The documents, uncovered during an operation led by the British intelligence service MI6, have been described by experts in that agency as "the most worrying [plot] that the world is facing."

The catastrophic wildfires would not only produce an environmental disaster but would stretch emergency services often beyond their limit and leave insurance companies facing multi-billion-dollar claims for damages that could effectively destroy the already shattered economies of a number of countries.

Australia, gripped by years of drought that has left tinderbox conditions as summer now approaches, regards the threat as "terrifying."

The country's attorney general, Robert McClelland, warned there is "a most urgent need for renewed vigilance against a very real and present danger." The FBI has issued a high priority warning that "such a terrorist plan could devastate states like California."

Spain, France and Germany -- all with vast forests -- are "vulnerable," MI6 warned the intelligence services of those countries. "The Amazon Basin, and other forests which supply the world with wood, is another prime target," the warning added.

The instructions for a "global fireball" were among documents recovered in the Pakistan border raid on an al-Qaida safe house.

The event of the annunciation and Mary's life illustrate and recapitulate the structure of the Covenant of the Word of God and the responsorial attitude of faith. They emphasize the personal and Trinitarian nature of faith, which consists in a gift of the person to God who gives himself through revealing himself. "This attitude is the attitude of saints. It is the same as the Church's who never ceases converting to her Lord in response to the voice addressed to her". This is why attention to the figure of Mary as model and even archetype of the Church's faith appears to be capital to concretely operate a change of paradigm in the relationship with the Word of God.

When Pope Pius IX proclaimed the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, he referred explicitly to the biblical story of the Annunciation in Luke''s Gospel. The angel Gabriel's salutation, "Hail, full of grace," is understood as recognizing that Mary must always have been free from sin. No other human being collaborated in the work of redemption as Mary did. The Early Church wanted to explain in a plausible manner how God''s Son could be "completely human, yet without sin." Their answer was that the mother of God must have been without sin.

The Church celebrates Mary's final journey into the fullness of God's Kingdom with the dogma of the Assumption promulgated by Pius XII in 1954. As with her beginnings, so too, with the end of her life, God fulfilled in her all of the promises that he has given to us. We, too, shall be raised up into heaven as she was. In Mary we have an image of humanity and divinity at home. God is indeed comfortable in our presence and we in God's. Through her Assumption, Mary was chosen to have a special place of honor in the Godhead.

The Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC) condemned the vote, saying, "Future generations would regard the bill as devaluing human life." SPUC said they will raise the issue during the next general election.

Besides allowing the creation of cloned human/animal embryos for experimentation, the bill will enshrine in law all the individual permissions given in the last 16 years by the UK's Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority. It will allow homosexual partners to have children created for them in IVF labs after it abolishes the requirement that doctors consider the "need for a father" in artificial procreation treatments. It allows the creation of children, called "saviour siblings," to be used as tissue donors for siblings, and permits the genetic manipulation of embryos for eugenic purposes. Earlier this week, it was also revealed that the government plans to use the bill to allow the creation of human clones from tissues taken from mentally incapacitated patients who cannot give consent.

Describing the vote as "tragic" and the bill itself as "macabre," SPUC director John Smeaton said, "Our only consolation is that thousands of people across the country have joined a concerted campaign in solidarity with unborn children."

"Scores" of doctors, lawyers and academics, as well as representatives of other faiths joined in the combined efforts of the various pro-life groups to oppose the bill.

Finally, the message ended saying that "[n]on-violence is encouraged by many other religions. Non-violence is central to our beliefs as the way to promote truth, light, mutual respect, freedom and harmony. As religious leaders called to uphold the truth found in our respective religions, let us help to foster non-violence among our followers and support it in their actions."