The so-called apparitions are taking place during meetings of the Cap-Verdi prayer group at St Paul's Catholic Church in the glitzy Cote d'Azur resort of Cannes. Believers say that Christ and the Virgin Mary have been appearing to them on a regular basis over the past six months.

Church-goer Rita Gomez, who helps run the prayer group, said: "The visions usually begin with the whole building trembling in the middle of a prayer meeting.
"Then various worshippers will fall off their seats shaking violently or being sick. When they come round a few minutes later, they say Christ or the Holy Virgin has appeared and spoken to them."

One 14-year-old girl had fits and began smashing windows, then began bleeding 'pinkish-yellow' blood, Miss Gomez said.
She added: "This might sound like the work of the devil rather than God, but everyone who experiences a vision says it was Jesus and Mary that appeared to them."

Clearly there is no appetite in any government for doing things the straightforward way - mandating clean energy, banning coal-fired electricity generation, clearing city centres of cars, forcing builders to adopt stringent energy efficiency standards. All this, we are told, will "damage competitiveness".

Yvo de Boer, the new executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, summed it up thus: "From looking at climate change policies as a cost factor for development, countries are starting to see them as opportunities to enhance economic growth in a sustainable way.

"The further development of carbon markets can help mobilise the necessary financial resources needed for a global response to climate change, and give us a future agreement that is focused on incentives to act."

Read these words in a positive way, and you visualise a mobilisation of business might to cool the Earth while making a profit - but turn the thought around, and what you have is the acknowledgment that making money, not reducing emissions, is the priority for governments and their advisers.

You certainly have an explanation for why the majority of the debates and conclusions here avoid any mention of reducing emissions.

At current rates, emissions will have risen by about 5% by the time they start talking.

Russian trade and economic minister, German Gref said the deal would allow Russia to compete "as an equal" in world markets. "This is a very significant event, which signals Russia's integration into the global trading system," he said.

"This is a historic step, the last step that signals the return of Russia to the market principles of the world economy." Russian president Vladimir Putin said the trade pact, which was essential for Moscow's admission to the WTO membership, would not have been possible without the political will of the US.

US trade representative Susan Schwab also welcomed the agreement. "The full integration of Russia into the global economy is in the interests of Russia and is also in the interests of the United States," she said.

The deal must be ratified in both countries and Russia must also agree a multilateral deal with the WTO as a whole - meaning it may be six months before its membership is complete.

Resistance

The US was the only member of the 149-nation WTO to withhold consent for Russia's membership.

Reservations about Russia's human rights record, state control over key energy resources, intellectual property rights and restrictions on the activity of foreign companies had all held up a deal. Russian resistance to sanctions against Iran in response to Tehran's nuclear ambitions also counted against it in US eyes.

Meanwhile, Russia has raised concerns about the sanitary conditions used in imports of meat from the US.

Much of the slowing is likely to be due to tightening measures, such as higher levels of bank reserves, as well as other restrictions recently added by the government aimed at reigning in corruption..

Meanwhile, China is facing complaints about its inability or unwillingness to control piracy, and counterfeiting, according to recent recommendations made by an advisory board to the U.S. Congress.

According to the latest report by the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission "U.S. customs officials have so far this year seized more than $150 million worth of pirated goods, most of it coming from China."

Carolyn Bartholomew, the Co-Chairman of the commission noted: '"Entire towns [in China] can depend on the revenue generated by counterfeiting," she said. "The Chinese government has failed to control such violations and typically prefers administrative fines, rather than the more effective avenue of criminal prosecutions."

With international banks having more access to the Chinese market, starting in December, as well as the potential for a global economic slowing into 2007, the big question is whether China can continue to grow its economy at double digit pace, independently of the rest of the world.

China urged Japan to strictly abide by its "three non- nuclear principles" and to adopt a responsible attitude in safeguarding regional peace and stability, the spokesman's office of Chinese foreign ministry in a statement.

