Benedict turns 85 in the new year, so a slowdown is only natural. Expected. And given his age and continued rigorous work schedule, it's remarkable he does as much as he does and is in such good health overall: Just this past week he confirmed he would travel to Mexico and Cuba next spring.

But a decline has been noted as Benedict prepares for next weekend's grueling Christmas celebrations, which kick off two weeks of intense public appearances. And that raises questions about the future of the papacy given that Benedict himself has said popes should resign if they can't do the job.

Vatican spokesman the Reverend Federico Lombardi has said no medical condition prompted the decision to use the moving platform in St Peter's, and that it's merely designed to spare the pontiff the fatigue of the 100 meter walk to and from the main altar. Back at home, however, it seems the daily grind of being pope - the audiences with visiting heads of state, the weekly public catechism lessons, the sessions with visiting bishops - has taken its toll. A spark is gone. He doesn't elaborate off-the-cuff much anymore, and some days he just seems wiped out.

He said "live and let live" had too often become "do what you please". The PM said it was wrong to suggest that standing up for Christianity was "somehow doing down other faiths". Describing himself as a "committed" but only "vaguely practising" Christian, the PM admitted he was "full of doubts" about big theological issues.

But he staunchly defended the role of religion in politics and said the Bible in particular was crucial to British values. "We are a Christian country and we should not be afraid to say so," he told the audience at Christ Church. "Let me be clear: I am not in any way saying that to have another faith - or no faith - is somehow wrong."

"I know and fully respect that many people in this country do not have a religion. And I am also incredibly proud that Britain is home to many different faith communities, who do so much to make our country stronger. But what I am saying is that the Bible has helped to give Britain a set of values and morals which make Britain what it is today."

And he staunchly defended the role of religion in politics and said the Bible in particular was crucial to British values. But how have the comments been received across the UK?

The Anglican Church - The Church of England was contacted for a response but said it would prefer not to comment. However, Reverend Sally Hitchiner, vicar at St John's Church in Ealing, expressed surprise at how strongly Mr Cameron made his case. She told Sky News: "I think he was saying - in much stronger terms than even I would put - that Christianity is fundamentally important and needs to stay fundamentally important."

President of the National Secular Society, Terry Sanderson - "Mr Cameron's promotion of faith for other people when his own is so wishy-washy is typical of a politician who thinks religion is a useful means of social control. But you cannot force people to believe what they have reasoned to be untrue. Nor will they be convinced that religion is the only route to morality. The daily headlines from around the world have shown that religion can be a thousand times more destructive than any rioter in Tottenham."

British Humanist Association chief executive Andrew Copson - "As a simple factual statement what the prime minister said is incorrect - only a minority of people in Britain are practising Christians and over half of the population sees itself as non-religious according to the latest British Social Attitudes survey. The most hopeful political reading of his speech is that Mr Cameron doesn't really mean it and that his statements are intended as a way to pacify the increasingly strident lobbying of a minority of Christians for more influence in our public life and greater privilege for those with Christian beliefs. Most concerning would be if the prime minister were serious. A politician and a government that tried to make Christianity and Christian beliefs the foundation of British values or a social morality would be building on seriously unstable foundations. All the evidence is that religion makes no difference in terms of a person's social and moral behaviour."

Muslim Council of Britain member and imam from Leicester, Sheikh Ibrahim Mogra - "It's very seldom I get excited by what our prime minister has to say and this is one of those times. As Muslims we also believe in the Bible. We believe in the teachings of Jesus. Not only that, but in the teachings of all the biblical prophets, including Moses in the Torah. So this is something that we feel is absolutely in tune with the Muslim thinking. We have to base our behaviour according to scripture, God's revealed message. For a long time Muslims have been trying to express this idea, that for us as Muslims Islam is not just a religion but a way of life. To divorce politics from religion is not something we are able to do, we cannot leave our religion at home or in the mosques, it comes with us wherever we go. So it's refreshing to hear the prime minister say Christians should do the same. I agree Britain is the best country for Muslims to live in, at least in Europe."

At the peak of the operation there were 170,000 US troops and more than 500 bases in Iraq. Nearly 4,500 US soldiers and tens of thousands of Iraqis have died since the US-led campaign began in 2003. The operation has cost Washington nearly $1 trillion (643 billion pounds).

Jim Muir - BBC News, Baghdad - writes: US troops have trained up Iraqi security forces which, if they stick together, can arguably contain the internal security situation, still stubbornly jammed at a level of violence which kills on average around 350 people every month. But security has to be rooted in political stability, and that's only one of many challenges immediately facing Iraq.

