Financial markets experienced another day of intense volatility as investors struggled to interpret an emergency statement from the Group of 20 leading economies, which met on the sidelines of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank meetings in Washington.

Investors were initially unimpressed by the G20's message of support for the global economy, but several said they did not want to get caught out should policymakers unexpectedly decide on a radical policy response.

Gold continued to slide sharply and US oil prices traded below $80 a barrel, their lowest in more than a year. Shares rallied modestly in Europe and the US, accompanied by selling in government bonds and the dollar.

Many finance ministers reported a greater sense of urgency in discussions on the eurozone overnight on Thursday. Eurozone governments have pledged to pass legislation by mid-October to make their rescue fund, the European financial stability facility, more flexible and are discussing ways to "maximise its impact in order to address contagion".

European Union officials are warming to the idea that the EFSF could be "leveraged" to increase its strength, perhaps by guaranteeing larger European Central Bank purchases of Spanish and Italian sovereign debt, in an effort to isolate the two countries from the more intractable Greek debt crisis. Francois Baroin, French finance minister, said policymakers "need the right firewall to prevent contagion" and can discuss giving the EFSF "the necessary strength".

G20 sources said that up to 50% was likely to be wiped from the face value of Greece's 350 billion euros debt - but not until Europe had put into place a war chest to prevent the contagion spreading. More money will be disbursed by the International Monetary Fund and the EU next month to keep the Greek government afloat, but this is seen as a short-term fix while Europe's leaders beef up the eurozone bailout fund, the European Financial Stability Facility.

Europe came under ferocious pressure at this weekend's IMF meeting in Washington to contain the spiralling crisis, which is blamed for dragging the global economy to the brink of a double-dip recession. The IMF is reportedly willing to continue bailing out Greece in the short-term, provided that Europe uses the time to tackle the issue of debt once and for all. The Washington-based lender believes the 18-month delay since Greece was first bailed out last spring has exacerbated the crisis.

Tim Geithner, the US treasury secretary, said: "The threat of cascading default, bank runs and catastrophic risk must be taken off the table, otherwise it will undermine all other efforts, both within Europe and globally. Decisions as to how to conclusively address the region's problems cannot wait until the crisis gets more severe."

German and French officials came up with the strategy which aims to end the eurozone's sovereign debt crisis before it spirals completely out of control, plunging the world back into recession. The likely deal came ahead of a major new setback for the British economy - with BAe Systems, Britain's biggest manufacturer, poised to cut 3,000 jobs.

Whitehall officials believe the job losses could be announced as early as this week and are likely to affect the company's military aircraft division in Warton, Lancashire, and Brough, Yorkshire. The eurozone deal, being brokered by the G20 group of nations, would seek to "ring fence" the crisis around Greece, Portugal and Ireland - preventing it from spreading to major EU economies such as Italy and Spain.

It would involve the bailing out of those European banks - mostly French - most at risk from their massive lendings to tottering economies. Greece, crucially, would be able to default on at least some of its more than 300 billion pounds debts but remain inside the eurozone. The Greek government's private creditors would bear most of the increased costs. At this stage, a new bail-out programme would be devised for Greece - with cash coming at least in part from the International Monetary Fund, in which Britain holds a 4.5 per cent stake. This could mean British taxpayers paying out more than the 1 billion pounds they are already slated to have to contribute under the terms of the first Greek bailout fund.

Christine Lagarde, the managing director of the International Monetary Fund, has said: "There are dark clouds over Europe and there is huge uncertainty in the US. And with that we could risk a collapse in global demand. Let's remove the clouds and remove the uncertainty. Easier said than done, and it requires clearly a collective action."

And on March 1, Yemen's President, Ali Abdullah Saleh, his 32-year reign threatened by the popular uprising sweeping across the Middle East, accused... No, you'd best hear this in his own words. "There is an operations room in Tel Aviv with the aim of destabilizing the Arab world," he said in a speech at Sana'a University. The operations room in question, he added, is "run by the White House."

For the Obama Administration, which is struggling with the consequences of the toppling of other Arab dictators, Saleh's predicament is especially worrisome. Impoverished Yemen (population 24 million) may be at the fringes of the world economy and Arab politics, but it punches well above its weight in global terrorism, as both a supplier of jihadists to holy wars abroad and a home for al-Qaeda's most ambitious franchise.

Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) was behind many major terrorist plots uncovered in the US over the past two years, including last fall's effort to use the global airfreight network to detonate bombs on board a Chicago-bound plane and the attempt to blow up a passenger jet over Detroit on Christmas Day 2009. The group also shelters the American-born preacher Anwar al-Awlaki, who has been in Yemen since 2004 and has been linked to several of these plots.

The Obama Administration doubled counterterrorism aid to $150 million in 2010, and US special forces are helping train Yemeni troops. Regime change in Sana'a could jeopardize that cooperation and potentially take pressure off AQAP - a point that Saleh's officials have been keen to make since the protesters began to press for his ouster. "If we go, this country will be wide open," one official tells TIME, asking not to be named. "People who want to support these so-called revolutionaries should stop and ask themselves if these kids can protect the world from al-Qaeda."

Some of the BBC's most popular programmes including University Challenge, presented by Jeremy Paxman, and Radio 4's In Our Time, hosted by Melvyn Bragg, are among the growing number of shows using the new descriptions. The BBC's religious and ethics department says the changes are necessary to avoid offending non-Christians.

It states: 'As the BBC is committed to impartiality it is appropriate that we use terms that do not offend or alienate non-Christians. In line with modern practice, BCE/CE (Before Common Era/Common Era) are used as a religiously neutral alternative to BC/AD.'

But the move has angered Christians, mystified other faith leaders and been branded unnecessary by the Plain English Campaign. Critics say the new terms are meaningless because, just like AD and BC, they still denote years in relation to the life of Christ.

Dr Michael Nazir-Ali, the former Bishop of Rochester, said: 'I think this amounts to the dumbing down of the Christian basis of our culture, language and history. These changes are unnecessary and they don't achieve what the BBC wants them to achieve.'

'Whether you use Common Era or Anno Domini, the date is actually still the same and the reference point is still the birth of Christ.'

Marie Clair of the Plain English Campaign said: 'As with most politically correct innovations, I am sure this was done with the best of intentions. But it is difficult to see what the point of the changes are if people do not understand the new terms. It sounds like change just for the sake of change.' The website for BBC Religion and Ethics, headed by commissioning editor Aaqil Ahmed, who is a Muslim, is littered with references to Common Era and Before Common Era.

The Reverend Peter Mullen, Anglican chaplain to the London Stock Exchange, said: 'This is absurd political correctness and these new terms do not mean anything to anyone. I think it's an example of the BBC trying to undermine Christianity by pushing an aggressive secularism. I would be very surprised if any other faith had complained about the use of Anno Domini and Before Christ.'

It was, however, his speech to the German Bundestag which has been the most parsed since his arrival. Even before he got to Berlin, Vatican observers, studying the speech on the plane on the way to Berlin, were astounded at what they read. It was as if the old Joseph Ratzinger had returned, the theology professor who never really wanted to become pope. He did not mince words. He spoke about nature and reason and demanded from the parliamentarians an increased sense of moral responsibility for ecology and equality. It was a very political speech. It was courageous. And it was unique.

A politician's "fundamental criterion and the motivation for his work as a politician must not be success, and certainly not material gain," the pope said. "Politics must be a striving for justice, and hence it has to establish the fundamental preconditions for peace." A politician's success, he continued, should be "subordinated to the criterion of justice, to the will to do what is right, and to the understanding of what is right." Pointedly, he added "we Germans... have seen how power became divorced from right, how power opposed right and crushed it."

The pope flew to Erfurt on Friday morning, where he visited the monastery where Martin Luther lived before he turned his back on Catholicism. It is a stop which is being seen as a gesture of reconciliation. But judging from his first day in Germany, one can expect that Pope Benedict XVI will make sure that the message of the visit is clear. In all its bluntness.

The results - which threatens to upend a century of physics - were put online for scrutiny by other scientists. In the meantime, the group says it is being very cautious about its claims. They will be discussing the result in detail in a conference at Cern on Friday afternoon, which can be viewed online. "We tried to find all possible explanations for this," said report author Antonio Ereditato of the Opera collaboration. "We wanted to find a mistake - trivial mistakes, more complicated mistakes, or nasty effects - and we didn't," he told BBC News. "When you don't find anything, then you say 'Well, now I'm forced to go out and ask the community to scrutinise this.'"

