"Americans are woefully undersaved for emergencies," said Greg McBride, chief financial analyst at Bankrate. "By not having emergency savings and using some of your available credit, your options in the event of unplanned expenses are much more limited."

Bankrate's figures released Monday do show some improvement from a year earlier. Only 58 percent of Americans have more emergency savings than credit card debt, Bankrate found, but a year ago that figure was 51 percent. Respondents in the new survey also feel better about their finances than the respondents a year earlier.

But Americans may be fooling themselves. According to the Employee Benefit Research Institute's 2014 Retirement Confidence Survey, 60 percent of workers have less than $25,000 in savings and investments, and 36 percent have less than $1,000 — up from 28 percent in 2013. "Americans are still woefully undersaved for emergencies and retirement, and that's not something that's going to change overnight," McBride said.

The Right Reverend Mark Davies, Bishop of Shrewsbury, said yesterday: ‘No-one expects bishops to offer a political programme at election time but to highlight the moral questions which underpin the public debate. Faced with the unprecedented scale of family breakdown and its immense human and social costs, this election debate surely cannot ignore support for marriage.

'At the very foundation of society is respect for the sanctity of human life. We mustn’t forget the newly-elected parliament in 2015 will decide the legality of assisted suicide in our hospitals and care homes with far-reaching consequences for the way society regards the sick and the elderly.' It contrasts with the widely-criticised manifesto by Anglican bishops last week which made no mention of marriage.

Instead the Church of England said families could best be helped by outside organisations like housing associations or credit unions. Nor did the CofE bishops choose to remind voters of the difficulties of elderly people needing care nor the scourges of drugs and pornography. The Church of England election letter was the first attempt to sway voters by the Anglican bishops and was widely criticised for its focus on inequality and the alleged evils of the market economy, consumerism and the legacy of Margaret Thatcher.

Roman Catholic bishops, however, have regularly given advice to churchgoers on the central issues they should consider in advance of each general election.

Italian officials fear extremists could enter the country amid the growing tide of refugees arriving by boat from North Africa. About 500 extra troops have been stationed to guard symbolic targets in Rome and monitor the streets of the capital for suspicious activity. The video threat, released with images of 21 Coptic Christians from Egypt who were beheaded this month, warned that Islamic State forces were "south of Rome," in Libya. At its closest point, Libya is little more than 100 miles from the Italian islands of Sicily and Sardinia.

This comes four months after the Islamic State's propaganda magazine Dabiq ran a cover photo of the militant group's flag flying above the obelisk in St Peter's Square in the Vatican with the headline: "The failed crusade." "The risks are real," said Sabrina Magris, president of the International University School of Rome and Florence, the only European institution that prepares negotiators for hostage and terror threats. "The goal may be an actual attack of some kind or simply using threats to create an atmosphere of fear. But the risks shouldn't be underestimated."

Experts say ISIS' control in Libya could create potential 'disaster scenario' and coalition airstrikes are fueling the militants' manipulative propaganda

ISIS has 31,500 loyal fighters according to CIA but estimates place this far higher at around 200,000 militants. The vastness of its influence went largely unnoticed among the wider public until Sunday when it released a gruesome video showing the beheadings of 21 Egyptian Christians on a Libyan beach.

It was once a rebel group defying the British and US occupation of Iraq. Now other extremists across the Middle East and northern-Africa are pledging allegiance to it. 'ISIS has name brand power,' Harleen Gambhir says. 'What we've seen in a few different places is ISIS' ability to transfer new military expertise, explosives planning, new planning to other groups to win over their allegiance and we're seeing that in Libya.'

Terrorist organisations inside the country such as Ansar al-Sharia - which has taken control of Benghazi and declared its own Islamic state - also announced its alliance with ISIS in 2014. While Yemen-based militant group Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) - one of Al-Qaeda's most powerful branches - defected to ISIS this month according to US monitoring group SITE.

And while it has no confirmed territory in Tunisia, the country has become a breeding ground for ISIS fighters with the Interior Ministry claiming 2,400 citizens had become combatants since 2011. ISIS does control regions in the north and west of Iraq, including Fallujah near the capital Baghdad and its second largest city Mosul.

Speaking at the start of the weekly cabinet meeting, Netanyahu said his ministers were to be briefed on "the security challenges developing around us, first and foremost Iran's attempt to increase its foothold on Israel's borders even as it works to arm itself with nuclear weapons." An Israeli air strike inside the Syrian-controlled sector of the Golan Heights on January 18 killed six members of Hezbollah, which is backed by Iran and allied with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, as well as a general from Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards.

Israel neither confirmed nor denied responsibility, but it has carried out several such strikes over the past two years, stressing its policy of preventing arms transfers to militant groups and potential attacks. Netanyahu said that Tehran's ongoing "murderous terrorism" has "not prevented the international community from continuing to talk with Iran about a nuclear agreement that will allow it to build the industrial capacity to develop nuclear weapons."

World powers are trying to strike a deal with Iran that would prevent Tehran from developing a nuclear bomb in return for an easing of punishing international economic sanctions. Israel has repeatedly warned that Iran's nuclear programme has military objectives, a claim Tehran denies.

