President Obama's deployment of 30,000 extra US troops to Afghanistan would weaken the Taliban enough to force it to agree a peace deal, he said. He added that the Taliban could help run the country in future. His comments come ahead of an international conference on Afghanistan due to be held in London later this week. "I'd like everybody to walk out of London with a renewed commitment, and that commitment is to the right outcome for the Afghan people," General McChrystal said.

Recently, Afghan President Hamid Karzai told the BBC that he planned to introduce a scheme to attract Taliban fighters back to normal life by offering money and jobs. He said he would offer to pay and resettle Taliban fighters to come over to his side. Mr Karzai said he hoped to win backing for his plan from the US and UK at the London conference.

"It's not my job to extend olive branches, but it is my job to help set conditions where people in the right positions can have options on the way forward," General McChrystal said. He also said that the Taliban could have a role in a future Afghan government.

The Futenma base was originally scheduled to move to Nago from a more crowded part of Okinawa. Talk of moving the base out of Japan altogether has threatened the long-standing US-Japan security alliance. Mr Hatoyama said the results of Sunday's election reflected the will of the people, and that Japan would completely re-examine its commitment to relocate the air base. "The country will start from scratch on this issue and take responsibility to reach a conclusion by the end of May," he told reporters.

Correspondents said the prime minister's comments highlighted the difficulties involved in fulfilling an agreement with the US to relocate the base against strong local opposition. Japan signed a deal with the US four years ago that was part of a broader realignment of American troops. A key part of the plan was to relocate the Futenma air base, home to about 2,000 Marines, to the smaller city of Nago.

Okinawa is home to most of the 47,000 American troops based in Japan.

It based the claims on an unpublished report that had not been subjected to routine scientific scrutiny - and ignored warnings from scientific advisers that the evidence supporting the link was too weak. The report's own authors later withdrew the claim because they felt the evidence was not strong enough.

The claim by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, that global warming is already affecting the severity and frequency of global disasters, has since become embedded in political and public debate. It was central to discussions at last month's Copenhagen climate summit, including a demand by developing countries for compensation of $100 billion from the rich nations blamed for creating the most emissions.

Ed Miliband, the energy and climate change minister, has suggested British and overseas floods - such as those in Bangladesh in 2007 - could be linked to global warming. Barack Obama, the US president, said last autumn: "More powerful storms and floods threaten every continent."

Last month Gordon Brown, the prime minister, told the Commons that the financial agreement at Copenhagen "must address the great injustice that ... those hit first and hardest by climate change are those that have done least harm". The latest criticism of the IPCC comes a week after reports in The Sunday Times forced it to retract claims in its benchmark 2007 report that the Himalayan glaciers would be largely melted by 2035. It turned out that the bogus claim had been lifted from a news report published in 1999 by New Scientist magazine.

The Sunday Times has since found that the scientific paper on which the IPCC based its claim had not been peer reviewed, nor published, at the time the climate body issued its report. When the paper was eventually published, in 2008, it had a new caveat. It said: "We find insufficient evidence to claim a statistical relationship between global temperature increase and catastrophe losses." Despite this change the IPCC did not issue a clarification ahead of the Copenhagen climate summit last month.

The border region of Costa Rica and Panama experienced two quakes in the same time period, one a magnitude of 5.2 and the other 4.7. There were no immediate reports of casualties or damage. The earthquake that devastated Haiti on January 12 registered 7.0 on the Richter scale.

The Times understands that the decision to raise the threat level is connected to the conference on Afghanistan taking place at Lancaster House, London, next Thursday. Sources said there had been intensive discussions throughout the day relating to intelligence suggesting a possible attempted "spectacular" by an al-Qaeda affiliated group. But the shift was also described by one source as "precautionary" rather than rooted in any firm information that an identified terror cell was plotting an attack.

Mr Johnson said: "The Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre has today raised the threat to the UK from international terrorism from substantial to severe. This means that a terrorist attack is highly likely, but I should stress that there is no intelligence to suggest than an attack is imminent. JTAC keeps the threat level under constant review and makes its judgments based on a broad range of factors, including the intent and capabilities of international terrorist groups in the UK and overseas."

MI5 says the threat levels give "a broad indication" of the likelihood of an attack and assessments are based on "a range of factors including current intelligence, recent events and what is known about terrorist intentions and capabilities".

The European Union will not imitate Obama's plan, because it aims to reduce risk in the sector through other means, an EU source said on Friday."Look, we understand the US position and we understand his reasons. But I can't see the EU going down this route," the source, who is close to EU financial policymaking, told Reuters. "The US finds itself a little behind us on this. The Obama plan is not fit for the purpose in the EU."

