He suggested the high winds and waves of a recent storm had exhausted the predators, which are normally good swimmers. And in a scientific paper, he and colleagues argued that the increased incidence of storms caused by global warming, and the loss of ice for polar bears to walk on, could lead to more deaths in the future.

While the findings were seized upon by environmentalists as another peril of climate change, sceptics and some other scientists questioned the conclusions. Yesterday it emerged Dr Monnett - who works for the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement - has been placed on leave and is being investigated for 'integrity issues' apparently linked to the polar bear report.

Dr David Whitehouse, science adviser to the sceptical Global Warming Policy Foundation, said: 'The dangers of climate science is that once you passionately believe in man-made global warming, you see connections everywhere when you should be scientifically cautious about drawing conclusions.' Dr Monnett is in charge of a 30 million pounds project researching the Arctic's wildlife. A BOEMRE spokesman declined to comment on an 'on-going internal investigation'. The organisation is believed to have barred Dr Monnett from talking to reporters.

In 2008, the US classified the polar bear as a threatened species, the first with its survival at risk due to global warming. Last year scientists working for the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change came under fire for exaggerating the threat of global warming. The body falsely claimed Himalayan glaciers would melt by 2035 after lifting claims from an unsubstantiated report written by the green charity WWF.

They are worried the courts' decisions may run against the law of the land, particularly in divorce settlements for women. The scrapping of the inquiry comes in a week when Islamic extremists have launched a campaign to declare 'Sharia-controlled zones' across Britain. Hate preacher Anjem Choudary has claimed responsibility for the scheme, which has so far seen posters put on lampposts in several London boroughs declaring that within the 'zones' there should be 'no gambling', 'no music or concerts', 'no porn or prostitution', 'no drugs or smoking' and 'no alcohol'.

The Daily Mail has previously published photographs of Choudary in his student days breaking all but one of the zone laws - holding a cannabis joint, downing a pint of cider, playing cards and leering at porn. But the abandonment of the Government's Sharia inquiry has fuelled fears that such radicals will be able to continue their intimidating activities unchecked.

The number of Sharia courts here is unknown, although an estimate of 85 made by the Civitas think-tank in 2009 is widely accepted. But the abandonment of the Government's Sharia inquiry has fuelled fears that such radicals will be able to continue their intimidating activities unchecked. The Ministry of Justice had launched an inquiry into the operation of Sharia courts in Britain because of rising fears that the secretive system has undue influence.

The amount of money placed in investment funds by savers has fallen by up to 90 per cent in recent months, figures show, as investor confidence hits lows not seen since the depths of the recession three years ago. Instead, savers are rushing to put their money in perceived "safe havens", with sales of gold funds rising by nearly 60 per cent last week.

Increasingly, people are opting to invest simply in cash, even though rising inflation means that they are effectively losing money. The growing uncertainty in the safety of the stock market came as the FTSE 100 index dropped by one per cent - wiping 15 billion pounds off the value of Britain's most successful companies after poor economic data from the United States. The index has fallen two per cent in the past week.

Such is the growing uncertainty in the markets that Moody's, the credit rating agency, yesterday threatened to downgrade Spain as the eurozone's troubles continue. In Europe, Moody's said it was reviewing Spain's credit rating and would probably downgrade it by one level. Shortly after this warning, the Spanish government called a surprise early election for November.

Turkish President Abdullah Gul moved quickly to appoint General Necdet Ozel as the new army chief. General Ozel is widely expected to be swiftly elevated to chief of the general staff in place of General Kosaner. Tradition dictates that only the head of the army can take over the top job.

There has been a history of tension between the secularist military and the governing AK party, with the two sides engaged in a war of words for the past two years over allegations that parts of the military had been plotting a coup. Investigations into those allegations, known as the "Sledgehammer" conspiracy - appear to be the root cause of today's resignations, says the BBC's correspondent in Istanbul, with the senior military wanting to go ahead with scheduled annual promotions for some of the officers implicated - and the government refusing.

General Kosaner portrayed his resignation as a protest at the jailing of military officers in a variety of court cases. "It has become impossible for me to continue in this high office, because I am unable to fulfil my responsibility to protect the rights of my personnel as the chief of general staff," General Kosaner told the Hurriyet news group.

"It's time for them to tell us what they're for," echoed Boehner, repeating the Republican canard that suggests Obama, who's endorsed Majority Leader Reid's latest bill and put forward a series of proposals himself behind closed doors, has no plan. "It's time to tell us how they're going to get us out of the cul-de-sac they've driven our country into."

