The 8am religious slot on Radio 4's Today programme aims to provide reflection from 'a faith perspective' on topical issues. Director General Mark Thompson is understood to have discussed the idea when he visited the Vatican earlier this month. Mr Thompson, a devout Roman Catholic, has yet to secure papal agreement but executives from the corporation are to continue to discuss the appearance with Vatican officials.

Radio 4 Controller Mark Damazer said Benedict XVI was part of a 'wish list' of guests which also included Bruce Springsteen and Sir Mick Jagger for Desert Island Discs. He added: 'I won't leave this job until I have got the Pope doing Thought for the Day.'

However, the BBC's plan has attracted criticism. Terry Sanderson, president of the National Secular Society, said: 'The Pope will have a four-minute slot to lecture us about morality but no one will be able to challenge anything he says. Why won't he be invited to take the 8.10 interview slot on the Today programme with John Humphrys - and let's have a bit of finger-wagging the other way. There are a lot of questions to be answered, but all we're going to get from the BBC is propaganda.'

While it was unclear how Argentina might enforce the shipping blockade that it declared on Tuesday, its Foreign Ministry said that it intended to prevent operation of the rig around the Falklands, known locally as Las Malvinas. Asked by local media about the arrival of the Ocean Guardian, which crew waiting in the Falklands say has been shadowed by Argentine jets, Victorio Taccetti, the Deputy Foreign Minister, said: "If it's going to Las Malvinas it will have to request authorisation."

Mr Taccetti said that Argentina would take unspecified measures to stop oil exploration off the Falklands but said that he was not considering a repeat of the 1982 conflict with Britain. The rig was on the verge of moving from international waters and into territory claimed by Britain and Argentina around the Falklands last night. It is due to move to its drilling location on Friday.

The action drew anger from British politicians. The secretary of the all-party parliamentary group on the Falklands, Andrew Rosindell, demanded that the Argentine Ambassador be called in. "I don't think we should appease Buenos Aires - we found out what happens last time," Mr Rosindell said.

Regulatory filings show that his $8.8billion investment vehicle, Soros Fund Management, raised its stake in exchange-traded fund SPDR by 3.7million shares to 6.2million shares in the three months ending December 31, 2009. The new shares were bought at a price of $421million, taking his total holding in the fund to $663million at the end of December.

In addition, Mr Soros's investment vehicle owns 11,000 call options that will permit it to buy an extra 1.1million shares should gold prices move higher. Soros Fund Management also increased its stake in Canadian-based gold producer Yamana Gold, buying 60,880 shares to take its total position to 85,880 shares, worth $973,314 at the end of December.

However, the actions of the Mr Soros's investment fund seem to be at odds with his own viewpoint. During the World Economic Forum in Davos in late January, Mr Soros said: "When interest rates are low we have conditions for asset bubbles to develop, and they are developing at the moment. The ultimate asset bubble is gold."

Gold hit a new high of just over $1,225 an ounce in December, having risen 40 per cent in the prior 12 months, and touched an all-time high in euros of 818 an ounce earlier this week. On Wednesday, gold was trading in New York at $1,115.55 an ounce, having hit a one-month high of $1,126.85 earlier in the day. Mr Soros is not alone in increasing his stake in the SPDR, with new filings also showing that China Investment Corporation (CIC), Beijing's main overseas investment fund, taking a 0.4 per cent stake in the fund worth $155.6million.

CIC's investment is equivalent to just 0.4 per cent of the 33.9million ounces of gold maintained by the Chinese government, but is part of a growing trend of major funds investing in the metal.

Israel's ambassador to the UK was summoned to the Foreign Office to give his explanation as the diplomatic row intensified. Ron Prosser will meet Sir Peter Ricketts, the permanent under secretary at the Foreign Office, on Thursday where the ambassador is expected to be asked whether Israel played any part in assassination. Gordon Brown, making his first public comments about the incident, promised a "full investigation" into the passport forgery.

Mossad has been accused by Hamas, the Islamist group that controls Gaza, of being behind the murder of its military commander Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, who was found dead in his hotel room in Dubai on January 20. A senior Foreign Office source told The Daily Telegraph: "If the Israelis were responsible for the assassination in Dubai, they are seriously jeopardising the important intelligence-sharing arrangement that currently exists between Britain and Israel. If it transpires that Israel has been using British passports to assassinate its opponents, the British government will need to give serious consideration to any future cooperation."

Israel's foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman said there was "no reason to think it was Mossad" which carried out the alleged hit, but refused to issue a denial. He said Israel had a "policy of ambiguity" on intelligence matters, and "never confirms and never denies" involvement in operations.

The USGS said the quake was centered on the Russian coast along the sea of Japan, 61 miles (98 kilometers) west-southwest of Vladivostok, Russia and about 70 miles (110 kilometers) east from Yanji city in northeast China's Jilin province. A man at the Jilin province earthquake bureau said the agency was trying to get more information and did not have any immediate details.

