First European Citizens' initiative for a work-free Sunday in Europe

We need a work-free Sunday in all of Europe,

- because children need a family day, which is protected as a day off work

- because this brings Europe forward on it's way to become the most child-friendly region in the world

- because according to EU legislation, Sunday is the weekly rest day for children and adolescents

- because schools and public institutions never used to work on Sundays and do not intend to do so in the future - despite various religious, cultural and ethnical backgrounds

- because studies prove the positive health effects of the work-free free Sunday

- because every person needs spare time - to relax, to be active in civil society, for hobbies and for religion

- because the work-free SUNDAY IS AN ESSENTIAL PILLAR OF THE EUROPEAN SOCIAL MODEL AND A PART OF THE EUROPEAN CULTURAL HERITAGE

"Card companies don't really care about divorce in and of itself - they care whether you're going to pay your card off," explains one law professor. People who buy cheap motor oil or drink in certain bars are considered risky borrowers, whereas people who buy carbon monoxide detectors and premium birdseed tend to pay on time.

When American Express offered some customers $300 to close their accounts last year, it used this kind of data to pick its targets. And if the company predicts a major life change, like a move or divorce, it alerts marketing partners, so they can sell you things like furniture and home refurbishing services.

Shadow immigration minister Damian Green revealed unpublished figures showing there are almost 730,000 fewer British-born workers in the private sector than in 1997. Mr Brown rejected the idea of an immigration quota, which he said would do 'great damage to British business'. But Mr Green said the official figures were 'the final proof that Gordon Brown was misleading the public when he promised British jobs for British workers'.

He added: 'Instead he has presided over boom and bust and left British workers in a worse position than when he took office 13 years ago. British workers have been betrayed. A Conservative government would introduce a genuine limit which would help us properly control immigration.'

The ONS figures show the total number of people in work in both the private and the public sector has risen from around 25.7 million in 1997 to 27.4 million at the end of last year, an increase of 1.67 million. But the number of workers born abroad has increased dramatically by 1.64 million, from 1.9 million to 3.5 million.

Arguably, the most damaging charge of them all. New Labour's election manifestos made little or no mention of immigration policy. But according to a draft report by the Cabinet Office, written in 2000, ministers had a secret plan to 'maximise the contribution' of migrants to the Government's 'social objectives'. Former Labour advisor Andrew Neather, who worked on the report, said the aim was to 'rub the Right's nose in diversity and render their arguments out of date.'

The counter-attack marked an escalation of the anger and indignation felt by many in the Catholic hierarchy, who say that the Pope is being unfairly blamed for the sex abuse crisis. "The Pope embodies moral truths that aren't accepted, and the shortcomings and errors of priests are being used as weapons against the church," Angelo Sodano, the dean of the College of Cardinals, told the Vatican's official newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano.

"It's not a bishop's fault if one of his priests is stained by grave wrongdoing. And certainly the pontiff is not responsible." Cardinal Sodano provoked outrage from victims of clerical sex abuse when he said during a mass at the Vatican on Easter Sunday that Catholics should not be distracted by "petty gossip" over how Benedict dealt with child sex-abuse allegations in his five years as Pope, his 20 years as head of the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and when he was archbishop of Munich in the 1980s.

Another cardinal, Julian Herranz of Spain, said that the Pope's opposition to gay marriage and abortion put him at odds with "powerful lobbies (which) would like to impose a completely different" agenda on the Church.

The protesters are angry at rising prices and accuse President Kurmanbek Bakiyev of failing to curb corruption. A key opposition leader has said the government has now resigned but there is no official confirmation. The leader, Temir Sariyev, said Prime Minister Daniyar Usenov had agreed to tender the government's resignation and that Mr Bakiyev had left Bishkek.

Mr Sariyev said a new "people's government" had been formed, headed by a former foreign minister, Roza Otunbayeva. The Agence France-Presse news agency quoted an airport employee as saying that Mr Bakiyev had flown out of Bishkek aboard a small plane. A senior opposition figure, Galina Skripkina, told Reuters news agency the president had flown to the southern city of Osh.

The US embassy in Bishkek and Russia have both expressed concern and called for restraint.

