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Cybercrime is likely to wreak as much havoc as the credit crisis in the coming years if international regulation is not improved, some of the world’s top crime experts said on Wednesday.

Damage caused by cybercrime is estimated at $100 billion annually, said Kilian Strauss, of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).

“These criminals, they outsmart us ten, or a hundred to one,” Strauss told Reuters, adding more internet experts were needed to investigate and tackle cybercrime.

Criminal organizations are exploiting a regulatory vacuum to commit internet crimes such as computer spying, money-laundering and theft of personal information, and the scope for damage is vast, experts told a European Economic Crime conference in Frankfurt.

“We need multilateral understanding, account and oversight to avoid, in the years to come, a cyber crisis equivalent to the current financial crisis,” Antonio Maria Costa, Executive Director of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, said.

Internet crime is also a threat to national security, they said. Several countries, including the United States, have voiced concern over Russia’s and China’s abilities to electronically spy on them and disrupt computer networks.

Calls for greater regulation of the internet come at a time of regulatory renaissance, with policymakers looking to bolster the powers of financial sector watchdogs in the wake of the global financial crisis.

“Because of the transnational nature of identity-related crime, and especially of cybercrime, if we do not tackle the crime everywhere we will not solve it anywhere,” Costa said.

The President of Interpol, Khoo Boon Hui, said increasingly tech-savvy gangs from China, India, Eastern Europe and Africa were coming up with ever more sophisticated ways of swindling money from vulnerable people.

He also said there was a trend of company bosses being bribed by fraudsters claiming to have incriminating evidence about their firms.

Strauss, who works as Senior Programme Officer at the Office of the Co-ordinator of OSCE Economic and Environmental activities, said Internet crime watchdogs could learn a lot from criminals willing to switch sides.

The Canadian province of Ontario, wounded by the global economic slowdown, expects to post a budget deficit of C$500 million ($400 million) in the current fiscal year as revenues are projected to be C$918 million below its March forecast.

The provincial government said on Wednesday that it plans to rein in spending on some programs and cut internal government expenditures to deal with its first budget shortfall in four years. It also said that overall spending in 2008-09 would be C$132 million higher than planned due to higher health-related expenses.

“Economists have been forced by unprecedented economic volatility to dramatically alter their growth projections for the United States, for Canada, for Ontario, and for the world,” Finance Minister Dwight Duncan told the provincial legislature in an economic and fiscal update.

Last March, Ontario had expected to balance its books in the current 2008-09 year, which ends March 31, 2009, and the Finance Ministry reiterated that view in the summer.

But it is no longer “business as usual,” Duncan said.

The province slashed its projection for 2008 economic growth to just 0.1 percent, down from 1.1 percent previously, and said it will curb costs. For example, it will hire more nurses but at a slower pace than planned, and it will defer “less urgent” education capital improvement projects, Duncan said.

The growth outlook had already deteriorated soon after the March budget because of weaker U.S. demand, turbulent financial markets, the sharp jump in oil prices, and upheaval in the North American auto sector. Numerous auto plant shutdowns have been announced in Ontario in recent months.

All Canadian provinces will face pressure from slowing revenues, said Mario Angastiniotis, a credit analyst in the public finance group of rating agency Standard & Poor’s.

“I think the bigger risk is for 2009 because, so far, while the economy has slowed down in manufacturing, overall Ontario’s economy until the second half was still posting modest growth rates,” Angastiniotis told Reuters.

Finance leaders from the world’s rich nations pledged a coordinated response to the credit crisis on Friday but stopped short of backing a British plan to guarantee lending between banks.

Faced with the threat of a global recession and panicky financial markets, Group of Seven members acknowledged that they could no longer afford a country-by-country, case-by-case approach to crisis management after 14 months of turmoil.

Recapitalizing banks was a top priority as the United States, Canada, Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Japan met on Friday afternoon, though there was much disagreement about how best to do that. The U.S. Treasury Department has a $700 billion rescue plan in hand, which it could tap to buy stakes in banks. European leaders have yet to unite behind a similar proposal.

The G7 are expected to issue a communique summing up their views sometime after 6 p.m., but heading into the afternoon meeting there was little consensus on what they might say.

