The Democratic party, which currently holds a majority in both houses of Congress, will bear the brunt of growing voter anger, the Pew study concludes. It stated, "The study finds a perfect storm of conditions associated with distrust of government - a dismal economy, an unhappy public, bitter partisan-based backlash, and epic discontent with Congress and elected officials."

The mood of the country in one word, increasingly, is "anger." The study did not question respondents on specific issues, such as foreign policy and the health reform law, but the mood of the country suggests that a large enough rebellion at the polls that could upset President Obama's plans, including those for Israel. A small but growing number of voters are strongly anti-government. The proportion saying that they are angry with the federal government has doubled since 2000 and matches the high [of 20 percent] reached in October 2006," Pew stated.

Pew said that the worst problem for Democrats may be that "the link between dissatisfaction with government and voting intentions is at least as strong among independent voters." Independents favor the Republican party in their districts by a 41-34 percent margin, according to the survey. The margin grows to 66-13 percent when taking into account only the Independents who are "highly dissatisfied." Distrust in the American government has reached its lowest level in 50 years, with only 22 percent trusting it most or all of the time.

A larger minority of the public also feels the government is a major threat to personal freedom, far more than registered in a media survey conducted seven years ago.

As the satellite images of the so-called 'aerosol index' published for the first time, the sky above Britain was totally clear of ash from Iceland's Eyjafjallajoekull volcano.

Inquiries by this newspaper have disclosed that:

- Attempts to measure the ash's density were hampered because the main aircraft used by the Meteorological Office for this purpose had been grounded as it was due to be repainted.

- Computers at the Met Office, which earlier forecast a 'barbecue summer' last year and a mild winter for this year, produced a stream of maps predicting the ash would cover a vast area, eventually stretching from Russia to Newfoundland. But across almost all of it, there was virtually no ash at all, and none visible to satellites.

- Though there was some ash over Britain at times during the ban, the maximum density measured by scientists was only about one twentieth of the limit that scientists, the Government, and aircraft and engine manufacturers have now decided is safe.

'We never understood why a blanket ban had been imposed - something that would not have happened in other parts of the world,' a senior airline executive said yesterday. While money has been thrown at climate change studies - the Met Office has received over 200 million pounds - other meteorological research has been starved of funds. The LVAAC depends on Eurocontrol en route charges for its funds, a sort of toll paid by airlines that fly through its space. It is clearly not enough.

The blanket ban was, then, governed as much by what we did not know as what we did. And while there is no EU law governing what to do in the event of an eruption affecting the skies in this way, we are bound to European states by treaties which stop us closing or opening our skies unilaterally

Perhaps the sector most unhappy with the government is called the Tea Party movement, ultra-conservatives who came a year ago in protest against the economic stimulus bill, which grew in visibility in the campaign against health reforms proposed by the government of Barack Obama. This movement is mostly composed of white men, aged 45 or so, who describe themselves as upset or angry with Washington.

Recent research from the New York Times / CBS News poll revealed that 18% of Americans identify themselves as supporters of the Tea Party, classify themselves "very conservative" and are very pessimistic about the direction of the country and severely critical of Washington and, of course, Obama. Over 90% of them believe that the country moves to a wrong path and the same percentage disapproves of the president and his administration policy. Already 92% of respondents estimated that Obama leads the country "toward socialism" (an opinion shared by more than half the population in general).

Moreover, the expressions of popular right-wing anger are registered when referencing more hate crimes, a rise of radical right-wing groups, as well as unofficial reports of a growing number of death threats against the president. Public safety agencies have raised the alert status for what is called "domestic terrorism."

The wave of disillusionment with the government and its rulers causes concern among some politicians who do not know what impact this might have on the elections of next November. But for others the issue is more alarming.

"It's very similar to Weimar Germany, the parallels are striking." Here, too, there is a tremendous disappointment with the parliamentary system, Chomskypointed out during his interview on Truthdig. "The United States is very lucky that no honest and charismatic figure has appeared, and if this were to happen this country would be in real trouble for the frustration, disillusionment and the justified anger combined with the absence of a coherent response," he concludes.

In Germany, he recalls, an enemy was created to explain the crisis which was the Jew. "Here they are the illegal immigrants and blacks. We will say that white men are a persecuted minority. We will say that we must uphold and defend the honor of the nation. Military force will be exalted. There will be blows. This could be converted into an undeniable force. And if it takes place, it will be more dangerous than Nazi Germany. The United States is a world power ... I do not believe that this is far from happening," he says.

