US Trade Representative Ron Kirk told Reuters that the team, announced by Obama last week, will include intelligence officials as well as representatives of other agencies in order to beef up US resources and crack open markets. "We want to make sure we aren't resource-constrained. Other countries know our budget and our resources... and so they'll game the system because they know that we're very discriminating on which cases we make," Kirk said in an interview.

"We don't want them to make... that bet that we don't have the resources to come after them if they're intentionally and unfairly discriminating against American exporters," Kirk said, speaking on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

He did not identify countries that could attract the attention of the unit, but Obama is under pressure to show business and voters he is taking a tough stance against China. Republican presidential candidates have slammed Obama's handling of Beijing ahead of November's elections. The US trade deficit with China is expected to have hit a record of about $300 billion in 2011.

Greek Education Minister Anna Diamantopoulou called the German plan "the product of a sick imagination". The European Commission said the budget "must remain the full responsibility of the Greek government". A German official told the Associated Press eurozone finance ministers were discussing the plan.

Stephen Evans BBC News, Berlin, comments: "The leaked document is a draft and the European Commission has already voiced its unease. But it clearly reveals the direction of German thinking: much tighter control of Greek policy-making. To control big economic decisions is to control much else.

But questions arise: what if a decision by a democratically elected government in Athens were vetoed by an unelected budget commissioner in Brussels, perhaps seen as the voice of Berlin? How might a decision be enforced?

The German government believes the nub of the Greek situation is that the government in Athens has over-spent, so must cut its spending. But politics may be less black and white. Democratic legitimacy plus the feeling of ordinary people are also factors - in a potent political mixture."

The European Commission says it wants to reinforce its monitoring of Greek finances, but Greece should retain sovereign control. Meanwhile, Greece and its private investors are close to a deal which will pave the way for a second bailout. Negotiators say a tentative agreement could be finalised next week.

Greece must reach agreement in the next few days in order to receive the next tranche of funds from its first bailout. It needs the money to pay off a significant number of bondholders whose bonds mature in March. Without the bailout funds, Greece could be forced into an uncontrolled default from the euro.

Mark Lowen BBC News, Athens, comments: "In reality, Greece's finances are already to a large extent controlled by foreign forces. The debt-stricken country has received enormous bailouts from the EU and IMF conditional on deep cuts and fiscal reforms drawn up largely by officials in Brussels. This new German proposal is clearly prompted by the widespread concerns that Greece is not succeeding in bringing its budget into order. Reforms have been slow and the budget deficit remains above target.

But ceding more control to Brussels would be deeply unpopular here. Most Greeks are against the austerity programme demanded by the EU and IMF. And much popular anger is directed at Germany as Europe's paymaster general. The fact that Berlin has raised this latest plan won't soften sentiments here."

Reviving Western concerns that his government is still contemplating unilateral military action against Iran, Ehud Barak gave one of the clearest signs yet that Israel's support for new US and EU sanctions remains strictly limited.

"We are determined to prevent Iran from turning nuclear," he told the World Economic Forum in Davos. "And even the American president and opinion leaders have said that no option should be removed from the table. "It seems to us to be urgent, because the Iranians are deliberately drifting into what we call an immunity zone where practically no surgical operation could block them."

Although Israeli intelligence and military officials have privately spoken of Iran's nuclear programme entering a "framework of immunity", it is the first time that a senior figure in Benjamin Netanyahu's government has done so in public. Israel's fears that it might soon be too late to launch military action were bolstered earlier this month when Iran announced that it had begun to enrich uranium at its Fordow plant, which is buried so deep within a mountain it may be impossible for Israeli warplanes or missiles to destroy.

“The United States says it will not allow Iran to be nuclear, but it is so blind that it hasn’t noticed that Iran has already become a nuclear state,” Khatami was quoted by Channel 10 News as having said. He added that the US has become isolated in the region, after its four “slaves” were removed from power. He was referring to former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, former Libyan strongman Muammar Qaddafi, former Tunisian President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali and former Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh.

Khatami also addressed the EU’s embargo on Iranian oil imports, which was announced this week, and said that the Europeans decided to wait with the implementation of the sanctions until July because their economic situation is no better than Iran’s. “Why did the Europeans decide to wait half a year before implementing the sanctions? The answer is simple - the Europeans have their own serious trouble - they were hit by the financial crisis,” he said.

Khatami added the embargo will hurt Europe more than it will hurt Iran, because Saudi Arabia will not be able to provide the required amount of oil to Europe, while the sanctions will only hurt 18 percent of Iran’s oil exports.

"What if an Argentinian force was able to secure the Mount Pleasant airfield? Then our ability to recover the islands now would be just about impossible," says General Jackson, who was Chief of the General Staff until five years ago and led the army into Iraq. "We are not in a position to take air power by sea since the demise of the Harrier force."

