This already has been communicated to American securities dealers, according to market participants with direct knowledge of the events. It is not clear whether China's motive is simple risk aversion in the wake of a sharp widening of corporate and mortgage spreads during the past two weeks, or whether there also is a political dimension. With the expected termination of the Federal Reserve's special facility to purchase mortgage-backed securities next month, some asset-backed spreads already have blown out, and the Chinese institutions may simply be trying to get out of the way of a widening.

There is some speculation that China's action has to do with the recent deterioration of US-Chinese relations over arm sales to Taiwan and other issues. That would be an unusual action for the Chinese to take - Beijing does not mix investment and strategic policy - and would be hard to substantiate in any event.

Hariri also complained in an interview published early Wednesday by the British Broadcasting System (BBC) that the Israel Air Force enters Lebanon's air space daily, which he claimed was a "threat" to the country. The statements are a turnabout for Hariri, in the past a moderate, and son of the assassinated former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri, who was anti-Syrian and who was backed by Western nations as well. The current prime minister also leads a coalition of political groups known as the March 14 Alliance, which in 2005 led mass demonstrations and with Western assistance pressured Syria to withdraw from Lebanon after a 29-year occupation.

Earlier this week, Syrian President Bashar Assad assured Lebanese Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri that Damascus would "stand alongside the government and the people of Lebanon against any possible Israeli aggression." The two men met Sunday in the Syrian capital to discuss "repeated Israeli threats on countries in the region and Israeli extremism which can... bring war to the region", according to the official SANA news agency.

Hizbullah terrorists have been "importing" weapons from Iran through the Syrian border since the end of the 2006 Second Lebanon War. The United Nations Resolution 1701 ceasefire agreement was to prevent such activity through deployment of the UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL).

Men like Wilhelm Nolling, former member of the German Central Bank Council, and Wilhelm Hankel, an economics professor critical of the euro, have been out of the spotlight for years. In the 1990s, they fought against the introduction of the common currency, even calling on Germany's high court to prevent the creation of the euro zone. But none of it worked.

Now both men are in demand again, and the old euro critics' beliefs are more relevant than ever. Were the skeptics right back then, when they said Europe wasn't ready for the euro zone? Were the differences too great and the politicians too weak to ensure a strict and stable course? Is the euro's high flight over now too? The news these days is alarming. It's causing a commotion on financial markets and intense discussion in capitals across Europe, as well as in Frankfurt, seat of the European Central Bank (ECB).

Accruing debt is becoming increasingly expensive for other countries in the euro zone as well, among them Portugal and Spain. The southern members of the euro zone are especially being eyed with mistrust. Speculators are betting that bonds will continue to fall and that, eventually, the countries won't be able to borrow any more money at all. State bankruptcies are seen as a possibility. "We've reached a point where it's possible to deal individual countries a lethal blow by downgrading their credit and boycotting their government bonds," Nolling warns.

Doing nothing is not an option. In light of the national debt in Greece, Portugal, Spain and Ireland, the euro zone is in danger of transforming from a "common destiny to a common liability," Nolling says. And so it won't be any ordinary meeting when finance ministers from the 16-euro zone countries meet for a regularly scheduled get-together in Brussels next Monday. The European Commission plans to assign each country homework to be completed in the coming years.

Downtown Washington resembled a ghost town with its 230,000 federal workers at home for a second day on Tuesday and many shops shut or closing early as more snow was predicted to pound the US East Coast, bringing another 9 more inches of snow. Offices were remaining closed at least through Wednesday.

Airports in Washington were closing early Tuesday, roughly a day after they reopened for service following the weekend storm. Most airlines canceled flights through Wednesday so their planes don't get stuck in the snow. Before snow began falling Tuesday night, lawmakers had already had trouble getting to the capital due to reduced flights and the House of Representatives had decided to scrap its entire work week.

In the past couple of days the US capital and its surrounding areas have seen as much snow as they normally see in a year and if the 9 inches predicted fall on Tuesday night it could become the snowiest winter since records were first kept in 1884. Nearby states were also bracing for another dumping and several had called a state of emergency. Meanwhile, in New York the United Nations announced that it would be closed Wednesday.