The suggestions come in a new documentary series in which Hawking, one of the world's leading scientists, will set out his latest thinking on some of the universe's greatest mysteries. Alien life, he will suggest, is almost certain to exist in many other parts of the universe: not just in planets, but perhaps in the centre of stars or even floating in interplanetary space.

Hawking's logic on aliens is, for him, unusually simple. The universe, he points out, has 100 billion galaxies, each containing hundreds of millions of stars. In such a big place, Earth is unlikely to be the only planet where life has evolved. "To my mathematical brain, the numbers alone make thinking about aliens perfectly rational," he said. "The real challenge is to work out what aliens might actually be like."

Similarly, Lord Rees, the astronomer royal, warned in a lecture earlier this year that aliens might prove to be beyond human understanding. "I suspect there could be life and intelligence out there in forms we can't conceive," he said. "Just as a chimpanzee can't understand quantum theory, it could be there are aspects of reality that are beyond the capacity of our brains."

Mississippi Emergency Management Agency spokesman Greg Flynn said five people were killed in Choctaw County, 3 in Yazoo County and 1 in Holmes County. No names have been released and details are not available. Two of those dead in Choctaw county are children.

Governor Haley Barbour told The Associated Press there was "utter obliteration" in parts of Yazoo County, an area where he is from. More than 15 other counties were also damaged. The swath of debris forced rescuers to pick up some of the injured on all-terrain vehicles.

The weather hampered crews trying to clean up an oil spill after an offshore rig exploded earlier this week off the coast of Louisiana. Several sporting events and festivals also were rescheduled. The storms also damaged a tank at a chemical plant in Tallulah, causing a small nitrogen leak.

He is expected to visit Birmingham - as part of the planned beatification of Cardinal John Newman - and Scotland. Dates for the trip have not been set. The Pope was formally invited to visit the UK by Prime Minister Gordon Brown last February. Scottish Secretary Jim Murphy also invited him to visit Scotland

The petition states: "We the undersigned, petition the Prime Minister to ask the Catholic Church to pay for the proposed visit of the Pope to the UK and relieve the taxpayer of the estimated 20 million pounds cost. We accept the right of the Pope to visit his followers in Britain, but public money would be better spent on hard-pressed schools, hospitals and social services which are facing cuts." The National Secular Society says that 28,000 people have now signed their petition.

BBC religious affairs correspondent Robert Pigott said Roman Catholics were trying to improve the way they get the Church's message across to an increasingly sceptical public in preparation for the visit. Articulate Catholics are being trained as spokesmen and women to answer some of the awkward questions about contraception and Aids, homosexuality, and the meaning of sainthood in the 21st Century that his visit is likely to prompt. He said they know the visit represented a great opportunity, but also something of a danger.

Our correspondent said: "So secularists have also spotted an opportunity. They can see the potential for creating a coalition of people unhappy with the traditionalist Christian message in a variety of limited fields. The Pope might not exactly be a stick with which to beat religion, but his visit will focus attention on areas which the National Secular Society suspects will inspire scepticism as much as faith."

Scientist Dr Grant Allen, of Manchester University's Centre for Atmospheric Science, uses words of evasion that are almost self-parodying: 'Analysis of these atmospheric measurements is early and still ongoing and being supplemented with new measurements all the time.'

In 1996, Britain spent 7 billion pounds killing millions of the nation's cows in response to the alleged threat of CJD killing humans eating burgers made from cattle infected by BSE. We now know that the likelihood of this was almost infinitesimally slight.

In 2009, the government spent 1 billion pounds on unneeded vaccines against swine flu, which we were told might kill half a million people. The SARS virus, said some 'experts', could prove more devastating to humanity than Aids. It was once suggested that bird flu might kill 150 million people worldwide.

Back to transport. After 9/11, many Americans were reluctant to fly, so drove to their destinations instead. One statistical analysis suggests that 2,500 extra road deaths ensued. Flying would have been much safer.

The British are grotesquely sensitive to rail accidents, though figures show that train travel is by far the safest means of going anywhere. After the Ladbroke Grove rail smash, in which 31 people died, a new Train Protection and Warning System was installed throughout the system. It has been estimated that each life thus saved has cost 15.4 million pounds.

No minister - Tory, Labour or lib Dem - readily defies those who invoke the sacred principle of making us safer. We have become an almost insanely risk-averse society, demanding to be babied from cradle to grave. The great volcanic ash air shutdown is part of the price we pay for this. Until, as a society, we learn to measure risk realistically, we shall continue to face draconian responses to even marginal threats.