Investors remained focused on the relative speed at which the world's economies were recovering from recession, punishing some laggards in Europe and rewarding those showing more confidence. Several Federal Reserve policy makers, comfortable with the US recovery, want to begin selling securities relatively soon to cut back massive help to the financial system, the central bank said overnight.

"The US took a very aggressive response to the crisis (monetary, bank recapitalization, fiscal) and while there are costs to these measures, they will likely result in a faster exit from the recession," Michael Hasenstab, senior vice president and co-director of Franklin Templeton's fixed income group, told Reuters in a chat room interview.

Gold slid 0.3 percent to $1,102.20 an ounce after peaking at $1,126.85 the highest since January 20, before the IMF news on gold sales. The precious metal has posted gains in every year since 2000 and last year surged 25 percent. The stronger US dollar weighed on commodities and materials stocks, with US crude futures down 0.5 percent to $76.95 a barrel. The Reuters-Jefferies CRB index of 19 commodity futures is down 3.4 percent so far this year.

The damage from the latest cyberattack is still being assessed, and affected companies are still being notified. But data compiled by NetWitness, the closely held firm that discovered the breaches, showed that hackers gained access to a wide array of data at 2,411 companies, from credit-card transactions to intellectual property.

The hacking operation, the latest of several major hacks that have raised alarms for companies and government officials, is still running and it isn't clear to what extent it has been contained, NetWitness said. Also unclear is the full amount of data stolen and how it was used. Two companies that were infiltrated, pharmaceutical giant Merck & Co and Cardinal Health Inc, said they had isolated and contained the problem.

Starting in late 2008, hackers operating a command center in Germany got into corporate networks by enticing employees to click on contaminated websites, email attachments or ads purporting to clean up viruses, NetWitness found. In more than 100 cases, the hackers gained access to corporate servers that store large quantities of business data, such as company files, databases and email. They also broke into computers at 10 US government agencies. In one case, they obtained the user name and password of a soldier's military email account, NetWitness found. A Pentagon spokesman said the military didn't comment on specific threats or intrusions.

The spyware used in this attack allows hackers to control computers remotely, said Amit Yoran, chief executive of NetWitness. NetWitness engineer Alex Cox said he uncovered the scheme January 26 while installing technology for a large corporation to hunt for cyberattacks. "It highlights the weaknesses in cyber security right now," said Adam Meyers, a senior engineer at government contractor SRA International Inc who reviewed the NetWitness data. "If you're a Fortune 500 company or a government agency or a home DSL user, you could be successfully victimized."

That attack was described in a February 5 report from the Department of Homeland Security, which said it was issuing an alert to the government and other organizations to "prevent further compromises." A DHS official said that Zeus was among the top five reported tools for malware infections.

Asked about the political climate across the country, Biden said in a nationally broadcast interview that "we understand why they're angry ... We get it."

Speaking of intense partisanship in the capital, Biden said on CBS's "The Early Show" that "I've never seen it this dysfunctional." He said the message coming from the stunning Republican upset in the recent Massachusetts election was, "Hey guys, get your act together. Get something going."

Dubbed "Cyber ShockWave" and organized by the Bipartisan Policy Center (BPC), the event was held at a Washington hotel room transformed for the day into the White House Situation Room, where the president and his advisers typically meet to address national emergencies. In the simulation, former top US officials debated how to respond as the power grid in the eastern United States was virtually shut down by a stealth cyberattack and a pair of bombings, cutting electricity to tens of millions of homes.

Three large television screens behind the participants displayed multi-color maps of the United States with a series of alarming updates and a fictional television network, "GNN," broadcast news reports on the cascading crisis. "You're going to see planes being grounded now. You're going to see trains not moving," said Fran Townsend, former president George W Bush's one-time Homeland Security advisor, who was promoted to Homeland Security secretary for the simulation.

The "cabinet members" debated how to respond to the situation and what advice to give the president, with suggestions ranging from calling out the National Guard, nationalizing the power companies and retaliating once the attackers' identities were known. "If this is an attack on the United States the president, as commander-in-chief, has the authority to use the full powers at his disposal," said former deputy attorney general Jamie Gorelick, playing the role of the US attorney general.

"We're in good shape from a command and control standpoint," said "Secretary of Defense" Charles Wald, a retired general and the former deputy commander of US European Command. "We can take action offensively if we know where to go," Wald said. "Problematically, we don't know where that is."

Economists predict cutbacks, tax increases that 'aren't even imaginable'. "It keeps me awake at night, looking at all that red ink," said President Obama in Nashua, New Hampshire, on February 2. "Most of it is structural and we inherited it. The only way that we are going to fix it is if both parties come together and start making some tough decisions about our long-term priorities."

Obama will sign an executive order tomorrow that establishes a bipartisan National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform to make recommendations on how to reduce the country's debt. Over the past year alone, the amount the US government owes its lenders has grown to more than half the country's entire economic output, or gross domestic product.