Though Arab officials have been careful not to side with Israel in their stated positions, their worries over the possibility of a nuclear-armed Tehran are in fact similar to those of Jerusalem, and their attitudes towards the current state of nuclear talks between Tehran and Western powers are similarly pessimistic, according to the report.

Leaders of Sunni states such as Egypt, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia fear a bad deal with Tehran would allow it, with the removal of sanctions, to become a nuclear threshold state, the WSJ reported. They say it could also lead to a nuclear arms race in the region. “At this stage, we prefer a collapse of the diplomatic process to a bad deal,” an official from an unnamed Arab nation told the paper.

Arab officials have also reportedly held discussions with the US over the possibility of Washington placing their countries under its “nuclear umbrella” — a guarantee to take military, even nuclear, action to protect an allied state under certain circumstances.

New members may enter – seven have done so since 2005 – but none, not even Greece, which should never have been allowed to join, may leave. And that’s the way it may have looked after Friday’s 11th-hour agreement on a four-month extension to Greece’s existing bail-out.

But fans of Wolf Hall might observe that “old-style marriage” never stopped old-style monarchs securing divorce or annulment whenever it suited. Students of monetary history know that very few currencies (other than the pound and the US dollar) have ever achieved the permanence that eurocrats claim for their creation. Currencies – and cross-border currency unions – are not stone-built institutions, but tools of commerce and exchange that reflect the politics of their time.

There are technocrats from the IMF and the World Bank who have spent long careers helping countries recover from bankruptcy, notably in Latin America. A Greek economy with a devalued currency, shorn of public-sector excess, attractive to tourists, would be far more competitive. Recovery is possible, and with popular will and collective effort it might even be surprisingly swift.

Not only is Grexit still very much on the cards – skilfully managed, it could prove that the euro itself is robust and flexible enough to achieve the permanence its founders crave. In the long term, it might put Greece in a better place as well.

Baroness Warsi, the first Muslim woman to sit in Cabinet, handed official posts to people linked to Islamist groups, including a man involved in an “unpleasant and bullying” campaign to win planning permission for the controversial London “megamosque” proposed by a fundamentalist Islamic sect. He sits – alongside other radicals or former radicals and their allies – on a “cross-Government working group on anti-Muslim hatred” set up by Lady Warsi and Nick Clegg, the Deputy Prime Minister.

Some members of the group are using their seats at the table to urge that Whitehall work with Islamist and extremist-linked bodies, including one described by the Prime Minister as a “political front for the Muslim Brotherhood”. Some are also pressing to lift bans on foreign hate preachers from entering Britain, including Zakir Naik, who has stated that “every Muslim should be a terrorist”.

The Swat team, as they're known, park at the same spot every week so a group of volunteers from the Sikh community can hand out vital supplies. Homeless people, who overwhelmingly are not Sikh, patiently wait in line to be served. The Guru Singh Sabha Gurdwara in Southall, thought to be the biggest Sikh temple outside of India, says it alone serves 5,000 meals on weekdays and 10,000 meals on weekends.

Every Sikh has the duty to carry out Seva, or selfless service, says Surinder Singh Purewal, a senior member of the temple management team. "It means we're never short of donations or volunteers to help prepare the Langar."

After painting the wooden sticks black, the German soldiers swiftly attached them to the top of armored vehicles, according to a confidential army report which was leaked to ARD. A defense ministry spokesperson said the use of broomsticks was not a common practice, and that the decision of the involved soldiers was "hard to comprehend."

According to the ministry, the armored vehicles were furthermore not supposed to be armed. It remains unclear how many broomsticks were substituted for machine guns. To make matters worse, the broom-equipped German soldiers belong to a crucial, joint NATO task force and would be the first to be deployed in case of an attack.

Opposition politicians have expressed concerns about Germany's ability to defend itself and other European allies, given that even some of the most elite forces lack basic equipment.

The view was reflected elsewhere too yesterday: "I think they've now reached a point where they will tell Greece 'if you really want to leave, leave'," Edward Scicluna, Malta's finance minister, told the 'Malta Today' newspaper.

German finance ministry officials had described Greek proposals for an extension of the country's €240 billion bailout as a "Trojan Horse" because the Leftist government had not explicitly agreed to "conclude" austerity targets agreed in 2012. Meanwhile, Jeroen Dijsselbloem, the Dutch finance minister who chairs the eurogroup, earlier had also struck a pessimistic note. "I do not have to tell you it's quite complicated," Mr Dijsselbloem said.

Turkey originally awarded the tender to China Precision Machinery Export-Import Corporation (CPMIEC) in 2013, prompting US and NATO officials to say the deal could raise questions over security. Turkey later said it was in talks with France on the issue. However, in his written response to the question filed in late December 2014 by main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) İzmir deputy Aykut Ciray, Yilmaz said no new bids had been received.

“The project will be financed through foreign financing. Work on assessing the bids has been completed and no new official bid has been received,” the minister said, in his response released by Ciray’s office February 19. “The system in question will be integrated with the national system for Turkey’s defense and will be used without integrating it with NATO,” he added. Eurosam, which is owned by Franco-Italian missile maker MBDA and France’s Thales, came second in the tender.