Obama made his proposals on Thursday, saying he was ready to fight resistance from Wall Street banks he blamed for helping cause the global financial crisis. The plan would prevent banks from investing in, owning or sponsoring a hedge fund or private equity fund. It would set a new limit on banks' size in relation to the overall financial sector and, perhaps most dramatically, could also bar institutions from proprietary trading operations, which are unrelated to serving customers, for their own profit.

Proprietary trading involves firms making bets on markets with their own money and has been the source of much of banks' bumper profits before and after the financial crisis. French Economy Minister Christine Lagarde welcomed the proposal, saying it was a "very, very good step forward." UK Treasury Minister Paul Myners said Britain already had acted to address problems in its banking industry. "He's developing a solution to what he sees as the American issues, we've already taken the necessary action in the UK," Myners said in an interview with Reuters Insider TV.

Michael Wood, the top legal advisor to the Foreign Office at the time, and his then deputy Elizabeth Wilmshurst, who quit her job in protest at the invasion, are both due to give evidence on Tuesday. According to The Independent on Sunday, Wilmshurst will reveal infighting between officials and ministers over the legality of deposing Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein without explicit United Nations support.

She will say she was far from alone in having doubts about the case and say her boss, Wood, "clearly advised" that the war was illegal under international law, the paper said. He did not make this view public at the time. A report in The Observer Weekly confirmed that Wood was planning to tell the inquiry that the war was illegal because of the absence of a second resolution from the UN Security Council explicitly authorising the use of force in Iraq.

Britain's top legal advisor at the time, attorney general Lord Peter Goldsmith, gave the green light for military action under a UN resolution passed in November 2002, but critics claim he was pressured into it. Goldsmith is due to give evidence to the Chilcot inquiry on Wednesday.

Today's volatility is a sign of things to come, said Jeff Kleintop, chief market strategist at LPL Financials, as the market grapples with earnings, China and a tighter grip from Washington. "Volatility is going to be a key characteristic of 2010," Kleintop said. "I think we've got to get used to that kind of market."

Obama proposed limiting banks' size and risk-taking ability, including preventing them from trading with their own money and owning hedge funds. "While the financial system is far stronger today than it was one year ago, it is still operating under the exact same rules that led to its near collapse," Obama said Thursday. "Never again will the American people be held hostage by a bank that is too big to fail."

This could be the first in a string of global moves to clamp down on banks, Pimco's Mohamed El-Erian said on CNBC this morning. "We as investors have to be able to navigate these new factors, because that's the reality," said El-Erian, CEO of the world's largest bond fund. "This thing is going to intensify. You're going to read about it in other countries."

Congressional critics of Mr Bernanke, some fearful for their own re-election prospects and others critical of the Fed's management of the financial crisis, moved against him, adding to a list of proclaimed no votes. Economists warned that a rejection of Mr Bernanke could be seen as a threat to the central bank's independence. US Treasury yields were little changed but stocks fell more than 2 per cent.

"A 'No' vote on Bernanke would be viewed by markets as adding yet another uncertainty in an already fluid economic and policy environment," said Mohamed El-Erian, chief executive of Pimco, the world's largest bond investor. Chris Dodd, the chairman of the Senate banking committee, said a 'No' vote would send the economy into a "tailspin".

Mr Obama on Friday made a defiant speech in Ohio at the end of a week in which he promised to fight for healthcare reform and Wall St regulation.

The first officer to help the elder victim said he was reduced to tears after finding him in a blood-soaked condition. Sergeant Richard Vernon said: "I can honestly say in the 22 years I've been in the job it's the most distressing thing I've ever dealt with. The lad was covered in blood. You couldn't see his face. He was drifting in and out of consciousness."

The brothers showed no emotion as they were detained indefinitely by a judge at Sheffield Crown Court after admitting causing grievous bodily harm. Detective Superintendent Mick Mason said the traumatic nature of the incident had affected many of the officers who worked on the case, but it had seemingly provoked little reaction from the brothers themselves.

"You think of the severity of the attack, it must have sunk in and they must be realising what they have done. I'm not sure about that. From what I'm told, they didn't show any remorse during interview." Children's Secretary Ed Balls, who said his response was the same as many families across Britain, described it as a "horrific" case. He said: "These are children who, to be honest, have been deeply damaged by years of abuse - physical abuse, seeing their mother being struck by their father, but also abuse against them. But that's no excuse for what they did."

"What we've now got to do is make sure that in custody they get the support to try and turn things round for them. And we also learn lessons in Doncaster so that in future we don't have a repeat of such a terrible, unusual and horrific case."

Andrew Flanagan, chief executive of the NSPCC, said England had "not seen such acts of schoolboy savagery for many years". He said: "The case raises serious questions about how children can be left to drift in homes seriously damaged by violence and neglect. Where families cannot give their children a decent start in life, the authorities need to act swiftly and robustly - both for their sake and the rest of society."