Even more alarming, experts say, is that those figures will climb to an unprecedented 200 percent of GDP by 2038 without a dramatic shift in course.

In an interview, Pitts told Hotsheet that he believes that "if the federal government continues to spend money at the rate it's spending money, and if it continues to print money at the rate it's printing money, our economic system is going to collapse. The Germans felt their system wouldn't collapse, but it took a wheelbarrow of money to buy a loaf of bread in the 1930s," he said. "The Soviet Union didn't think their system would collapse, but it did. Ours is capable of collapsing also."

The lawmaker believes that a shift to an economy based on gold and silver coins would give the state a "base of currency" should that collapse come. As one expert told the Scoop, however, his bill would likely be ruled unconstitutional because it "violates a perfectly legal and Constitutional federal law, enacted pursuant to the Commerce Clause of the US Constitution, that federal reserve notes are legal tender for all debts public and private."

In addition, since gold and silver regularly fluctuate in value, they could not easily function as stable currency. But Pitts maintains that his state is better off with something he can hold in his hand and barter with as opposed to federal currency, which he described to the Scoop as "paper with ink on it." He says he resents what he considers the federal government's intrusions on states' rights. Though he did not offer a timeframe, Pitts told Hotsheet that he anticipates a nationwide economic collapse "if our federal government continues the course it's been traveling under the previous administration and this administration."

The cold, snowy winds aren't merely inconvenient. They come just as some businesses and municipalities were beginning to dig themselves out from the recession. Sure some businesses like ski resorts, sellers of snow blowers and shovels, or companies that have mastered the art of telecommuting are doing a victory dance.

But in places like Maryland, which has spent much of its $60 million budget for snow removal (or Pennsylvania, which has spent $131.9 million of its $245 million budget for the entire winter; or New York City, where there was a debate about whether one inch of snow equals a $1 million drain on the city's budget), the economic tab piles up. And the winter follies are far from over.

The costs hit in many ways. The increase in demand for warmth means consumers will pay more for heating oil and gasoline. Unseasonably cold weather in Florida is already bringing higher produce prices to supermarkets. Retailers that managed to have a decent holiday season have seen shopping slow as people huddle in their homes. With consumer spending a huge part of GDP, less shopping could no doubt shape the economic story for the first quarter of 2010.

Everyone aged 65 and over and younger people with certain health conditions are eligible for a free jab on the NHS, costing 115 million pounds. Every year more than 15 million people in England alone receive a free flu jab, with around three out of four aged 65 or over getting vaccinated.

Controversy has grown over the benefits of vaccinating those over 65, with at least two major studies in the past two years claiming they have been 'greatly exaggerated', and there are no figures to back up claims that lives are being saved. In a similar study in 2008, Dr Jefferson said there was little evidence to show the flu jab had any impact on the length of hospital stays, time off work and death rates in healthy adults.

The flu jab's co-inventor, biochemist Graeme Laver, told the Daily Mail in 2007 that the jab did not guarantee protection. Dr Laver, who died in 2008, said: 'I have never been very impressed with its efficacy. It is better than nothing and I wouldn't want to advise people not to take it, but you can't rely on it doing any good.'

The European Union has shown its righteous wrath by stripping Greece of its vote at a crucial meeting next month, the worst humiliation ever suffered by an EU member state. While the symbolic move to suspend Greece of its voting rights at one meeting makes no practical difference, it marks a constitutional watershed and represents a crushing loss of sovereignty.

"We certainly won't let them off the hook," said Austria's finance minister, Josef Proll, echoing views shared by colleagues in Northern Europe. Some German officials have called for Greece to be denied a vote in all EU matters until it emerges from "receivership". Jean-Claude Juncker, head of the Eurogroup, hinted that ministers have already agreed on a support mechanism, should it be necessary. It will most likely involve bilateral aid by eurozone states. He said proposals for an IMF bailout - backed by Britain - were "absurd" and would shatter the credibility of monetary union.

Many Germans disagree, including Otmar Issing, once the backbone of the European Central Bank. He said an EU rescue for Greece would be fatal, arguing that unflinching rigour is the only way to hold monetary union together without political union.

Commanders issued immediate apologies and renewed promises to try their utmost to avoid casualties among the population. However, Major General Nick Carter has now confirmed that the destroyed house was being used by the Taliban to launch attacks. "We know now that the missile arrived at the target that it was supposed to arrive at," he said via video link from Lashkar Gah, in the southern Afghan province of Helmand.

During a briefing on the progress of Operation Moshtarak, the largest offensive against the Taliban in the conflict so far, he added: "It wasn't a rogue missile. There was no technical fault in it." Use of the High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) has been reinstated.

Major General Carter said there had been "conflicting" reports in the first 24 hours, which he blamed on "the fog of war", but said investigations had revealed procedures governing the use of the HIMARS were "as they should be". He added that "we are being very careful, though, with any aerial delivered munitions" to avoid similar incidents.