In the capital, government workers jostled with other residents in supermarket check-out lines, often 30-people long, to stock up on whatever staples were still available. Delivery trucks had trouble reaching many area supermarkets, leaving customers seeking cheese, fresh fruits and vegetables and even Diet Coke staring at empty shelves. "It's embarrassing that the world's largest superpower closes from a few feet of snow," said Alex Krause, 23, of Los Angeles, who was stranded in Washington and visiting the National Mall. "The Kremlin must be laughing."

Toyota has already had to bring millions of other vehicles back to dealerships amid accelerator and floormat problems. Honda - Japan's second-biggest carmaker - said the defective airbags can overinflate and burst, spraying potentially deadly metal shards. The fault has already been linked to 11 injuries and one fatality. Its shares fell in Japan after the announcement.

Just last month, Honda had to recall 650,000 Fit hatchbacks worldwide to fix a switch defect that could cause a fire. It said the fault could allow water to enter the power window mechanism, making components overheat. For Toyota, the problems continued as a US Congressional committee cast doubts on its plans to fix accelerator problems. A memo to lawmakers cited "substantial evidence" of redesigned floormats failing to stop the pedals sticking.

On Tuesday, Toyota recalled 436,000 hybrid vehicles worldwide, including its latest Prius, to fix brake faults. That comes on top of more than 8 million Toyotas recalled since last October for problems with slipping floormats and sticking accelerator pedals, linked to crashes that have killed at least 19 people.

The last time the Sun reached a peak in activity, satellite navigation was barely a consumer product. But the Sun is on its way to another solar maximum, which could generate large and unpredictable sat-nav errors. Solar flares - vast exhalations of magnetic energy from the Sun's surface - spray out radiation across the electromagnetic spectrum, from low-energy radio waves through to high-energy gamma-rays, along with bursts of high-energy particles toward the Earth.

The radiation or waves that come from the Sun can make sat-nav receivers unable to pick out the weak signal from satellites from the solar flare's aftermath. There is little that current technology can do to mitigate this problem, with the exception of complex directional antennas used in military applications. Sat-nav receivers will be blinded for tens of minutes, probably a few times a year at the solar maximum.

The effects that sat-nav users will face, however, are difficult to predict. "We can look at the measurements from the last solar maximum," Professor Mitchell said. "If we project those forward, it varies quite a lot across the Earth; looking at the UK it will be about 10-metre errors in the positioning." The errors would be much more long-lasting than the "blindness" problem, lasting hours or even days.

So as the Sun builds up to its crescendo in a few years' time, be aware that your sat-nav may for a time give some strange results - or for a short while none at all.

"The (Lisbon) treaty lays out a common security and defence policy. The federal government wants to make progress on this front," said Mr Westerwelle. "The long-term goal is to build up a European army under parliamentary control. The EU has to live up to political expectations of its role as a global player." The foreign minister sketched out a role for such an army as crisis management in a time of resource scarcity, to be developed by willing member states over time as a "motor for closer co-operation" in the EU.

In a nod to NATO, Mr Westerwelle said such EU structures would not replace other military structures. Germany's top diplomat received backing for his plan from his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, who called for a "single European military-political space" in which no one country's security was sacrificed for another. "We want to overcome the bloc-thinking of the Cold War in Europe and create a new kind of mutual trust," said Mr Lavrov.

European governments have been drawing up plans for a possible bail-out of Greece, amid fears it could be spiralling towards debt default. Worries about the health of public finances are also spreading to other countries. Speculators believe these states will be unable to meet their obligations to lenders and have taken up a short position on the currency. More than 40,000 deals have been made betting against the single currency, according to analysis of figures from the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. Some analysts claim the crisis is so deep the future of the euro could be put in peril, driving the value of the single currency lower.

Yesterday sterling traded at 1.14 euros.

The numbers underline the growing sense of panic about the euro zone's ability to cope with the government debt turmoil.

Economist Richard McGuire of RBC Capital Markets said: 'It is almost as if the banking crisis is now being replayed in the sovereign (government debt) space. The market concerns have this almost self-fulfilling quality to them.' Politicians are desperately trying to convince market players that they are serious about taking the debt-cutting measures needed to shore up their national finances.