Britain no longer has an aircraft carrier and the Harrier fleet which performed with such distinction during the Falklands War has been sold to the US Marine Corps. "Let us hope we do not live to regret that decision," says General Jackson, responding to what he calls "disagreeable noises coming from Buenos Aires" as the 30th anniversary of the war approaches.

President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner has restated Argentina's claims to sovereignty over the islands it calls the Malvinas, saying, "We are going to get them back." General Jackson believes they could still fall to a surprise attack.

Defence sources have confirmed that if violence were to return to British cities, especially during the Olympic Games, the Paras would be "ideally placed" to provide "short-term" support to police forces around the UK. Such a request would have to be made by the Home Office and would have to have Prime Ministerial approval, according to the source.

During the exercises at the Lydd training base in Kent, the elite troops were pelted with petrol bombs and missiles and "fought" running battles with gangs of protesters as part of the battalion's "public order training". The battalion is the lead unit in the Airborne Task Force - the Army's premier rapid response unit and can be called on to deal with a wide range of emergency situations - from hostage rescue to riot control - around the world.

Sources have stressed however that being riot-trained does not necessarily mean the Paras will be deployed onto British streets in the event of future wide-scale public disorder; instead the move was described as "prudent contingency planning". There is not understood to have been a specific request from the Home Office or police for the training to be carried out.

The riot training could be used if soldiers were called in to evacuate British nationals or embassies in the face of public disorder in a foreign country.

Since the start of the ongoing winter season, at least 7,069 people have reported suffering from symptoms similar to those of swine flu. Lab tests are still underway and have so far confirmed 1,456 cases of the disease, which is officially known as A/H1N1.

According to Mexico’s Health Ministry (SSA), at least twenty-nine people have died of swine flu so far this season. While no health emergency has been declared, officials expect the death toll will rise in the coming weeks as Mexico also faces A/H3N2 and B influenza.

The H1N1 influenza virus emerged in the Mexican state of Veracruz in April 2009 and quickly spread around the world, causing the World Health Organization (WHO) to declare a global flu pandemic in June 2009. At least 18,000 people have died of the disease since, although the actual number is believed to be far higher.

But that line doesn't make sense, and the sanctions will not achieve their goals. Iran is far from isolated and its friends – like India – will stand by the oil-producing nation until the US either backs down or acknowledges the real matter at hand. That matter is the American dollar and its role as the global reserve currency.

The short version of the story is that a 1970s deal cemented the US dollar as the only currency to buy and sell crude oil, and from that monopoly on the all-important oil trade the US dollar slowly but surely became the reserve currency for global trades in most commodities and goods. Massive demand for US dollars ensued, pushing the dollar's value up, up, and away. In addition, countries stored their excess US dollars savings in US Treasuries, giving the US government a vast pool of credit from which to draw.

We know where that situation led – to a US government suffocating in debt while its citizens face stubbornly high unemployment (due in part to the high value of the dollar); a failed real estate market; record personal-debt burdens; a bloated banking system; and a teetering economy. That is not the picture of a world superpower worthy of the privileges gained from having its currency back global trade. Other countries are starting to see that and are slowly but surely moving away from US dollars in their transactions, starting with oil.

If the US dollar loses its position as the global reserve currency, the consequences for America are dire. A major portion of the dollar's valuation stems from its lock on the oil industry – if that monopoly fades, so too will the value of the dollar. Such a major transition in global fiat currency relationships will bode well for some currencies and not so well for others, and the outcomes will be challenging to predict. But there is one outcome that we foresee with certainty: Gold will rise. Uncertainty around paper money always bodes well for gold, and these are uncertain days indeed.

Spearheaded by the governments of the United States and Japan and constructed largely in the absence of public awareness, the measures of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) dramatically alter current international legal framework, while introducing the first substantial processes of global internet governance. With complete contempt towards the democratic process, the negotiations of the treaty were exclusively held between industry representatives and government officials, while excluding elected representatives and members of the press from their hearings.

Under the guise of protecting intellectual property rights, the treaty introduces measures that would allow the private sector to enforce sweeping central authority over internet content. The ACTA abolishes all legal oversight involving the removal of content and allows copyright holders to force ISPs to remove material from the internet, something that presently requires a court order. ISPs would then be faced with legal liabilities if they chose not to remove content. Theoretically, personal blogs can be removed for using company logos without permission or simply linking to copy written material; users could be criminalized, barred from accessing the internet and even imprisoned for sharing copyrighted material. Ultimately, these implications would be starkly detrimental toward the internet as a medium for free speech.

The Obama Administration subverted the legal necessity of allowing to US Senate to ratify the treaty by unconstitutionally declaring it an “executive agreement” before the President promptly signed it on October 1st, 2011. As a touted constitutional lawyer, Barack Obama is fully aware that Article 1, Section 8 of the US Constitution, mandates Congress in dealing with issues of intellectual property, thus voiding the capacity for the President to issue an executive agreement. The White House refused to even disclose details about the legislation to elected officials and civil libertarians over concern that doing so may incur "damage to the national security." While some may hang off every word of his sorely insincere speeches and still be fixated by the promises of hope offered by brand-Obama, his administration has trampled the constitution and introduced the most comprehensive authoritarian legislation in America’s history.

