Of course, there's always the possibility that the federal government would crack down. That risk might make investors too skittish to get involved. Earlier this month, Attorney General Eric Holder announced that the government would continue its dangerous raids. Some regions, such as Mendocino County, have leaned on pot agriculture as other industries dried up. It's estimated that at least half of that county's economy depends on cultivation of the plant.

The only sure thing is that there's no sure thing. Marijuana legalization is uncharted territory. Or at least, it's uncharted in this country. Other countries have managed to figure it out, but here in The Land of the Free, we've clung to prohibition.

Earlier, the state estimated that it could rake in $1.4 billion in taxes if Prop 19 passes, but they've since backed off that estimate, claiming that there are too many unknown variables. Prop 19 would allow each individual municipality to set its own pot regulations, which some detractors have said will create an unwieldy patchwork of laws. Coincidentally, most of those who oppose legalization are those who make money from prohibition: law enforcement agencies and the alcohol industry.

The Chinese action, involving rare earth minerals that are crucial to manufacturing many advanced products, seems certain to further intensify already rising trade and currency tensions with the West. Until recently, China typically sought quick and quiet accommodations on trade issues. But the interruption in rare earth supplies is the latest sign from Beijing that Chinese leaders are willing to use their growing economic muscle.

"The embargo is expanding" beyond Japan, said one of the three rare earth industry officials, all of whom insisted on anonymity for fear of business retaliation by Chinese authorities. They said Chinese customs officials imposed the broader restrictions on Monday morning, hours after a top Chinese official summoned international news media Sunday night to denounce United States trade actions.

China mines 95 percent of the world's rare earth elements, which have broad commercial and military applications, and are vital to the manufacture of products as diverse as cellphones, large wind turbines and guided missiles. Any curtailment of Chinese supplies of rare earths is likely to be greeted with alarm in Western capitals, particularly because Western companies are believed to keep much smaller stockpiles of rare earths than Japanese companies.

China experts said on Tuesday that Beijing's assertive stance on rare earths might also signal the ascendance of economic nationalists, noting that the Central Committee of the Communist Party convened over the weekend.

"It is not going to happen in this country." Geithner told Silicon Valley business leaders of devaluing the dollar. Geithner broke his silence on the dollar's protracted slide ahead of this weekend's meeting of finance leaders from the Group of 20 wealthy and emerging nations in South Korea, where rising tensions over Chinese and US currency valuations are expected to take center stage. "It is very important for people to understand that the United States of America and no country around the world can devalue its way to prosperity, to (be) competitive," Geithner added. "It is not a viable, feasible strategy and we will not engage in it."

Answering audience questions before the Commonwealth Club of California in Palo Alto, he said the United States needed to "work hard to preserve confidence in the strong dollar." Geithner, normally reluctant to publicly discuss currency and market movements, has not uttered the so-called "strong dollar mantra" - a refrain he helped create at Treasury in the 1990s - since February.

On Friday, the dollar index hit a 10-month low against a basket of major currencies, while the greenback has been plumbing fresh 15-year lows against Japan's yen. Many emerging market countries are complaining that Fed money creation is weakening the dollar, and causing more funds to flow into their markets, pushing up their currencies. Talk of a "currency war" has persisted as countries take action to keep from losing export competitiveness.

The UN cited the worst extinction rate since the dinosaurs vanished 65 million years ago, saying it's a crisis that needs to be addressed by governments, businesses and communities. A UN-backed study this month said global environmental damage caused by human activity in 2008 totaled $6.6 trillion, equivalent to 11 percent of global gross domestic product.

Despite the UN's fear that biodiversity may be at risk, scientists over the past decade have identified new species at an unprecedented rate. The 2008 World Wildlife Fund (WWF) study First Contact in the Greater Mekong reported that 1,068 species were discovered or newly identified by science between 1997 and 2007 - averaging two new species a week. And the Census of Marine Life - an ambitious, 10-year project to catalog the diversity of the world's oceans - recently concluded, having identified more than 6,000 potentially new ocean-going species.

Scientists have a growing understanding of the wealth of life on Earth, and the conference argues that our diversity is being threatened. The two-week UN meeting faces an uphill battle as it tries to institute sweeping steps to protect and restore ecosystems such as forests, rivers, coral reefs and the oceans that are vital for an ever-growing human population. Issues of funding will be a key problem delegates will need to iron out - both who pays for the program and who reaps the rewards of the world's biodiversity.

Japan, chair of the meeting, said agreement on an ambitious and practical 2020 target was key. "We are nearing a tipping point, or the point of no return for biodiversity loss," Japanese Environment Minister Ryu Matsumoto told the meeting. "Unless proactive steps are taken for biodiversity, there is a risk that we will surpass that point in the next 10 years."

In an unusually pointed interjection, German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Sunday declared that multiculturalism in Germany was a failure and said it was an illusion to think that Germans and foreign workers could "live happily side by side. We kidded ourselves for a while that they wouldn't stay, but that's not the reality," she told members of the youth group of her Christian Democratic Union party, referring to the influx of workers, known as guest workers, who helped fuel the country's postwar economic boom.

