He had been under huge pressure to quit as army chief and is due to be sworn in as civilian president on Thursday. The most serious pressure on the president to give up his uniform had come from the United States, his main international backer. Washington has grown concerned in recent months at the army's inability to rein in pro-Taleban militants and by Gen Musharraf's growing unpopularity.

As a civilian leader, Gen Musharraf will still have considerable powers, including the ability to sack a civilian government. He imposed emergency rule on 3 November in order, he said, to control an unruly judiciary and deal with the growing threat from Islamist militants. General elections are to be held on 8 January, but Gen Musharraf has yet to say when the emergency will be lifted.

According to several well-placed Rome sources, Iranian officials are quietly laying the groundwork necessary TO TURN TO POPE BENEDICT XVI AND TOP VATICAN DIPLOMATS FOR MEDIATION IF THE SHOWDOWN WITH THE UNITED STATES should escalate toward a military intervention. The 80-year-old Pope has thus far steered clear of any strong public comments about either Iran's failure to fully comply with U.N. nuclear weapons inspectors or the drumbeat of war coming from some corners in Washington.

But Iran, which has had diplomatic relations with the Holy See for 53 years, may be trying to line up Benedict as an ace in the hole for staving off a potential attack in the coming months. "The Vatican seems to be part of their strategy," a senior Western diplomat in Rome said of the Iranian leadership. "They'll have an idea of when the 11th hour is coming, AND THEY KNOW AN INTERVENTION FROM THE VATICAN IS THE MOST OPEN AND AMENABLE ROUTE TO WESTERN PUBLIC OPINION. It could buy them time."

The current No. 2 official at the embassy, Vice-Ambassador Ahmad Fahima, said that despite some concern last year about the Pope's provocative speech about Islam in Regensburg, Germany, "relations between Iran and the Holy See are very good. LAST APRIL'S RELEASE OF 15 BRITISH SAILORS HELD BY IRAN - A DECISION THAT AHMADINEJAD CALLED 'AN EASTER GIFT' - CAME JUST A DAY AFTER THE POPE HAD SENT A PRIVATE LETTER ASKING FOR THEIR LIBERATION. There was respect for the request of the Pope," said Fahima, who also cited a Rome meeting in May between Benedict and former Iranian President Mohammad Khatami as a sign of the mutual good will.

"THE POLICY OF THE HOLY SEE IS IMPORTANT THROUGHOUT THE WHOLE WORLD," the diplomat said. "We don't expect the superpower will attack," Fahima concluded. "But if they do, I am sure the Holy See would not be favorable to such a choice." Father Daniel Madigan, a Jesuit scholar of islam said, "Right now, they're isolated because of sanctions, but they really do want to interact with the world." And Rome is one place the interaction has already begun.

Archbishop Chrysostomos II, the church head, urged priests to pray together on 2 December for rainfall to end a drought that had "blighted" the land. The archbishop said Cypriots were "justifiably anxious" over the threat to water supplies and agriculture. Lower-than-average rainfall over the last year has drained the reservoirs on which Cyprus relies heavily for water.

Cyprus' largest dam is expected to run dry if there is no heavy rainfall within the next month, Reuters news agency reports. Prolonged hot weather during the tourist season has further strained supplies, with most reservoirs on average only 8% full - as opposed to 25% last year.

Prayers for rain are rare in Cyprus, with the last one reported when a comparable drought struck the island in 1998. The Orthodox Church is among Cyprus' biggest landowners, with sizeable investments in banking, construction, hotels and wine-making.

The Vatican press office confirmed today that the head of the Holy See delegation to the Tuesday meeting will be Monsignor Pietro Parolin, undersecretary for relations with states at the Vatican Secretariat of State. Monsignor Franco Coppola, a counselor at the office of the nunciature, will accompany him. In Annapolis, with help from the international community, Israelis and Palestinians will try to relaunch negotiations and aim for a just and definitive solution to the conflict that has bloodied the Holy Land for 60 years, the [Pope] said.

In his appeal, the Pope recalled the many "tears and sufferings" the conflict has caused the two peoples. He asked people to "implore the Spirit of God for peace for that region so dear to us and to give wisdom and courage to all the protagonists in this important meeting." The Annapolis encounter "offers a lot of hope," newly elevated Cardinal Daniel DiNardo, archbishop of Galveston-Houston, Texas, told the Vatican newspaper. "I hope that those who are involved in this international conference dedicate themselves with diligence to a resolution that effectively assures peace in the regions of the Middle East."

On the one hand we have the United Nation's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change coming up with yet another of its notoriously politicised reports, hyping up the scare by claiming that world surface temperatures have been higher in 11 of the past 12 years (1995-2006) than ever previously recorded.

