Mr Obama hasn’t confirmed a visit to the Temple Mount. But Muslim leaders have heard rumors and have issued a blunt statement nonetheless, The Times of Israel reports.

Hamas said a visit by Mr Obama to the Al-Aqsa Mosque, which is located just on the southern side of the Mount, would be “an imminent danger which the Al-Aqsa Mosque and Jerusalem have never faced,” according to The Times of Israel. Hamas — which has been designated a Foreign Terrorist Organization by the US State Department since 1997 — also called any visit by Mr Obama to the site of “the Zionist occupation” an act of danger.

Ekrima Sabri, who heads the High Islamic Council in Jerusalem, said his group “insists on Muslim sovereignty over the Temple Mount,” according to The Times of Israel report.

What they have found so far has shocked even scholars steeped in the history of the Holocaust. The researchers have cataloged some 42,500 Nazi ghettos and camps throughout Europe, spanning German-controlled areas from France to Russia and Germany itself, during Hitler's reign of brutality from 1933 to 1945.

The figure is so staggering that even fellow Holocaust scholars had to make sure they had heard it correctly when the lead researchers previewed their findings at an academic forum in late January at the German Historical Institute in Washington.

Dr Dean, a co-researcher, said the findings left no doubt in his mind that many German citizens, despite the frequent claims of ignorance after the war, must have known about the widespread existence of the Nazi camps at the time. "You literally could not go anywhere in Germany without running into forced labor camps, Prisoner Of War camps, concentration camps," he said. "They were everywhere."

We’ve heard about the so-called papal ‘resignation’ almost 600 years ago. But there wasn’t one. There were three rival Popes back then, and one of them was a psychopath. They were sacked by a council of all the bishops and cardinals to get back to one Pope at a time. Since then, every Pope has died in office.

Resignation isn’t in Benedict’s vocabulary. The real reason he has quit is far more spectacular. It is to save the Catholic Church from ignominy: he has voluntarily delivered himself up as a sacrificial lamb to purge the Church of what he calls ‘The Filth’. And it must have taken courage. Here is the remarkable thing you are seldom told about a papal death or resignation: every one of the senior office-holders in the Vatican – those at the highest level of its internal bureaucracy, called the Curia – loses his job.

A report Benedict himself commissioned into the state of the Curia landed on his desk in January. It revealed that ‘The Filth’ – or more specifically, the paedophile priest scandal – had entered the bureaucracy.

He is too old, and too implicated, to clean it up himself. He has resigned to make way for a younger, more dynamic successor, untainted by scandal – and a similarly recast Curia.

Benedict was not prepared to wait for his own death to sweep out the gang who run the place. In one extraordinary gesture, by resigning, he gets rid of the lot of them. But what then? The Curia are usually quickly reappointed. This time it may be different. It involves scores of departments, like the civil service of a middling-sized country.

In the Observer, which first reported the story last week, the former priest, who remains anonymous, today said he had been 'disappointed' by the church's reaction.

He said: 'There have been two sensations for me this week. One is feeling the hot breath of the media on the back of my neck and the other is sensing the cold disapproval of the church hierarchy for daring to break ranks. I feel like if they could crush me, they would.'

'The vacuum the church has created has allowed whimsy and speculation to distort the truth, and the only support I have been offered is a cursory email with a couple of telephone numbers of counsellors hundreds of miles away from me.'

However, Mr Yi said a currency war can be avoided if policymakers follow the consensus reached at the Group of 20 nations meeting in Moscow last month.

A currency war occurs when a number of major economies compete against each other to devalue their own currency and lower the exchange rate. This cuts the price of exports from the country and makes imports more expensive – effectively boosting jobs as demand from both domestic and foreign markets increases.

In the Great Depression of the 1930s, currency wars became common, with nations effectively competing to export unemployment. However, global trade declined sharply as fluctuating exchange rates harmed international traders, hurting all economies. Fears of a currency war were sparked last month when Japan’s new prime minister Shinzo Abe made it clear he is determined to force down the yen to boost exports.

In an interview with a German magazine published on Saturday, Mr Grillo said that “if conditions do not change” Italy “will want” to leave the euro and return to its former national currency. The 64-year-old comic-turned-political activist also said Italy needs to renegotiate its €2 trillion debt. At 127 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP), it is the highest in the euro zone after Greece.

“Right now we are being crushed, not by the euro, but by our debt. When the interest payments reach €100 billion a year, we’re dead. There’s no alternative,” he told Focus, a weekly news magazine.

Since the Pope’s resignation announcement on February 11, ABC, NBC and CBS have characterized the Catholic Church as “troubled” 122 times and used the word “scandal” 87 times says a new study from the Media Research Center. Coverage has also pushed for the church to be more liberal, calling for the church to “modernize” 32 times, change its stance on women seven times and on gays 13 times, the study found. Then there was the funny stuff.

“The resignation of the leader of 1.2 billion Catholics is the time for making jokes. The networks ran jokes from late night shows about the Pope seven times and even brought on comedian George Lopez to give his sacrilegious perspective on Catholicism,” the study said.

“The networks reminded people of faith that so-called journalists will use any chance to undermine conservative beliefs in family, marriage and life,” observes Dan Gainor, vice president of media and culture for the research group.

Mr Van Rompuy, president of the EU Council of Ministers, told a London conference that the issue raised by the Prime Minister's recent speech promising an “in/out referendum” under a future Tory Government was “not just a matter between London and Brussels.” He said: “The wish to redefine your country's relationship with the Union has not gone unnoticed. I cannot speak on behalf of the other presidents and prime ministers but I presume they neither particularly like it nor particularly fear it.”

Addressing the Policy Network EU conference Mr Van Rompuy, who chairs all summits of EU leaders - the next in a fortnight - continued: “Leaving the (EU) club altogether is legally possible” but it would be “a most complicated and unpractical affair. Just think of a divorce after forty years of marriage. Leaving is an act of free will but it doesn't come for free.”

Army sources have revealed that German bases scheduled for closure in 2020 could now be shut down by 2018 as part of a deal to be announced by the Ministry of Defence next week. Bringing home the successors to the British Army of the Rhine will mean spending billions of pounds on new UK bases, but ministers will argue that it will deliver major long-term savings.

Britain has had a continuous military presence in Germany since 1945 and there are still almost 17,000 personnel stationed there. Ministers have promised to withdraw half of those forces by 2015 and all of them by 2020. Defence ministers will promise MPs next week that the 2020 target will be met. Whitehall sources said that some German bases could even be closed earlier than expected.