"Of course the tendency had been to say, 'let's adopt the multicultural concept and live happily side by side, and be happy to be living with each other'. But this concept has failed, and failed utterly," she said.

Her comments fanned Germany's already raging debate on immigration. A chorus of politicians has argued that many people from the immigrant community, which includes some four million Muslims and makes up some 18 percent of the population, have failed to integrate into German society. Thilo Sarrazin touched off the debate in August with the launch of his polemic book blaming immigration for what he saw as the demise of German society.

During a visit to Beijing last month, a delegation led by Robert J Einhorn, the State Department's special adviser for nonproliferation and arms control, handed a "significant list" of companies and banks to their Chinese counterparts, according to the senior US official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive issue in US-Chinese relations. The official said the Obama administration thinks that the companies are violating UN sanctions, but that China did not authorize their activities.

The Obama administration faces a balancing act in pressing Beijing to stop the deals and limit Chinese investments in Iran's energy industry. US officials say they need to preserve their ability to work with China on issues ranging from the value of its currency to the stability of North Korea. But the administration also wants to make progress in efforts to dissuade Iran from building a nuclear weapon and to convince other powerful states that China is not receiving lenient treatment because of its energy needs.

"My government will investigate the issues raised by the US side," said Wang Baodong, a spokesman for the Chinese Embassy.

A Facebook spokesman told the news organisation on Sunday night that the social media site is moving to "dramatically limit" the leaking of users' personal information, as it breaks the site's own rules. The report says that many applications grab a user's ID number, which is unique, and can then pass them on to internet advertising companies. It says that all of the 10 most popular "apps" did so, including Zynga's FarmVille, Texas HoldEm Poker and FrontierVille. Three of the top 10, including FarmVille, also transmitted personal information about the user's friends to external companies.

The data transmitted - the "Facebook ID" - is unique to each user, and can be used to look up your name even if your profile is set at its strictest setting. It also reveals any data that has been set to be visible to "everyone" on the site - which in fact means visible across the web. The WSJ said that the apps were sending Facebook IDs to at least 25 advertising and data firms, which build profiles of people by tracking them online.

The row over what data can safely be made available - and to what extent advertisers and tracking companies could and should be able to identify people from their browsing - is longstanding. In the 1990s the activities of the advertising company DoubleClick caused concern when it was realised that it could target people because it provided "cookies" on each site that they visited, and target ads at them. DoubleClick is now owned by Google.

More recently it has been Facebook, with its 500 million users, which has come repeatedly into the privacy spotlight. The WSJ says "one data-gathering firm, RapLeaf Inc, had linked Facebook user ID information obtained from apps to its own database of internet users, which it sells. RapLeaf also transmitted the Facebook IDs it obtained to a dozen other firms, the Journal found. Rapleaf told the paper: 'We didn't do it on purpose'.

The comments from International Monetary Fund managing director Dominique Strauss-Kahn came at the end of a meeting in Shanghai that brought together high-level officials from Asia, Africa, Europe, and North and South America. The Shanghai conference follows IMF and World Bank annual meetings earlier this month, where finance officials discussed how to strengthen the recovery from the worst recession since World War II and the global financial system.

It also comes ahead of this week's key Group of 20 meeting in South Korea, where currency reform is expected to dominate talks, amid fears that nations could adopt trade barriers in the face of competition from Asian exports. "The spirit of cooperation must be maintained. Without that, the recovery is in peril," Strauss-Kahn said in closing remarks, according to a copy of his speech released by the Washington-based IMF.

"Today, there is a risk that the single chorus that tamed the financial crisis will dissolve into a cacophony of discordant voices as countries increasingly go it alone. This will surely make everybody worse off."

The claim comes as a Government report identifies the "growing threat" of computer hackers to Britain as a key priority for the security and intelligence services. The National Security Strategy, to be unveiled by David Cameron, lists cyber attacks alongside violent terrorism as the most important challenges faced.

Speaking ahead of the Prime Minister's announcement, Sir Malcolm Rifkind, chairman of the ISC, said cyber attacks could pose "very massive problems". He told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "It's not people hacking into private citizens' computers."

"What we're talking about is terrorists being able to actually use cyber methods, for example, to interrupt the National Grid to prevent proper instructions going to power stations, which are under computer control. I was in the United States a few months ago and a very senior intelligence figure said to me that cyber attacks, he feared, were going to be the United States' next Pearl Harbor. That's the kind of severity that could happen if we don't get it right."

The G20 finance meeting in South Korea at the end of the week is likely to be dominated by disagreements over foreign exchange rates, with implications for global investment flows well beyond currencies. Japan's unsuccessful struggle to date to keep its yen competitive, for example, is one of the roots of its stock market's massive underperformance this year.

Britain's spending review on Wednesday, meanwhile, is also likely to be watched closely given its billing as one of the most detailed expositions of fiscal austerity plans in a Group of Seven country to date. Both come as prospects of the US Federal Reserve printing more money as part of a new quantitative easing (QE) stimulus program have driven world equities to two-year highs.

