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The unusually early snow blanketed the capital from Sunday morning and kept falling for half the day, helped by temperatures as low as minus 2 Celsius (29 Fahrenheit) and strong winds from the north, Xinhua news agency reported.

Besides falling in the northeastern provinces of Liaoning and Jilin and the northern province of Hebei, the eastern port city of Tianjin also got its first snow of the autumn, the report said.

“We wont miss any opportunity of artificial precipitation since Beijing is suffering from the lingering drought,” the report quoted Zhang Qiang, head of the Beijing Weather Modification Office, as saying.

Chinese meteorologists have for years sought to make rain by injecting special chemicals into clouds.

Although the technique often gets results, a drought in the north of the country has continued for over a decade.

In order to secure gold at the lowest possible price, US investors are turning to the complex, lengthy process of taking delivery of gold futures contracts. By buying gold contracts in deliverable months and wait for them to expire, sophisticated investors are emptying COMEX warehouses. The incredible hassle of trying to pry gold out of Comex warehouses appeals to investors because no other place in the US offers a price equal to the Comex exchange. Nothing even comes close.

Guiding investors through the delivery process are gold and silver brokers like JB Slear who specialize in helping high net worth clients take delivery of gold and silver futures contracts. These advisors are necessary because, as investors are discovering, that there is trouble at Comex warehouses:

1) Delays and complications in the delivery process have become increasingly commonplace. It is taking weeks and possibly even months, and sometimes dozen of inquiries, for investors to get the gold they already own out of the warehouse.

2) More restrictions are being applied to overseas buyers requesting delivery.

3) Some brokerages will not help with the delivery process or refuse to help even after the commissions are paid.

4) The cost in just about everything “Comex” is increasing

5) Investors withdrawing their 100oz. bars from the Comex depositories are being given bars with incorrect serial numbers or weight.

With the difficulties and irregularities in the COMEX delivery process, many, including gold brokers like JB Slear, have doubts as to whether there is gold in inventory to match existing warehouse receipts.

Like others involved in the gold market, Slear believes that there are real shortages of precious metals that have yet to be exposed. But he recognises the futures market as a last resort for people who can’t buy metals at reasonable prices elsewhere: “If a buyer wants to buy a physical product and cannot find it locally, he or she can go to my firm’s web address to transact that business. My business model is a last resort purchase arena for those who need to protect their personal wealth.”

He says there is anecdotal evidence that this activity is widespread enough to be affecting warehouse stocks as high net worth clients remove metal from warehouses.

Americans have made up no more than 5 per cent of Switzerland’s $US1.8 trillion ($1.97 trillion) offshore-banking business. But European clients are steadily coming clean, spooked by threats of a crackdown by their own governments.

Non-resident, or offshore, clients make up about a third of Switzerland’s private-banking business, with just more than half of those coming from other European countries. According to KPMG, as much as 80 per cent of the Europeans’ money in Switzerland is undeclared. In all, KPMG reckons that tax evasion could represent up to 25 per cent of Switzerland’s total private-banking market.

This weekend, Swiss banking giant UBS will hand over the names of 500 suspected American tax dodgers to the Internal Revenue Service, the first of 4450 names it will turn over as part of an August agreement between the US and Swiss governments. That accord marked a historic breach of Switzerland’s cherished bank secrecy, and prodded many Swiss banks to refuse to take American clients for fear of falling foul of US laws.

Now, in the wake of the American crackdown, and Switzerland’s co-operation, an exodus of European money is under way. According to consulting group McKinsey & Co, Western European money makes up 51 per cent of legacy assets in Switzerland, but only about a third of new money.

“It’s a big mistake to say this is an American issue,” says Philip Marcovici, a Zurich partner at law firm Baker & McKenzie. “The Europeans are right around the corner.”

To be sure, the demise of the tax-dodging business is akin to a melting ice cube, and the speed at which it dissolves will depend on how aggressive European governments – whose rhetoric in clamping down on tax deadbeats has exceeded real action – will be. No other government has been as aggressive as the US has in putting up demands that the Swiss hand over names of suspected tax dodgers.

But there are signs of pressure. This past week, Italian tax authorities raided local offices of Swiss banks, in what Swiss bankers regard as an attempt to scare tax dodgers. And new treaties Switzerland has signed with France and the UK make it easier for those countries to pursue information on suspected tax dodgers.

The tax crackdown isn’t the only factor driving European money away. Many European baby boomers are also anxious to bring money home to recapitalise sagging businesses or pass the money on to their children.

For Swiss banks, a fat business is slipping away. Citizens in Italy, Germany and France – the big three tax-dodging nations – stashed their money in Switzerland because of political unrest at home, high inflation and sky-high tax rates. They weren’t always after high returns, and they complained little about performance and rarely visited their bankers, who typically had them sign discretionary mandates allowing the bank to act on their behalf. Higher fees on discretionary mandates mean such clients are twice as profitable as those who directly manage their accounts. Some bankers privately admit that the fees on undeclared money can be several times those on declared money.