But in Greece, the eye of the current storm, opposition to public spending cuts is growing. Some 600,000 state workers, from teachers to tax collectors, are planning to strike for 24 hours later this week as they protest the austerity measures planned by Prime Minister George Papandreou. Fiscal woes are hardly confined to the euro zone, however. British government bonds took a fresh hit amid claims the UK bears alarming similarities to those of Greece, Portugal and Spain.

The Archbishop is from the Church's liberal wing and a man who once espoused equal rights for gays within the Church. More recently he has adopted a conservative line for the sake of Church unity. Today he said: "There are ways of speaking about the question that seem to ignore these human realities or to undervalue them. I have been criticised for doing just this and I am profoundly sorry for the carelessness that could give such an impression."

Addressing the even more contentious debate over gay ordinations - something which threatens to split the Church farther with the expected consecration in May of Canon Mary Glasspool, a lesbian, as a bishop in Los Angeles - Dr Williams said it had not been helped by those who ignored the fact that many worshippers were gay, as well as many "sacrificial and exemplary priests".

He made it clear that there was blame on all sides of the argument that has brought the Church to the brink of splitting. He pleaded for Anglicans angry over gays and women bishops to cease fighting, admitting that he and other bishops might have to settle for a two-tier communion. In his wide-ranging address at Church House Westminster, Dr Williams said that the ordination of women bishops should not go ahead at the expense of the Church's Anglican Catholic wing, which is currently assessing an offer from the Pope to move over to Rome into a new Anglican Ordinariate.

Meanwhile 50 serving priests belonging to Reform, the evangelical group, signed an open letter saying that the situation could force them to cut off funding for dioceses and spend their money on training new vicars outside the Church instead. The established church, which introduced women to the priesthood in 1994, is committed to ordaining female bishops as well but the process has been held up by the entrenched positions of both supporters and opponents of the historic move.

Liberals argue that women should be introduced to the episcopate on the same basis and with the same powers as men, otherwise an unfair two-tier system will develop. However conservatives claim they were assured back when women priests were introduced that provisions would be made for them, similar to the "flying bishops" that currently cater for parishes that cannot accept the oversight of female vicars, when the next step was taken.

They want either an entirely new "men-only" province that could cover the whole of England, or extra junior bishops in dioceses who had not ordained women bishops and who would be answerable only to an Archbishop. The Church's revision committee, which is drawing up the legislation, was due to report back this week but the debate has been postponed until July as it struggles with the conflicting proposals.

The calls for broad retaliation over the planned US weapons sales to the disputed island came from officers at China's National Defence University and Academy of Military Sciences, interviewed by Outlook Weekly, a Chinese-language magazine published by the official Xinhua news agency. The interviews with Major Generals Zhu Chenghu and Luo Yuan and Senior Colonel Ke Chunqiao appeared in the issue published on Monday.

The People's Liberation Army (PLA) plays no role in setting policy for China's foreign exchange holdings. Officials in charge of that area have given no sign of any moves to sell US Treasury bonds over the weapons sales, a move that could alarm markets and damage the value of China's own holdings. While far from representing fixed government policy, the open demands for retaliation by the PLA officers underscored the domestic pressures on Beijing to deliver on its threats to punish the Obama administration over the arms sales.

"Our retaliation should not be restricted to merely military matters, and we should adopt a strategic package of counter-punches covering politics, military affairs, diplomacy and economics to treat both the symptoms and root cause of this disease," said Luo Yuan, a researcher at the Academy of Military Sciences.

"This is the year in which the Islamic state has to be confronted unless it once and for all stops developing nuclear weapons," said Liam Fox, the Conservative Party shadow defense secretary. Within the intelligence community the decision is seen as "a significant decision, one we have not heard since the Gulf War days," said an MI6 senior officer. All three services - MI6, MI5 and GCHQ - now have increased their briefings to Conservative leader David Cameron and Fox.

