Senator John McCain, who ran against Obama in the 2008 presidential election, voiced concern about slower-than-expected progress in southern Afghanistan and doubts about Afghan President Hamid Karzai's commitment. "I am deeply concerned about our campaign in Afghanistan. Many of the key trends seem to be heading in a bad direction, perhaps even signaling a mounting crisis," McCain said at a Senate hearing, where top Pentagon officials defended the Afghan strategy.

In an extraordinary briefing to trade union chiefs last week, Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso set out an 'apocalyptic' vision in which crisis-hit countries in southern Europe could fall victim to military coups or popular uprisings as interest rates soar and public services collapse because their governments run out of money.

Mr Monks, now head of the European TUC, said: "I had a discussion with Barroso last Friday about what can be done for Greece, Spain, Portugal and the rest and his message was blunt: 'Look, if they do not carry out these austerity packages, these countries could virtually disappear in the way that we know them as democracies. They've got no choice, this is it.' He's very, very worried. He shocked us with an apocalyptic vision of democracies in Europe collapsing because of the state of indebtedness."

Mr Barroso's warning lays bare the concern at the highest level in Brussels that the economic crisis could lead to the collapse of not only the beleaguered euro, but the EU itself, along with a string of fragile democracies. But it risks infuriating governments in southern Europe which are already struggling to contain public anger as they drive through tax rises and spending cuts in a bid to avoid disaster.

Mr Monks yesterday warned that the new austerity measures themselves could take the continent 'back to the 1930s'.

In an interview with the Brussels-based magazine EU Observer he said: 'This is extremely dangerous. This is 1931, we're heading back to the 1930s, with the Great Depression and we ended up with a militarist dictatorship. I'm not saying we're there yet, but it's potentially very serious, not just economically, but politically as well.'

The looming bankruptcy of Spain, one of the foremost economies in Europe, poses far more of a threat to European unity and the euro project than Greece. Greece contributes 2.5 percent of GDP to Europe, Spain nearly 12 percent.

In that speech, Obama took aim at the "Christian Right" for "hijacking" religion and using it to divide the nation: "Somehow, somewhere along the way, faith stopped being used to bring us together and started being used to drive us apart. It got hijacked. Part of it's because of the so-called leaders of the Christian Right, who've been all too eager to exploit what divides us," he said.

Geller suggested perhaps other evidence should be considered as well, listing how Obama in early 2009 declared the "war on terror" over, suggested discussions with Hamas and recruited more Muslims for the White House staff.

He also created the Outreach to the Worldwide Muslim community in the State department, announced cuts in the US nuclear arsenal, offered funding to a Muslim technology fund, issued a special hajj message, had a "non-religious" Christmas, ordered NASA to work with Muslim nations and offered support for an anti-Israel resolution at the UN.

The quake follows a series of temblors that struck Southern California over the weekend, including a pair of moderate earthquakes that rattled a desert area east of San Diego. Residents in downtown San Diego could feel the ground rumbling during at least one of the Saturday quakes. At least 20 aftershocks were recorded within 30 minutes of Monday's earthquake, with the largest measuring at magnitude 4.1.

More than 1,000 people reported feeling the shaking, according to online citizen reports compiled by the USGS. The strongest shaking was felt in San Diego County. The latest quake struck just two months after the deadly Easter Sunday magnitude 7.2 quake that shook Baja California and Southern California. Monday's quake occurred in the aftershock zone of the Easter quake, said USGS geophysicist Rafael Abreu. "It's still too early to say, if it was an aftershock," Abreu said.

'Readiness' is made up of more than 150 retired generals and admirals. The group wants state and federal funding for pre-kindergarten programs that it says give children a solid foundation for academic and personal success. The report says 145,000 Philadelphians ages 18 to 24 cannot meet the military's medical, moral and mental standards. Nationally, the Department of Defense estimates that 75 percent of young adults are disqualified from military service.

He said that just as the events of September 11, 2001, had profoundly shaped 'our view of our vulnerabilities and our foreign policy', so the oil disaster would shape thinking on the environment and energy for years to come. Those who lost loved ones when terrorists flew hijacked planes into the Twin Towers of New York's World Trade Centre said Mr Obama's remarks were yet another attempt to slur the UK.

Joy Bennett, 66, a mother of two from Amersham in Buckinghamshire whose son Oli, a 29-year-old financial journalist, died, said: 'It is an unfair parallel and is really a cruel thing to say. I can see what he is trying to say but to compare a manmade deliberate terrorist attack to something that is an accident is absolutely wrong. Mr Obama seems intent on causing as much offence to Britain as possible. By saying this he is distracting from what his government is doing, or not doing enough of.'

