Now, seven months later, that floating debris is on a direct collision course with the Pacific Coast of the United States - and it might be coming sooner than expected. "Across the wide Pacific, the drift rate is about five to 10 miles per day," oceanographer Curt Ebbesmeyer told ABC News.

Early computer models predicted that the debris would not hit the United States for two to three years. But a Russian training ship, the STS Pallada, following a map of the computer models, hit an extended field of debris in mid-Pacific, close to Midway Island, a US territory about 1,700 miles from Hawaii.

The ship's encounter with the 1,000-mile-long mass of tsunami debris came in September - 300 miles ahead of schedule, and nearly 2,000 miles from the site of the tsunami in Japan. The ship's crew found a battered, 20-foot fishing boat marked "Fukushima," the same spot in Japan that was ground zero for the tsunami. The Pallada's crew sailed through the debris, surrounded by everything from appliances and televisions to furniture, all of it now headed straight for Hawaii.

The first of it is expected to hit Midway Atoll this winter, then Hawaii in early 2013, and the US West Coast - mainly Washington and Oregon - in early 2014. Experts now estimate that lighter objects will wash ashore Midway's beaches this winter.

"We are living in crucial times. If the summit is a failure, this could tip the European continent into unknown territory," the sources from the ruling UMP party quoted the prime minister as saying during the meeting. "Pressure does not stop growing on the eurozone and the whole of the global economy," the sources quoted him as saying. "It is undeniable that the forecasts for global economic growth are undergoing brutal falls."

"If the results of the European summit are positive, the pessimism (on growth rates) will abate," he said. "An agreement must be found with Germany," he said. He also denounced press reports that Paris was following Berlin's lead in dealing with the eurozone crisis, saying: "I remind you that the initiatives (to deal with the crisis) are French."

The demand came as European officials attempted to reach a final agreement on giving the eurozone's 440 billion euros rescue fund more firepower so that it can assist Italy by purchasing Italian bonds, lowering Rome's borrowing rates, which are near 6 per cent. While such EU assistance falls well short of a full-scale Italian bail-out, senior European officials said it would come with tough new conditions, and that the demands on Silvio Berlusconi were the beginning of a more intrusive effort by Italy's eurozone partners to ensure Rome convinces the financial markets it is sincere about fiscal reforms.

Talks early on Tuesday between Mr Berlusconi and his Northern League coalition partners failed to resolve the deadlock - centred on proposed pension reforms - after inconclusive negotiations the night before. Talks between the coalition parties continued into the night, indicating no substantial agreement on reforms had been reached.

"At the outset of the creation of the euro in 1999, it was expected that the southern eurozone economies would behave like those in the north; the Italians would behave like Germans. They didn't," Greenspan said. "Instead, northern Europe fell into subsidizing southern Europe's excess consumption, that is, its current account deficits."

Greenspan predicts that as the south's fiscal crisis deepens, the flow of goods from the north will stop altogether and southern Europe's standard of living will go down. "The effect of the divergent cultures in the eurozone has been grossly underestimated," he added. "The only way to have several currencies from divergent nations lumped together is if they are culturally close, such as Germany, the Netherlands and Austria. If they aren't, it simply can't continue to work."

Greenspan feels that, to a very large extent, what's driving the United States at the moment is Europe. "Today, there is one single integrated global stock market," he said. He also expects the European crisis, coupled with a failure to address the US budget deficit, may be severe enough to cause a bond market crisis if the market suddenly decides the US is more like Greece than not.

Cameron's government, which is against holding a referendum, in the end won the House of Commons vote 483-111 due to support from the Liberal Democrats - the Conservatives' euro-friendly junior coalition partners - and the main opposition Labour Party. But the eurosceptic wing of the Conservative Party delivered Cameron a blow by ignoring whip pressure to vote in favour of a referendum in the biggest show of internal party dissent since he took office in May 2010.

After the vote, a spokesman from Cameron's Downing Street office said the government respected the fact that members "felt very strongly" about the issue, but that it had to do with "what is in the national interest." Cameron's strong stance was necessary to preserve the benefits which Britain enjoys from being an EU member but the leader is determined to bring about "fundamental reform" in the 27-nation bloc, added the spokesman in Monday's statement.

Although the vote was never to be legally binding, the rebellion is politically significant, particularly as polls suggest it has public support. A YouGov survey for The Sunday Times this weekend found 66 percent of Britons back a referendum on European Union membership.