And army and navy chiefs have, for the first time, revealed to both men details of the full-scale attack Cameron, as the new prime minister, could launch. A planner in the Ministry of Defense, one of a large team, confirmed that the attack would consist of missiles rather than a land invasion as had happened in the two Gulf Wars.

"There would be Royal Navy ships and submarines based in the Gulf equipped with cruise missiles, supported by early warning aircraft and tankers for in-flight refueling for other planes," added the planner. Cameron has been briefed that the missile strike would be against Iran's three prime uranium enriching facilities at Isfahan and the heavy-water reactor at Arak. Low-yield bunker-busting (nuclear) bombs would be used against Natanz as the facility is buried deep underground. Britain would almost certainly be one of three nations involved in an attack. The United States and Israel would complete the strike force.

The Port of Dover is being recommended by Government advisers for sale to the French authorities. It is one of a string of public assets which have been earmarked for privatisation as the Government battles with a record 830 billion pounds of national debt.

The proposal for the port has prompted outrage. Prospective Tory MP for Dover Charles Elphicke said: 'It's clear Gordon Brown has no sense of the history of our nation or the pride of our town. How dare he consider selling it all off to the French? Dover is the English border. The people of Dover have a clear message for him - hands off our port, hands off the English border.'

The sale of the Port of Dover, Europe's busiest ferry port, could net up to 350 million pounds for the Treasury. Its harbour board applied to the Transport Secretary for voluntary privatisation last month. The sale is expected to be rubber-stamped and the leading bidder has emerged as Nord-pas-de-Calais regional council, which also owns Calais. Gwyn Prosser, the town's Labour MP, warned that jobs could be lost. The port's workforce has shrunk by 60 per cent over the past eight years. Mr Prosser said: 'This is a strategic asset and we must be careful about the import of foreign capital.'

This is what it looks like, the document of a conspiracy: 24 pages, with appendix, in Latin, published by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith at the Vatican. A "norma interna," or confidential set of guidelines for all bishops, who were required to keep it a secret for all eternity, in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost.

The guidelines, issued in the year of our Lord 1962, address a sensitive subject: sex in the confessional. The Vatican doesn't put it quite that directly, preferring to use more guarded terminology to describe what happens when a priest leads a member of his flock astray before, during or after the confession - in other words, when he provokes a penitent "toward impure and obscene matters" through "words or signs or nods of the head (or) by touch."

According to the instructions from Rome, the bishops were to deal very firmly with each individual case - so firmly, in fact, that everything would remain within the confines of the Holy Church. After all, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith - formerly known as the Inquisition - has centuries of experience in conducting internal investigations. The Vatican has always filled all the positions in such investigations - prosecutors, defendants, judges - from within its own ranks, while the investigation files have been kept in the secret archives of the Roman Curia.

On the surface, the Vatican's objective is to protect the sacrament of the confession. In reality, however, it is trying to uphold the Catholic Church's claim to being a superior moral authority. Nothing can be allowed to besmirch this authority: not the sexual abuse of children and adolescents, committed by thousands of Catholic priests worldwide; not the secret relationships between pastor and their housekeepers; not the covering-up of priests' children; and not the love affairs between gay clerics.

They are all cases of a double standard that arose because it is difficult for people - even priests - to subordinate their human desires to a papal encyclical. This code of silence has been upheld for decades, in some cases informally and in some cases by virtue of Vatican directives like the 1962 guideline.

Federal agencies that employ 230,000 in Washington were closed, as were many businesses and school districts across the region. The National Weather Service, meanwhile, issued a storm watch for the Washington area Tuesday, saying there was potential for another 5 inches or more of snow. Forecasters expect highs in the low- to mid-30s for the next few days, though sunshine on Monday should help melt some of the snow, said weather service meteorologist Bryan Jackson.

"You've got a whole city held captive here," Gwen Dawkins, who was trying to get to Detroit, said as she waited at Washington's Reagan National Airport, where all flights had been canceled after 18 inches of snow was recorded by Sunday. The National Weather Service called the storm "historic" and reported a foot of snow in parts of Ohio and 2 feet or more in Washington, Delaware, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Parts of Virginia, Maryland and West Virginia got closer to 3 feet.