The spin session, which came just hours after word leaked that McConnell was turning away overtures from Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and demanding to negotiate directly with the President, marked an escalation in an already fraught standoff that has the US Treasury preparing drastic measures should the debt ceiling not be raised by Tuesday.

McConnell announced that he had contacted the White House on Saturday and had held initial phone conversations with Vice President Joe Biden, as well as Obama himself. But the Republicans' message seemed more like maneuvering than outreach. "We are now fully engaged... with the one person in America out of 300 million who can sign a bill into law," McConnell said. Boehner made sure to repeat his line about the President driving the country into a cul-de-sac before concluding the brief session with reporters.

The Republican leaders did offer one sunny note. "I'm confident and optimistic we're going to get an agreement in the very near future," McConnell said. But after Saturday's recriminations and delays, that future seems less certain than ever.

Thorbjorn Jagland, a former prime minister of his country, said leaders such as the British premier would be "playing with fire" if they continued to use rhetoric that could be exploited by extremists. Four months ago in Munich, Cameron declared that state multiculturalism had failed in Britain, a view immediately praised by Nick Griffin, leader of the BNP, as "a further huge leap for our ideas into the political mainstream". Marine Le Pen, vice-president of the far-right National Front party in France, also endorsed Cameron's view of multiculturalism, claiming that it corroborated her own party's line.

Jagland's comments come in the wake of the Oslo bomb and the massacre on Utoya Island that left 77 people dead. The killer, Anders Behring Breivik, said he was inspired by the right-wing English Defence League. Breivik sent his manifesto, published online hours before the attacks, to about 250 British members of the BNP, the EDL and the Stop Islamisation of Europe group. Jagland, who is also secretary general of the Council of Europe, told the Observer: "We have to be very careful how we are discussing these issues, what words are used."

"Political leaders have got to defend the fact that society has become more diverse. We have to defend the reality, otherwise we are going to get into a mess. I think political leaders have to send a clear message to embrace it and benefit from it. We should be very cautious now, we should not play with fire. Therefore I think the words we are using are very important because it can lead to much more."

Jagland has also urged leading politicians to change their terminology. He said the word "diversity" was better than multiculturalism because the latter had become defined in different ways by different groups. "We also need to stop using 'Islamic terrorism', which indicates that terrorism is about Islam. We should be saying that terrorism is terrorism and not linked to religion," said Jagland.

This morning the last remnants of the storm passed into Mexico, leaving behind a hot and sunny weekend with only a few scattered showers expected in southern Texas. While it means there was no respite for cattle farmers, who are selling off their livestock because their pastures are barren, it was a huge relief for cotton growers, who are in the middle of this year's harvest.

Yesterday residents along the coast filled up their cars and moved off the islands to take refuge inland, including about 500 students who were evacuated from Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi, which has an island campus. Earlier yesterday, storm preparations in South Texas were light, with some people seeing it as a drill for things to come.

Luis Canales, of McAllen, said: 'In a way, this tropical storm is a pre-test for an actual hurricane. It helps sharpen us up for what we need.' While many people were tying down possessions and preparing for the winds, more were out on the beach, looking forward to the storm waves. But by this morning, Don had fizzled out into a depression. All tropical storm warnings along the Texas coast were lifted at 4am.

Barry Goldsmith, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service, said: 'There's really not much left of it. It's a done deal.'

He added: 'That great beach weather we had last week is coming right back.' Almost all of Texas is in extreme drought, and even Don's projected few inches of rain wouldn't have cured that, but farmers were hoping for at least a few inches. Carlo Cascos, the top elected official in Cameron County, at Texas's southernmost tip, said: 'It was somewhat of a dud. It looked huge and powerful on the radar. We have another one out there that we'll be watching as well.'

Before the storm, Texas State Climatologist John Nielson-Gammon told MSNBC: 'We're looking at five inches of rain, and that is about a month and a half's worth of rain for these areas. Texas has seen the driest nine months in its history, and many areas are 15 inches below where they would usually be this time of year.'

Traders told the Bureau of Investigative Journalism that Frontier bought all available May Futures contracts on the London International Financial Futures and Options Exchange (Liffe) in the period running up to the tender date in the last week of April. Feed wheat sets the benchmark price for wheat used in food. In recent weeks, Frontier is believed to have taken physical delivery of approximately 225,000 tonnes of feed wheat now worth in the region of 40 million pounds in what has been described as an attempt to corner the market.

Frontier strongly rejected any suggestion of an attempt to manipulate the market. It did not confirm or deny it made the unusually large trades and refused to reveal its position. The company's trading director, Jon Duffy, stated that all the wheat contracts it took physical delivery for were made to secure enough grain to fulfil customers' orders. "We are not speculators," said Duffy. "We are physical grain traders. We buy about 5 million tonnes of grain. We buy it, move it, transport it and deliver it." The spectacular grain raids, which are not illegal, were confirmed by three leading wheat traders who spoke to the Bureau.

