"Here it is," Medvedev told reporters today in L'Aquila, Italy, after a summit of the Group of Eight nations. "You can see it and touch it." The question of a supranational currency "concerns everyone now, even the mints," Medvedev said. The test coin "means they're getting ready. I think it's a good sign that we understand how interdependent we are."

Medvedev has repeatedly called for creating a mix of regional reserve currencies as part of the drive to address the global financial crisis, while questioning the US dollar's future as a global reserve currency. Russia's proposals for the G20 meeting in London in April included the creation of a supranational currency.

Good question, because such measures wouldn't do a thing to clean up the oil or fix the problems that led to the leak.

The answer can be found in Obama Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel's now-famous words, "You never want a serious crisis to go to waste - and what I mean by that is it's an opportunity to do things that you think you could not do before."

That sure was true of global-warming policy, and especially the cap-and-trade bill. Many observers thought the measure, introduced last year in the House by Representatives Henry Waxman (Democrat for California) and Edward Markey (Democrat for Massachusetts), was dead. The American people didn't seem to think that the so-called global-warming crisis justified a price-hiking, job-killing, economy-crushing redesign of our energy supply amid a fragile recovery. Passing another major piece of legislation, one every bit as unpopular as ObamaCare, appeared unlikely in an election year.

So Obama and congressional proponents of cap-and-trade spent several months rebranding it - downplaying the global-warming rationale and claiming that it was really a jobs bill (the so-called green jobs were supposed to spring from the new clean-energy economy) and an energy-independence bill (that will somehow stick it to OPEC).

Critics of wind farms have seized on the revelation as evidence of the unsuitability of turbines to meet the UK's energy needs in the future. They claim that the 'intermittent' nature of wind makes such farms unreliable providers of electricity. The National Grid fears that on breezy summer nights, wind farms could actually cause a surge in the electricity supply which is not met by demand from businesses and households.

The electricity cannot be stored, so one solution - known as the 'balancing mechanism' - is to switch off or reduce the power supplied. The system is already used to reduce supply from coal and gas-fired power stations when there is low demand. But shutting down wind farms is likely to cost the National grid - and ultimately consumers - far more. When wind turbines are turned off, owners are being deprived not only of money for the electricity they would have generated but also lucrative 'green' subsidies for that electricity.

The first successful test shut down of wind farms took place three weeks ago. Scottish Power received 13,000 pounds for closing down two farms for a little over an hour on 30 May at about five in the morning. Dr Lee Moroney, planning director of the Renewable Energy Foundation, a think tank opposed to the widespread introduction of wind farms, said: "As more and more wind farms come on stream this will become more and more of an issue. Wind power is not controllable and does not provide a solid supply to keep the national grid manageable. Paying multinational companies large sums of money not to supply electricity seems wrong."

Earlier this year, The Sunday Telegraph revealed that electricity customers are paying more than 1 billion pounds a year to subsidise wind farms and other forms of renewable energy.

Bill Bridwell, a real estate agent in the desert south of Phoenix, is among the thousands of agents hired nationwide by the companies to sell those foreclosures, recouping some of the money that borrowers failed to repay. In a good week, he sells 20 homes and Fannie sends another 20 listings his way. "We're all working for the government now," said Bridwell on a recent sun-baked morning, steering a Hummer through subdivisions laid out like circuit boards on the desert floor.

For all the focus on the historic federal rescue of the banking industry, it is the government's decision to seize Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in September 2008 that is likely to cost taxpayers the most money. So far the tab stands at $145.9 billion, and it grows with every foreclosure of a three-bedroom home with a two-car garage one hour from Phoenix. The Congressional Budget Office has predicted that the final bill could reach $389 billion.

Fannie and Freddie increased American home ownership over the last half-century by persuading investors to provide money for mortgage loans. The sales pitch amounted to a money-back guarantee: If borrowers defaulted, the companies promised to repay the investors. Rather than actually making loans themselves, the two companies bought loans from banks and other originators, providing money for more lending and helping to hold down interest rates.

As terrorists increasingly recruit US citizens, the government needs to constantly balance Americans' civil rights and privacy with the need to keep people safe, said Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano. But finding that balance has become more complex as homegrown terrorists have used the Internet to reach out to extremists abroad for inspiration and training. Those contacts have spurred a recent rash of US-based terror plots and incidents.

"The First Amendment protects radical opinions, but we need the legal tools to do things like monitor the recruitment of terrorists via the Internet," Napolitano told a gathering of the American Constitution Society for Law and Policy. Napolitano's comments suggest an effort by the Obama administration to reach out to its more liberal, Democratic constituencies to assuage fears that terrorist worries will lead to the erosion of civil rights.