With his relentless criticism of BP, Mr Obama has been accused of threatening British pensions - which are heavily invested in the company - and the UK economy. Energy Secretary Chris Huhne finally hit back yesterday, breaking days of public silence from the Government. He emphasised that a string of US firms were also heavily involved in the events leading up to the April 20 explosion on the Deepwater Horizon offshore rig and said BP, which Mr Obama has pointedly referred to as British Petroleum, was 'effectively an Anglo-American company'. In a coded criticism of the president, he warned: 'I think we have seen what can happen if people attempt to flam up the rhetoric on this.'

Rival oil giant Chevron told the Wall Street Journal that the Gulf of Mexico explosion was a 'preventable' incident. Chief executive John Watson said his company had policies and procedures in place that could have avoided the explosion that triggered the spill.

Yet, to the frustration of all Europeans, international financial markets refuse to be reassured. Although the euro has stopped falling in value, banks are still refusing lending to one another, and the cost of insuring European debt against future defaults remains sky-high. Mr Axel Weber, the German who hopes to be elected as the next president of the European Central Bank, spoke for many recently when he dismissed the reaction of the markets as "simply incomprehensible."

But the explanation for this curious mismatch between the actions of European governments and the response of international markets is rather straightforward. For the continent's financial problems are only beginning, and resolving them will require far more than just vague pledges. The smaller and poorer EU nations which have unleashed the crisis - Greece, Spain and Portugal - have promised to put their houses in order. Bigger European nations have followed suit: Italy and Britain are preparing their people for the most painful spending cuts in generations, while Germany has just adopted the biggest austerity package since the country emerged from the ashes of World War II.

However, not all Europeans are following this prudent path. France, for instance, remains in self-denial, asking all others to improve their housekeeping without doing much itself. German Chancellor Angela Merkel is so irked by this behavior that she abruptly pulled out of a planned dinner with French President Nicolas Sarkozy last Monday. To make matters worse, a new European banking crisis may be looming.

When the global financial crisis erupted in 2008, the United States government started testing its banks, by looking at their assets and liabilities, with a view to determining whether they remained going concerns. But European governments preferred to conduct such tests away from public eyes, largely because they feared the outcome.

Rocked by the resignations of a pair of high-ranking officials from her party and a significant setback in elections last month, Mrs Merkel finds herself embroiled in possibly the worst political crisis since she became chancellor in 2005. The decision to push through Germany's share of a multibillion-dollar bailout for Greece and an even larger rescue package to defend the euro cost her dearly among parsimonious German voters, who are bitter at bailing out what they see as spendthrift neighbors.

Then last week the government proposed nearly $100 billion in belt-tightening measures by 2014, intended to slow the growth of the country's debts. Coming on the heels of the bailout votes, the budget cuts led thousands of Germans to take to the streets in protest over the weekend, leaving more than a dozen police officers injured here in the capital. The leading German newsweekly, Der Spiegel, called Mrs Merkel's teaming of conservative Christian Democrats and pro-business Free Democrats "a government in ruins," adding that "no one would bet on a long duration for this government, not even Merkel's faithful."

"New elections are now in the heads and hearts of everyone who thinks about political responsibility," said Renate Kunast, a chairwoman of the opposition Greens in Parliament.

Last week Germany banned naked short-selling at its 10 most important financial institutions. But the draft proposal from the Finance Ministry now suggests the ban will be extended to shares and derivatives in all companies. According to the Wall Street Journal, the proposal states: "Naked short-selling of stocks and the debt of eurozone states that are listed on a domestic exchange in a regulated marketplace will be forbidden." The proposals are expected to be discussed by the German cabinet next week.

G20 finance ministers had distanced themselves from bank taxes at a meeting earlier this month. A bank tax would protect taxpayers from having to bail-out banks in the future. Proceeds from the taxes would go into a fund that could be accessed during any future financial crises. A number of countries have been calling for taxes on banks since governments spent billions of dollars bailing out banks across the world following the financial crisis that began in 2008. However, so far there has been no agreement.

Many governments are concerned that if they unilaterally impose a tax, banks will simply move to countries that have not introduced such measures. According to the Reuters news agency, European Union leaders will agree in principle on Thursday to introduce a levy on financial institutions, after which the details will be worked out by the European Commission.

"The European Council agrees that a levy on financial institutions should be introduced to ensure that they contribute to the cost of crises," draft conclusions of a council meeting said, Reuters reported.

One ship left port on Sunday and another will depart by Friday, loaded with food, construction material and toys, the report said. The boats would be part of international efforts to break Israel's isolation of the Gaza Strip. "Until the end of the Gaza blockade, Iran will continue to ship aid," said an official at Iran's Society for the Defence of the Palestinian Nation.

While Israel has long suspected Iran, which rejects the Jewish state's right to exist, of supplying weapons to Hamas, Tehran says it only provides moral support to the group. Israeli troops two weeks ago boarded a flotilla of Turkish aid ships heading to Gaza on May 31 and killed nine pro-Palestinian activists, most of them Turks.