This signing ceremony merely formalized the EU’s adoption of ACTA last month, during a completely unrelated meeting on agriculture and fisheries, reports TechDirt. Though initiated by the US, Japan is the official depository of the treaty. Removal of the Three Strikes clause, in which users accused of three counts of piracy would be barred from the internet, paved the way for the EU to adopt ACTA last month.

Related to ACTA, a chapter in the Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP) “would have state signatories adopt even more restrictive copyright measures than ACTA,” reports the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Both ACTA and TPP were developed without public input and outside international trade groups, like the World Trade Organization and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

Leaked cables published by WikiLeaks in 2009 exposed early drafts of ACTA, resulting in a firestorm of controversy. Those cables, coupled with later releases, showed that ACTA negotiations began in 2006 and were controversial even to participating states.

The Pentagon is facing cuts of $487 billion (£310 billion) over the next 10 years. In five years, the Army will drop from a peak of 570,000 to 490,000, and the marines be cut by 20,000, to 182,000. The military's budget would rise, albeit at a slower rate, to $567 billion by 2017. The defence budget could also lose another $500 billion at the end of this year after Congress failed to agree on deficit reduction following a debt-ceiling deal in August.

Some members of Congress did not agree that such a budget would maintain a strong US military. "Taking us back to a pre-9/11 military force structure places our country in grave danger," said Texas Senator John Cornyn, a member of a committee that will hold hearings on the budget plan. Republican hopefuls for president have pointed to the defence cuts as an argument against Mr Obama's re-election. "We simply cannot continue to cut our Department of Defense budget if we are going to remain the hope of the Earth," Mitt Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts, said in a debate on 16 January.

Forecasters say the UK will be “put in the freezer” with weeks of snow, ice and freezing temperatures set to cause chaos on the roads. The AA yesterday warned motorists lulled into a false sense of security by the mild weather to take extra care as wet roads freeze over, making driving conditions treacherous. The Met Office has severe weather warnings in place today for ice, with snow turning to slush leading to traffic disruption.

Forecaster Helen Chivers said: “We have got cold air coming in from the East, an Atlantic system from the West and the UK is the battleground. It is going to turn cold with the risk of snow cover in the North.” Black ice could turn roads into skating rinks and drivers were warned to be prepared for delays and to check road conditions before setting off.

Last year Britain ground to a halt as one of the coldest winters on record caused transport chaos. Parts of the country were buried under up to a foot of snow for days as temperatures plunged to -20C. But a spokesman for the Local Government Association said yesterday: “Councils are better prepared this winter than they have ever been. Town halls have stockpiled 1.4 million tons of grit, more than was used throughout all of last winter.”

More than half of all black men without a high-school diploma go to prison at some time in their lives. Mass incarceration on a scale almost unexampled in human history is a fundamental fact of our country today — perhaps the fundamental fact, as slavery was the fundamental fact of 1850.

In truth, there are more black men in the grip of the criminal-justice system — in prison, on probation, or on parole — than were in slavery then. Over all, there are now more people under “correctional supervision” in America — more than six million — than were in the Gulag Archipelago under Stalin at its height. That city of the confined and the controlled, Lockuptown, is now the second largest in the United States.

There, Haitian-American artists come to talk about their faith in voodoo and how it keeps them connected to their homeland. "The religion is like a glue," says voodoo priestess Marie Saintil. "We attract each other. If a drum is beating, and someone hears it, the next thing you know, this place is packed." That connection is especially important this month, on the two-year anniversary of the earthquake that devastated Haiti.

Since the quake, voodoo has played an important role in the healing process. Many of these Haitian immigrants have found comfort in the faith and community that voodoo cultivates, practitioners of the religion in the US say. Haitian voodoo (spelt 'vodou' in Creole) is an ancient practice that emerged among the first Africans brought to Haiti as slaves in the 16th Century. Unable to practice their own diverse religions openly, the slaves fused them with the Catholic beliefs of the Spanish and French slavers. From these complex beginnings voodoo has become an important part of Haitian culture, especially for those living far from home.

Voodoo ceremonies do not take place on a weekly basis, like Catholic mass or a Jewish Shabbat service. A voodoo practitioner can request a ritual meeting with a priest or priestess but, more often, ritual ceremonies mark holidays. Practitioners hope to connect with deceased ancestors through a series of songs and prayers. During the singing and drumming, they aim to become possessed by voodoo spirits. "Voodoo is veneration of our ancestors and also our connection to nature," says Brooklyn-based actor Atibon Legba. At a recent ceremony practitioners in the Brooklyn temple celebrated the Gede, an important voodoo spirit who connects with the dead.