Even as the final US troops were heading for the border, a political crisis was erupting in Baghdad, with deputies from Ayyad Allawi's Iraqiyya block pulling out of parliament. There is turmoil in two mainly Sunni provinces, which want to declare themselves autonomous regions like the Kurds in the north. There's also a widespread conviction that with the Americans gone, Iranian influence will spread. While most Iraqis believe it was high time for the Americans to go, many are deeply worried about the challenges that lie ahead.

Their studies collated the relative worth of potential new currencies five years after a theoretical collapse of the Euro. Our charts show ING's forecast for 2012 based on their assumption of a dollar to sterling rate of 1.42. For 2016 the chart shows the average of their forecasts, converted to ING's guess of a dollar to sterling rate of 1.5. ING sees an immediate fall in currencies in 2012, which is shown in the red bars, and a recovery over the four years running up to 2016. ING predicts that most of the new currencies will not reach Euro exchange rates, except for Germany which would see its currency appreciate by four per cent.

The weakest nations inside the Eurozone would rapidly devalue against sterling by 2016, with a new Greek drachma worth at least 44 per cent less against sterling by 2016, the Portugese escudo worth 28 per cent less and the Spanish peseta worth nearly 24 per cent less. Both forecasters believe it would be a far from smooth ride if the Euro collapsed. There would be enormous uncertainty after a possible Euro collapse, with currencies liable to overshoot and be subject to high volatility. In ING's complete break-up scenario, governments decide to convert all assets and liabilities into their new national currencies. Capital controls like transaction taxes are temporarily introduced in an effort to stop money leaving weaker members.

New notes and coins are introduced as quickly as possible, but in the transition Euro notes would likely be stamped to mark them as the new national currencies, and strict legal tender limits would be put on coins. In the Eurozone ING sees GDP output falls ranging from seven per cent in Germany to 13 per cent in Greece. The Nomura team base their analysis on current real exchange rate misalignments and possible future inflation risk.

Back in July, the EUR/USD was over 1.45. As panic has swept the financial markets, the euro has lost more than 3 percent over the past three days. But this is just the beginning. When the euro drops below 1.20, analysts will talk about the collapse of the euro. When the euro falls toward parity with the dollar, headlines around the world will scream about the death of the euro. But when the European financial system finally collapses, we may very well actually see the end of the euro.

Yes, it actually could happen. The eurozone, as it is currently constructed, simply does not work. You just can't take 17 different nations that have 17 different fiscal policies, 17 different tax policies and 17 different economic agendas and cram them all into a single currency and expect the thing to work. The euro is a doomed currency, and if a big nation like Germany decides to walk away at some point the game is going to be over.

The truth is that a collapse of the euro has already begun.

All over the world, financial professionals are speculating about how far the euro will eventually fall. Scott Mather, the head of global bond portfolio management at PIMCO, says that he believes that the euro is going to go much, much lower. "Parity with the dollar next year is not out of the question".

Doctors without Borders, also known as Medecins Sans Frontieres, gets about 4,000 hits on its US website on an average Sunday. Last Sunday that number ballooned to 50,000 as a horde of redditors, subscribers to the social media site reddit.com, thundered across the DWB homepage.

Thousands more clicked through from the atheism sub-reddit, a site normally given over to finding holes in religions and picking fights with creationists, and headed for a dedicated site at firstgiving.com, where they have so far given $180,000. "It's amazing, what's going on. The amount being raised is amazing, definitely," said Natalie Favre, an MSF spokeswoman in Geneva. "We don't control any of this."

Many donations were tagged with messages such as "Because god won't", "Good without god" or even "Good without Zeus".

The Financial Times reported that UK officials might have "observer status". This would enable the UK to monitor discussions on the role EU institutions may play in enforcing the deal. David Cameron's decision to veto a treaty change of all 27 EU members last week led to a huge row between the Conservatives and Lib Dem partners. The UK declined to sign up to the agreement - which proposes central oversight of EU members' budgets, tougher sanctions for overspending and moves towards tax harmonisation - because of a lack of satisfactory safeguards on financial regulation

Labour have said the outcome has left the UK isolated in Europe and unable to influence key decisions affecting the economy. But the coalition government has insisted that it remains committed to being fully engaged in Europe and co-operation in a wide range of areas. The UK has now accepted an invitation to sit in on negotiations in the coming weeks to formalise last week's outline deal. Although much of what is discussed is not likely to directly affect the UK, the BBC's political correspondent Vicki Young said that with Treasury officials included in the European working group, Britain will be able to keep a close eye on deliberations.