THIS CAREFULLY IGNORES THE LATEST US SATELLITE FIGURES SHOWING TEMPERATURES HAVING FALLEN SINCE 1998, declining in 2007 to a 1983 level - not to mention the newly revised figures for US surface temperatures showing that the 1930s had four of the 10 warmest years of the past century, with the hottest year of all being not 1998, as was previously claimed, but 1934.

On the other hand, we had Gordon Brown last week, in his "first major speech on climate change", airily committing his own and future governments to achieving a 60 per cent reduction in carbon emissions by 2050 - which is rather like prime minister Salisbury at the end of Queen Victoria's reign trying to commit Winston Churchill's government to achieving some wholly impossible goal in the middle of the Second World War.

Mr Brown's only concrete proposal for reaching this absurd target seems to be his plan to ban plastic bags, whatever they have to do with global warming (while his government also plans a near-doubling of flights out of Heathrow). But of course he is no longer his own master in such fantasy exercises. Few people have yet really taken on board the mind-blowing scale of all the "planet-saving" measures to which we are now committed by the European Union.

By 2020 we will have to generate 20 per cent of our electricity from "renewables". At present the figure is four per cent (most of it generated by hydro-electric schemes and methane gas from landfill). As Whitehall officials privately briefed ministers in August, there is no way Britain can begin to meet such a fanciful target (even if the Government manages to ram through another 30,000 largely useless wind turbines).

Another EU directive commits us to deriving 10 per cent of our transport fuel from "biofuels" by 2020. This would take up pretty well all the farmland we currently use to grow food (at a time when world grain prices have doubled in six months and we are already facing a global food shortage).

Then by 2009, thanks to a mad gesture by Mr Blair and his EU colleagues last March, we also face the prospect of a total ban on incandescent light bulbs. This compulsory switch to low-energy bulbs, apart from condemning us to live in uglier homes under eye-straining light, is in practice completely out of the question, because, according to our Government's own figures, more than half Britain's domestic light fittings cannot take them.

This year will be remembered for two things:
FIRST, IT WAS THE YEAR WHEN THE SCIENTIFIC DATA SHOWED THAT THE COSMIC SCARE OVER GLOBAL WARMING MAY WELL TURN OUT TO BE JUST THAT - YET ANOTHER VASTLY INFLATED SCARE.

SECOND, IT WAS THE YEAR WHEN THE HYSTERIA GENERATED BY ALL THE BOGUS SCIENCE BEHIND THIS SCARE FINALLY DROVE THOSE WHO RULE OVER US, INCLUDING GORDON "PLASTIC BAGS" BROWN, WHOLLY OUT OF THEIR WITS.

Colleagues of Gillian Gibbons, 54, from Liverpool, said she made an "innocent mistake" by letting the six and seven-year-olds choose the name. Ms Gibbons was arrested after several parents made complaints. The BBC has learned the charge could lead to six months in jail, 40 lashes or a fine.

It is seen as an insult to Islam to attempt to make an image of the Prophet Muhammad. Mr Boulos said Ms Gibbons was arrested on Sunday at her home inside the school premises after a number of parents complained to Sudan's Ministry of Education. He said police had seized the book and asked to interview the girl who owned the bear.

The country's state-controlled Sudanese Media Centre reported that charges were being prepared "under article 125 of the criminal law" which covers insults against faith and religion.

The parchment scroll, made in the Middle Ages, is the only surviving copy of a road map from the late Roman Empire. The document, which is almost seven metres long, shows the network of main Roman roads from Spain to India. It is normally never shown to the public. The parchment is extremely fragile, and reacts badly to daylight. But it has been on display for one day to celebrate its inclusion in Unesco's Memory of the World Register.

At first sight, it looks very unlike a modern map. Both the landmass and the seas have been stretched and flattened. The Mediterranean has been reduced to a thin strip of water, more like a river than a sea. Instead of being oriented from north to south, the map, which is only 34 centimetres wide, works from west to east.

But despite its unfamiliar appearance, the director of the Department of Manuscripts, Autographs and Closed Collections at the Austrian National Library, Andreas Fingernagel, says it is an intensely practical document, more like a plan of the London Underground than a map. "The red lines are the main roads. EVERY SO OFTEN THERE IS A LITTLE HOOK ALONG THE RED LINES WHICH REPRESENTS A REST STOP - AND THE DISTANCE BETWEEN HOOKS WAS ONE DAY'S TRAVEL." "Every so often there is a pictogram of a building to show you that there was a hotel or a spa where you could stay," he said.