According to Kyodo news agency, Japan's new government said on Tuesday it is "legally permitted" to possess nuclear arms as long as they remain at a "necessary minimum" level for self-defence.

China hopes Japan, as a signatory of the Nuclear Non- proliferation Treaty (NPT), will seriously carry out its obligations, according to the office.

"It was proven that, by means of an offensive operation that need not be equal to Israel's moves, it is possible to neutralize the Zionist navy," the article said triumphantly.

'Great war not far off'

It continued: "Just as in one 33-day war more than 50 percent of Israel was destroyed, and the hope of its supporters for the continued life of this regime was broken, it is likely that in the next battle, the second half will also collapse."

"On that day... Jordan will not be able to prevent the Jordanian Islamists from operating through the long Jordan-Palestine border, and the millions of Egyptian Islamists... will not let the Sinai-Israel border remain quiet, and the Syrian Golan Heights will not remain as a (mere) observer of the battle. That day is not so far off."

The Resalat newspaper struck a similarly bellicose tone with an editorial entitled "Preparations for the Great War."

"The great war is ahead of us, (and will break out) perhaps tomorrow, or in another few days, or in a few months, or even in a few Years... Israel must collapse," the newspaper said.

It added: "For the first time in the 60 years of its disgraceful life, the Zionist regime - the West's beloved in the Middle East - tasted the taste of defeat, and the citizens of this regime trembled at the menace of Hizbullah's missiles? The nation of Muslims must prepare for the great war, so as to completely wipe out the Zionist regime, and remove this cancerous growth. Like the Imam (Ayatollah) Khomeini said: 'Israel must collapse.'"

Speaking to Ynetnews, Professor Raymond Tanter, one of the authors of the forthcoming book 'What Makes Iran Tick,' which explores the Shiite Islamist ideology of Iran, said there was no questioning the belief of Iran's leaders in the coming of the Mahdi.

"When Ahmadinejad was mayor of Tehran, he set up an urban renewal program that would make it easier to facilitate the Mahdi's return. He created passageways and roadways that would allow the Mahdi to return triumphantly. He operationalized this concept," Tanter added. The Iranian president did not view himself as the Shiite messiah though, according to Tanter.

Tanter noted Ahmadinejad's comments after a speech to the UN General Assembly in 2005, which he also concluded with a call for the Mahdi to return. After the speech, Ahmadinejad said that "the hand of God had held all of them" in a hypnotized-like state, and had "opened their eyes and ears."

Messianic nuclear weapons

There is a link between Iran's nuclear weapons program on one hand, and its ideology of trying to facilitate a cataclysmic event to hasten the return of the Mahdi. As a result, no conceivable positive or negative incentives will influence the leadership of the clerics and the revolutionary guards from acquiring nuclear weapons. They need nuclear weapons in order to facilitate the ideological precepts of the return of the Mahdi," said Tanter.

"The process of diplomacy as far as Ahmadinejad and Khamenei are concerned is to prevent sanctions that would constrain the nuclear weapons progress, and to that extent Iran has done well to drag out this process," he added.

An excerpt from 'What Makes Iran Tick' left no doubts over the authors view of Iran's intentions: "Just as it is in the nature of the scorpion to sting, so it is in the nature of the ayatollahs ruling Iran to establish an Islamic empire and destroy Israel."

Who are the GCC Countries?

Arabia, the area made up of the Arabian Peninsula, is located in the south western region of the Asian continent. Covering about 3 million square kilometres, the south eastern area of the peninsula is the Rub'al-Khali, the Empty Quarter, which is the world's largest expanse of continuous sand.

Politically, the Arabian Peninsula consists of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, the Sultanate of Oman, and the Republic of Yemen. Together, these countries (excluding the Republic of Yemen) constitute the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC).

Founded on 26 May 1981, the aim of this collective is to promote coordination between member states in all fields in order to achieve unity.

The UAE central bank decided this year to convert 10% of its largely dollar-denominated foreign exchange reserves into euros and gold.
The bank is watching for the impact of US monetary policy on the dollar and waiting for a dip in the euro before making the switch, the UAE central bank's governor said in September.