News of four major quakes in as many months, in Haiti, Chile, Mexico and Indonesia, has prompted a tinge of panic in some who would otherwise consider these events pure coincidence. "I received a call from a psychiatrist who is getting an influx of patients who are really concerned about the end of days," says Koontz, "and he wanted us to pinpoint science and provide him with links to science that would help allay the fears of some of his patients. He needed some hard facts and he said that that actually helped."

Koontz explained to the doctor what seismologist Harley Benz explained to Fox News. That seismically speaking, this is all pretty normal.

"You can expect earthquakes in locations where we are known to have earthquakes," explains Benz. "And in this case, in Sumatra, it's one of the most seismically active areas in the world. Likewise Chile is one of the most seismically active areas in the world."

According to the USGS Earthquake Center website, earthquakes can also occur in clusters, which may explain why this year has been front loaded with so much activity. Statistically, the globe is on track, so far this year, to be relatively average in terms of the number of larger quakes that hit annually. An average year will produce 17 quakes with a magnitude 7.0 or greater. What is different about the last four months is the number of deaths caused by quakes. According to USGS records, 223,140 have been killed worldwide from seismic activity. Almost all of those deaths occurred in Haiti when residents were crushed by poorly designed and constructed homes and structures.

In the last 20 years the number of seismographs around the globe has increased dramatically. Right now, four thousand monitors measure the Earth's movements. Since the USGS scientists can track more quakes and get the information out there faster, that too can add to the perception the world has become less stable, even if that isn't the case.

The surge in Greek bond yields, which reached 7.1 per cent, prompted the Finance Minister to warn that the present interest rate burden was unsustainable. The renewed fears about the Greek finances hit the euro, which fell against the dollar.

The rush to sell Greek debt was sparked by rumours that Athens was seeking to renegotiate a proposed rescue package involving loans from eurozone states and the IMF. At the same time, it emerged that Greece was trying to rebrand itself among investors as an emerging market bond issuer.

It has devastated crops, fuelled price rises and highlighted China's chronic water problems. Since last September, rainfall has been less than half the normal levels, turning much of normally temperate Yunnan into a bone-dry environmental disaster zone of evaporating reservoirs and shrivelled rivers.

Go to http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/picturegalleries/worldnews/7560301/Drought-in-southern-China.html

The appointment will give Opus Dei enormous influence in the American Church and Vatican, and is the most senior appointment for a member of the group. It will also lead to Mexican-born Gomez, formerly the Archbishop of San Antonio, Texas, becoming the first Latin American US cardinal, a position that will give him influence in Rome and the right to vote at a papal conclave. The choice is likely to dismay the Catholics of Hollywood, which falls within the archdiocese. The reigning archbishop, Cardinal Roger Mahony, avoided confrontation, but Archbishop Gomez is less likely to duck controversy.

Opus Dei, which he joined in 1978, is seen as one of the most devout of all the Catholic groups. Some of its priests practise self-flagellation while praying to the Virgin Mary and also wear a cilice - a spiked garter - to help them to mortify the flesh and avoid sexual sins. One of Archbishop Gomez's primary tasks will be to deal with the fallout from the abuse crisis.

None of the 2,000 priests of Opus Dei, which has the status of a "personal prelature" of the Pope, has ever been embroiled in a sexual scandal. The Archdiocese of Los Angeles, however, is one of the worst afflicted by the clerical sexual abuse crisis that has convulsed the US Church since 2002.

"Lord!" the man begins. It is night, and the torches cast flickering shadows on the ancient walls. "Your Church often seems like a boat about to sink, a boat taking in water on every side." It is a somber statement, particularly coming from a senior member of the Catholic Church.

The priest continues, speaking of weeds in the fields of the Lord, and of how much "filth there is in the Church," the result of priests' betrayal of God. "The soiled garments and face of your Church throw us into confusion. Yet it is we ourselves who have soiled them! It is we who betray you time and time again." He beseeches God, saying: "Have mercy on your Church; even within her, Adam continues to fall again and again."

These were prophetic words. They reflected a bitterness and lack of illusions that could only have been expressed by an experienced cardinal who had exhaustively studied the files outlining the "filth in the Church." The speaker was Joseph Ratzinger. He was chastising his own church during the Easter holiday five years ago, in 2005. It was a bitter indictment by a veteran of the Church, who apparently had little hope and was on the verge of retirement. It was meant as a legacy and as a warning, but what Ratzinger did not do was to specify the actual misconduct.