The 1,166 requests for information - which relate to the second half of 2009 - came from agencies such as local and national police, and usually formed part of a criminal investigation. France asked for 846 pieces of information, and Germany for 428. The search engine also received 59 requests from British government departments and other official sources to remove items from Google's services.

A Google spokesman said that the company regularly gets asked by governments for information relating to users' emails or on how and where they have logged on. The company added, however, that where broad requests are made it endeavours to release as little information as is necessary by law. It complies with approximately 77 per cent of all British requests for removal.

Google has launched its Government Requests Tool to highlight the extent to which governments are using their legal systems to gather information about citizens or censor the web. However, it admitted it could not provide data for China as Beijing considers such figures as a state secret.

David Drummond, the company's general counsel, said that "We believe that greater transparency will lead to less censorship." Google said, however, that because there is not internationally accepted criteria for requests then presenting data from around the world is impractical. "We're still learning the best way to collect and present this information," the company said. "We'll continue to improve this tool and fine-tune the types of data we display."

He said we found it hard to accept that Germany had become a 'vastly more prosperous nation' and that 'we need to be put back in our place'. His views, outlined in a newspaper article when he was a member of the European Parliament, cast grave doubts over his judgment of international affairs ahead of the second leaders' debate this evening, when the topic will be foreign policy. The jibes threatened to undermine the surge which has taken Mr Clegg from also-ran to serious player in the opinion polls.

'All nations have a cross to bear, and none more so than Germany with its memories of Nazism. But the British cross is more insidious still. A misplaced sense of superiority, sustained by delusions of grandeur and a tenacious obsession with the last war, is much harder to shake off. We need to be put back in our place.'

Tory MP Nicholas Soames, grandson of wartime leader Sir Winston Churchill, said: 'These views will disgust people the length and breadth of the country. They show that Nick Clegg is unfit to lead his party, let alone the country. They are an insult to the memory of Britain's war dead and to a time when the British public all pulled together for the common good. They prove that Mr Clegg shares the European view of Britain rather than the British view.'

Making clear his love affair with all things European, he condemned the British 'belief in our innate difference from our mainland continental cousins'. He went on: 'No other culture in Europe is quite so enamoured by such a false notion of difference. We Brits concoct a historically illiterate notion that we are divorced from outside influences. Maybe it was loss of empire, the choppy waters of the Channel, or the last war.'

The lawsuit filed Tuesday in US District Court in Seattle accuses the alliance of violating Washington state laws barring discrimination. The alliance organizes the annual Gay Softball World Series. Beth Allen, the alliance's attorney, said the lawsuit is unwarranted and that the three plaintiffs "were not discriminated against in any unlawful manner." In any case, Allen said, the alliance is a private organization and, as such, can determine its membership based on its goals.

The three plaintiffs - Steven Apilado, LaRon Charles and Jon Russ - played on a team called D2 that qualified for the 2008 Gay Softball World Series, which is organized by the alliance. The alliance's rules say that each World Series team can have no more than two heterosexual players. According to the lawsuit, a competing team accused D2 of violating that rule. Each of the three plaintiffs was called into a conference room in front of more than 25 people, and was asked "personal and intrusive questions" about his sexual attractions and desires, purportedly to determine if the player was heterosexual or gay, the lawsuit alleges.

The men are asking for $75,000 each for emotional distress. They're also seeking to invalidate the alliance's findings on the men's sexual orientations and to reinstate D2's second-place World Series finish. The men also are asking the court to toss out the alliance's rule limiting the number of straight players on each team. Hypothetically, that could mean a team of all-straight people could form, but "it would be extremely unlikely for that to happen," Rowen said.

The alliance was formed in 1977 and now includes more than 680 teams in 37 leagues across the US and Canada, according to its website.

But scientists have said regulators had few options beyond a ban on flights. Earlier, officials said air traffic in Europe would be back to "almost 100%" on Thursday, although an alert led Qantas to cancel a flight from London. Tens of thousands of people remain stranded around the world as airlines restart services after the unprecedented travel chaos.

Six days after the eruption of the Eyjafjallajokull volcano in Iceland triggered the first airspace closures, the International Air Transport Association (Iata) said airlines had lost $1.7 billion (1.1 billion pounds). "For an industry that lost $9.4 billion last year and was forecast to lose a further $2.8 billion in 2010, this crisis is devastating," Iata chief Giovanni Bisignani said. "Airspace was being closed based on theoretical models, not on facts."

