A total of 33 states and the Virgin Islands have depleted their funds and borrowed more than $38.7 billion to provide a safety net, according to a report released Thursday by the National Employment Law Project. Four others are at the brink of insolvency. Debt-challenged California has borrowed the most, totaling more than $8.4 billion, followed by Michigan and New York, which have loans worth more than $3 billion. Nine other states have borrowed at least $1 billion from the federal government.

"The nation's financing system for jobless benefits is under unprecedented stress," said Andrew Stettner, deputy director of the New York-based advocacy group for the unemployed. "While the recession has certainly made things worse, this funding crisis has been developing for years."

During debate over the draft of a new Kenyan constitution, James Orengo, the country's minister of lands and a member of parliament for the Ugenya constituency, cited America's election of a Kenyan-born president as an example of what can be accomplished when diverse peoples unite:

"If America was living in a situation where they feared ethnicity and did not see itself as a multiparty state or nation," Orengo posited, "how could a young man born here in Kenya, who is not even a native American, become the president of America?"

Orengo held up the US as a country no longer "living in the past," since Americans elected a Kenyan-born president without regard to "ethnic consideration and objectives."

The convention, which is not yet ratified in the United States but has been adopted by numerous other nations, orders that children can choose their own religion with parents only having the authority to advise them, the government can override a parent's decision regarding a child if a social worker disagrees, a child has a right to a government review of every parental decision and Christian schools would violate the law if they refused to teach children "alternative worldviews."

And all corporal punishment, such as spankings, would be banned by law. The conflict had arisen over legislation that was proposed in the United Kingdom, called the Children, Schools and Families Bill, that would have set into law many of the provisions and issues demanded by the UN plan.

However, according to a report from the Home School Legal Defense Association, that proposal for now has been dropped. The British government's Department of Children, School and Families said it was tabling the plan because "no agreement could be reached between government and opposition parties."

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However, Mr Soros added that he still hoped that Germany and others would be willing to forge a last-minute solution, since the consequence of a break-up would be so dangerous. He was speaking before an announcement on Sunday afternoon by eurozone finance ministers of the terms of a support package for Greece.

"It is 50-50 whether the eurozone breaks up. The damage that break up would cause is so great, that I think that as people realise it, they will pull back from the brink," Soros told the Financial Times in an interview. "But we are at the brink now ... a solution has to be found in a matter of days."

Mr Soros's comments on the fringes of a conference in Cambridge came as Dominique Strauss Kahn, the managing director of the International Monetary Fund spoke of the fiscal challenges facing all advanced economies and the need for a European Budgetary Authority to underpin the euro. "The launching of the euro was only a first step. You can't have a single currency without having a more coordinated economic policy," Mr Strauss Kahn said.

This will be the third element in a nuclear season that began with this month's unveiling of the Obama administration's nuclear strategy, the Nuclear Posture Review. This identified nuclear proliferation - the spread of nuclear weapons and the danger that they might fall into the hands of terrorist groups - as now the key nuclear threat to America's security.

That was step one. Step two was the meeting between Mr Obama and his Russian counterpart, Dmitry Medvedev, in Prague that got the strategic arms reduction process back on track. Step three will be this week's Nuclear Security Summit in Washington. All three events are aimed at strengthening Mr Obama's hand as he heads into step four: the review of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) scheduled for next month in New York.

The NPT is the centre-piece of international efforts to halt the spread of nuclear weapons. However the treaty is looking increasingly threadbare. Both North Korea and Iran have driven a coach and horses through its provisions. Pyongyang has abandoned the agreement altogether and is widely thought to have built a small nuclear weapons arsenal. Tehran remains within the treaty but refuses to obey UN Security Council calls to halt its enrichment activities, amidst concerns that Iran's ambition - despite its vehement denials - is also to have the bomb.

Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will not attend. No formal reason has been given though there are suggestions that either Mr Netanyahu feared being ambushed by Arab states who might raise concerns about Israel's own nuclear arsenal or that he did not want to face more pressure from the Obama administration to give ground on settlement construction in Jerusalem. Israel will nonetheless be represented by a senior minister and says it fully backs the summit's agenda.

