmed as Abraham's purchase."

The second place is Joseph's Tomb; as written in Genesis 33:19, "For one hundred kesitah... And Jacob bought the parcel of the field ... from the children of Hamor."

The third is the Temple Mount; as recorded in Chronicles 1: 21:25, "David gave Ornan for the place gold shekels weighing six hundred."

"How ironic and painful it is that precisely these three places that the nations of the world never thought of wresting from Jews, the Jews by their own volition give it up and say it belongs to the Arabs," the rabbis said.

Chief veterinary officer Debby Reynolds told a news conference a new 3km (1.8 mile) temporary control zone had been put around a farm west of Dorking. A confirmed outbreak at the site would be the first outside the existing 10km (6.2 miles) surveillance zone. That is around two Guildford farms where the disease has been confirmed.

Ms Reynolds said the new control zone at a farm to the west of Dorking - not far from the two confirmed cases of the disease near Guildford - had been set up after an "inconclusive assessment" of symptoms in cattle. Lib Dem environment spokesman Chris Huhne urged the government to consider vaccinations to stop the disease spreading.

"If it's a confirmed outbreak then I do think the government is going to have to look at other options than the culling option that it's been looking at so far," he told BBC News. "It does seem to be spreading outside the surveillance zone and the last thing we want is another 2001 spreading throughout the countryside."

The shift reflects the increasing diversity of the US, the result of immigration particularly from Central and South America and the higher birth rate among blacks and Hispanics. In 2000, according to the Census Bureau, whites were in a minority in 262 US counties, up from 183 in 1990.

Nationally, the number of minorities topped 100 million for the first time in 2006, to make up about one third of the population. By 2050, minorities will account for half of all US residents, the Census Bureau predicts.

The results will fuel the intense debate over immigration, one of the most contentious and pressing issues in many US communities, which have witnessed backlashes against immigrants, vigilante efforts such as border controls and a flood of state level laws borne of frustration with federal government inaction on the issue.