Mr Bisignani said the situation had been exacerbated by "poor decision-making" from governments and called on them to compensate airlines, something which the European Commission has said it is considering. Some airlines are also demanding changes to EU passenger compensation rules, which require them to provide accommodation for those prevented from flying. Michael O'Leary, the chief executive of the low-cost carrier Ryanair, said it was "absurd" that his firm had to spend thousands of euros on someone whose ticket might have cost only a few euros.

In measures more stringent than Wall Street and the City had expected, the fund called for the introduction of a twin-track approach to the three-year banking crisis that would both force firms to pay for any future support packages and raise new taxes on their profits and remuneration. The report, prepared by the Washington-based institution for the G20 group of developed and developing nations, was seized upon by Gordon Brown as evidence that his push for an international crackdown on the banking sector was gaining support.

Leaked in advance of the fund's meeting this weekend, the blueprint emerged as the investment bank Goldman Sachs released better than expected first quarter revenues and admitted its bonus and pay pool had reached $5.5 billion (3.3 billion pounds) in the first three months of 2010. The anticipated study called for a financial stability contribution (FSC), which should be paid by all financial institutions, not just banks, and used to bail out weak and failing firms. It would initially be paid at a flat rate but eventually be tailored to suit institutions' size and riskiness.

Military operations in Afghanistan were intrinsic for the UK's security said 57%, but about a third disagreed. The survey was released ahead of the second of the televised party leaders' election debates, on foreign affairs. Some 58% of those polled thought the UK's best interests were served by maintaining a special relationship with the US, ahead of other strategic partners.

On security priorities for the next government, just over 80% believed tackling terrorism would remain the most pressing task. Both Labour and the Conservatives have said they would renew the UK's Trident nuclear deterrent missile system, a stance backed by 53%.

That proportion agreed that Trident's security and political benefits clearly outweighed its diplomatic and economic costs, but more than a third disagreed. BBC News defence correspondent Caroline Wyatt says all three main political parties have committed to holding a strategic defence review - which will need to decide just what the UK's role should be - after the election.

A new ash cloud heading towards the country has forced all London airports to stay closed. Others in England, including Manchester, are set to open from 1pm, but this is not certain. Scottish airports have reopened this morning with a flight from Glasgow to Stornoway taking off at 7.15am.

BA had intended to resume flights from London airports today but last night it had to cancel those plans. A spokesman for the air traffic control service Nats said: 'The volcano eruption in Iceland has strengthened and a new ash cloud is spreading south and east towards the UK. This demonstrates the dynamic and rapidly changing conditions in which we are working.' The Met Office itself said strong high-altitude winds were blowing the new cloud towards the UK more quickly than the one which followed the first eruption.

Last night the Met Office was accused of unnecessarily triggering the six-day closure of British airspace which has cost passengers, airlines and the economy more than 1.5 billion pounds. Critics said the agency used a scientific model based on 'probability' rather than fact to forecast the spread of the ash cloud.

Matthias Ruete, the European Commission's director general of transport, said the ban should have been restricted to a 20 to 30-mile limit around the volcano. He said: 'The science behind the model we are running is based on certain assumptions where we do not have scientific evidence.'

It also estimated that 1.2 million passengers a day were affected. On Tuesday night, flights started landing in the UK after a six-day shutdown of UK airspace. The decision to lift the ban followed safety tests that showed plane engines could cope in areas of low density ash.

A separate report by the the Centre for Economics and Business Research has estimated the cost to airlines of the disruptions to be 1.08 billion euros ($1.45 billion; 942 million pounds) over the six days. David Frost, director general of the British Chambers of Commerce, told the BBC that the cost to the UK economy of the flight disruptions was likely to have been more than 100 million pounds a day.

Mr Bisignani also criticised governments for the haste with which they closed airspace, and called on them to provide compensation to the airlines. "Airspace was being closed based on theoretical models, not on facts. Test flights by our members showed that the models were wrong."

"[The crisis] is an extraordinary situation exaggerated by a poor decision-making process by national governments. Governments should help carriers recover the cost of this disruption." Budget airline Easyjet said it had lost 50 million pounds during the flight ban and that it would be seeking government compensation.

But the effects of the crisis have also been felt outside of the travel industry, as tens of thousands of people have been stranded, unable to get to work. Producers of perishable goods, such as food and flowers, have also been hit hard. Carmaker Nissan had to suspend production for a day as it could not import components from the Irish Republic.