At first glance, the promises of the G20 nations, which were meeting in this format for the fourth time, sounded impressive. National deficits will be "at least" halved by 2013, according to the summit's closing statement. But the agreement has no teeth, given that it does not foresee any binding mechanisms to make sure that the commitment is kept. Every country will manage its own cost-cutting efforts, with some taking action sooner, others later. The measures will be "tailored to national circumstances," the statement reads.

The discussion of possible new rules for the financial sector was postponed to the next summit in South Korea, which is scheduled for November. Merkel was not able to find sufficient allies to push through a worldwide bank levy or a global financial transaction tax. France and Germany are now working on a EU plan for a financial transaction tax. The G20 members may have been united during the crisis, but now they are diverging - both in terms of regulation and their economic health. National interests have once again become more important than the big picture.

Merkel wants to economize. The British have no other choice but to do so. China is allowing its currency to slowly appreciate against the dollar. And the Americans are expected to continue with their strategy of racking up new debt, at least for the time being. The big question now is: Will the stimulus efforts already undertaken be enough? Or will the bad economic news once again dominate the headlines?

Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri is said to have privately asked Cypriot President Demetris Christofias, Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan, Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou and the Maltese Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi to deny Lebanese ships bound for Gaza permission to drop anchor, refuel or load provisions at their ports, in order to prevent them from proceeding to Gaza. Hariri explained that he feared the flotilla campaign to break the Israeli blockade would precipitate a new Middle East war.

On Thursday, June 24, Israel repeated its warning that ships trying to breach its blockade against the Gaza Strip would be deemed "enemy vessels." The Israeli Navy has been instructed to employ every available means to bar their access to Gaza's shore. Israel OC Northern Command General Gadi Eizenkot said: "The Lebanese side is issuing threats against Israel and we are confident that the Israeli army is preparing to confront these threats in an appropriate manner." He was referring to Hezbollah's announcement: "We will not stand by idly if Israel attacks ships bound for Gaza. Detainees taken into Israeli custody (aboard those vessels) will be deemed prisoners of war who must be released."

As the climate over the Mediterranean heats up, two ships are either at sea or hours away from embarkation - the Julia from Lebanon and an Iranian ship, which is said to be making for the Suez Canal from the Persian Gulf port of Khorramshahr.

UPDATE: TEHRAN, IRAN - Iran will not be sending a blockade-busting ship to Gaza in defiance of Israeli warnings, an Iranian lawmaker said Saturday, citing Israeli "restrictions." The Iranian ship called "Infants of Gaza" had been expected to sail Sunday for Gaza carrying 1,100 tons of relief supplies and 10 pro-Palestinian activists but plans were canceled "due to restrictions imposed by the occupying Zionist regime," Bighash said.

Rabbi Yehuda Levin, spokesman for the alliance, told CNSNews.com on Thursday that "a great deal has been made about the fact that she would be the second Jewish woman on the court, and we want to signal to people across the country that we take no pride in this."

Levin said most people are happy when "one of their own" is nominated to such a high position. But, he added, "We feel that Elena Kagan turns traditional Judaism on its head - from a concept of a nation of priests and holy people, she is turning it into, 'Let's homosexualize every segment of society. And by the way, partial-birth babies have no right to be delivered.'"

In a statement issued Thursday, the rabbinical alliance called on the Senate Judiciary Committee to refuse to confirm Kagan to succeed the outgoing Justice John Paul Stevens.

"It is clear from Ms Kagan's record on issues such as abortion-on-demand, partial-birth-abortion, the radical homosexual and lesbian agenda, the 'supremacy' of the anti-family panoply over religious liberties of biblical adherents, et al, that she will function as a flame-throwing radical, HASTENING SOCIETY'S ALREADY STEEP DECLINE INTO SODOM AND GOMORRAH," the rabbis said in the statement.

Belgium is one of many countries where the Church has been hit by sex scandal. In April, the Bishop of Bruges, Roger Vangheluwe, resigned after admitting he had sexually abused a boy more than 20 years ago. The Vatican has summoned the Belgian ambassador to the Holy See to voice anger over Thursday's raids.

Police in Leuven seized nearly 500 files and a computer from the offices of a Church commission investigating allegations of sex abuse. They also searched the Church's headquarters, the Brussels archdiocese in Mechelen, north of the Belgian capital.

Bishops holding a meeting there were barred from leaving the premises for several hours and had their mobile phones confiscated, said Church officials. Investigators made holes in the tombs of two former Belgian primates at Mechelen cathedral, and sent down cameras in search of hidden documents, without success, said a Church spokesman.