The presence of Israel, India and Pakistan at this summit is fascinating. All three are believed to have nuclear weapons and none of them have signed the NPT. Israel's arsenal clearly has wider ramifications in the Middle East. India and Pakistan's nuclear rivalry is seen by experts as a serious concern given the huge conventional military imbalance between them. And Pakistan is also a major worry in terms of the security of its nuclear installations and materials.

Having all three on board is an attempt by the Obama administration to extend the circle of nuclear security in new directions. This is an unprecedented gathering. Mr Obama will hope for an unprecedented outcome.

It emerged this weekend that in 1985 when he was in charge of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which deals with sex abuse cases, the pope signed a letter arguing that the "good of the universal church" should be considered against the defrocking of an American priest who committed sex offences against two boys.

Dawkin and Hitchens believe he should face criminal proceedings because his "first instinct" was to protect the church rather than the children in its care. They are hoping to exploit the same legal principle used to arrest Augusto Pinochet, the late Chilean dictator, on a Spanish warrant when he visited Britain in 1998. The Pope will be visiting London, Glasgow and Coventry, during his time in the UK between September 16 and 19.

"This is a man whose first instinct when his priests are caught with their pants down is to cover up the scandal and damn the young victims to silence," Dawkins, who wrote The God Delusion, said. "This man is not above or outside the law. The institutionalised concealment of child rape is a crime under any law and demands not private ceremonies of repentance or church-funded payoffs, but justice and punishment," Hitchens, author of God Is Not Great, said.

According to this report, Sarkozy was "appalled" at Obama's "vision" of what the World should be under his "guidance" and "amazed" at the American President's unwillingness to listen to either "reason" or "logic". Sarkozy's meeting where these impressions of Obama were formed took place nearly a fortnight ago at the White House in Washington DC, and upon his leaving he "scolded" Obama and the US for not listening closely enough to what the rest of the World has to say.

Apparently, as this report details, the animosity between Sarkozy and Obama arose out of how best the West can deal with the growing threat posed by rising Islamic fundamentalism. Both Sarkozy and his European neighbors had previously been supported in their efforts by the United States in forming an alliance to strengthen the integration of Muslim peoples into their societies, and has included France and Belgium moving to ban the wearing of burqa's.

European fears over their growing Muslim populations appear to be valid as the growing immigration and birth rates of these Islamic peoples are warned is causing the "Eurabiazation" of the Continent and within a few generations will see them become the majority of nearly all of the EU Nations.

The greatest threat to these Western Nations posed by the Muslim peoples becoming the majority of their populations lies in their likelihood of destroying the Global Banking System which according to their faith is firmly rooted in "satanic" evil and "must" be replaced by an Islamic one.

The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center says a destructive wave is not expected. The Solomon Islands is a country of nearly 1,000 islands in the Pacific Ocean, east of Papua New Guinea.

Thanks to a state policy which has limited many families to one child since 1979, combined with an ancient and ruthless prejudice in favour of sons, the world's new superpower is beginning the century of its supremacy with an alarming surplus of males. By the year 2020, there will be 30 million more men than women of marriageable age in this giant empire, so large and so different (its current population is 1,336,410,000) that it often feels more like a separate planet than just another country. Nothing like this has ever happened to any civilisation before.

The nearest we can come to it is the sad shortage of men after the First World War in Britain, France, Russia and Germany, and the many women denied the chance of family life and motherhood as a result.

It is possible that the effects of that imbalance are still with us, in the shape of the radical feminist movement which found ready recruits among the husbandless teachers and other professionals of the Twenties and Thirties. But men without women are altogether more troublesome than women without men, especially when they are young. All kinds of speculation is now seething about what might happen; a war to cull the surplus males, a rise in crime, a huge expansion in the prostitution that is already a major industry in every Chinese city, a rise in homosexuality.