More than 20% of deaths among those assessed were caused by the naturally occurring poisonous element, it found. The World Health Organization said the exposure was "the largest mass poisoning of a population in history". It began after hand-pumped wells were installed in the 1970s to tap groundwater.

Scientists say even small amounts of arsenic over a long period can cause cancer of the bladder, kidney, lung or skin. Bangladesh was chosen for the study because nearly 90% of the population uses groundwater as its primary source of fresh water.

"Our country's outstanding public debt is huge. Our public finances have become the worst of any developed country. We cannot sustain public finance that overly relies on issuing bonds. As we can see from the eurozone confusion that started in Greece, there is a risk of default if growing public debt is neglected and trust lost in the bond market."

No one knows if he can pull off the mythical trick of reducing government spending while stimulating private sector spending. Kan may be overplaying the similarity to Greece to get people behind fiscal reform, a Credit Suisse Japan analyst tells The Guardian.

We are the next Greece has been the signal phrase for fiscal reform in California, Hungary, and America.

He said Spain's economy was solid and solvent, and the visit by Dominique Strauss-Kahn is a scheduled one. His government has just introduced a package of spending cuts and a reform of the labour market in an attempt to persuade nervous financial markets that Spain's finances are under control. That's a difficult task.

This meeting between Mr Zapatero and Mr Strauss-Kahn was scheduled before rumours of an imminent bail-out for Spain began to circulate. So both the government here, and the IMF, insist it doesn't mean Spain's seeking access to a multi-billion euro credit line for its struggling economy. But after the crisis with Greece the financial markets are nervous.

That means Spain is having to pay record rates to sell its debt now and this week a senior banker revealed that Spanish financial institutions are struggling to get funding on international markets. The country is still reeling from the collapse of the construction sector, with a budget deficit of 11% - one in five workers is unemployed.

The cost of the BP oil spill in environmental and economic damage could hit $100 billion (67.5 billion pounds), according to new predictions as concern mounts over the company's liabilities. Despite an agreement to set aside $20 billion (13.5 billion pounds) in a special compensation fund, investors are worried that the London-based firm's liabilities could stretch well beyond that figure.

Standard and Poors yesterday cut the company's credit rating, and warned that further downgrades may follow as up to 60,000 barrels of oil a day leak from a pipe ruptured in an explosion on the Deepwater Horizon drillling rig. The accident left 11 people dead. BP's costs to date are $1.8 billion, including the cost of the spill response, containment, relief well drilling, grants to the Gulf states, claims paid, and federal costs. Repeated attempts to cap the leak have failed.

David Wilton, a Partner at restructuring firm BTG Mesirow, predicted BP's liabilities could reach 63 billion pounds, but played down fears that the company could collapse, observing that the payments will be spread over a long period of time. US politicians have shown no signs of letting up an onslaught against the company, following the lead set by Barack Obama who has compared the disaster to the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

On Wednesday BP announced that it had buckled to demands by President Barack Obama's administration to set up a $20 billion escrow account to fund compensation claims from thousands of fishermen and businessmen whose livelihoods have been affected by up to 60,000 barrels of oil leaking into the sea every day. It also agreed to suspend dividend payments to shareholders for the rest of the year, though they account for 1 pound in every 6 pounds paid out in dividends to British pension holders.

Speaking under oath, with the strong possibility of criminal prosecutions further on, Mr Hayward repeatedly said that he had not been present when decisions were made about the construction of the well, prompting accusations of "stonewalling" and obstruction. Mr Hayward remained impassive as committee members spent an hour and a half - about double the normal time - on mostly hostile opening statements, meeting forecasts that the high-profile hearing would be designed more to grab attention than unearth new facts.

The parents at the center of Thursday's drama, followers of Rabbi Shmuel Berzovsky who leads the tiny Slonimer Hasidic sect, chose two weeks in jail rather than sending their daughters to the Beis Yaakov school near their homes in the religious West Bank settlement of Emanuel. Their reason? At the school, the Ashkenazi kids would mingle with religious Mizrahi kids, some of whom come from more secular extended families and therefore, say the Slonimers, could expose their sheltered daughters to unwanted influences from the wider world.

And their imprisonment was the culmination of a two-year battle between the ultra-orthodox sect, which effectively controls the school, and Israel's secular Supreme Court. Before the Beis Yaakov controversy, few people had heard of the Slonimer, named for the town in Belarus where their first rabbi lived 200 years ago, and the sect's internal power struggle between rival leaders in Jerusalem and Bnei Brak. But the fight over the schoolgirls has united the tiny group and transformed it into the latest torchbearers of a festering feud between the ultra-orthodox and the secular establishment.