Duffy stresses that Frontier is independent of its powerful shareholders, Cargill and Associated British Foods. Both shareholders own a number of major food processing and biofuel facilities in Britain. This, suggest farming insiders, has the potential for Frontier to exert significant control on farmers and rival grain suppliers.

Anders Breivik's 1,500-page manifesto is nothing if not thorough. Pages and pages of text outline in excruciating detail the ideological underpinnings of his worldview - one which led him to kill 76 people in two terrible attacks in Norway last week.

It is a document which has led many to question Breivik's sanity. But it has also, due to its myriad citations and significant borrowing from several anti-immigration, Islamophobic blogs, highlighted the deeply entwined network of right-wing populist groups and parties across Europe - from the Front National in France to Vlaams Belang in Belgium to the Freedom Party of Austria (FPO).

But recently it has become clear that Europe's populist parties aren't merely content to establish a network on the Continent. They are also looking further east. And have begun establishing tight relations with several conservative politicians in Israel - first and foremost with Ayoob Kara, a parliamentarian with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud party who is also deputy minister for development of the Negev and Galilee districts.

The reason for the growing focus on Israel is not difficult to divine. "On the one hand," Strache told Spiegel Online in a recent interview, "we are seeing great revolutions taking place in the Middle East. But one can't be totally sure that other interests aren't behind them and that, in the end, we might see Islamist theocracies surrounding Israel and in Europe's backyard."

In other words, in the battle against what right-wing populists see as the creeping Islamization of Europe, Israel is on the front line.

The dangers are almost as great if the US fails to lift the debt ceiling and avoids default by enacting the most drastic fiscal squeeze in modern history. "Default would be an act of collective insanity," said Willem Buiter, Cititgroup's chief economist. "Even if a default were cured promptly, it would severely dent the credibility of the US as a global financial player and the provider of the world's leading reserve currency. There would be an immediate repricing of the dollar and an increase in medium and long-term nominal and real interest rates. Asset, credit, and funding markets in the US and the world as a whole would likely suffer and a global recession would likely result, centred in the US, but not restricted to it."

Mr Buiter said brinkmanship on the US debt ceiling had reached a point where tail risk had "morphed" into a serious possibility, with a 5 per cent likelihood that Washington will pull the trigger on a technical default. Stephen Roach, head of Morgan Stanley in Asia, said Chinese officials are disgusted by the "astonishing recklessness" of Washington as default looms. "Coming so shortly on the heels of the sub-prime crisis, the debate over the debt ceiling and the budget deficit is the last straw," he said.

Andrew Garthwaite from Credit Suisse said a default would be catastrophic, causing 5 per cent contraction in the US economy and a 30 per cent drop on Wall Street, with "massive" ramifications for the world. "It is almost unthinkable to believe the US would miss a coupon payment [$29 billion are due on August 15]. If the US does default, the repo market would probably cease to work. It is hard to imagine money market funds operating under this scenario. The inter-bank market would freeze up. The fallout would be far worse than after Lehman's default," he said. "It would be horrible to think what happens to the dollar if the Fed hints it would offset the growth damage with QE3."

Mr Garthwaite said it might not be that much better if the US fails to lift the debt ceiling and enacts a draconian fiscal squeeze equal to 11 per cent of GDP (annualised) to stave off default. Such an outcome would at first lead to a 10-15 per cent drop in equities and a fall in 10-year Treasury yields to 2.75 per cent. The dollar would slide. The longer it went on, the worse it would be. Each month would mean fiscal tightening equal to 0.9 per cent of GDP.

Some experts fear that variants of this scenario would spiral out of control. It would drive a string of US states and municipalities into bankruptcy if it lasted more than a few weeks, while the multiplier effect would tip the economy into a self-defeating downward spiral with echoes of 1931.

Following the horrific attacks that left 76 dead in Norway last week, many European leaders have been asking questions about the dangers of right-wing radicalization in the region. In recent years European Union member countries have seen growing support for right-wing populist groups - but the attacks confessed to by Anders Behring Breivik took their anti-Islam, xenophobic ideology to an entirely new and deadly level.

As if to confirm such fears, members of both a British right-wing group and an increasingly populist Italian party bucked the initial trend of rejecting Breivik's ideology, expressed their understanding for certain sentiments. Stephen Lennon, leader of the English Defense League, a far-right British group to which Breivik has claimed ties, said the attacks proved the desperation of those with populist leanings in Europe.