In the past week, the MSCI all-country world index hit a level last seen just after the collapse of Lehman Brothers in September 2008. It is with that as a background that investors are gearing for what could be a turbulent G20 finance summit. "The body language doesn't look good," Piroska Nagy, senior adviser to the chief economist at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, told a Reuters briefing.

European officials were informed that "Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula was doubtless active or envisioned being active" on the "European continent, notably France," Hortefeux said during a joint TV and radio interview. "The threat is real," he said on RTL-LCI-Le Figaro's weekly talk show. The warning from Saudi Arabia is the latest in a series of alerts that have put French security forces and others in high-vigilance mode.

The US State Department advised American citizens living or traveling in Europe earlier this month to take more precautions following reports that terrorists may be plotting attacks on a European city, possibly a shooting spree or other type of attack similar to the deadly 2008 Mumbai attacks in India.

France began boosting security last month at busy tourist sites like Notre Dame Cathedral and the Eiffel Tower, which was twice evacuated after false claims of an attack. French authorities recorded nine bomb alerts in the capital in September, including the two at the Eiffel Tower - a threefold increase from a year earlier. No explosives were found.

More than 1,000 supermarket petrol stations have run out of fuel, their industry association has said. The government wants to raise the retirement age from 60 to 62 and the full state pension age from 65 to 67. A further day of strikes is scheduled for Tuesday. The Senate is due to vote on the pensions bill on Wednesday.

More go-slow protests by truck drivers are planned during the rest of the day. There have been further blockades of fuel depots in western and southern France, with "at least 1,500 stations that have run out of at least one fuel product or are totally dry", an industry representative said. Around 4,500 of France's 12,500 petrol stations are attached to shopping centres, and supply 60% of the fuel used by French motorists.

"Twenty to 25% of our distribution capacity is either stopped or in trouble," said Alexandre de Benoist, a senior official with Union of Independent Petroleum Importers, which represents the sector.

Typhoon Megi is the strongest storm the Philippines has faced for four years. In 2006, a storm with winds of 155km/h triggered mudslides, burying villages and killing about 1,000 people. Tropical cyclones formed in the Pacific Ocean are called typhoons, but are classified on a scale of one to five in the same way as Atlantic Ocean hurricanes.

Strong typhoons with sustained winds of at least 130 knots (150mph; 240km/h), are referred to as super typhoons, according to the US Navy's Joint Typhoon Warning Center. Forecasters said Megi was a super typhoon as it made landfall, but weakened slightly as it made its way across the northern Philippines.

American and Chinese officials traded blows over the weekend, setting the stage for a tense G20 summit next month. The head of China's central bank rejected the idea of a big revaluation for the yuan, advocating a slow-acting "herbal medicine" instead. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner took a swipe at countries with "significantly undervalued" currencies, of which China is an obvious example.

The United States claims to be a loser in the currency wars. But in reality it is winning. The dollar has fallen sharply against most of its trading partners' currencies. On a trade-weighted basis, the dollar is the lowest it has been all year, according to the Federal Reserve major currencies index. The likelihood of an imminent bout of money-printing can keep that trend going for a long time.

China, meanwhile, claims not to be a winner. But that is disingenuous too. While the yuan just hit its highest level versus the dollar since officially abandoning its dollar peg in 2005, it has fallen heavily against most other currencies. The euro, the currency of China's biggest trading partner, has strengthened 14 percent against the yuan. The Japanese yen is not far behind. Various emerging markets, such as Brazil, have also seen their currencies soar.

The gap between winners and losers is widening.

A gradual but sustained revaluation of the yuan versus the dollar - combined with a halt to the dollar's own depreciation - is the least bad way forward. But getting such a deal, as positions become increasingly entrenched, will be tricky. And if both sides refuse to do anything, a currency war could mutate into a trade war - a genuine lose-lose scenario.

A recent survey showed that more than 30% of Germans believed Germany was "overrun by foreigners". The study - by the Friedrich Ebert Foundation think-tank - also showed that roughly the same number thought that some 16 million of Germany's immigrants or people with foreign origins had come to the country for the social benefits.

Mrs Merkel told a gathering of younger members of her conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party on Saturday that at "the beginning of the 60s our country called the foreign workers to come to Germany and now they live in our country... We kidded ourselves a while, we said: 'They won't stay, sometime they will be gone', but this isn't reality. And of course, the approach [to build] a multicultural [society] and to live side-by-side and to enjoy each other... has failed, utterly failed."

In her speech, the chancellor specifically referred to recent comments by German President Christian Wulff who said that Islam was "part of Germany" like Christianity and Judaism. While acknowledging that this was the case, Mrs Merkel stressed that immigrants living in Germany needed to do more to integrate, including learning to speak German. "Anyone who does not immediately speak German", she said, "is not welcome".

By speaking now, Mrs Merkel has now joined the increasingly hot debate on multiculturalism, coming down on the side of those who are uneasy about immigration, says the BBC's correspondent in Berlin, Stephen Evans.