After 12 hours of at times ill-tempered talks that once again highlighted gaping divisions on how to rescue the currency, the leaders got closer to agreement on bank recapitalization and on how to leverage their rescue fund to try to avoid bond market turmoil following a Greek debt cut. Final decisions were put off until Wednesday's summit and it remains unclear how much of a hit banks will have to take on a Greek haircut - 40, 50 or 60 percent.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy backed down after German Chancellor Angela Merkel refused to accept his plan to use unlimited European Central Bank funds to fight the crisis by turning the rescue fund into a bank and letting it borrow from the ECB. Meanwhile, Italian Prime Miniser Silvio Berlusconi was told in no uncertain terms to present a more convincing plan this week to boost growth and lower its debt burden.

German newspapers on Monday make gloomy reading, with commentators saying that leaders have let the EU down with their piecemeal approach towards fighting the crisis over the last 18 months: The measures to be decided on Wedesday won't rescue the euro, they say - it will only buy time for countries to reduce their debt and reform their economies.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has told German lawmakers that the financial strength of the euro rescue fund, the European Financial Stability Facility, is to be leveraged to 1 trillion euros ($1.39 billion), and that a Greek debt cut of up to 60 percent is planned, opposition leaders said on Monday.

The type of leveraging planned remains unclear, with a number of versions being discussed. It emerged earlier on Monday that the controversial measure to increase the firepower of the 440 billion euros rescue fund will be put to a full vote in the German parliament on Wednesday, rather than just a vote by the budget committee as initially planned. Given the intense public debate on boosting the EFSF, Merkel's center-right coalition decided to seek a broader mandate than just budget committee approval.

The search for survivors had continued through the night, with some successes, but officials acknowledged they were powerless to prevent a steep rise in the death toll after Sunday afternoon's earthquake - the biggest to rock the country in more than a decade. The prime minister's emergency agency, AFAD, said at least 279 people had been confirmed dead and a further 1,300 were injured across the region. Thousands more were left homeless amid bitter winter temperatures.

The quake damaged at least 2,262 buildings, with Van city and the Ercis district the worst affected, AFAD said. Over 3,000 rescue personnel were assisting the region's search and rescue efforts with the help of medical teams, search dogs and military aircraft to shuttle supplies to the affected regions. But widespread power outages were hampering their response. Dozens of people were still trapped in the rubble, while dozens more were placed in body bags or covered by blankets and laid down in rows so people could search for their missing relatives.

Turkey lies in one of the world's most active seismic zones and is crossed by numerous fault lines. In 1999, two earthquakes with a magnitude of more than 7 struck northwestern Turkey, killing about 18,000 people. Istanbul, the country's largest city with more than 12 million people, lies in northwestern Turkey near a major fault line, and experts say tens of thousands could be killed if a major quake struck there.

Why in the world would we be borrowing money and then turn around and giving it back to the countries that we're borrowing it from?" Republican Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma said. "If they have enough of a surplus to loan us money, they have enough of a surplus to take care of their own needs." Democratic Senator Jim Webb of Virginia asked the same question in a recent appearance on Fox News: "Hey, in the crisis that we're in right now, should we really be continuing to send American taxpayer dollars over to China for these purposes?"

So why'd we start giving aid in the first place? "The hope and the operating assumption is that to the extent that we engage them in a variety of ways, that we can stay influential. And we can influence them," Dan Runde of the Center for Strategic and International Studies said. But Runde notes China's record of flaunting trade rules - violating intellectual property laws, including multiple openings of fake Apple stores there recently, as well as patent infringements. He suggests the aid has had little positive impact. The whole matter leaves Coburn completely disgusted. "You know, it's stupidity. There's no other explanation for it, other than we're stupid in Washington to continue to do that."

The group, which follows state fiscal conditions and advocates for limited spending and taxes, said the deficit calculations that states make "do not offer a full picture of the states' liabilities and can rely on budget gimmicks and accounting games to hide the extent of the deficit."

The housing bust, financial crisis and economic recession caused states' tax revenue to plunge, and huge holes have emerged in their budgets over the last few years. Because all states except Vermont must end their fiscal years with balanced budgets, states have scrambled to cut spending, hike taxes, borrow and turn to the federal government for help.

Taxpayers are worried the states' poor fiscal health will persist for a long time and some Republicans in Congress have questioned whether the situation is worse than the states say.