Public opinion in Muslim countries was outraged by the killings. An official of the Iranian Red Crescent Society's youth organisation said some 100,000 Iranians had volunteered as potential crew for aid ships, Iran Daily reported. A senior Iranian official said earlier Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards were ready to provide a military escort to aid ships heading to Gaza if Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei so commands.

Senior space agency scientists believe the Earth will be hit with unprecedented levels of magnetic energy from solar flares after the Sun wakes "from a deep slumber" sometime around 2013. In a new warning, Nasa said the super storm would hit like "a bolt of lightening" and could cause catastrophic consequences for the world's health, emergency services and national security unless precautions are taken.

Scientists believe it could damage everything from emergency services' systems, hospital equipment, banking systems and air traffic control devices, through to "everyday" items such as home computers, iPods and Sat Navs. Due to humans' heavy reliance on electronic devices, which are sensitive to magnetic energy, the storm could leave a multi-billion pound damage bill and "potentially devastating" problems for governments.

"We know it is coming but we don't know how bad it is going to be," said Dr Richard Fisher, the director of Nasa's Heliophysics division. "It will disrupt communication devices such as satellites and car navigations, air travel, the banking system, our computers, everything that is electronic. It will cause major problems for the world. Large areas will be without electricity power and to repair that damage will be hard as that takes time." In an interview with The Daily Telegraph, he added: "Systems will just not work. The flares change the magnetic field on the earth that is rapid and like a lightening bolt. That is the solar affect."

The government has said it was aware of the threat and "contingency plans were in place" to cope with the fall out from such a storm. These included allowing for certain transformers at the edge of the National Grid to be temporarily switched off and to improve voltage levels throughout the network. The National Risk Register, established in 2008 to identify different dangers to Britain, also has "comprehensive" plans on how to handle a complete outage of electricity supplies.

According to regulatory filings, RawStory.com has found that Goldman Sachs sold 4,680,822 shares of BP in the first quarter of 2010. Goldman's sales were the largest of any firm during that time. Goldman would have pocketed slightly more than $266 million if their holdings were sold at the average price of BP's stock during the quarter.

If Goldman had sold these shares today, their investment would have lost 36 percent its value, or $96 million. The share sales represented 44 percent of Goldman's holdings - meaning that Goldman's remaining holdings have still lost tens of millions in value. Other asset management firms also sold huge blocks of BP stock in the first quarter - but their sales were a fraction of Goldman's. Wachovia, which is owned by Wells Fargo, sold 2,667,419 shares; UBS, the Swiss bank, sold 2,125,566 shares. Wachovia and UBS also sold much larger percentages of their BP stock, at 98 percently and 97 percent respectively.

The mineral wealth, discovered by a team of Pentagon officials and US geologists, is scattered throughout the country including in the south and east along the border with Pakistan, where the Taliban-led insurgency is the most intense. Afghanistan does not have any mining industry or infrastructure, so it will take decades for the country to exploit its mineral wealth fully, the paper quoted US officials as saying.

The report about the country's untapped wealth is likely to intensify competition among regional players such as China, India and even Russia for a greater role in exploiting those resources. Two Chinese firms have committed themselves to a $4 billion investment in the vast Aynak copper mine, south of Kabul, the biggest non-military foreign investment so far in the country.

Another big contract to mine an estimated 1.8 billion tons of high-quality iron ore in the remote mountainous region of Hajigak is expected to open for international bidding this year. Firms from India and China are eyeing the contract, which the Afghan mines ministry says is the largest unmined iron deposit in Asia.

According to the US study, the biggest deposits discovered so far are of iron and copper and the quantities are large enough to make Afghanistan a major world producer. Other finds include large deposits of niobium, a soft metal used in producing superconducting steel, rare earth elements and large gold deposits in Pashtun areas of southern Afghanistan.

Scotland Yard said it was not aware of a specific threat against the family but admitted that there was 'concern' over inflammatory postings on social networking sites. Yesterday a woman phoned the Radio 4 programme Any Answers to say she had heard from friends and relatives in Hackney that Mr and Mrs Koupparis were being 'harangued and besieged' by animal rights activists. The caller also said there were messages on internet sites, allegedly accusing the family of seeking publicity after their ordeal.

Another group, calling itself 'Urban Fox Defenders', has attracted more than 500 members. One, who gave her name as Alison Smith, wrote: 'I really can't see how a fox could be SO brazen as to go into a house, up the stairs, past adults, and go for two children. There is something here that simply does not add up!'

Lola left hospital on Friday and Mrs Koupparis, 41, said: 'We've gone through every emotion imaginable.'

Isabella, who was the more badly hurt of the pair, has been transferred from Great Ormond Street children's hospital to the Royal London, which is nearer her home. A police spokesman said: 'There has been some concern about things that have been said on social networking sites.'