"It was meant for the civil servants of the late Roman Empire, for couriers and travellers," he added. Some of the buildings have large courtyards - a sign of more luxurious accommodation. But Mr Fingernagel says it is very different from other medieval maps and is clearly a copy of a much earlier document, dating back to the 5th century. "IN MAPS FROM THE 12TH OR 13TH CENTURY, JERUSALEM, NOT ROME, WAS IN THE CENTRE," HE SAID.

"THE INTERESTS OF MAP MAKERS IN THE MIDDLE AGES WERE QUITE DIFFERENT. THEY DON'T SHOW ROADS OR REST STATIONS, INSTEAD THEY SHOW THE HOLY PLACES OF CHRISTIANITY." And the map contains other details which indicate the original probably dates back to the 5th century, including the city of Aquileia, which was destroyed in 452 by the Huns.

In a study published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers show that eating garlic appears to boost our natural supply of hydrogen sulfide. Hydrogen sulfide is actually poisonous at high concentrations - it's the same noxious byproduct of oil refining that smells like rotten eggs. But the body makes its own supply of the stuff, which acts as an antioxidant and transmits cellular signals that relax blood vessels and increase blood flow.

In the latest study, performed at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, researchers extracted juice from supermarket garlic and added small amounts to human red blood cells. The cells immediately began emitting hydrogen sulfide, the scientists found.

The power to boost hydrogen sulfide production may help explain why a garlic-rich diet appears to protect against various cancers, including breast, prostate and colon cancer, say the study authors. Higher hydrogen sulfide might also protect the heart, according to other experts. Although garlic has not consistently been shown to lower cholesterol levels, researchers at Albert Einstein College of Medicine earlier this year found that injecting hydrogen sulfide into mice almost completely prevented the damage to heart muscle caused by a heart attack.

"People have known garlic was important and has health benefits for centuries," said Dr. David W. Kraus, associate professor of environmental science and biology at the University of Alabama. "Even the Greeks would feed garlic to their athletes before they competed in the Olympic games."

Her warning, made during a closed-door lunch in Brussels, highlighted renewed debate over whether Europe could afford to impose tougher rules on genetically modified, or GM, products than other parts of the world.
Some EU officials say the region should maintain its skeptical stance toward the technology on safety grounds, while others argue for a more pragmatic approach to enhance the region's competitiveness and help the agricultural sector.

"Along with our zero-tolerance policy toward GM feed stuffs in Europe there also is a major potential cost impact," Michael Mann, a spokesman for Fischer Boel, said Monday. One of the reasons why European policies toward GM feeds raise costs is that ships bound for Europe must be thoroughly cleaned to make sure that feeds are not intermingled with feeds grown using GM seeds that have not yet been approved for use in the EU.

Environmental groups that oppose any slackening of the rules on imports of GM products say many of the arguments used to justify a relaxed policy on GM feed in Europe are specious. Helen Holder, a GM expert with Friends of the Earth in Brussels, said prices were rising because more farmers in parts of the world like the United States were growing crops for biofuels at a time when demand was rising for crops to feed livestock.

Holder called on the EU to drop proposals to mandate more use of biofuels and change EU rules so that farmers can use more home-grown feeds rather than relaxing rules on imports from parts of the world like the United States. "The EU needs to stand firm and defend its biosafety rules," she said.

There will be a great cocktail party, a fantastic photo opportunity, and perhaps a Mondial [World Cup tournament] can be arranged there," Lieberman said in an interview with the Knesset Channel. "But there is no chance for a breakthrough. Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas does not represent anyone."

The Israel Beiteinu chairman, who has been embattled from the right for failing to quit the Olmert government ahead of the parley, stated that serious negotiations were not an option as long as Abbas was not in control of the Gaza Strip. "Because he (Abbas) is so weak, even our basic requirements are beyond his ability to deliver."

Opposition head Binyamin Netanyahu also criticized the government's decision to negotiate with the Abbas. "We want dialogue and real peace" Netanyahu said. "However, in order to attain that you need two strong partners - and that cannot be found in Annapolis."

"You need a strong Palestinian partner, but today we have a weak PA that is unwilling to lift a finger against terror," the Likud chairman said. "This process will not lead to peace but rather to the danger of further compromises on Israel's vital interests. We need different partners and a different government."

What has abruptly changed is the twin revolution of biofuel politics and Asia's switch to an animal-protein diet. Together, they have shattered the fragile equilibrium.

The world's grocery bill has jumped 21pc this year to $745bn (£355bn), hence the food riots ripping through West Africa, Morocco, Yemen, Bengal, and Indonesia. Three people were killed this month in China at a cooking oil stampede in Chongqing. Mexico has imposed a ceiling on corn prices to quell a tortilla revolt. Russia has re-imposed a Soviet price freeze on bread, eggs, cheese, milk, sugar, and vegetable oil until January. Russian bread prices have doubled this year.

