UK - Midwives, GPs and registrars will be enlisted to help couples stay together and reduce levels of family breakdown under government plans, The Daily Telegraph has learned. Iain Duncan Smith, the Work and Pensions secretary, is examining a series of new policies aimed at reducing the "stigma" surrounding counselling and relationship support services.

Under the plans, which were presented to ministers at the social justice cabinet meeting earlier this month, midwives, GPs and registrars will be encouraged to talk to couples about their relationships. The policies, which will be unveiled this summer, come amid concerns that family breakdown is costing taxpayers billions every year.

UK - Calls for a Parliamentary inquiry into the scale of Islamic law in the UK are mounting after the body representing solicitors in England and Wales issued formal guidance on making “Sharia compliant” wills. The Law Society was accused of giving its stamp of approval to discriminatory practices after it published advice on writing wills which deny women an equal share and exclude “illegitimate” children or unbelievers. The society denied promoting Sharia Law and insisted that it was simply responding to demand. Meanwhile Peter Tatchell, the human rights campaigner and patron of Tell Mama, the group which combats anti-Muslim hate crime, said: “The Law Society is wrong. It should withdraw its guidelines assisting or promoting Sharia Law in the UK.”

TAIWAN - Taiwanese police have clashed with hundreds of students who occupied government headquarters to protest at a trade deal with China. Police used water cannon and dragged out students one by one, clearing the building by dawn on Monday. Close to 60 people were arrested and more than 100 hurt, reports said. The protesters say the agreement with China would hurt Taiwan's economy and leave it vulnerable to pressure from Beijing. The governing Kuomintang party says it is determined to ratify the deal with Beijing, which it says will boost the economy and create jobs. China formally regards Taiwan as a part of its territory, despite the island governing itself for six decades.

UK - Many types of brown and wholemeal bread contain higher levels of sugar than white loaves, a Telegraph analysis shows. A number of popular manufacturers are adding sugar to bread seen as a “healthier” option, while equivalent white loaves remain free of the substance. Campaigners described the findings as “alarming”, suggesting that families who opted for wholemeal varieties for health reasons were being misled. One nutritionist said the added sugar partly undermined the benefits of eating wholemeal. The disclosure comes amid growing warnings by scientists over the effects of sugar on health.

USA - Authorities in the US state of Washington have found six more bodies after Saturday's huge landslide, bringing the number known to have been killed to 14, say police. Officials now say as many as 176 people may remain unaccounted for after the 177ft (54m) wall of mud hit near the town of Oso, north of Seattle. Search crews have worked day and night, using helicopters and laser imaging. But officials admit they have little hope of finding survivors. Speaking earlier after surveying the area from the air, Washington Governor Jay Inslee said it was "devastation beyond imagination". He said the slide "basically cut a mountain in two" and deposited it on the town below. Nothing in the path of the slide was still standing.

GUINEA, WEST AFRICA - There are no known treatments or vaccines for the hemorrhagic fever, which kills up to 90 percent of those who become infected. Guinea’s capital Conakry has been hit by an Ebola epidemic that has already claimed dozens of lives in the country’s southern forests. “At least 59 out of 80 who contracted Ebola across the West African country have died so far,” said UNICEF in a statement to Agence France-Presse (AFP). The virus is spread through direct contact with blood, feces or sweat, by sexual contact or unprotected handling of contaminated corpses. First discovered in the Democratic Republic of Congo in 1976, the disease has spread in several outbreaks, mainly in sub-Saharan Africa.

FRANCE - France's far-right National Front party dealt a major blow [which] will put them in pole position in the second round on March 30 [beating] Socialists after several of its candidates took prime position in the first round of local elections. The main centre-right opposition UMP party also hailed a "big victory" as initial estimates showed it came out trumps in the elections, as President Francois Hollande suffers record unpopularity against a backdrop of near-zero growth and high unemployment. Far-right candidates came ahead in several key towns and cities.

