One resident of the city of Rodas, near Cienfuegos, described the light as "bigger than the sun". He said: "On Tuesday we left home to fish around five in the afternoon, and around 8:00 we saw a light in the heavens and then a big ball of fire, bigger than the sun."

There were also numerous unconfirmed reports of a bright streak of light over the San Francisco Bay area on Friday night. Scientists at the Chabot Space and Science Center, in Oakland, said it had received calls describing what appeared to be a fireball flying west, but it was not clear what the object was. Gerald McKeegan, an astronomer, said the centre's telescopes did not pick up the object.

In a press conference to mark the new year Schulz said he shared some of the "unease" with the EU that UK prime minister David Cameron outlined in a widely-reported speech earlier in the week. "This unease with the EU as it now is, is something that I share. I think there are many people in Europe who also have this unease" said Schulz. "And that's why I would really recommend that we don't label everyone who criticises the EU as a eurosceptic."

"The EU is not in a good state. We have to do better."

As flaws he pointed to the economic developments that have led to more "social injustice" and a democratic deficit which he said was not so much to do with the European institutions themselves but rather with opaque EU decision-making.

"Why do EU institutions meet behind closed doors? Everything that happens behind closed doors is anonymous and leaves open great room for interpretation." He suggested this only prolongs the practice of member states blaming the EU when things go wrong and taking credit for positive developments. Much of the legitimacy criticism about the EU concerns the future role of national parliaments when issues considered to be the core of a sovereign state - such as budget policy - are increasingly being decided in Brussels.

Mr Berlusconi made the comments as a response to recent corruption scandals within several state-controlled conglomerates in Italy. Mr Berlusconi, spoke against the arrest of Giuseppe Orsi, CEO of Finmeccanica defence group, who was taken into custody yesterday accused of paying Indian government officials to secure a helicopter contract.

The 76-year-old politician, who is running for his fourth term as Prime Minister in the country’s elections this month, said bribes are essential in international business, the Financial Times reports.

‘Bribes are a phenomenon that exists and it is useless to deny the existence of these necessary situations when you are negotiating with third world countries and regimes,’ Mr Berlusconi said in an interview with Italian State broadcaster, RAI 3. ‘These are not crimes. We are talking about paying a commission to someone in that country. Why? Because those are the rules in that country.’

Aktham Suliman's wristwatch was always ahead. Although he lived in Berlin, it always showed him the time in Doha, the capital of the emirate of Qatar - which is also the home of Al-Jazeera, the television news network that had been employing Suliman, born in Damascus, as a correspondent for Germany since 2002. One and a half years ago, Suliman, 42, re-set his watch to German time, having become disenchanted with Al-Jazeera. And it wasn't just because the broadcaster seemed less interested in reports from Europe. Rather, Suliman had the feeling that he was no longer being allowed to work as an independent journalist.

Last August, he quit his job. "Before the beginning of the Arab Spring, we were a voice for change," he says, "a platform for critics and political activists throughout the region. Now, Al-Jazeera has become a propaganda broadcaster."

Suliman is not the only one who feels bitterly disappointed. The Arab TV network has recently suffered an exodus of prominent staff members. Reporters and anchors in cities like Paris, London, Moscow, Beirut and Cairo have left Al-Jazeera, despite what are seen as luxurious working conditions in centrally located offices. And despite the fact that the network is investing an estimated $500 million (€375 million) in the US, so as to reach even more viewers on the world's largest television market - one in which its biggest competitor, CNN, is at home.

A prominent correspondent who, until one year ago, used to report in Beirut for the network, says: "Al-Jazeera takes a clear position in every country from which it reports - not based on journalistic priorities, but rather on the interests of the Foreign Ministry of Qatar," he says. "In order to maintain my integrity as a reporter, I had to quit."

The spectacle deeply frightened many Russians, with some elderly women declaring that the world was coming to an end. Many of the injured were cut by flying glass as they flocked to windows to see what the reason was for such an intense flash of light.

The meteor - estimated to be about 10 tons - entered the Earth's atmosphere at a hypersonic speed of at least 54,000 kph (33,000 mph) and shattered into pieces about 30-50 kilometers (18-32 miles) above the ground, the Russian Academy of Sciences said in a statement.

The meteor released several kilotons of energy above the region, the science academy said. It was probably about 2 meters (6 ½ feet) across, about the size of an SUV, said Richard Binzel, a professor of Planetary Science at MIT.

The shock wave blew in an estimated 100,000 square meters (more than 1 million square feet) of glass, according to city officials, who said 3,000 buildings in the city were damaged. At one zinc factory, part of the roof collapsed.

Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin said the incident showed the need for leading world powers to develop a system to intercept objects falling from space. "At the moment, neither we nor the Americans have such technologies" to shoot down meteors or asteroids, he said, according to the Interfax news agency.

The Japanese yen has seen a big decline, while the euro has risen against a basket of currencies. The G20 has previously asked nations to refrain from market intervention. Earlier this week, the G7 group of nations issued a statement saying they would not set targets for exchange rates of their currencies.

"The language may differ [from the G7], but the intent will remain the same," the minister was quoted as saying by the Reuters news agency. That was echoed by Germany's Finance Minister, Wolfgang Schaeuble, on German radio. He said he was confident of a joint agreement, expressing the official line. "We do not want state intervention in exchange rates. We want exchange rates that are determined by the markets," he said.

The head of the European Central Bank, Mario Draghi, attempted to dampen talk about currency wars ahead of the meeting, by saying loose talk about currencies was "inappropriate, fruitless and self-defeating". The meeting comes at a time when some of the world's biggest economies and regions are still struggling to spur economic growth.

