WebProNews reports that the AnonymousIRC Twitter account announcd to its 276, 783 followers on Friday, attacks on three church websites. IB Times reports the first message, sent out at around 10 a.m. EST, read: "http://www.betheloic.org HACKED Reason:religious idiocy and foh dah lulz #Anonymous #AntiSec #OWS #ROOTED #DAWKINS."

According to Examiner.com, the homepages of Bethel Outreach International Church, Charlotte International Church and Crossfire Ministries were hacked and defaced. The homepages were replaced with a 30-minute long YouTube video, "Richard Dawkins: An Atheist's Call to Arms," and declaration of "war on religion," with the message "Religion sucks, LOL."

The Richard Dawkins video is a 30-minute speech in which Dawkins urges atheists to stop hiding their beliefs and to fight against the influence of religion in politics and education. The hackers said religion is a sickness!

Friday's attack is yet another in a series of Anonymous online attacks on groups they see as representing what they are opposed to in the world. IB Times reported a week ago that Anonymous hackers took down several FBI affiliates websites. Dayton Daily News reports the targeted sites included the Dayton, Ohio branch of InfraGard, a partner organization to the FBI.

Anonymous also said it has declared war on America in a YouTube video released earlier in the week and called on US citizens to rise up against the US goverment.

The study showed a large proportion can log on to the internet, play on computer games, use an iPhone or iPad and work satellite television services like Sky Plus. But 65 per cent can't make a cup of tea, while 81 per cent can't read a map and 87 per cent wouldn't be able to repair a bicycle puncture. Research also showed a large proportion were sadly lacking in knowledge about the great outdoors.

As many as 63 per cent wouldn't know how to build a den, while 59 per cent can't even climb a tree. A further 79 per cent have no idea how to put up a tent, while 78 per cent can't build a camp fire. And when asked if they cared about the environment a third said 'no' - with half of these saying it was because "in the future we'll be able to live in space."

Survival expert Ray Mears said he was shocked by the findings, from electricity provider npower. He added: "I can't believe our young people are so ill-equipped when it comes to practical skills. When I was growing up, I was told 'You don't need equipment, you need knowledge to survive in the wild' and this is something that I truly believe. Simple skills like putting up a tent can teach you important lessons that can't be learnt without doing them yourself. You learn how to work in a team and communicate with your peers as well as how to work under pressure and use logic. Most importantly, you also learn how to look after yourself and know your strengths."

TOP TEN THINGS CHILDREN AGED 5 TO 13 CAN DO:

1 Work a DVD player - 67 per cent

2 Log onto the internet - 58 per cent

3 Play computer games on games console (wii, Xbox or similar) - 50 per cent

4 Make a phone call - 46 per cent

5 Use a handheld games console (Nintendo DSi, PSP or similar) - 45 per cent

6 Use an iPhone (or smartphone) - 42 per cent

7 Work Sky Plus - 41 per cent

8 Send a text message - 38 per cent

9 Search for clips on YouTube - 37 per cent

10 Use an iPad (or tablet computer) - 31 per cent

TOP TEN THINGS CHILDREN AGED 5 TO 13 CAN'T DO:

1 Recognise three types of butterfly - 91 per cent

2 Repair a puncture - 87 per cent

3 Tie a reef knot - 83 per cent

4 Read a map - 81 per cent

5 Build a camp fire - 78 per cent/Put up a tent 78.5 per cent

6 Spot a blackbird, sparrow or robin - 71 per cent

7 Make papier mâché - 72 per cent

8 Make a cup of tea - 65 per cent

9 Build a den - 63 per cent

10 Climb a tree - 59 per cent

Police forces across the UK were inundated with calls from around 9.40 pm from concerned members of public who had seen a “bright light or a fire in the sky” and believed it may have been an incident involving an aircraft. The Met Office said it had received reports from as far north as Aberdeen and as far south as Solihull. A spokesman said: “We’re not sure what it was, but people are certainly interested in what they saw. We have had about 40 calls from across the country.” The Kielder Observatory also reported the sighting of a “huge fireball” travelling from north to south over Northumberland.

Credit rating agencies have warned they will declare Athens to be in default if the CACs are triggered which would be a dramatic culmination to a three-year rollercoaster ride for Athens, the eurozone and global markets. While the markets have been ready for a Greek default for months, the move could leave Greece and its banks barred from funding from the European Central Bank (ECB). On Monday, Standard & Poor’s declared Greece to be in a state of “selective default” which led to the ECB announcing it would no longer accept Greek government bonds as security for new loans.