UK - The remains of more than 15,000 babies were incinerated as 'clinical waste' by hospitals in Britain with some used in 'waste to energy' plants. The bodies of thousands of aborted and miscarried babies were incinerated as clinical waste, with some even used to heat hospitals, an investigation has found. Ten NHS trusts have admitted burning foetal remains alongside other rubbish while two others used the bodies in ‘waste-to-energy’ plants which generate power for heat. Last night the Department of Health issued an instant ban on the practice which health minister Dr Dan Poulter branded ‘totally unacceptable.’ At least 15,500 foetal remains were incinerated by 27 NHS trusts over the last two years alone, Channel 4’s Dispatches discovered.

RUSSIA - Igor Sechin gathered media in Tokyo to warn Western governments that more sanctions over Moscow's seizure of the Black Sea peninsula from Ukraine would be counter-productive. The underlying message from the head of Russia's biggest oil company, Rosneft, was clear: If Europe and the United States isolate Russia, Moscow will look East for new business, energy deals, military contracts and political alliances. The Holy Grail for Moscow is a natural gas supply deal with China that is apparently now close after years of negotiations. If it can be signed when Putin visits China in May, he will be able to hold it up to show that global power has shifted eastwards and he does not need the West.

RUSSIA - Somebody is a selling a fistful of US Treasuries. It could be Russia, or China, Turkey, South Africa, or Indonesia, or all frantically selling bonds at the same time for different reasons. We don’t yet know. All we know is that the US Federal Reserve’s custody holdings on behalf of foreign central banks plunged by $106 billion in the week ending March 12, the biggest one-week drop on record. Russia’s central bank is undoubtedly liquidating reserves at a breakneck pace to prevent a collapse of the rouble, as foreign companies scramble to get all their spare cash out of Russian accounts before the G7 guillotine comes down on the Putin clan next week. It is certainly trying to remove its assets beyond the jurisdiction of the US authorities – though that will not be easy. The international order is unravelling.

USA/UK - Both in the US and the UK, government authorities are considering the legalisation of so-called “three-parent embryos”. The US Food and Drug Administration held hearings in late February and the UK Department of Health has published draft guidelines which are currently open for comment by the public. However, a leading US scientist has delivered a broadside at the scientific ignorance and spin involved in discussion of the proposals. Professor Stuart Newman, of New York Medical College, makes the obvious point that what is being proposed is nuclear transplantation, not mitochondrial transplantation. He believes that the technique is being used as a stalking horse for genetically engineered children: “once the transfer of an entire haploid (ie one parent's) set of chromosomes into a woman's egg is considered acceptable, transfer of a smaller number of chromosomes or genes will be a much easier sell.”

USA/VATICAN - In a meeting room under Holy Name Cathedral, a rapt group of black Roman Catholics listened as Barack Obama, a 25-year-old community organizer, trained them to lobby their fellow delegates to a national congress in Washington on issues like empowering lay leaders and attracting more believers.

USA - President Barack Obama's policies “have become progressively more hostile toward Christian civilization,” Cardinal Raymond Burke, head of the highest court at the Vatican, said in a recent interview. Cardinal Burke added that Obama wants to restrict religious freedom and force the individuals, outside of his or her place of worship, “to act against his rightly-formed conscience, even in the most serious of moral questions.”

AUSTRALIA - Why are politicians and the media ignoring the cause of most child abuse: the breakdown of the traditional family? The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse has been heralded a new epoch in Australian life that will finally ‘break the silence’ surrounding child sexual abuse. Sceptical commentators, however, have questioned how the royal commission will ensure children are better protected in the future when its restrictive terms of reference (which only authorise an inquiry into how institutions such as churches, schools and sporting bodies respond to child sexual abuse) ignores the 70 percent to 80 percent of cases of child sexual abuse in which the perpetrator has a ‘familial relationship’ with the abused child.

UKRAINE - The raids on TV editorial boards by parliamentarians in the new Ukrainian government, which Germany helped bring to power, is provoking massive protests. Tuesday evening, Svoboda Party MPs stormed the office of the acting President of the National Television Co of Ukraine (NTU) and forced him to resign with physical blows and verbal insults.