The beleaguered euro initially fell in the wake of her comments and fresh speculation that Greece's international credit rating may be downgraded. On a dramatic day which also saw money markets around the world fall:

- The head of Germany's leading debt management agency warned the euro would collapse if any member defaulted on its debt.

- US regulators said they would investigate whether investment bank Goldman Sachs helped Athens disguise its budget deficit.

- EU inspectors visiting Athens told authorities they see a deeper than expected recession.

The developments came as Greece was recovering from a day of rioting which accompanied a second national strike over plans to curb the country's huge budget deficit. The violent clashes between antigovernment protesters and riot police in Athens on Wednesday followed a strike by more than two million workers in protest at plans to freeze public sector pay, raise the pension age and hike taxes on fuel, tobacco, alcohol and property.

Yesterday, while Mrs Merkel insisted the single currency would survive the crisis, she acknowledged that soaring debt levels in Greece and other southern European countries had put the euro at risk 'for the first time since its introduction'.

The devil was in the details, and by the end of the full-day session, a significant breakthrough still seemed beyond reach. Republicans appeared just as steadfastly opposed to the Democrats' sweeping vision of remaking the nation's health care system as they were at the beginning. Democrats refused to cede any ground to the Republican argument that they should start from scratch and take an incremental approach to health care reform.

There have been tensions between the nations since 2008, when one of Mr Gaddafi's sons was arrested in Geneva, accused of assaulting two servants. A Swiss foreign ministry spokesman declined to comment on the jihad call. The Libyan leader made his comments while speaking at a meeting to mark the birthday of the Prophet Muhammad.

"Let us wage jihad against Switzerland, Zionism and foreign aggression," he said. "Any Muslim in any part of the world who works with Switzerland is an apostate, is against Muhammad, God and the Koran."

In a referendum last November, 57.5% of Swiss voters approved a constitutional ban on the building of minarets. An appeal against the ban has been submitted to the European Court of Human Rights.

They say a slowdown in the production of this water could result in colder winters in the north Atlantic. The iceberg is currently floating south of Australia. Dr Neal Young, a glaciologist at the Antarctic Climate and Ecosystems Research Centre in Tasmania, told the BBC that any disruption to the production of the super cold water - known as bottom water - in the region would affect ocean currents, and consequently weather patterns, for years to come.

"This area accounts for about 25% of the production of bottom water in Antarctica, and therefore it will reduce the overturning circulation rate," he said. "You won't see it immediately, but it has downstream effects. And it will also have implications for penguins and other wildlife in the region that normally use this area for feeding."

At the height of the big freeze, the entire country was blanketed in snow. But Australian weather expert Professor Neville Nicholls, of Monash University in Melbourne, said yesterday: "January, according to satellite data, was the hottest January we've ever seen."

"Last November was the hottest November we've ever seen. November-January as a whole is the hottest November-January the world has seen." Veteran climatologist Professor Nicholls was speaking at an online climate change briefing, added: "It's not warming the same everywhere but it is really quite challenging to find places that haven't warmed in the past 50 years." His extraordinary claims came after the World Meteorological Organisation revealed 2000 to 2009 was the hottest decade since records began in 1850.

But UK forecaster Jonathan Powell, of Positive Weather Solutions, said: "If it is the case and it is borne out that January was the hottest on record, it is still no marker towards climate change. It's been the coldest for 30 years in Britain but we predicted that and climate change always tends to throw up anomalies. It's all in line with predictions and I won't be sold on climate change at all. The data is either faulty or manufactured to make it look like it shouldn't."

At stake is public belief that greenhouse gas emissions are warming the planet, and political momentum to act as governments struggle to agree a climate treaty which could direct trillions of dollars into renewable energy, away from fossil fuels.

Public conviction of global warming's risks may have been undermined by an error in a UN panel report exaggerating the pace of melt of Himalayan glaciers and by the disclosure of hacked emails revealing scientists sniping at skeptics, who leapt on these as evidence of data fixing. Scientists said they must explain better how a freezing winter this year in parts of the northern hemisphere and a break in a rising trend in global temperatures since 1998 can happen when heat-trapping gases are pouring into the atmosphere.

"There is a lack of consensus," said Kevin Trenberth, head of the Climate Analysis Section at the US National Center for Atmospheric Research, on why global temperatures have not matched a peak set in 1998, or in 2005 according to one US analysis. The proportion of British adults who had no doubt climate change was happening had dropped in January to 31 percent from 44 percent in January 2009, an Ipsos MORI poll showed this week.

ALBANY, NEW YORK, USA - A powerful winter storm dumped a foot or more of snow in the Northeast on Wednesday, knocking out power to thousands and stalling air traffic from Boston to Philadelphia, all ahead of a second system packing strong winds that could blanket the area with another foot of snow.

The storm cut a swath from eastern Pennsylvania into northern New England, slamming typically snowy regions that had been spared the paralyzing storms that hit cities farther south earlier this winter. About 150,000 customers lost power Wednesday, hundreds of schools were closed and at least three traffic deaths were blamed on the storm.