The International Monetary Fund has estimated losses from the credit crisis could reach $1.4 trillion, or about double what banks have written down so far. That would leave a gaping hole on balance sheets and restrict already tight lending.

“We should not imagine that we will have a harmonized response that will be the same for everyone, quite simply because you cannot apply the same method to market situations that are different,” French Economy Minister Christine Lagarde said. “What is important is to reach an agreement on common principles.”

But Britain’s Chancellor of the Exchequer, Alistair Darling, said governments needed to “move on from simply agreeing on a general approach.”

“Markets and people the world over will be looking for a clear sign that governments of the largest economies in particular are prepared to act — they are prepared to take firm measures that will make a difference,” Darling told Reuters in an interview. “We expect this weekend to show that we are determined to do that.”

Britain this week committed 50 billion pounds to recapitalize its banks and offered to guarantee interbank lending by as much as 250 billion pounds to get credit flowing again.

Darling said he hoped other countries would follow Britain’s plan. Officials from two G7 countries said the group was unlikely to adopt the British approach this weekend.

“We will have to coordinate internationally, but beyond that there should be room for nation-specific solutions,” German Finance Minister Peer Steinbrueck said. “What Great Britain has been doing is one approach, but that does not mean that it should be transferred to any other country.”

Pope Benedict on Sunday kicked off a seven-day, non-stop Bible reading marathon on Italian television.

The pope read for several minutes from the start of the Book of Genesis live from his apartments in the Vatican while other speakers read in the Basilica of Holy Cross in Rome.

In the next seven days and six nights, more than 1,200 people will read from the Bible until all 73 books of the Catholic edition is finished.

The second reader was from the Russian Orthodox Church and the third was an Italian protestant leader. Others on the first night included Italian politicians and artists, among them Oscar-winning actor and director Roberto Benigni.

Tenor Andrea Bocelli sang between readings.

Rome’s chief rabbi, Riccardo di Segni, had originally agreed to read immediately after the pope but pulled out of the event last month, saying it had become “too Catholic”.

The broadcast began live on state broadcaster RAI’s first channel and was to continue on one of its satellite channels.

A television news anchor who looks like Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin has revealed that she’s been getting ‘hate mail and nasty phone calls’ from viewers who think she’s trying to copy her signature style.Cindy Michaels at WVII-TV in Maine has long brown hair that she sometimes wears up in a style similar to the Alaska governor, and she also wears glasses occasionally.

Michaels says viewers recently began accusing her of trying to copy Palin’s style or, worse, somehow trying to subliminally sway votes.

Michaels confesses to finding the hate mail a ‘little strange’.

“I don’t think I look like her, I think I look like me,” News.com.au quoted her, as saying.

New York Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton is trying hard to stem the recent shift of white female voters to the Republican ticket.During the brutal Democratic primary fight, Clinton had driven a wedge between female white voters while countering Senator Barack Obama.

She told an enthusiastic crowd of about 1,600 made up mostly of white women, in the gymnasium of Ellet High School, Ohio, that though she and Obama started out on two separate paths, they are now on one journey.

“With your help, it will lead straight to the White House,” added Clinton.

According to the Washington Times, she trashed both Republican Presidential nominee Senator John McCain and running mate Alaska Governor Sarah Palin for promising more of the same policies of President Bush, which ‘had cost Ohio manufacturing jobs, left many without health insurance and made big oil companies richer while the middle class grew poorer.’

Palin’s addition to the Republican ticket last month is being cited as one major factor for energizing the conservative base and drawing female voters away from Obama. Clinton mentioned her name only once.

Moreover, Clinton echoed Obama’s campaign message that McCain is out of touch with the middle-class voters.

Interestingly, many women in the crowd said that they attended the event out of admiration for Clinton and were not yet persuaded to back Obama on Election Day.

A high-ranking British policeman who dressed up as Osama bin Laden, the chief of Al Qaeda terror outfit, during a village carnival has apologized for his action which he said was due to an ‘an error of judgement’.Chief Superintendent Colin Terry took part in a village carnival in Grampound, in the southwestern county of Cornwall last Saturday, and has since been reprimanded by his superiors.

However, the force said it could not start immediate disciplinary action because Terry was currently on secondment to the British Foreign Office, working on a European Union (EU) mission to train police officers in Afghanistan.