Meanwhile, the eurozone recession also deepened in the final three months of 2012. The economies of Germany, France and Italy, the biggest members of the eurozone, all shrank by more than expected.

This has led to fears that countries that continue to struggle may try to devalue their currencies in order to trigger growth.

"What is the difference between outright currency manipulation versus the collateral damage to one's currency based on central bank programs?" he rhetorically asks, "in my mind, very little, but obviously, in the minds of many leaders of G-7 developed economies, there's a huge distinction."

And therein lies the rub. As Japan follows Bernanke's decade-old plan to reflate by literally printing money into existence - just as every other developed fiat currency nation - their argument is that they are fighting deflation - or stimulating growth - when, in fact "The distinction between collateral damage and outright manipulation is absolute malarkey."

Now that the currency wars have gone global - no matter what well-placed op-eds will try to convince otherwise - Santelli sums it all up perfectly, "in the end when you don't have a standard and you have printing and fiat currency, what level of value is real?"

Benedict, who announced his resignation on Monday in a move that stunned the Roman Catholic world, also indicated that he would not hold a public role once his resignation became official on February 28. Benedict is the first pope to step down in nearly 600 years.

“Though I am now retiring to a life of prayer, I will always be close to all of you, and I am sure all of you will be close to me, even though I remain hidden to the world,” Benedict, 85, and increasingly frail, told the assembly of hundreds of priests, who had greeted him with a long standing ovation and some tears.

Once retired, Benedict will live in a convent in Vatican City, and will be tended to by the nuns who look after him now. Father Lombardi said Benedict’s longtime personal secretary, Archbishop Georg Gänswein, who was also named prefect of the papal household two months ago, would continue to work for him.

Father Lombardi said he saw no conflict of interest if Archbishop Gänswein served the current pope and his successor. The prefect is responsible for logistical duties, and “in this sense it is not a profound problem, I think,” Father Lombardi said.

It will pass closer even than the geosynchronous satellites that orbit the Earth, but there is no risk of impacts or collisions. Its closest approach will be 19:25 GMT. For regions in darkness around that time, it will be visible using good binoculars or a telescope. As it passes - at 7.8km/s (17,450 mi/hr) - it will come from "under" the Earth and return back toward the Sun from "above".

It will pass over directly over the eastern Indian Ocean, making for the best viewing in Eastern Europe, Asia and Australia. But keen viewers anywhere can find one of several live streams of the event on the internet, including a feed from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory at Nasa, available from 19:00 GMT.

A fireball was seen streaking through the sky above the city of Yekaterinburg, followed by loud bangs. 514 people injured in the Chelyabinsk region, 11 were being treated in hospital, the regional emergencies agency said in a statement.

Scientists have played down suggestions that there is any link between the event in the Urals and 2012 DA14, an asteroid expected to race past the Earth on Friday at a distance of just 27,700km (17,200 miles) - the closest ever predicted for an object of that size.

Professor Alan Fitzsimmons, of the Astrophysics Research Centre at Queen's University Belfast, said there was "almost definitely" no connection. "One reason is that 2012 DA14 is approaching Earth from the south, and this object hit in the northern hemisphere," he told BBC News. "This is literally a cosmic coincidence, although a spectacular one."

Meanwhile, the meat industry has been merrily gorging away on antibiotics — and churning out meat rife with antibiotic-resistant pathogens — if the latest data from the FDA itself is any indication. The Pew Charitable Trusts crunched the agency's numbers on antibiotic use on livestock farms and compared them to data on human use of antibiotics to treat illness.

While human antibiotic use has leveled off at below 8 billion pounds annually, livestock farms have been sucking in more and more of the drugs each year — and consumption reached a record nearly 29.9 billion pounds in 2011.

To put it another way, the livestock industry is now consuming nearly four-fifths of the antibiotics used in the US, and its appetite for them is growing.

Euro area GDP fell 0.6 percent in the last three months of 2012, marking the currency bloc's first full year in which no quarter produced growth, extending back to 1995, according to figures from European statistical agency Eurostat. The worse-than-expected decline - the deepest since the first quarter of 2009 - was driven by GDP slumps in the bloc's major economies, including a shock 0.6 percent contraction in Germany and a 0.3 percent fall in French output in the fourth quarter.

Meanwhile in Italy, the next largest eurozone economy, fourth quarter GDP shrunk a more-than-expected 0.9 percent. In Germany, where preliminary data showed the economy still grew on the year, albeit at just 0.1 percent, weak exports from the nation's muscular manufacturing industry were blamed for the sharp fall in output.

In France, Europe's second biggest economy, the fourth quarter GDP contraction obliterated a tentative recovery made in quarter three and signalled that the nation could be lurching back towards recession.

The document is an unprecedented window into the terrorist operation, indicating that al-Qaida predicted the military intervention that would dislodge it in January and recognized its own vulnerability.

The letter also shows a sharp division within al-Qaida's Africa chapter over how quickly and how strictly to apply Islamic law, with its senior commander expressing dismay over the whipping of women and the destruction of Timbuktu's ancient monuments. It moreover leaves no doubt that despite a temporary withdrawal into the desert, al-Qaida plans to operate in the region over the long haul, and is willing to make short-term concessions on ideology to gain the allies it acknowledges it needs.

The more than nine-page document, found by The Associated Press in a building occupied by the Islamic extremists for almost a year, is signed by Abu Musab Abdul Wadud, the nom de guerre of Abdelmalek Droukdel, the senior commander appointed by Osama bin Laden to run al-Qaida's branch in Africa.

The clear-headed, point-by-point assessment resembles a memo from a CEO to his top managers and lays out for his jihadists in Mali what they have done wrong in months past, and what they need to do to correct their behavior in the future.