No 10 said that, in a phone call with European Council president Herman van Rompuy on Thursday, the prime minister "reiterated he wants the new fiscal agreement to succeed and to find the right way forward that ensures the EU institutions fulfil their role as guardian of the EU Treaty on issues such as the single market". France and Germany want the new agreement to be concluded as soon as possible to help boost confidence in the eurozone but the nine other countries outside the single currency area have said they will need Parliamentary approval before they can agree to take part.

On a day that saw an escalation in the tit-for-tat trade battle between China and the United States and a deepening of the diplomatic rift between Britain and France, Christine Lagarde issued her strongest warning yet about the health of the global economy and said if the international community failed to co-operate the risk was of "retraction, rising protectionism, isolation". She added: "This is exactly the description of what happened in the 1930s, and what followed is not something we are looking forward to."

The IMF managing director's call came amid growing concern that 2012 will see Europe slide into a double-dip recession, with knock-on effects for the rest of the global economy. "The world economic outlook at the moment is not particularly rosy. It is quite gloomy," she said. Since arriving in Washington in the summer, Lagarde has been forced to cut her organisation's forecasts for global growth next year and is now putting pressure on countries outside the eurozone - including Britain - to play their part in containing Europe's sovereign debt crisis.

The Ministry of Defence added that snipers in Lynx and Puma helicopters will patrol the skies of London. Typhoon jets will move to RAF Northolt in west London from bases in Scotland and Lincolnshire so they can be scrambled to the Olympic site within minutes. And Royal Navy warships and RAF fighter jets bristling with fearsome weaponry will also be on standby to ensure the sporting showcase does not come under attack. Crack special forces units are also understood to have been practising manoeuvres to prevent fanatics targeting the Olympics. Defence Secretary Philip Hammond said security would remain police-led but the Armed Forces would make a 'significant contribution'.

He said the Games, which will feature 10,500 athletes from 105 countries with an estimated 10.8 million spectators, was 'the biggest security challenge this country has faced for decades'. Military personnel would contribute to 'ensuring a safe, secure and enjoyable Olympics', he said.

Security chiefs are acutely aware that the Olympic and Paralympic Games would be a prized target for terrorists. The Olympic Park in Stratford, east London, will itself contain the 80,000-seat Olympic Stadium, Aquatic Centre for swimming events and the athlete's village.

"Debt is our only weapon and we must use it to impose better conditions, because recession itself is what is stopping us complying with the (EU-IMF Troika) accord. We should make the legs of the German bankers tremble," he said. The comments came as Portugal slides deeper into recession, with the economy expected to contract by 3 per cent next year. Protesters marched through Lisbon on Thursday denouncing plans by the new conservative government to raise the working week to 42 hours. Wages are being cut 16 per cent for higher paid, and 8 per cent for lower paid public workers.

The parliament passed a fresh austerity budget earlier this month under the terms of its 78 billion euros loan package from the EU and the International Monetary Fund. Mr Nuno Santos said Europe's southern states should join forces to resist the austerity dictates and contractionary policies being imposed by the core powers. "It is incomprehensible that the peripheral countries don't do what the French president and the German Chancellor do. They should unite," he said.

Left-leaning parties in Europe are becoming increasingly defiant, accusing the Right of exploiting its grip on the European machinery to force through polices that are in effect dismantling parts of the welfare state or undermine trade union power. Germany's Angela Merkel, France's Nicolas Sarkozy, and Holland's Mark Rutte are all conservatives, and will soon be joined by Spain's Mariano Rajoy. Francois Hollande, France's Socialist leader and front-runner in the presidential elections, has vowed to renegotiate last week's EU summit deal if elected next May, saying it violates the fiscal sovereignty of the French parliament, imposes perpetual austerity, and fails to offer struggling states any way out of economic crisis. "There must be growth," he said

Oskar Lafontaine, a leader of Germany's Linke (Left) party, said the euro was hurtling towards destruction on current policies. He blamed Germany's system of screwing down wages to undercut other EMU countries - or "wage dumping" - for causing the imbalances behind the eurozone crisis. "A shared currency cannot work without coordination of wage policy. Once wages have diverged as far as they have in recent years, devaluation and revaluation is the only way out." He accused Merkel and Sarkozy of driving Greece into a downward spiral and now trying to inflict the same "demented" policies on the whole of Europe.