‘The carnival is a community event and I am extremely disappointed if it has caused offence and I am most apologetic for that. I should have been a bit more careful because of my job,’ Terry told the BBC.

The US presidential nominees Republican John McCain and Democrat Barack Obama have welcomed the NSG waiver to India.McCain has asked Congressional leaders to act “expeditiously” to pass the Indo-US nuclear deal and Obama has sought its quick submission before lawmakers.

McCain said in a statement in Virginia that the implementation of the nuclear deal, represents another building block in the partnership between India and US.

Obama issued a statement from Chicago referring the NSG approval a “positive development” and saying that he is looking forward to “reviewing” what the grouping has agreed in Vienna.

Meanwhile, Bush Administration will try to push the Indo-US nuclear deal in its session starting on Monday after its ringing endorsement by the 45-member Nuclear Suppliers Group in Vienna.

Thailand’s army chief has vowed not to use force against protesters following the prime minister’s declaration of emergency rule.

Army Commander Gen. Anupong Paochinda told a news conference Tuesday that the military was “on the people’s side.”

He said that if the military needs to get involved in the country’s political crisis they will not have weapons and “will not use force.”

Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej declared a state of emergency earlier Tuesday after overnight clashes between government opponents and supporters left one person dead and 43 injured.

The violence heightened a national crisis that started a week ago when opponents of Samak occupied the grounds of his official compound and refused to move until he resigned.

Oscar-winner Helen Mirren admitted she loved snorting cocaine and only stopped due to the capture of Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie, in an magazine interview out this month.

The respected British actress, 63, who won an Academy Award for her portrayal of Queen Elizabeth II in “The Queen”, told the October issue of GQ men’s monthly that she took the drug until her late thirties.

She only quit after the notorious Barbie was caught in Bolivia in 1983, and believed to have been making money from the Class A drug.

The star, knighted in 2003, also talked about meeting Queen Elizabeth, and spoke further about her date rape experiences.

Mirren said she used to take “a bit of cocaine. I loved coke. I never did a lot, just a little bit at parties.

“But what ended it for me was when they caught Klaus Barbie, the Butcher of Lyon, in the early eighties.

“He was hiding in South America and living off the proceeds of being a cocaine baron.

“And I read that in the paper, and all the cards fell into place and I saw how my little sniff of cocaine at a party had an absolute direct route to this fucking horrible man in South America.

“And from that day I never touched cocaine again. Until that moment I had never grasped the full horrifying structure of what brings coke to our parties in Britain.”

Mirren said she hated marijuana and once tried the hallucinogenic drug LSD but found it a horrifying experience.

She said she was not a “royalist” but had become a “Queenist” after portraying the British sovereign.

“It’s a miracle she’s never gone mad,” she said.

“She is a remarkable person, who has achieved an amazing thing with a life she neither chose for herself, nor particularly wanted.”

Mirren finally met Queen Elizabeth at Ascot races earlier this year, having turned down an invite to Buckingham Palace because she was filming.

“She said, ‘Hello, it’s lovely to meet you’. And that was about it, other than horsey chat,” said Mirren.

Queen Elizabeth’s husband Prince Philip “just talked about the sandwiches, and the horses. Then the queen invited us all outside to watch the racing.

“I think it was just a gesture to say, ‘It’s OK, we’re cool about the film. And that was plenty enough for me.”

Mirren, who has spoken in the past of her date rape experiences in her youth, said she had a sheltered upbringing in a convent school and did not have the courage to stand up to men.

She did not report the incidents to the police.

“You couldn’t do that in those days,” she said.

“It’s such a tricky area, isn’t it? Especially if there is no violence. I mean, look at Mike Tyson. I don’t think he was a rapist.

“I was (date-raped), yes. A couple of times.

“Not with excessive violence, or being hit, but rather being locked in a room and made to have sex against my will.”

She said that if a woman voluntarily ended up in a man’s bedroom, took all her clothes off and engaged in sexual activity in bed with him, she had the right to say “no” at the last second and if the man ignored her it was rape.

But she added: “I don’t think she can have that man into court under those circumstances.”

Mirren, often considered a sex symbol, added: “I might have a certain appeal in some way or another, and maybe part of that is sexual, but I am not beautiful.”