With the US Federal Reserve halting a two-year campaign of monetary tightening in August, markets have become particularly sensitive to any suggestion that central banks, especially those in countries with large current account surpluses, are moving some of their holdings away from dollars into euros.

"While we have thwarted many terrorist attacks against our economies, we have not been able to stop them all," the report by the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Forum's counter-terrorism task force said.

"Terrorism will remain a threat to the stability and growth of our region and it is a threat we must continue to face together.

The document is to be issued during the 21-member APEC's annual summit in Hanoi to be attended by US President George W Bush and the leaders of China, Russia and 18 other economies.

It warned: "the terrorist threat is constantly evolving, and we must work together to be flexible in our responses and to prepare our economies for these new security concerns."

One concern raised by the United States is the risk of militants poisoning or contaminating the food supply chain, the report warned.

It urged APEC leaders to agree to take concerted action "to mitigate the threat of deliberate contamination of our food supply."

The summit involving Premier Steve Bracks moved to speed up action to deal with the biggest dry on record, including $200 million in aid for small businesses.
Measures announced after yesterday's summit included:

BRINGING forward a permanent interstate water trading scheme to January 1 next year.

AN EMERGENCY meeting on December 15 to consider plans for towns and cities along the Murray should there be no let-up in the drought over the next 18 months.

SMALL businesses that receive 70 per cent of their income from farms to be included in income support and interest rate subsidies that drought-stricken farmers are already entitled to.

STATES to pay 10 per cent of the small business interest rate subsidies and consider waiving or rebating water charges in drought declared areas.

STATES to consider following Victoria's lead in providing a 50 per cent rebate for council rates.
South Australian Premier Mike Rann said a briefing to the PM and the premiers of Victoria, NSW and South Australia by the Murray Darling Basin Commission suggested experts were dealing with unchartered territory.
"We were told at the meeting by the Murray-Darling commissioner that we now face, not a one-in-100-year drought, but a one-in-1000-year drought," Mr Rann said.

Climate change is a reality, and science confirms that human activities are heavily implicated in this change.
But over the last few years a new environmental phenomenon has been constructed in this country - the phenomenon of "catastrophic" climate change.

It seems that mere "climate change" was not going to be bad enough, and so now it must be "catastrophic" to be worthy of attention.

The increasing use of this pejorative term - and its bedfellow qualifiers "chaotic", "irreversible", "rapid" - has altered the public discourse around climate change.
This discourse is now characterised by phrases such as "climate change is worse than we thought", that we are approaching "irreversible tipping in the Earth's climate", and that we are "at the point of no return".

Fear and terror

The language of catastrophe is not the language of science. It will not be visible in next year's global assessment from the world authority of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

To state that climate change will be "catastrophic" hides a cascade of value-laden assumptions which do not emerge from empirical or theoretical science.
Is any amount of climate change catastrophic? Catastrophic for whom, for where, and by when? What index is being used to measure the catastrophe?

The language of fear and terror operates as an ever-weakening vehicle for effective communication or inducement for behavioural change.

The IPCC scenarios of future climate change - warming somewhere between 1.4 and 5.8 Celsius by 2100 - are significant enough without invoking catastrophe and chaos as unguided weapons with which forlornly to threaten society into behavioural change.
I believe climate change is real, must be faced and action taken. But the discourse of catastrophe is in danger of tipping society onto a negative, depressive and reactionary trajectory.

Mike Hulme is Professor of Environmental Sciences at the University of East Anglia, and Director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research

A senior US official reaffirmed Washington's support for Iraq's leaders but said they must increasingly assume responsibility for security.

The Iraq situation is a key issue in November's US mid-term elections.

"There's got to be another way," is how one member of the Iraq panel summed up their views on the situation in Iraq and the failure of current US policy, according to the LA Times.

Invitation to help

Mr Baker's commission, which is due to report in the next few months, is set to recommend significant change, and will advise against "staying the course".