In a statement, the Vatican expressed "shock over how the searches were carried out by Belgian judicial authorities and indignation over the violation of the graves of the Cardinals Jozef-Ernest Van Roey and Leon-Joseph Suenens," reports AFP news agency.

Officers also raided the nearby home of the recently retired Archbishop of Belgium, Cardinal Godfried Danneels.

He was not interrogated but a personal computer and some paperwork was confiscated. The Vatican said the raids had led to the "violation of confidentiality of precisely those victims for whom the raids were carried out". The Catholic Church in Belgium has apologised for its silence on abuse cases in the past and Archbishop Leonard has promised a policy of zero tolerance.

The move could cost retailers millions of pounds because of changes they will have to make to packaging and labelling, as well as the extra burden of weighing each box of food before it is put on sale. The cost is likely to be passed on to shoppers through higher grocery bills.

Federation of Bakers director Gordon Polson warned that it may be too late to change the rules, even though they will be debated further in the European Parliament. He revealed that lobbyists had already tried to rectify the regulations, discovered in the 174 pages of amendments to the initial 75-page proposal, but there was not enough time to convince MEPs before the crucial vote.

One major food supplier said: 'This is hindering rather than helping the consumer, taking away one of the key bits of information. If this goes through it would demonstrate how far removed the legislators are from the real world. It's bonkers.' Another industry source added: 'It's absolute madness. You can't make any argument that consumers are being confused by labels for six eggs or four bread rolls.'

Adam Leyland, editor of The Grocer trade magazine, said: 'You couldn't make it up, could you? It would be funny if it were an April Fool's joke. But it's not and it will potentially cost the industry millions, while confusing customers no end. The EU's attempt to simplify labelling has created a multi-headed monster.'

The new labelling row is the latest in a long line of European Union food policy scandals.

The EU passed a directive in 1994 ruling that top-of-the-range bananas had to be 'free from malformation or abnormal curvature of the fingers'. The directive was ridiculed as a symbol of bureaucratic excess in Brussels.

In 1988, it ruled that top-of-the-range cucumbers must bend by only 10mm per 10cm in a directive designed to help packaging and transport.

In 1979, another directive ruled that carrots should be termed as fruits, as the Portuguese made jam out of them.

Neil Herron, campaign director of the Metric Martyrs Defence Fund, said the EU directive was 'absolute nonsense'. He added: 'If I was a farmer I would get my customers to throw eggs at any official trying to enforce this. It is directives like this that give the European project a bad name. It makes the British public want to just pull out of the whole thing altogether.'

Using confidential military documents, copies of which have been seen by the IoS, the "runaway general" briefed defence ministers from Nato and the International Security Assistance Force (Isaf) earlier this month, and warned them not to expect any progress in the next six months. During his presentation, he raised serious concerns over levels of security, violence, and corruption within the Afghan administration.

Details of General McChrystal's grim assessment of his own strategy's current effectiveness emerged as the world's most powerful leaders set the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, a five-year deadline to improve security and governance in his country. The G8 summit in Toronto called for "concrete progress" within five years on improving the justice system and for Afghan forces to assume greater responsibility for security. David Cameron said a "political surge" must now complement the military one.

But the "campaign overview" left behind by General McChrystal after he was sacked by President Barack Obama last week warned that only a fraction of the areas key to long-term success are "secure", governed with "full authority", or enjoying "sustainable growth". He warned of a critical shortage of "essential" military trainers needed to build up Afghan forces - of which only a fraction is classed as "effective".

He pinpointed an "ineffective or discredited" Afghan government and a failure by Pakistan "to curb insurgent support" as "critical risks" to success. "Waning" political support and a "divergence of coalition expectations and campaign timelines" are among the key challenges faced, according to the general.

It was this briefing, according to informed sources, as much as the Rolling Stone article, which convinced Mr Obama to move against the former head of US Special Forces, as costs soar to $7 billion a month and the body count rises to record levels, because it undermined the White House political team's aim of pulling some troops out of Afghanistan in time for the US elections in 2012. In addition to being the result of some too-candid comments in a magazine article, the President's decision to dispense with his commander was seen by the general's supporters as a politically motivated culmination of their disagreements.

Mr Cameron was expected to make his point to Ms Kirchner either during an official leaders' dinner at the Toronto summit last night or at some point in the "margins" of official discussions on Sunday. A source close to Mr Cameron said: "He will be robust. He will make the point again that our position on the sovereignty of the Falklands has not changed and will not change."