Of course, the office of pope does not exist so that its holder can be loved by the whole world. After Pius IX died in 1881, a number of Rome residents tried to seize the coffin so that they could throw it into the Tiber River. Today, a few days after Easter, only the most devoted pilgrims are rallying around their spiritual leader. The rest of the world, shocked by the sheer scope of the abuse cases, looks to Rome with skepticism, and some are already calling upon Benedict to take responsibility for his sinning priests and resign.

The older of the two suspects was walked out of the courthouse hours later, placed into a police vehicle and driven away. By then, white protesters had left, leaving only hundreds of blacks who screamed, ululated and whistled in support. "We are celebrating the death of the man who has abused us so much," one woman in the crowd shouted.

The killing of Eugene Terreblanche, a militant leader once convicted of beating a black farm worker so badly the man was left brain damaged, has focused attention on simmering racial tensions less than 10 weeks before South Africa hosts the World Cup.

Three aftershocks were reported in the northern province of Aceh, but there were no reports of casualties. Indonesia sits on the Pacific Ring of Fire, one of the world's most active areas for earthquakes and volcanoes. It has recently been struck by a string of quakes; one off Sumatra in September killed more than 1,000 people.

The latest quake - the largest in the area since March 2008 - struck at 0515 on Wednesday morning (2215 GMT on Tuesday). Although the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center initially said a small tsunami would possibly hit coasts within 100 km of the quake's epicentre, a destructive widespread tidal wave was said to be unlikely. Japan's Kyodo news agency reported blackouts in Medan and Banda Aceh, the capital of Aceh Province.

But just 44 million will now be bought as cases have petered out since December. Of these, 6 million have already been used and 3.8 million is being sent to help Africa. Ministers said the renegotiated deal was good value, but the Tories said millions of pounds had been wasted. Of the nearly 44 million vaccines that the UK has agreed to pay for, 6 million have already been used on priority groups and health workers, while 3.8 million are being handed to the World Health Organization for Africa.

Of the rest, 10.6 million is already with GPs who will be ready to act if more people entitled to the jab come forward. But the remaining 23.6 million will be held in reserve. Estimates have put the value of the stockpile at between 100-150 million pounds, although the government has refused to confirm cost saying it was commercially confidential.

Health Secretary Andy Burnham said: "I am pleased we have reached an agreement that is good value for the taxpayer and means that the department has retained a strategic stockpile to protect the UK population without incurring a cancellation fee." It is also possible the vaccine could be used to combat seasonal flu this winter as it is thought the swine flu virus will become the dominant strain.

At least 33 people died in Rio de Janeiro city after 28cm (11in) of rain fell in 24 hours, while 33 were killed in the neighbouring city of Niteroi. Many houses in Rio's hillside shanty towns were buried under mudslides.

Rescue teams have been scouring the hillside to find missing people and recover bodies buried under the mud. With no let-up in the rain, President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has urged residents to leave their homes if they are at risk of flooding. Authorities say Rio's transport system is close to collapse, after traffic ground to a halt with many streets under water. "The situation is chaos," Mayor Eduardo da Costa Paes said in a statement on Tuesday. "All the major streets of the city are closed because of the floods."

The head of Rio de Janeiro's civil defence department told TV Globo the amount of rain that had fallen was "more than any city is capable of supporting". Paulo Marqueiro, a reporter for the newspaper O Globo, told the BBC it was like the city had "collapsed". Houses had been brought crashing down by the floods and landslides, and there was no public transport whatsoever, he said.

Gordon Brown today met with the Queen at Buckingham Palace to ask her for a May 6 election date. The Prime Minister briefed his Cabinet at a short meeting this morning before leaving Number Ten through the front door at 10am. He smiled but kept tight-lipped and ignored the massed ranks of media as he clambered into his chauffeur-driven car which then led the motorcade on the short journey to the Palace.

There, he spent 22 minutes inside at a private meeting with the Queen before heading back to Downing Street where he will shortly emerge to make a brief statement. The move to dissolve Parliament fires the starting gun for the most defining election campaign for a generation. The Queen only flew back to the Palace from Windsor a short time ago, arriving by helicopter onto the lawns and walked inside accompanied by one aide.