Interim leader Mustafa Abdel Jalil said on Sunday, during his speech to the nation in Benghazi to formally declare the country's liberation from the ousted regime of Muammar Ghadafi, that sharia would be Libya's principal law. "Any law that violates sharia is null and void legally," he said, citing as an example the law on marriage passed during the slain dictator's 42-year tenure that imposed restrictions on polygamy, which is permitted in Islam. "The law of divorce and marriage... This law is contrary to sharia and it is stopped," Abdel Jalil said.

His comments have provoked criticism and calls for restraint both in Libya and in Europe, amid fears that the Arab Spring may give rise to a potentially intolerant Islamist resurgence. Many Libyans awaiting Sunday's historic speech expressed surprise at the decision by the National Transitional Council leader to mention the role of sharia law in the new country before addressing such important issues as security and education.

In his speech, Abdel Jalil also announced the introduction of Islamic banking in Libya in keeping with sharia which prohibits the earning of interest, or riba in Arabic, that is considered a form of usury.

Though the country's independent election commission hasn't announced any official results, the country's political parties, relying on data from party poll monitors around the country, said Nahda appeared to have won upwards of 40% of the popular vote. Some party officials reported Nahda looked likely to win an outright majority, with as much as 55% of the vote.

If official results, which may be released as early as Tuesday, support those results, it would be a substantially better showing for the Islamists than many predicted. The center-left Tekatil Party and a party led by a leading human-rights activist, the Congress Party for the Republic, looked set to come in second and third. The party most predicted to place second, the staunchly secular Progressive Democratic Party and Nahda's most outspoken critics, did far worse than expected.

The first free and fair elections to emerge from this year's string of Arab uprisings has been roundly praised by observers. Nine-term US congresswoman Jane Harman, who helped lead a team of observers from the Washington-based National Democratic Institute, said the vote was "hands down the best, the most promising election I have ever witnessed, including those I have seen in the United States."

Yingluck Shinawatra, Thailand's recently elected prime minister, said on a visit to the government's flood relief operations centre on Monday that she hoped the water level in the capital would not rise above one metre. But, with Ms Yingluck having consistently taken a more optimistic tone than the governor of Bangkok, who represents the opposition Democrat party, residents said they were preparing for the worst and have been stocking up on food and water. Some supermarkets have run out of supplies.

At least 350 people have been killed, several million forced out of their homes and big industrial estates and key infrastructure destroyed. Monsoon rains have pounded south-east Asia since July, wiping out large swaths of rice crops and raising the spectre of "serious food shortages", according to the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation.

Despite initial attempts to divert the flood waters around Bangkok, which accounts for about 40 per cent of Thailand's economic output, the government is now attempting to drain the huge volume of water south into the sea through the city's canals and its main river, the Chao Phraya.

"Towards Reforming the International Financial and Monetary Systems in the Context of a Global Public Authority," was at times very specific, calling, for example, for taxation measures on financial transactions. "The economic and financial crisis which the world is going through calls everyone, individuals and peoples, to examine in depth the principles and the cultural and moral values at the basis of social coexistence," it said.

It condemned what it called "the idolatry of the market" as well as a "neo-liberal thinking" that it said looked exclusively at technical solutions to economic problems. "In fact, the crisis has revealed behaviours like selfishness, collective greed and hoarding of goods on a great scale," it said, adding that world economics needed an "ethic of solidarity" among rich and poor nations. "If no solutions are found to the various forms of injustice, the negative effects that will follow on the social, political and economic level will be destined to create a climate of growing hostility and even violence, and ultimately undermine the very foundations of democratic institutions, even the ones considered most solid," it said.

It called for the establishment of "a supranational authority" with worldwide scope and "universal jurisdiction" to guide economic policies and decisions. Asked at a news conference if the document could become a manifesto for the movement of the "indignant ones", who have criticised global economic policies, Cardinal Peter Turkson, head of the Vatican's Justice and Peace department, said: "The people on Wall Street need to sit down and go through a process of discernment and see whether their role managing the finances of the world is actually serving the interests of humanity and the common good. We are calling for all these bodies and organisations to sit down and do a little bit of re-thinking."

Sir John claimed it was likely that Europe was heading towards a ''federal state within the eurozone'' as leaders try to find a resolution for the current crisis. He told the BBC's Andrew Marr show: ''There won't necessarily have to be a treaty in this country for fiscal union. It is conceivable there would be a treaty just among members of the eurozone.'' He added: ''But at some stage there will be another treaty because if there is fiscal union in Europe it changes our relationship to Europe."