The rating agency said its decision had been prompted by the threat of the CACs and the actual use of them is likely to tip Greece into actual default. The agency said it regarded the process as a “distressed debt restructuring”. Raoul Ruparel of Open Europe, the London-based think-tank, said: “Greece is likely to struggle to reach the targets for a voluntary agreement so the credit rating agencies are almost certainly going to see this as a default. What happens next is unknown territory. Greek banks will probably be barred from normal ECB funding and have to turn to the Emergency Liquidity Assistance [provided by the ECB] instead but for how long, we don’t know.”

The rule of thumb is that a 10 percent rise in crude cuts US growth by 0.2 percent four quarters later, but the science is flabbily soft and nobody knows where the inflexion point lies. The effect is famously “non-linear”. Nothing much seems to happen until confidence suddenly snaps. What is deeply troubling is that Brent crude should have reached fresh records in sterling (£79) and euros (€94) - with a knock-on effect on US petrol prices, mostly tracking Brent - even though the International Monetary Fund has sharply downgraded its world growth forecast to 3.25 percent this year from 4 percent in September, and even though International Energy Agency (IEA) has cut its oil use forecast for this year by 750,000 barrels per day (bpd).

Oil is not supposed to ratchet defiantly upwards in a downturn, which is what we have with the Eurozone facing a year of contraction in 2012, and much of the Latin bloc sliding into full depression. Japan‘s economy shrank in the fourth quarter. Asia’s emerging powers of Asia - the key force driving the commodity boom of the last decade - are in various stages of “soft-landings” after hitting the monetary brakes last year to check property bubbles and curb inflation. China’s manufacturing has been bouncing along near contraction levels through the winter. So what happens when it recovers?

The unpleasant fact we must all face is that the relentless supply crunch - call it ‘Peak Oil’ if you want, or ‘Plateau Oil’ - was briefly disguised during the Great Recession and is already back with a vengeance before the West has fully recovered. So we have a remarkable situation. China alone will be adding 125 million cars to its roads over the next five years, with auto production targets of 30 million annually by 2016. India is spending $1 trillion on infrastructure projects over the next five years.

Variants of this are happening across Asia and Latin America. The picture is by now well-known to Telegraph readers. Two billion people in the emerging world are joining the global economy and competing toe-to-toe for scarce resources with the West. Their rising demand - not our declining demand - will set oil prices.

Netanyahu's office issued a statement immediately, calling the speech "harshly inflammatory ... from someone who claims that he is bent on peace." The statement continued: "Jerusalem has been the eternal capital of the Jewish People," and added that, "Abu Mazen [Abbas] knows full well that there is no foundation to his contemptible remarks, including his baseless and irresponsible claims regarding the Al Aqsa Mosque. The State of Israel expects that one who supposedly champions peace would prepare his people for peace and coexistence and not disseminate lies and incitement. This is not how one makes peace."

According to the Israeli Prime Minister, his government will maintain the holy places in Jerusalem to ensure freedom of worship for all religions. The head of the Palestinian Authority told the conference that the Israeli occupation authorities are accelerating their efforts and using the ugliest and most dangerous means to implement plans to erase the Arab Muslim and Christian character of Jerusalem.

US Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta said last month that there is a "strong likelihood" of an Israel attack by June. If Prime Minister Netanyahu delivers an ultimatum, it would give the United States 2-3 months to act or face the reality of an Israeli attack that would almost certainly require the United States coming to its aid, if necessary.

Israeli officials have said that in several months, Iran will have buried so many of its nuclear facilities deep under concrete bunkers in mountains that an attack would not be effective. The Israeli Prime Minister “has the upper hand,” claims the Telegraph's correspondent Adrian Blomfield. “Exuding confidence, Mr Netanyahu effectively brings with him an ultimatum, demanding that unless the president makes a firm pledge to use US military force to prevent Iran acquiring a nuclear bomb, Israel may well take matters into its own hands within months,” wrote Blomfield.

One other factor he did not mention is that President Obama is running for re-election. Failure to back Israel, if necessary, could torpedo his campaign. Moreover, Republican presidential candidates Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney will address the annual American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) convention this week. President Obama, Prime Minister Netanyahu and President Shimon Peres also will speak.

The closing statement of the European Union summit that the leaders of the 27 member states approved on Friday filled a total of 15 pages. It included 24 mentions of the word "growth," and only referred to a "crisis" once. The language underscores the direction Europe's politicians would actually like to be heading.