The system was the first of a 1-2 winter punch. The National Weather Service said the storm forecast to hit Thursday is expected to be "significant and long-lasting," packing wind gusts of 40 to 50 mph, which could cause more power outages, and dump a foot or more of snow on some areas by Friday. Meteorologists said some areas of New York's Adirondack and Catskill mountains and Vermont's Green Mountains could get as much as 2 feet by the weekend. Philadelphia, which has had its snowiest winter with more than 70 inches and is still digging out from earlier back-to-back storms, could see as much as a foot of snow.

One of the most significant factors behind Britain's stubbornly high rate of teenage pregnancy is the accelerating breakdown of the family, which leaves children from broken homes without role models to teach them about the importance of love and commitment in relationships.

Ironically, this collapse of traditional family life has been fuelled by deliberate government policies, such as the end of tax relief for married couples and the introduction of financial incentives in the welfare system for lone parents.

For make no mistake: despite what the Government might think, being brought up in a stable, domestic environment is by far the best way a child can learn about the importance of fidelity, restraint and personal responsibility.

There is no ethical basis to any of the advice given to young people about sex. In Britain, sex education is, quite literally, just words. Indeed, so powerful is this collapse of a stable moral code in Britain that youth counsellors, campaigners, teachers and ministers are now terrified about making any judgments whatsoever about an individual's behaviour. Do whatever you want, with whoever you want, whenever you want, as long as you wear a condom or take the morning-after pill. That is the thrust of most sex education for teenagers in Britain today.

Indeed, far from promoting restraint or commitment, the entire emphasis of this politically correct system is on the so- called 'sexual rights' of young people. And the dreadful consequences are there for all to see in rising rates of both teen pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases. The problem is further exacerbated by the increasing secularisation of our society. Christianity in particular has largely lost its influence, with less than 10 per cent of the population now regularly attending church.

You might say that this politically correct, nonjudgmental attitude has, in fact, become the new secular religion of our times, with any attempt to raise issues of morality now regarded as a form of heresy. THE ONLY STIGMA IN MODERN BRITAIN, IT SEEMS, IS DIRECTED AT THOSE WHO WARN AGAINST INFIDELITY, ADULTERY OR PARENTAL NEGLECT OF CHILDREN. In this brave new world, personal rights reign supreme.

Discarded plastic is known to harm seabirds and marine life, but Karen Lavender Law of the Sea Education Association said the problem in the Atlantic ocean had been 'largely ignored.' The revelations come after the results of a 22-year study were unveiled at the Ocean Sciences Meeting in Portland, US.

During the study, the longest and most extensive record of plastic marine debris in any ocean basin, SEA undergraduates collected more than 64,000 tiny bits of plastic. Scientists and students carried out 61,000 sweeps of the North Atlantic towing fine mesh nets behind a research vessel. More than half of these expeditions revealed floating pieces of plastic on the water surface.

The researchers described the sheer diversity of what they had found in this synthetic soup in a voyage blog. They wrote: 'We saw embedded in each patch a disturbing mosaic of plastic junk. We grabbed our nets and began fishing furiously, amassing a pile of bottle caps, shotgun shells, crates, toothbrushes, a boxer's mouthpiece, and myriad unidentifiable chunks floating by, gently pulsating with the ocean's currents.' Dr Lavender Law said that most of the pieces of plastic were generally very small - about one centimetre across, and were accumulating fairly far north in the Atlantic.

The researchers wrote on their voyage blog: 'There is no doubt in our minds that the Pacific plastic plague is not an isolated phenomenon, but an International problem. We've seen plastic trash covering beaches in Bermuda, carried from the mainland by the Gulf Stream. We've seen broken down fragments in our trawls after sieving the ocean's surface and we've now seen mini "islands" of plastic trash entangled in Sargassum (seaweed).'

A report by an Advisory Panel on Judicial Diversity said that the judiciary has historically drawn its membership from well educated, middle-class, white, male barristers. It said that despite increasing numbers of women and ethnic minorities in the legal profession, this had been reflected only slowly in appointments to the judiciary.

The report said it was wrong for members of the judiciary to be drawn from a "narrow and homogenous group" that does not reflect the society it serves. Just one in five judges sitting in courts in England and Wales are women and less than 5 per cent are from ethnic minority groups. Only 3 of the 163 most senior judges sitting in the High Court, Supreme Court and Court of Appeal are from minority groups.

Jack Straw, the Justice Secretary, said: "I warmly welcome their findings and their recommendations. Becoming a judge must be, and must be seen to be, open in practice to everyone with the right skills and qualities."

At 10am US Eastern Time, he will host an all-day "summit", broadcast live on nationwide TV, with his Republican congressional opponents and his wayward Democratic supporters, to try to establish some kind of political consensus on the top priority of his presidency - reform of the ruinously expensive US healthcare system. Medicine now absorbs 17 per cent of US national income, double the average in other advanced economies and half as much again as Switzerland, which has the next most expensive healthcare.

If nothing is done to change the US healthcare system, it can be stated with mathematical certainty that the US Government and many leading US companies will be driven into bankruptcy, a fate that befell General Motors and Chrysler largely because of their inability to meet retired workers' contractually guaranteed medical costs.