Global wheat prices have surged from $375 a bushel to $826 since mid-2006.The FAO says the food spike has a different feel from earlier cycles. "What distinguishes the current state of agricultural markets is the concurrence of the hike in world prices of, not just a selected few, but of nearly all, major food and feed commodities," it said.

The US Department of Agriculture says the Taiwanese eat nine times as much animal protein as the Chinese. Why does it matter? Because IT TAKES 16LB OR SO OF ANIMAL FEED - MOSTLY SOYA OR CORN - TO PRODUCE A SINGLE POUND OF ANIMAL FLESH. IT TAKES 50 TIMES AS MUCH WATER.

Until last year, China was able to grow enough grain to supply its ubiquitous poultry and fish farms. It has now become a net importer of corn for the first time in its modern history. Urban sprawl across China's eastern seaboard is stealing most of the fertile land, and the water tables of northern China are drying up. The same trends are under way in India, Vietnam, and much of emerging Asia.

Meanwhile, the Bush administration aims to supply 20pc of total US fuel needs from biofuels within a decade, up from 3.5pc today - a ploy to break dependence on oil demagogues and slash the trade deficit. Credit Suisse says worldwide biofuel targets will take up 12pc of global arable and permanent cropland in 10 years, although new technology using the non-edible stalks will mitigate food displacement up to a point.

"It's a total disaster for those who are starving," says Jean Ziegler, the UN's food Rapporteur. "IT TAKES 232KG OF CORN TO MAKE 50 LITRES OF BIOETHNANOL. A child could live on that amount of corn for years," he said. Mr Ziegler wants a five-year ban on biofuels.

It also said that the campaign is aimed at deflecting attention from its recent massacre of Fatah supporters at a Gaza rally.

Recent Hamas speeches warned of "the shame and disgrace" of the meeting in Annapolis. It called on Arabs and Muslims to censure the "Zionist enemy" for alleged attacks on the Al-Aqsa mosque at the Temple Mount. "Israel continues damaging Jerusalem and Al-Aqsa mosque. It is planning to excavate additional tunnels under the mosque [and] right-wing Israeli activists 'invaded' the Al-Aqsa mosque precinct," Hamas has told its followers.

Hospitals and schools are struggling to cope with a huge influx of Eastern European children, new figures show. The number of Polish babies born in UK hospitals has almost quadrupled since the 2004 EU expansion. On current trends, there will be more than 13,000 such births this year, costing the NHS more than £20million. It is an inevitable consequence of the influx of up to a million Poles - the vast majority of them Roman Catholics in their 20s - since their former Soviet Bloc country joined the EU.

In addition, more than 240,000 Eastern European children have arrived in Britain's schools - with head teachers warning that some are now close to breaking point. Figures compiled by the Institute for Public Policy Research think-tank show there are some 170,000 children from Poland, 30,400 from Lithuania, 28,700 from Slovakia and 12,900 from the Czech Republic.

Shadow Home Secretary David Davis said the figures showed the Government had not properly planned the consequences of its immigration policy. He added: "The Government predicted 13,000 a year would come from the EU. The number has exceeded 700,000.

Continuous U.S. mediation in post-conference negotiations, including pressure on Israel, he says, "can turn things around" and lead to a comprehensive settlement before President Bush's term expires in 13 months.

But, speaking in Paris just hours before his scheduled arrival in the U.S., Prince Saud warned Israelis that they would have no peace until Israel withdrew from Arab territories captured in the 1967 war. Saud, who will be the highest ranking Saudi to ever attend a peace conference with the Jewish state, added that he would not shake the hand of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert or make a symbolic visit to Jerusalem before a peace deal.

"The hand that has been extended to us has been a fist so far," he said. He warned Israelis against seeking a surrender, adding, "We don't need a Versailles for the Arab world, a peace that will only be an instigator of future wars."

"The United States has been far too involved in sort of looking the other way, not only at the atrocities of human rights and violation of women," Huckabee said on CNN's "Late Edition."

"Every time we put our credit card in the gas pump, we're paying so that the Saudis get rich ? filthy, obscenely rich, and that money then ends up going to funding madrassas - schools that train the terrorists," said Huckabee. "America has allowed itself to become enslaved to Saudi oil. It's absurd. It's embarrassing."

Huckabee said "I would make the United States energy independent within 10 years and tell the Saudis they can keep their oil just like they can keep their sand, that we won't need either one of them."