But as the bishops of the Episcopal Church approach their semiannual meeting this week in New Orleans, the predictions are being taken very seriously.

At the top of the agenda for the Sept. 20-25 gathering will be a directive issued by the leaders of the Anglican Communion to stop consecrating openly gay and lesbian bishops and to ban blessings of same-sex unions or risk a diminished status in the communion, the world’s third-largest Christian denomination.

The police, including some officers dressed in riot gear, tried to halt demonstrators as they sought to climb over a low wall near the Capitol after a march that had begun near the White House in a festive atmosphere.

The protest grew tense as the chanting, placard-carrying demonstrators gathered near the Capitol for a planned “die-in.” Officers struggled to keep demonstrators from breaking through their ranks and began arresting those who tried.

(“Come quick, Martha — the media’s finally owning up to their bias!”)

Anti- or pro-war, journalist, blogger or reader, we can probably agree that news coverage of events such as yesterday’s rallies along the Mall routinely reveals a strong media bias toward covering crowds of people doing stuff outdoors, especially on a day featuring crisp air and brilliant sunshine.

This article is not as bad as the headline makes it sound.

You can detect a similar desperation in Moscow these days in the attempts to divine what President Vladimir V. Putin has in store for his nation in the six months before the next presidential election. While Russia in the Putin era is a far more open society than the Soviet state, the inner workings of the Kremlin are as confounding as ever. Still, the art of Kremlinology has changed, in ways subtle and not.

Witness the events that buffeted the Russian government last week, and the theories and questions and rumors that sprouted in response.

The Sadrists provided Nuri Kamal al-Maliki with the support he needed last year to become prime minister, but the political landscape has since shifted. As a result, while the fracturing of the coalition adds to the uncertainty that is crippling Iraq’s political process, it is not clear how damaged Mr. Maliki will be if the Sadrists follow through with their plans to withdraw.

Mr. Sadr’s lawmakers have complained repeatedly about being marginalized within the Shiite bloc, the United Iraqi Alliance.

The European commission is to send officials to investigate the causes of the resurgence of the disease, which the National Farmers’ Union estimates is costing farmers £10m a day.

Alf-Eckbert Füssel, of the animal health unit at the European commission, said: “Last time it was clear it was an isolated incident, but this is different. Now we have to be afraid about further spread.”

The head of Israel’s airforce, Major-General Eliezer Shkedi, was visiting a base in the coastal city of Herziliya last week. For the 50-year-old general, also the head of Israel’s Iran Command, which would fight a war with Tehran if ordered, it was a morale-boosting affair, a meet-and-greet with pilots and navigators who had flown during last summer’s month-long war against Lebanon. The journalists who had turned out in large numbers were there for another reason: to question Shkedi about a mysterious air raid that happened this month, codenamed ‘Orchard’, carried out deep in Syrian territory by his pilots.

Shkedi ignored all questions. It set a pattern for the days to follow as he and Israel’s politicians and officials maintained a steely silence, even when the questions came from the visiting French Foreign Minister, Bernard Kouchner. Those journalists who thought of reporting the story were discouraged by the threat of Israel’s military censor.

But the rumours were in circulation, not just in Israel but in Washington and elsewhere. In the days that followed, the sketchy details of the raid were accompanied by contradictory claims even as US and British officials admitted knowledge of the raid. The New York Times described the target of the raid as a nuclear site being run in collaboration with North Korean technicians. Others reported that the jets had hit either a Hizbollah convoy, a missile facility or a terrorist camp.

The suspected official, Shamil D. Burayev, was detained in Moscow. Mr. Burayev was once the leader of Achkhoi-Martan, one of the administrative districts in Chechnya, but was dismissed from the post several years ago.

He also ran unsuccessfully for the Chechen presidency in 2003. The Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper, which reported his arrest, said that he had been accused under Russian law of organizing a murder, and suggested that he had ordered Ms. Politkovskaya’s killing.

On Tuesday, Belgium marks its first 100 days without a government. There is every reason to believe that the Belgians, and the rest of us, will have to get used to it. The questions now are how will the divorce of Flanders and Wallonia be consummated, and what will become of Brussels, home to the EU and Nato? More worryingly, the demise of Belgium – a sticking plaster over the faultline between Europe’s Protestant north and Catholic south – could make Europe a more dangerous place.

‘Flanders has systematically organised its independence over 35 years,’ said Delacroix-Rolin, a French-speaker fighting to save her village of Rhode Saint Genese, nine miles south of Brussels, from becoming Flemish. ‘If they succeed here, they will move on to Brussels. We’re like the moat around the castle.’

The group marched from the White House to the Capitol to demand an end to the Iraq war. Their numbers stretched for blocks along Pennsylvania Avenue, and they held banners and signs and chanted, “What do we want? Troops out. When do we want it? Now.”

…

Many were arrested without a struggle after they jumped over the waist-high barrier. But some grew angry as police with shields and riot gear attempted to push them back. At least two people were showered with chemical spray. Protesters responded by throwing signs and chanting: “Shame on you.”

The number of arrests by Capitol Police on Saturday was much higher than previous anti-war rallies in Washington this year. Five people were arrested at a protest outside the Pentagon in March when they walked onto a bridge that had been closed off to accommodate the demonstration, then refused to leave. And at a rally in January, about 50 demonstrators blocked a street near the Capitol, but they were dispersed without arrests.

…

Organizers estimated that nearly 100,000 people attended the rally and march. That number could not be confirmed; police did not give their own estimate. A permit for the march obtained in advance by the ANSWER Coalition had projected 10,000.

Earlier in the week, Democrats in the Senate threatened to block confirmation of another prospect – Theodore Olson, a longtime GOP ally and former solicitor general who represented Bush before the Supreme Court in the contested 2000 presidential election.