Thursday's demonstration was the largest in Jerusalem since ultra-orthodox protesters gathered in similar numbers in 1999 in a show of strength against the supposed antireligious bias of Israel's Supreme Court. A decade on, the gap between the two entities is wider than ever, with running debates over such issues as the power of religious courts, state subsidies for religious students, religious exemption from military service and access to public roads on the Sabbath.

"People of Arab origin face new forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related forms of intolerance and experience discrimination and marginalization," an Egyptian delegate said, according to a UN summary. And Pakistan, speaking for the 57-nation Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), said the council's special investigator into religious freedom should look into such racism "especially in Western societies."

Diplomats say the resolution, which also tells the investigator to make recommendations to the Human Rights Council on how its strictures might be implemented, is bound to pass given the majority the OIC and its allies have in the body. The countries of the majority group, which also include India and Brazil, ensure that its members and their friends outside the council - such as Sri Lanka and Iran - are shielded from any serious criticism of their rights record. The group ensures that council fire is largely aimed at Israel over its occupation of Palestinian territories and treatment of people living there as well as on the Israeli blockade of Hamas-ruled Gaza.

Yet a Christian church in Saudi Arabia is forbidden and fundamentalist Islamists routinely launch violent attacks against Christians throughout the Middle East. Just one more reason for all functioning democracies and Republics to withdraw from the United Nations.

"I am warning the US and certain adventurous countries that in case they plan to inspect the cargo of Iranian ships and planes, they should rest assured that we will do the same in the Persian Gulf and the Sea of Oman (with their ships)," Larijani was quoted as saying. "This retaliation would be part of our policy to protect our national interests," Larijani added.

The new round of the UN Security Council sanctions resolution, adopted against Iran last Wednesday over its controversial nuclear program, aims to restrict the country's shipping and air cargo operations.

After a face-to-face showdown with the President at the White House, BP chairman Carl-Henric Svanberg revealed the payment meant the oil giant would be forced to suspend dividends to its shareholders until at least next year. BP's backdown came as David Cameron finally broke his controversial silence over Mr Obama's attacks on the company. The Prime Minister revealed he told President Obama not to 'go after' BP 'for the sake of it'.

Yesterday's dramatic capitulation came as US officials and lawmakers escalated the ugly rhetoric over the disaster.

Vietnamese-born Congressman Joseph Cao went so far as to suggest that the only honourable way for BP bosses to atone for the environmental crisis was to commit suicide. 'In the Asian culture we do things differently,' he said. 'During the samurai days, we'd just give you a knife and ask you to commit hara-kiri.'

Yesterday's four-hour meeting ended with the company capitulating to Mr Obama's rescue-fund ultimatum and offering an apology to the American people.

Germany and France want to give the EU new powers to curb member states' budget deficits as European economies suffer because of market fears over high levels of government debt. Plans supported by Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy involve sanctions such as fines and a possible loss of EU voting rights for countries that break the rules and spend too much.

Downing Street has said that the Prime Minister would resist any change in EU rules that would involve a loss of national sovereignty. The new proposal, tabled after talks between France and Germany this week, would require the Commons to pass legislation enshrining the EU's Stability and Growth Pact, which limits national deficits, into British law.

Summit documents, seen by The Daily Telegraph, demand "adoption by all member states of national budgetary rules and medium budgetary frameworks in line" with the pact. Germany has already incorporated the EU budget rules into its constitution and France has pledged to follow suit later this year. But Mr Cameron will insist the demand is dropped at what is expected by diplomats to be "difficult" lunchtime discussion on economic governance.

British diplomats say that if implemented, the proposal would reduce UK sovereignty because it would be Brussels that would set a limit on the public finances and not British politicians.

He believes financial turmoil could be the trigger for the crisis, and that the reactions of American leaders will be crucial to its outcome. He also thinks new global organizations will be key to securing stability rather than nation-states. Professor Boyle argues that 2014 will be important because the previous five centuries have also hinged on events that took place in the middle of their second decade.

In 1517 Martin Luther nailed his theses to the door of Wittenburg church, sparking the Reformation and the rise of Protestantism.

A century later 1618 marked the start of the 30 Years War and decades of religious conflict in Western Europe, which ended with the establishment of the Hanoverians in 1715.

The enlightened Congress of Vienna took place in 1815 following the defeat of Napoleon, heralding a century of relative stability across Europe.

But in 1914 the First World War broke out, a catastrophic conflict that would claim millions of lives and set the tone for international discord throughout the 21st century.

Prof Boyle, whose book '2014 - How to survive the next world crisis' is published on Thursday, said: "The character of a century becomes very apparent in that second decade, so why should ours be any different?"