The downgrade could raise the cost of borrowing for these banks. Fitch cut the "issuer default ratings" at the banks to "reflect challenges faced by the sector as a whole". The ratings agency said: "These challenges result from both economic developments as well as a myriad of regulatory changes". Credit ratings of the world's biggest lenders have come under pressure from weak economic growth and concerns about whether European politicians have done enough to end the Eurozone debt crisis.

Long-term issuer default ratings for Bank of America, Citigroup and Goldman Sachs were cut to A from A+. Barclays, Deutsche Bank and Credit Suisse were downgraded to A from AA- while BNP Paribas fell to A+ from AA-. Meanwhile, Germany's attempt to save the Eurozone was hanging in the balance as Hungary and the Czech Republic claimed it would be damaging and protesters in Warsaw demanded Poland stands firm against Angela Merkel.

Amid fresh warnings that Europe is triggering a 1930s-style global depression, the German chancellor faced open rebellion against the key plank of her Brussels accord. The leaders of Hungary and the Czech Republic told a joint conference in Budapest they were ready to reject the planned treaty changes and implied a move towards a centralised tax system. Czech prime minister Petr Necas said he was "convinced that tax harmonisation would not mean anything good for us".

Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orban said that central Europe had the potential to become the most competitive region in Europe. "The only kind of co-operation we can have with the eurozone is one which does not damage Hungary's competitiveness," he said. Poles marched under banners that read: "We want sovereignty, not the euro." They were protesting against the Brussels deal that could see EU countries, including those outside the eurozone, face penalties for breaking tough centralised spending laws. Britain used its veto in Brussels, sparking an intense backlash. Ireland and Sweden are also nervous about the fiscal pact, but Germany and France still expect the other 26 members, minus the UK, to approve it.

The head of the Armed Forces warned that economic issues pose a "strategic risk" to Britain. Senior British commanders and officials are concerned that US plans to cut defence spending will be followed by other allies in Europe and elsewhere. Reductions in allied military capabilities could put a greater burden on Britain's stretched forces in Afghanistan and elsewhere, it is feared.

The military planning work has come to light after The Daily Telegraph disclosed last month that British embassies in the eurozone have been told to PREPARE EMERGENCY PLANS FOR THE DEMISE OF THE EURO AND THE POSSIBLE CIVIL DISORDER THAT COULD FOLLOW.

Senior ministers are increasingly convinced that the break-up of the single currency is a real possibility. "Over time, a thriving economy must be the central ingredient in any UK Grand Strategy. This is why the eurozone crisis is of such huge importance not just to the City of London but rightly to the whole country and to military planners like me."

CGIL leader Susanna Camusso told Reuters that Prime Minister Mario Monti's government was "deeply conditioned" by its need for support from the party of his predecessor, Silvio Berlusconi, and its austerity plan spared the rich and demanded excessive sacrifices from ordinary Italians. "We see every risk of a social explosion," Camusso said in an interview, warning that anger was rising over a pension reform she said was unnecessary, measures that cut already weak purchasing power and a worsening labor market.

The left-wing CGIL and the two smaller and more centrist unions, CISL and UIL, are holding a series of strikes this week to protest against the 33 billion euro plan that aims to shore up public finances and combat Italy's debt crisis. Camusso, the first woman leader in the CGIL's 105-year history, acknowledged that Monti had made some concessions to union demands by reducing cuts to low pensions and slightly easing a housing tax, but this did not go far enough.

"It would be absolutely excessive to say we are satisfied; the solutions are insufficient," she said, announcing that the CGIL and its partner unions would hold a national street demonstration just before Christmas. More than half of the CGIL's 6 million members are pensioners.

"(There is) the risk that the Arab awakening leads to fissures and internal conflict that could be exported, including militant Islamism," Richards told a defense thinktank, the Royal United Services Institute, in London. "They have diasporas reaching back to this country, as does Pakistan and other states struggling with instability."

A year after protests that led to the Arab Spring began, moderate Islamist parties have taken control in Tunisia and Morocco and look set to follow suit in Egypt, though militant Islamists have so far failed to take advantage of the chaos. However, Richards had no doubt where the chief threat lay. "I am clear that the single biggest strategic risk facing the UK today is economic rather than military ... This is why the euro zone crisis is of such huge importance," Richards said.

"No country can defend itself if bankrupt."