Tensions have risen since Rockhopper, a British drilling company, announced "potential signs" of oil in Falkland Island waters - although they did not say that commercial quantities were present. British sources say Argentina has used the find as a pretext to "revisit the sovereignty issue". Last week a United Nations committee passed a non-binding resolution calling for the two countries to restart talks.

Since the 10-week Falklands War in 1982, which claimed 257 British and 649 Argentinians, Argentina has continued to claim sovereignty over the islands and officially refers to them as "Las Malvinas." The US recognises Britain's "administration" of the Falklands, stopping short of fully endorsing its sovereignty.

The Queen, who will be accompanied by the Duke of Edinburgh for her visits to Canada and New York, last addressed the UN General Assembly five years after acceding to the throne following the death of her father, George VI. The Queen was 31 years old when she delivered that speech on October 21, 1957.

On that occasion, she said: "This Assembly was born of the endeavours of countless men and women from different nations who, over the centuries, have pursued the aims of the preservation of peace between nations, equality of justice for all before the law and the right of the peoples of the world to live their lives in freedom and security."

"The Charter of the United Nations was framed with a view to giving expression to these great purposes and so forming a fitting memorial to the men and women whose toil and sacrifices turned those ideas into articles of faith for the nations of today..." The United Nations General Assembly was set by a charter in 1945, at the end of the Second World War. It is the chief deliberative, policy-making and representative body of the United Nations.

The Queen acceded to the throne in 1952 and in 2012 she will celebrate her Diamond Jubilee with a series of nationwide events, including a major concert.

The statistics, released by the Metropolitan Police, permit an informed debate on a sensitive subject for the first time. One prominent black politician said last night that the black community needed to face up to major challenges.

Shaun Bailey, a Tory election candidate in London and a charity worker, said: "The black community has to look at itself and say that, at the end of the day, these figures suggest we are heavily - not casually - involved in violent crime. We are also involved in crime against ourselves - and we regularly attack each other." The data provide a breakdown of the ethnicity of the 18,091 men and boys who police took action against for a range of violent and sexual offences in London in 2009-10.

They show that among those proceeded against for street crimes, 54 per cent were black; for robbery, 59 per cent; and for gun crimes, 67 per cent. Street crimes include muggings, assault with intent to rob and snatching property. Just over 12 per cent of London's 7.5 million population is black, including those of mixed black and white parentage, while 69 per cent is white, according to the Office for National Statistics. The police figures also show that black men are twice as likely to be victims. They made up 29 per cent of the male victims of gun crime and 24 per cent of the male victims of knife crime.

The Sunday Telegraph obtained the figures via a Freedom of Information request after Rod Liddle, the writer, caused controversy last year when he claimed in an online blog published on The Spectator website that "the overwhelming majority of street crime, knife crime, gun crime, robbery and crimes of sexual violence in London is carried out by young men from the African-Caribbean community".

The comments led to claims that Mr Liddle was racist. However, Mr Liddle said: "I cannot think of anything more vile than racism. The issue here is not racism, it is one of multiculturalism."

Obama wants to slap a 0.15 percent tax on the liabilities of the biggest US financial institutions to recoup the costs to taxpayers of the financial bailout. "We need to impose a fee on the banks that were the biggest beneficiaries of taxpayer assistance at the height of our financial crisis - so we can recover every dime of taxpayer money," Obama said in his weekly radio and Internet address.

Obama, who is in Canada to attend gatherings with leaders of the world's biggest economies, also used the address to welcome a deal by congressional negotiators on a historic rewriting of US financial regulations. Obama hopes to tout the changes as a model for other countries at the G20 summit on Saturday and Sunday. "I hope we can build on the progress we made at last year's G20 summits by coordinating our global financial reform efforts to make sure a crisis like the one from which we are still recovering never happens again," he said.

The financial regulation package would set up a new financial consumer watchdog, create a protocol for dismantling troubled financial firms and mandate higher bank capital standards, with the aim of avoiding a repeat of the 2007-2009 financial meltdown.

A group, dressed all in black, smashed the windows of a bank, a coffee shop and some stores before heading to an area where Canada's largest banks are headquarted, smashing restaurant windows there. Police with shields and clubs earlier pushed back a small group of protesters who tried to head south toward the security fence around the site of the G-20 summit. Some demonstrators hurled bottles at police.

Previous summit gatherings have attracted massive protests by anti-globalization forces. But so far the Canadian protests have been smaller, and police hoped the rain would further thin the protesters' ranks. Toronto's downtown core resembles a fortress, with a big steel and concrete fence erected along several blocks to protect the summit site.