Fidesz, the mainstream center-right party led by former Prime Minister Viktor Orban, was widely expected to gain a commanding lead in the first round of the vote - as much as 57 percent, according to polls released after most voting stations closed Sunday evening.

That left the real contest for second place. With Hungary among European nations hardest hit by the world recession, the far-right Jobbik party has capitalized on rising nationalism and a resurgence of anti-Semitism and anti-Gypsy sentiment linked to the downturn.

Exit polls showed Jobbik at 15 to 17 percent, just behind the 19 to 20 percent obtained by the governing Socialists overwhelmingly blamed for the economic hardships. For the Socialists, it would be a stunning setback from the 43 percent support they received in 2006.

Russian officials say the pilots were warned that they were flying too low. Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin earlier attended a memorial service for the victims at the crash site, near the city of Smolensk. He has said he would personally oversee the investigation into the disaster, promising to find out what happened as soon as possible.

The president had been flying to Russia along with his wife, the heads of the army and navy, MPs and senior historians to mark 70 years since Soviet forces massacred more than 20,000 Poles near Katyn. Experts have also suggested that the age and condition of the Polish president's Soviet-era Tupolev 154 plane could have played a part in the accident. Correspondents say the plane was flying too low and clipped some trees as it approached the runway in thick fog, before it came down in a forest.

* Government bond spreads jump to 463 basis points, new euro record

* Bank stocks down over 7 per cent, shed 50 per cent in debt crisis

* Fitch says time for government to ask for EU/IMF help

* Germany says safety net still last resort (Adds euro zone leaders expected to discuss lifeline)

The government struggled to reassure markets it can stay solvent after the premium investors demanded to buy Greek rather than the benchmark German government debt surged for the third day in a row to a record high since Greece joined the euro.

But scepticism at a dearth of details surrounding a proposed European Union and International Monetary Fund lifeline continued to pile pressure on a country already struggling to cover its wide fiscal gap and huge public debt load.

Chris Pryce, senior Greece analyst for rating agency Fitch, said Athens' only choice now was to ask for help.

The latest surge seems to have been prompted by rising confidence in a global economic recovery, even if most traders and bankers are still cautious about supply and demand fundamentals.

Worries about the Greek economy have pegged prices back over the last couple of days but the more bullish Wall Street banks see prices climbing further, with Barclays Capital forecasting $97, Goldman Sachs $110 and Morgan Stanley $100 next year.

But the higher prices go, the deeper the concerns that they will stifle global growth. Jeff Rubin, a former CIBC chief economist and author of a book on oil and globalisation, says: "Triple-digit oil prices are going to threaten a world recovery." Pricier oil and other key commodities, notably iron ore and copper, could ripple through the economy and financial markets, potentially triggering inflation and forcing central banks to lift interest rates from ultra-low levels. This could force bond yields higher, but lower the attractions of equities.

First European Citizens' initiative for a work-free Sunday in Europe

We need a work-free Sunday in all of Europe,

- because children need a family day, which is protected as a day off work

- because this brings Europe forward on it's way to become the most child-friendly region in the world

- because according to EU legislation, Sunday is the weekly rest day for children and adolescents

- because schools and public institutions never used to work on Sundays and do not intend to do so in the future - despite various religious, cultural and ethnical backgrounds

- because studies prove the positive health effects of the work-free free Sunday

- because every person needs spare time - to relax, to be active in civil society, for hobbies and for religion

- because the work-free SUNDAY IS AN ESSENTIAL PILLAR OF THE EUROPEAN SOCIAL MODEL AND A PART OF THE EUROPEAN CULTURAL HERITAGE

"Card companies don't really care about divorce in and of itself - they care whether you're going to pay your card off," explains one law professor. People who buy cheap motor oil or drink in certain bars are considered risky borrowers, whereas people who buy carbon monoxide detectors and premium birdseed tend to pay on time.

When American Express offered some customers $300 to close their accounts last year, it used this kind of data to pick its targets. And if the company predicts a major life change, like a move or divorce, it alerts marketing partners, so they can sell you things like furniture and home refurbishing services.