"It's a ticking time bomb," he told news agency AP. "If they don't give that frustration and anger a platform as such - and a way of getting emotion out in a democratic way - it will create monsters like this lunatic." A member of Italy's Northern League Party, the populist junior partner in Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's government, went as far as praising some of Breivik's ideas. In an interview with an Italian radio station, Mario Borghezio, a member of the European Parliament with the party, said: "Some of the ideas he expressed are good - barring the violence - some of them are great."

France's National Front party, known for its nationalistic, far-right policies, has also shifted into the spotlight. Anti-racism initiative MRAP accused the party of nurturing conditions for such an attack, while the left-wing news magazine Le Nouvelle Observateur said Breivik was the "EMBODIMENT OF A NEW SPIRIT IN EUROPE." National Front politicians denied any role in encouraging terrorism with their policies.

Moody's move to place the Aa2 government bond rating on review cited concerns over growth and said funding costs would continue to be high in the wake of euro zone leaders' bolder moves to curb the Greek crisis last week. That added to a sense that Spain - and Italy - are still firmly in the firing line, and the euro and Spanish bond prices fell in response.

Particular focus rested on Spain's regional governments, many of whom are struggling with burgeoning debt loads after a decade of reckless spending. Analysts fear control over regions' debt loads is slipping out of the central government's grasp.

Regional authorities will miss their collective budget deficit target by up to 0.75 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), Moody's said, hampering the central government's program of austerity to reduce the overall shortfall. "Regional governments' finances may prove difficult to control due to structural spending pressures, particularly in the healthcare sector," Moody's said in a release.

International investors are concerned the euro zone's fourth largest economy, hamstrung by anemic growth rates and high unemployment, will fail to put its fiscal house in order and need a Greek-style bailout. Nerves about that have sent bond yields to their highest level in over a decade. Moody's current rating for Spain is in line with fellow rating agency S&P's AA setting, while Fitch Ratings has the country one notch higher at AA+.

The derelict neighborhood off Michigan Avenue is a sharp contrast to Goldman's bustling skyscraper headquarters near Wall Street, but the two operations share one important element: management by the bank's savvy financial professionals.

A string of warehouses in Detroit, most of them operated by Goldman, has stockpiled more than a million tonnes of the industrial metal aluminum, about a quarter of global reported inventories. Simply storing all that metal generates tens of millions of dollars in rental revenues for Goldman every year. There's just one problem: only a trickle of the aluminum is leaving the depots, creating a supply pinch for manufacturers of everything from soft drink cans to aircraft.

The resulting spike in prices has sparked a clash between companies forced to pay more for their aluminum and wait months for it to be delivered, Goldman, which is keen to keep its cash machines humming and the London Metal Exchange (LME), the world's benchmark industrial metals market, which critics accuse of lax oversight. Analysts question why London's metals market allows big financial players like Goldman to own the warehouses which store huge quantities of metal even as they trade the commodity.

Robin Bhar, a veteran metals analyst at Credit Agricole in London says the conflict of interest is so acute he wants US and European anti-trust regulators to weigh in. "I think it makes a mockery of the market. It's a shame," Bhar said. "This is an anti-competitive situation. It puts (some) companies at an advantage, and clearly the rest of the market at a disadvantage. It's a real, genuine concern. And I think the regulators have to look at it."

Obama has warned that if lawmakers cannot come to an agreement on how to manage the debt issue in the next week - or prior to August 2 - the government will default on its debts and payments will have to be prioritized. Payments on the chopping block will be Social Security benefits, along with military salaries and unemployment benefits. August 3 is the day the government would have to start prioritizing payments.

It also happens to be the day a big set of Social Security checks are scheduled to be mailed out. If the government fails to act on time, 60 million Social Security recipients will fail to receive their checks for the month. Geithner says if the government officially defaults on August 2 as predicted if lawmakers cannot resolve the debt issue, he will no longer have enough money on hand to pay salaries and other bills. This will leave millions of Americans with no income to rely on.

The National Hurricane Center said, "This general motion with an increase in forward speed is expected through Friday. Some strengthening is forecast during the next 48 hours." The Center calls Don a small tropical cyclone and if continued on its projected path the storm could hit land along the southeastern coast of Texas at 1 am Saturday morning. The thousands of oil and gas production platforms in the region are particularly of major concern.

Reuters reports that Shell Oil Co, along with several other offshore energy operators evacuated workers on Wednesday. These companies produce 29 percent of US oil output and over 10 percent of domestically produced natural gas. No measures to shut down production have been reported yet.