Previous protests during global meetings have turned violent. In 1999, 50,000 protesters shut down World Trade Organization sessions in Seattle as police fired tear gas and rubber bullets. There were some 600 arrests and $3 million in property damage. At a G-20 meeting, held in London in April 2009, thousands protested, and one man died after a confrontation with police.

At the last G-20 summit in September, police fired canisters of pepper spray and smoke and rubber bullets at marchers in Pittsburgh.

Nerve endings in the brain are not sufficiently formed to enable pain to be felt before 24 weeks, according to the report by the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, which had been commissioned by the Department of Health. The report said: "It can be concluded that the foetus cannot experience pain in any sense prior to this gestation."

Professor Allan Templeton, president of the Royal College, who chaired the review, told The Times that research put forward by anti-abortion campaigners that the human foetus did feel pain at or before 24 weeks was based on evidence from premature babies. This did not apply to the foetus in the womb, he said.

A second finding is that the foetus is naturally sedated and unconscious in the womb, leading the panel to advise that anaesthetics for the foetus are not needed when it is terminated. "There's nothing in the report that suggests any need to review the upper limit," said Professor Templeton. The review would appear to remove one strut of the argument by pro-life campaigners that the current abortion limit needs to be lowered, although they are likely to challenge the Royal College's findings.

Anti-abortion campaigners also argue that survival rates for very premature babies have improved markedly in the last decade - although the statistics are not clear-cut - and that abortion is still the termination of a human life.

But the truth is that is simply not going to happen. Right now the United States is heading for another real estate crash. The only thing that has been holding it back was the huge bribe (called a tax credit) that the US government was giving people to buy houses. Now that the tax credit has expired, there is no artificial incentive to buy homes and the real estate market has fallen through the floor. Unfortunately, there is every indication that things are going to get even worse.

The following are 7 reasons why the US real estate market is already a total nightmare...

- In May, sales of new homes in the United States dropped to the lowest level ever recorded.

- The median price of all new US homes sold in May was $200,900, which represented a 9.6% drop from May 2009.

- New home sale figures for the previous two months were also revised down sharply by the government. Apparently their previous estimates were far too optimistic.

- Newly signed home sale contracts in the US dropped more than 10% in May.

- According to the US Commerce Department, housing starts fell approximately 10 percent in May

- Internet searches on real estate websites are down about 20 percent compared to this same time period in 2009.

- The "twin pillars" of the mortgage industry are a complete and total financial mess. The Congressional Budget Office is projecting that the final bill for the bailouts of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac could be as high as $389 billion. Both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac continue to hemorrhage cash at an alarming rate, but the truth is that without them there wouldn't be much of a mortgage industry left in the United States.

Leaders from the Group of Eight leading economies will meet Friday in Huntsville, before joining up with other officials from the Group of 20 developed and emerging nations in Toronto on Saturday and Sunday. In a huge operation, police combed Toronto's streets barricaded by wire fences and miles of concrete blocks, backed by overhead helicopters, with many schools and businesses closed, and the main Union Station partially shut down.

Local trains only were allowed to unload passengers, who arrived to find the platforms mostly deserted, and security personnel posted at every corner. Protestors are planning days of demonstrations to focus attention on issues from the environment to the rights of indigenous peoples.

Tensions are already running high after Canadian authorities Wednesday said they had uncovered a plot to bomb the summit, charging a 37-year-old Toronto man and his common-law wife with possession of explosives.

"This year's White House fellows are comprised of some of the best and brightest leaders in our country," Michelle Obama said in the June 22 announcement. "I applaud their unyielding commitment to public service and dedication to serving their community." White House fellows spend a year as full-time, paid assistants to senior White House staff, the vice president, Cabinet secretaries and senior administration officials.

Samar Ali of Waverly, Tennessee, is the first name appearing on the White House list. She is an associate with the law firm Hogan Lovells - a firm that claims to have advised on more than 200 Islamic finance transactions with an aggregate deal value in excess of $40 billion.

Shariah finance institutions have funded militant Islamism for more than 30 years. Alexiev cited Islamic Development Bank's hundreds of millions of dollars in contributions to Hamas in support of suicide bombing. Bank Al-Taqwa and other banks and charities run by Saudi billionaires that have funded al-Qaida activities.

Additionally, Shariah law mandates that Muslims donate 2.5 percent of their annual incomes to charities - including jihadists. When 400 banks regularly contribute to such charities, potential financial sums can be virtually limitless. If Western banks endorse Shariah, they will "end up becoming what Lenin called useful idiots or worse to the Islamists," Alexiev wrote. "And it is a very thin line between that and outright complicity in the Islamist agenda."