"It is time to move from crisis mode to growth mode," European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said on the first night of the summit, seeking to set the tone. "I think we are turning the page," Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president who is currently in the midst of his election campaign, said triumphantly. "We are in the midst of exiting this crisis."

But one leader at the summit wasn't yet prepared to hint that a turning point had been reached. At the close of the two-day summit, German Chancellor Angela Merkel offered words of warning. "We are still in a fragile situation," she said. "We have made progress, but to say that we can now give the all clear - it would be much too early for that." Indeed, it seemed as though Merkel was seeking to apply the brakes on the euphoric mood. The calculation behind her move is clear, too: The crisis nations at Europe's periphery shouldn't be permitted to feel overly secure, nor should they let EU-imposed reforms slide. "The next two years will be just as decisive as the last two," Merkel said.

The lawyers argue that the women “encourage sexuality and other inappropriate behaviors.” The Egyptian paper Al-Bawaba named two of the targets as actresses Ghada Abd al-Raziq and Summaya al-Khashab. The same lawyers previously accused renowned comic actor Adel Imam of insulting Islam. Imam was given a three-month jail sentence.

A Christian man recently received a far harsher sentence for the same crime. According to Bikyamasr, Coptic Christian Makram Diab was given a six-year prison sentence for making offensive remarks about Mohammed, who Muslims revere as a prophet. Egypt’s Christian community has also been hit by kidnappings targeting young women. According to Christian community leaders, many Christian girls have been kidnapped by Muslim men and forced to convert to Islam. Police often decline to intervene.

The rock's closest approach to the planet is scheduled for February 15, 2013, when the distance between the planet and space wanderer will be under 27,000 km (16,700 miles). This is lower than the geosynchronous orbit kept by the Google Maps satellite. The asteroid has proven a bitter discovery. It has been circling in orbit for three years already, crossing Earth’s path several times, says space analyst Sergey Naroenkov from the Russian Academy of Sciences.

It seems that spotting danger from outer space is still the area where mere chance reigns, while asteroid defense systems exist only in drafts.

Still, prospects of meeting 2012 DA14 are not all doom and gloom. “The asteroid may split into pieces entering the atmosphere. In this case, most parts of it will never reach the planet’s surface,” remarks Dunham. But if the entire asteroid is to crash into the planet, the impact will be as hard as in the Tunguska blast, which in 1908 knocked down trees over a total area of 2,150 sq km (830 sq miles) in Siberia. This is almost the size of Luxembourg. In today’s case, the destination of the asteroid is yet to be determined.

Further complicating Monday's White House talks is a trust deficit between the two men that has been magnified by mounting pressures of the US presidential campaign. Mr Obama's Republican foes are eager to paint him as too tough on Israel and too soft on Iran. Mr Netanyahu is coming to Washington to press Mr Obama to more forcefully declare "red lines" that Iran must not cross in its nuclear program, Israeli officials say, even as speculation mounts that the Jewish state could act militarily on its own in coming months.

"If you don't want me to attack now, I want guarantees," an Israeli official quoted Mr Netanyahu telling top Obama aides who visited Jerusalem last month. "If you're saying, 'we'll take care of you', you're not saying that clearly enough." The White House has signaled that Mr Obama, who has pledged to prevent Iran from building a nuclear weapon but has been vague on how far he is prepared to go, will resist pressure for a public policy shift.

Instead, amid growing signs that US-led international sanctions are starting to take a toll on Iran, he will seek to persuade Mr Netanyahu to hold off on any military strike to give those measures and diplomacy time to work, US officials say. But Israeli officials say they fear that time is running out for an effective Israeli attack as Iran buries its uranium enrichment program deeper underground.

Still, an Israeli strike ahead of the November 6 election would put Mr Obama in a political bind. He would be reluctant to come down hard on Mr Netanyahu for fear of undercutting support among Jewish voters and other pro-Israel constituencies. But some Obama aides remain suspicious of Mr Netanyahu's motives. They are convinced that he would prefer to see a Republican take control of the White House in 2013 for fear that Mr Obama's re-election would give him a freer hand to push anew for Israeli concessions to the Palestinians during a second term.

The authors, whose piece was published in the Journal of Medical Ethics, have received death threats for suggesting that "what we call after-birth abortion (killing a newborn) should be permissible in all the cases where abortion is, including cases where the newborn is not disabled". Many believe such possibilities should never be raised - even within the confines of an ethics journal.