Today's summit represents Mr Obama's last chance to find a way forward, either by shaming some Republicans into supporting him or by embarrassing his own perennially divided Democratic Party into uniting around a single plan. If he is unable to do this, he will have almost no chance of passing any significant legislation on any other issue - not on energy, budgetary responsibility, macroeconomic management or even on such seemingly popular issues as bank regulation and jobs.

In short, Mr Obama has staked his entire presidency on today's summit. If you are not convinced, just listen to the President's own radio broadcast last weekend: "What's being tested in the healthcare summit is not just our ability to solve this one problem, but our ability to solve any problem." Consider what three years without effective government in Washington could mean, not only for America but for the entire Western world.

The escalating dispute came as a general strike in Greece spilled over into violent clashes between hooded youths and riot police in Athens. Chants of "burn the banks" are a foretaste of tensions once austerity measures bite in earnest later this year. Public and private sector unions joined forces to bring the country to a standstill for 24 hours, halting flights, trains, and shipping, and shutting schools and hospitals.

Theodoros Pangalos, deputy prime minister, said Germany had no right to reproach Greece for anything after it devastated the country under the Nazi occupation, which left 300,000 dead. "They took away the gold that was in the Bank of Greece, and they never gave it back. They shouldn't complain so much about stealing and not being very specific about economic dealings," he told the BBC.

Twisting the knife further, he said the current crop of EU leaders were of "very poor quality" and had botched this month's crisis summit in Brussels. "The people who are managing the fortunes of Europe were not up to the task," he said. One banker said the situation was surreal. "How can they call the Germans incompetent Nazis and still expect a bail-out?"

Despite Britain's close alliance with the US, the Obama Administration is determined not to be drawn into the issue. It has also declined to back Britain's claim that oil exploration near the islands is sanctioned by international law, saying that the dispute is strictly a bilateral issue.

Argentina appealed to the UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki Moon, last night to intervene in the dispute, a move Britain adamantly opposes. "The Secretary-General knows about the issue. He is not happy to learn that the situation is worsening," Jorge Taiana, the Argentine Foreign Minister, said after meeting Mr Ban in New York. "We have asked the Secretary-General, within the framework of his good offices, to stress to Britain the need to abstain from further unilateral acts." A top UN aide acknowledged, however, that Mr Ban would not be able to mediate because of Britain's opposition.

Sir Mark Lyall Grant, Britain's Ambassador to the UN, said: "As British ministers have made clear, the UK has no doubt about its sovereignty over the Falkland Islands, South Georgia and the Sandwich Islands ... We are also clear that the Falkland Islands Government is entitled to develop a hydrocarbons industry within its waters, and we support this legitimate business in Falklands' territory."

Senior US officials insisted that Washington's position on the Falklands was one of longstanding neutrality. This is in stark contrast to the public backing and vital intelligence offered by President Reagan to Margaret Thatcher once she had made the decision to recover the islands by force in 1982.

"Violent Islamic terrorism ... was part and parcel of the Fort Hood killings," Napolitano told the Senate Homeland Security Committee on Wednesday morning. "There is violent Islamic terrorism, be it Al Qaeda in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen or anywhere else, [and] that is indeed a major focus of this department and its efforts."

In the months since an Army psychiatrist - who had been in contact with a radical Muslim cleric in Yemen - opened fired inside the Army base, many on Capitol Hill have urged administration officials to publicly identify the attack as terrorism. Those calls have been used by Republicans and others to paint administration officials as weak on terrorism and subsequently unwilling to use the word "terrorism."

During the Senate hearing on Wednesday morning, Senator Joe Lieberman, the Homeland Security Committee's chairman, called the administration's "reluctance" to use terms such as "Islamist extremism" or "Muslim terrorist" a "pet peeve of mine." He said his "concern" about the issue was "aroused again" when an internal Pentagon review of the events leading up to the attack by Army Major Nidal Hasan on November 5, 2009, never used such terms.

Napolitano has often used the word "terrorism," including several times during her Senate confirmation hearing more than a year ago. But she, like others in the Obama Administration, has rarely referred to "Islamic terrorism."

But a string of allegations about coup plots by the military - and this week's arrest and formal indictment of seven senior military officers, including four admirals, a general and two colonels - have brought these tensions to a new level. They raise fundamental questions about whether peaceful cohabitation is possible between the staunchly secular military and a governing party with Islamist roots. And for Turkey's Western allies, they raise troubling questions about where the country could be heading.

If Mr Erdogan presses the issue even harder, this will strengthen the view of his critics that he is out to settle scores and is becoming increasingly authoritarian. But, as they watch their power and credibility eroding, the generals find themselves in a bind. To wage a war of attrition against the AKP, which has already won two convincing election victories, could simply ensure it wins a third.

There is no credible political rival on the horizon. Besides, the current chief of the Turkish general staff, the widely respected General Ilker Basbug, says coups are a thing of the past. Still clinging to its traditional role as guardian of the nation, but aware the tide of history is moving against it, the Turkish military finds itself at an uncomfortable crossroads.