Authorities are worried about sanitation and disease outbreaks in makeshift settlements like the one on the city's central Champs de Mars plaza, said Fritz Longchamp, chief of staff to President Rene Preval. He said buses would start moving the displaced people within a week to 10 days, once new camps are ready. Brazilian UN peacekeepers were already leveling land in the suburb of Croix des Bouquets for a new tent city, the Geneva-based intergovernmental International Organization for Migration reported Thursday.

Joe Downey, a fire battalion chief from an 80-member New York City police and firefighter unit, said this was the worst destruction his rescue team had ever seen. "Katrina was bad," he said of the 2005 hurricane. "But this was a magnitude at least 100 times worse."

All 136 commission delegations were renamed "EU delegations" on 1 January. But only the 54 placements were at the same time quietly given fresh powers in line with their new names. The super-delegations have taken on the role previously carried out by the national embassies of the member state holding the six-month EU presidency at any given time.

As such, they now co-ordinate the work of the member states' bilateral missions to the countries in question. The heads of the 54 delegations are also empowered to speak on behalf of the EU as a whole. But their statements have to be pre-approved by the 27 EU countries during meetings in Brussels. "They are going to be a bit more political. They will provide the same function that was provided by the given [EU presidency] member state before," an EU official said.

Traders watching on TV thought they had heard it before but there was something about the President and "tall man" Paul Volcker who stood behind him, and they kept watching. Then came the President's blows and they started selling, fast. Two minutes later nearly $30bn was wiped off the value of America's top shares as traders reeled at Mr Obama's proposal to split up Wall Street's banks.

Goldman Sachs, famously labelled the "vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity", appeared to have lost its grip as its shares plunged 5.3pc at one point. Wall Street rivals JP Morgan, Bank of America and Morgan Stanley fell 5pc each and the Dow Jones index of US shares was soon off by 2pc.

In Britain, the markets had just shut but the shock waves reverberated around the City and Canary Wharf. For weeks bankers have tried to keep their spirits up amid a maelstrom of political, public and regulatory pressures. But for many the President's speech signalled the end of the road. One senior banker said: "This is as bad as it gets. He's out to crush the banks - and he's got the mandate to do it."

Senior staff at the investment banks themselves were determined to play down the significance of the speech. "What you are witnessing is a political panic," said one. "Obama lost a crucial vote and is now trying to win back political ground by some serious bank bashing. This has to go through a long and complicated political process before it gets anywhere near being law." Another said: "This has been coming from the start of the financial crisis. We've all thought about it and we've worked out the impact already. If it's necessary, we'll sell off the prop divisions, or any others. We're ready."

Last night, David Viniar, Goldman's chief financial officer, showed the first sign that President Obama faces a fight. "To put rules in place that roll back the financial system by 10 years is going to be a very, very hard thing to do," he said.

"By refusing to hear Mrs Busch's case, the US Supreme Court has endorsed the kind of hostility toward religion that should never be found in an American public school," said John W Whitehead, president of the Rutherford Institute, which took on the Newtown Square, Pennsylvania, case.

As WND reported, Donna Busch accepted an invitation to visit her son Wesley's kindergarten classroom at Culbertson Elementary School to read a passage of Wesley's favorite book to his classmates in October 2004. Wesley's teacher had invited Busch because the boy was the featured student of "All About Me," a school event to feature a particular student and emphasize the student's personal characteristics, preferences and personality in classroom activities.

During the "All About Me" activity, a child's parent may read aloud from the student's favorite book. In this case, Wesley, a Christian, chose the Bible. His mother planned to read from Psalm 118. But when Donna Busch prepared to read from the Bible, Wesley's teacher instructed her not to do so until Principal Thomas Cook could determine whether it would be acceptable.

According to the Rutherford Institute, the principal "informed Mrs Busch that she could not read from the Bible in the classroom because it was against the law and that the reading would violate the 'separation of church and state.'" Then school administrators offered Wesley's mother an opportunity to read from a book about witches, witchcraft and Halloween. She declined the invitation.

Nations agreed then to declare their emissions reduction targets by the end of this month. Developed countries would state their intended cuts by 2020: developing countries would outline how they would curb emissions growth. But Yvo de Boer, the UN's senior climate change official, admitted that the deadline had in effect been shelved.

"By [the end of] January, countries will have the opportunity to ...indicate if they want to be associated with the accord," he said. "[Governments could] indicate by the deadline, or they can also indicate later. You could describe it as a soft deadline," Mr de Boer said. "There is nothing deadly about it. If [countries] fail to meet it, they can still associate with the Copenhagen accord afterwards."

Countries pushing for a new legally binding treaty on climate change will be disappointed, as the waiving of the deadline sets a bad precedent for efforts to finalise a deal this year. The next scheduled meeting is not until late May, in Germany, with another in late November, in Mexico but many officials say more will be needed.