The bipartisan task force, which was asked by the US Congress to examine the effectiveness of American policy in Iraq, has reportedly been looking at two options, both of which would amount to a reversal of the Bush administration's stance.

One is the phased withdrawal of US troops, the other is to invite Syria and Iran to come into Iraq to help stop the fighting.

Mr Baker, who was secretary of state under President George Bush, the current president's father, has so far stressed that the panel has not come to a definitive conclusion.

But he has indicated the direction of the panel's thinking in recent television interviews.

"Our commission believes that there are alternatives between the stated alternatives, the ones that are out there in the political debate of 'stay the course' and 'cut and run,'" he told ABC News recently.

Jamal Ismail is the journalist who received the message. He formerly worked for al-Jazeera. He told the News of Pakistan that he received a phone call Oct. 5 from Afghani.

"Afghani said he was speaking from somewhere in Kandahar province," reported Ismail. "In it, he advised Muslim residents of America to get out to escape harm because the U.S. could face big attacks in the month of Ramadan."

Ismail said it was the first time Afghani, who is head of the pro-Taliban cleric's consultative council and former ambassador of Afghanistan to Pakistan, had ever sent such a message.

"Afghani didn't say that it was a dream," recalled Ismail. "It appeared that he strongly believed that America was going to face punishment at the hands of Allah."

Last month, WND reported the new al-Qaida field commander in Afghanistan called for Muslims to leave the U.S. particularly Washington and New York in anticipation of a major terror attack to rival Sept. 11, according to an interview by another Pakistani journalist.

Mr Blair said the general had set "in proper context" what he was saying during the Today programme interview.

"What he is saying about wanting the British forces out of Iraq is precisely the same as we're all saying. Our strategy is to withdraw from Iraq when the job is done."

Mr Blair said when Sir Richard talked about the troops' presence exacerbating problems in Iraq, he thought he was "absolutely right".

"I've said the same myself, in circumstances where the Iraqis are ready to take over control of areas and we're still there."

In places like Basra, the presence of British troops was still "absolutely necessary", he said.

Mr Blair told the press conference he had received a "report" about the Daily Mail article on Thursday night, and Sir Richard was "plainly not" saying that troops should be withdrawn from Iraq immediately.

Iraqi response

A spokesman for Iraqi President Jalal Talabani said the departure of multi-national troops now "would be a disaster".

Iraq's ambassador to Britain, Dr Salah al-Shaikhly, said British soldiers were close to completing their mission.

"You've done marvellous in terms of the development, you've done marvellously in terms of keeping the security," he said.

White House spokesman Tony Snow said the United States had sought clarification on Sir Richard's comments.

"What he said is that the comment was taken out of context and his general point was that you know when your work is done you hand over authority to the Iraqis."

In Basra, Maj Gen Ali Hammadi, the Iraqi security co-ordinator, has told BBC's Newsnight that if the British stopped arrest operations in the city, the level of violence there would drop by 80%.

Pyongyang has faced mounting pressure over its nuclear programme. It is thought to have a handful of warheads but is not known to have tested one. Japanese PM Shinzo Abe said the plans were unacceptable and the international community would respond "harshly".

Six-nation talks on its programme have been stalled for nearly a year, and the US has imposed financial sanctions on North Korean businesses.

'Grave situation'

The statement from Pyongyang said it would "in the future conduct a nuclear test under the condition where safety is firmly guaranteed", though it did not state when.
The move comes after the UN imposed sanctions on North Korea in July, for test-firing seven missiles including a long-range Taepodong-2 - believed to be capable of reaching Alaska.

The missile tests also prompted South Korea to suspend aid to the North, and correspondents say China had been showing signs of frustration with its old Communist ally. Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Aso called the new test plans "totally unforgivable", Kyodo agency reported.

"Our response will be severe. This is more serious than the North's missile tests," he said. A successful nuclear test would put pressure on Japan and South Korea to develop their own nuclear capabilities.