However, some anti-abortionists have welcomed its publication, saying it casts a bright light on what abortion actually is. Anthony Ozimic, from the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC), said the article, which he described as a "chilling promotion of infanticide", showed how abortion was "creating a culture of death". While he was appalled at the suggestion that newborns should be killed for their parents' convenience, he nevertheless said it showed the logical framework behind infanticide and abortion was the same.

He said: "The paper proves what pro-lifers have long been arguing: that the common arguments for abortion also justify infanticide. There is no difference in moral status between a child one day before birth and a child one day after birth. Birth is merely a change of location, not a change from non-personhood to personhood."

He continued: "All human beings, regardless of age, location or capacities, are regarded in international law as equal members of the human family and thus as having an equal right to life." The authors, ethicists Dr Alberto Giubilini and Dr Francesca Minerva, argued: "The moral status of an infant is equivalent to that of a foetus in the sense that both lack those properties that justify the attribution of a right to life to an individual.”

The briefing notes that of the total amount (€282.2 billion) entailed in the various measures currently on the table to save Greece – through the bailouts and the ECB – only €159.5 billion, or 57% will actually go to Greece itself. The rest will go to banks and other bondholders. Furthermore, immediately after the restructuring, Greece’s debt to GDP will still be 161%, a reduction of only 2% compared to where it is now. On top of this Greece has to undertake extensive budget cuts amounting to 20% of GDP in total – a level which no other country has even attempted in recent history.

By 2015, once the first and second Greek bailouts have been completed, as much as 85% will be owned by taxpayer-backed institutions (EU/IMF/ECB).This means that in the event of a likely default, a huge chunk of the losses will fall on European taxpayers, potentially leading to significant political fallout in countries such as Finland, the Netherlands and Germany.

The briefing concludes that, given the sizeable debt relief needed in Greece, a fuller coercive restructuring would have been a simpler and more effective option from the start and should still be pursued.

According to a report broadcast on Swiss television, already in the past, the association's president has forced his way into a house in southern Poland, he claimed belonged to him. The association has also announced its intention to wage a political campaign this spring in several Polish cities. EBO's president is the national executive director of the extreme rightwing "pro-Deutschland" party, affiliated with an extreme rightwing splinter group of the German League of Expellees (BdV).

Its honorary president would like to transform a large segment of Polish territory into a neutral country: "Zentropa." The fact that the Federal Republic of Germany has, since 1949, consistently declared the resettlement of Germans "unjust" and the "question of reparations open" is encouragement for the lawsuits demanding reparations for the resettled.

The "Property Owners Association - East," closely affiliated with extreme rightwing "pro-" organizations, can feel encouraged by the fact that every West German government has characterized the resettlement as well as the uncompensated confiscation of the property of the resettled as an "injustice." According to the jurisprudence of the Federal Republic of Germany, the reparations issue is "open." Most recently in the summer of 2011, the government of the federal state Hesse distributed a brochure in numerous schools, saying that the time has come to intensify "the search for feasible ways for a just settlement, even in the difficult property issues."

"There is a widespread idea that accomplished expulsion is irreversible, but it is false."

Two men and four women died when a pre-dawn tornado struck Harrisburg, Illinois, a town of nearly 10,000 people. The six people were killed when powerful winds lifted a house up and dropped it on top of other homes in a housing subdivision adjacent to a wrecked shopping strip. The US National Weather Service's Storm Prediction Centre rated the Harrisburg tornado an EF-4, or one notch below the strongest tornadoes, meaning it packed winds of up to 200 miles per hour.

The EF-4 rating put it on par with the devastating tornado that killed 64 people in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, last April, and one notch below the massive EF-5 Joplin storm that flattened whole sections of the Missouri town. Scientists said the tornado was 200 yards wide with winds up to 170 mph. Adding to the danger, it hit as many slept - a timing research meteorologist Harold Brooks called unusual but "not completely uncommon." Brooks said perhaps 10 percent of tornadoes happen between midnight and 6 am, a time when the danger level rises because the storms are harder to spot and it's harder to get the word out.

Ryan Jewell, a meteorologist with the Storm Prediction Centre, said the next system is forecast to take a similar path and has the potential for even more damage. On Friday, he said, both the Midwest and South will be "right in the bull's eye."

Photo’s - http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/picturegalleries/worldnews/9115824/Powerful-tornadoes-leave-a-trail-of-destruction-across-the-US-Midwest.html