The behind-the-scenes battle over who will succeed Gonzales heated up over the weekend as the president, who was at Camp David, moved closer to announcing his choice.

“If we were to be driven out of Iraq, extremists of all strains would be emboldened,” said Bush in his weekly radio address. “Al-Qaeda could find new recruits and new sanctuaries,” he added, naming the extremist network that he blames, along with Iran, for fueling violence in Iraq.

…

The figure could decrease faster if Senate Democrats have their way: a proposal by Democratic Senator Jim Webb of Virginia — a Vietnam war veteran — is under discussion that would require US troops to spend as much time at home as on their most recent tours overseas before being re-deployed.

…

Gates called the proposal “well-intentioned,” but said it might require extending tours of units already in Iraq, and calling up additional National Guard and Reserve troops.

The Swiss People’s Party (SVP), dominated by its charismatic strongman and current Justice Minister Christoph Blocher, is riding high in the opinion polls ahead of the October 21 parliamentary elections.

Analysts fear however its provocative tactics threaten the consensus-based governing formula that has been the bedrock of Swiss stability for decades.

After one of the briefest electoral races in decades, pollsters expected a neck-and-neck run between the ruling conservative New Democracy party and the opposition Pasok socialists.

For although the ND party led by Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis carried a slim lead into Sunday’s decider, an unusually high number of undecided voters and general alienation over the fires that killed over 60 people makes this election impossible to call.

He says he found them in the pockets of Shanni Ram Ganga, a hunched man standing next to him facing a sentence of one to three years. Ganga’s alleged crime: begging.

Beggars crowd every sidewalk in India, yet panhandling is illegal, so a separate judicial system exists just for those accused of pleading for coins in public. More than 1,400 people are serving sentences in beggars’ homes – rundown facilities often little better than prisons, critics say – and that number is expected to rise as the government “cleans up” the Indian capital to host the Commonwealth Games, a major sports competition, in 2010.

Long queues formed outside branches throughout Britain as people began queuing as early as 6:00 am.

Extra staff were drafted in and opening hours were extended at a number of sites to deal with the many disgruntled customers.

The move further weakens the ruling coalition, which even before the defection had failed to push through laws aimed at reconciling Iraq’s warring majority Shi’ite and minority Sunni Arabs.

Maliki’s government now enjoys the support of only about half of Iraq’s 275 lawmakers, although it could survive with the support of a handful of independent lawmakers.

Sheik Majid Tahir al-Magsousi, the leader of the Migasees tribe here in Wasit province, acknowledged tribal leaders have discussed creating a brigade of young men trained by the Americans to bolster local security as well as help patrol the border with Iran.

He also said last week’s assassination of Abdul-Sattar Abu Risha, who spearheaded the Sunni uprising against al-Qaida in Anbar province, only made the Shiite tribal leaders more resolute.

Taro Aso, a high-profile member of the Abe government, initially emerged as the front-runner in the Sept. 23 ruling party election to replace the prime minister, who abruptly resigned this past week. But support for Aso’s sole opponent, Abe critic Yasuo Fukuda, has jumped since several party heavyweights said they would back him.

Fukuda is considered more dovish than Aso, but both candidates pledged Saturday to extend Japan’s support for U.S.-led operations in Afghanistan. The new leader of the Liberal Democratic Party is ensured election as prime minister because of the party’s majority in parliament’s lower house.

Negotiations ended around 9 p.m. EDT, GM spokeswoman Katie McBride said. They are scheduled to resume midmorning Sunday.

Some union subcommittees – which handle issues such as pensions, benefits and job security – have wrapped up talks, but an agreement wasn’t expected Saturday because negotiators were still dealing with some key issues, according to a person who was briefed on the negotiations.

Pushed from their homelands by a drought and pulled by the scent of human food, black bears across western US states are breaking into homes and tearing up garbage cans in a desperate search for nourishment ahead of hibernation.

Fires across the west also destroyed bear habitat, and the animals face the continuing peril of losing their living space to urban development.

Thompson reminisced about growing up “in a little town, where I knew if I got in trouble, they’d know about it at home before I ever got home.”

Thompson greeted friends and family – including his former in-laws from the marriage to his high school sweetheart that ended in 1985. He remarked that he had “cousins everywhere” among the crowd of several thousand that packed into the town square to hear his 25-minute speech.

Shares in British bank Northern Rock plunged by almost a third on Friday as clients rushed to withdraw their savings after the home loan provider admitted severe difficulties in raising cash on money markets.

While the BoE has aided Britain’s fifth-biggest home loan provider, it has decided against pumping billions of dollars of emergency funds into the overall banking sector to enable banks to continue normal lending practices.

In a bid to close the book on its struggles with competition authorities, Microsoft has asked the European Court of First Instance to annul a 2004 antitrust decision by the European Commission.

After a five-year probe, the top European competition regulator hit Microsoft at the time with a record fine of nearly half a billion euros and ordered the company to make crucial concessions to rivals.

“Jan. 11 was so frightfully cold that all of the communion wine froze,” says an entry from 1684 by Brother Josef Dietrich, governor and “weatherman” of the once-powerful Einsiedeln Monastery. “Since I’ve been an ordained priest, the sacrament has never frozen in the chalice.”

“But on Jan. 13 it got even worse and one could say it has never been so cold in human memory,” he adds.

“Finally it has been established that Peru is the owner of each one of the pieces,” Housing Minister Hernan Garrido Lecca, who led negotiations with Yale, told Lima’s Radioprogramas radio.

The New Haven, Connecticut-based university said in a statement on its Web site that some of the pieces will remain there temporarily for research, but did not specify how many.