Since around 2000, the bigger Swiss banks such as Credit Suisse, UBS, Julius Baer Group and Pictet & Cie have tried to diversify away from tax dodgers by opening branches in Italy, Germany and France and building big onshore businesses with these clients. They are also targeting new millionaires in Russia, the Middle East and Asia. With taxes low at home, investors in these countries are instead fleeing political instability. Indeed, Singapore, also courting these emerging-market millionaires, is now Switzerland’s main offshore rival.

But the switch isn’t painless. A recent presentation by Credit Suisse gave a rare peek into just how rich the undeclared business was. The bank expanded aggressively abroad over the past decade; between 2006 and the first half of this year, just 4 per cent of its net new money came from Western European clients bringing their money into Switzerland; 59 per cent flowed into its booking centres outside the country.

“Bank secrecy in itself cannot be a value proposition,” said Walter Berchtold, head of private banking at Credit Suisse, at a presentation recently. “It is important to clients, but the tax angle of it cannot be the driver.”

Dirk Hoffmann-Becking, an analyst at Sanford Bernstein reckons that Credit Suisse’s operating profit margin on its business managing non-compliant money in Switzerland is 75 per cent – double the margin on its onshore business. The tax-avoidance business could account for 12 per cent to 15 per cent of the operating profit of Credit Suisse’s private bank, according to Mr Hoffmann-Becking. As that business melts away, Credit Suisse could have trouble hitting its target of 40 per cent operating margin on the private bank, he says.

A spokesman for Credit Suisse said that the bank contests Mr Hoffmann-Becking’s analysis, saying Mr Hoffmann-Becking incorrectly interpreted figures from a recent presentation to analysts. Mr Hoffmann-Becking stands by his report.

The low valuations for a raft of recent private-banking acquisitions also show the poor prospects for undeclared money. In October, Julius Baer paid just 2.3 per cent of managed assets for the Swiss portfolio of ING – far off the 5 per cent paid just a few years ago – in part because the book contains a large chunk of European clients.

In making the argument, the Obama administration agreed with the Bush administration’s position on the case but insists it came to the decision differently. A civil liberties group criticized the move Friday as a retreat from promises President Barack Obama made as a candidate.

Holder’s effort to stop the lawsuit marks the first time the administration has tried to invoke the state secrets privilege under a new policy it launched last month designed to make such a legal argument more difficult.

Under the state secrets privilege, the government can have a lawsuit dismissed if hearing the case would jeopardize national security.

The Bush administration invoked the privilege numerous times in lawsuits over various post-9/11 programs, but the Obama administration recently announced that only a limited number of senior Justice Department officials would be able to make such decisions. It also agreed to provide confidential information to the courts in such cases.

Under the new approach, an agency trying to keep such information secret would have to convince the attorney general and a panel of Justice Department lawyers that its release would compromise national security.

Holder said that in the current case, that review process convinced him “there is no way for this case to move forward without jeopardizing ongoing intelligence activities that we rely upon to protect the safety of the American people.”

The lawsuit was filed by a group of individuals who claimed the government illegally monitored their communications. To proceed with the case, Holder said, would expose intelligence sources and methods.

Holder said U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker, who is handling the case, was given a classified description of why the case must be dismissed so that the court can “conduct its own independent assessment of our claim.”

Prime Minister Yulia V. Tymoshenko announced the measures on Friday in response to rising fears about swine flu, especially in western Ukraine. Federal health officials said 33 people had died from the flu across the country, although there was conflicting information about which type of the virus was to blame.

The closings brought the 2009 total to 115 in 2009 — the first year since 1992 that more than 100 banks have gone under.

The banks as of Sept. 30 had combined assets of $19.4 billion and deposits of $15.4 billion, the FDIC said.

The deposit insurance fund will take an estimated $2.5 billion hit, the FDIC said.

All nine banks were subsidiaries of FBOP Corp., a holding company based in the Chicago suburb of Oak Park, Ill., according to the FDIC.

Privately held FBOP, which originated as the parent company of First Bank of Oak Park, wasn’t involved in Friday’s closures, the FDIC said.

I identified with the Canadian soldiers at the funeral mourning the loss of their friend. Like them, I went to Afghanistan believing in “fighting terrorism” and “liberating Afghans.” During my first mission, we were protecting refugees escaping an area that was under attack by the mujahedeen. I was deeply affected by their misery, and by the poverty and suffering of the Afghan people in general. In my mind, our presence was “helping Afghans,” particularly with educating women and children. My combat unit participated in “humanitarian aid” – accompanying doctors and delivering food, fuel, clothing, school and other supplies to Afghan villages.

The report appears to have been inadvertently placed on a publicly accessible computer network, and it was provided to The Washington Post by a source not connected to the congressional investigations. The committee said Thursday night that the document was released by a low-level staffer.

As Afghanistan prepares for a second round of national voting, the documents and interviews paint the fullest picture to date of the finances of the election commission, which has been accused of facilitating election fraud and operating ghost polling places. The new disclosures also deepen the questions about the U.N.’s oversight of money provided by the United States and other nations to ensure a fair election in Afghanistan.