The speed of light is the Universe's ultimate speed limit, and much of modern physics - as laid out in part by Albert Einstein in his theory of special relativity - depends on the idea that nothing can exceed it. Thousands of experiments have been undertaken to measure it ever more precisely, and no result has ever spotted a particle breaking the limit. But Dr Ereditato and his colleagues have been carrying out an experiment for the last three years that seems to suggest neutrinos have done just that.

Societe Generale led a further rout of bank shares, crashing 9% in Paris on concern that it might need recapitalisation to cope with losses on Italian and Spanish debt. The yield spread between Italian 10-year bonds and Bunds reached a fresh record of 408 basis points before the European Central Bank (ECB) intervened in late trading. It is near the level at which LCH.Clearnet raises margin requirements, the trigger that forced Greece, Portugal and Ireland to request bail-outs.

Global investors appear shaken by the refusal of the US Federal Reserve to come to the rescue yet again with quantitative easing (QE3) even though it was never likely the bank would launch fresh stimulus with core inflation running near 2% or in the face of protests from Capitol Hill. The global flight from risk has hit Europe hardest. Peter Possing Andersen from Danske Bank said Europe's authorities are running out of time. "The financial markets have lost faith in the current policies and the economy is on the verge of a recession. Radical action is needed to short-circuit the negative spiral," he said.

"Segments of the financial markets are dysfunctional and access to credit is being shut down. European policymakers must take imminent and bold measures. Until this happens, the market will grind slowly but surely towards disaster. The current policy of austerity risks killing the already fragile recovery and is making a bad situation worse in terms of debt dynamics," he said.

Asked by CNBC if he believed the US risks falling into a double-dip recession, Soros said: "I think we are in it already. We have a slowdown and basically a conflict about whether the rich ought to pay taxes to create jobs or not and there was a deal in the making which would have balanced the budget over the long term, but would have allowed short-term fiscal stimulus, which would have been the right policy," Soros said in an interview late Wednesday.

"That was rejected, it fell apart... so it will come to the electorate next year to decide what they want," he added. Euro zone policymakers have repeatedly followed the wrong policy shifts, creating a situation in Europe "more dangerous" to the global financial system than the collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008, Soros said.

"It is a more dangerous situation [than Lehman Bros] and I think that the authorities, when push comes to shove, will do whatever it takes to hold the system together, because the alternative is just too terrible to contemplate," he added.

Thursday's slump was sparked by a Federal Reserve warning on Wednesday about the outlook for the US economy. Gloomy comments about weak global growth from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank knocked sentiment further. On Thursday, IMF head Christine Lagarde said the global economic situation was entering a "dangerous place", while World Bank president Robert Zoellick said he thought the world was in a "danger zone".

Doubts about the strength of European banks also resurfaced on Friday, after the head of France's markets regulator, Jean-Pierre Jouyet, said "there is indeed a problem with the capitalisation of banks". He said 15 to 20 banks needed additional funds, none of which were based in France. Meanwhile, Greece has denied media reports it was contemplating defaulting on its debts, with creditors taking a 50% hit on Greek government bonds.

The close friendship that has developed between Christians and Jews "must put up with others saying things that hurt," he told Reuters after he and other Jewish leaders met the pope and Catholic prelates for about 25 minutes. "A possible beatification of Pius XII would hurt us," said Graumann, referring to efforts to put the late pope on the path to sainthood. "For us he is the pope who kept his silence too coldly and loudly during the Holocaust." Critics accuse Pius of not speaking up to defend Jews against the Nazis, but his defenders - including Benedict - say he did the best he could to help them. Graumann said the pope did not react to his objection to beatifying Pius.

In his remarks to the Jews, Benedict said Christians should never forget the horrors of the Holocaust and should become increasingly aware of their faith's deep affinity with Judiasm. Noting that the Nazis planned and organised the attempt to exterminate the Jews from offices in Berlin, Benedict called the city a "central place of remembrance."

Benedict, who as a teenager was forcibly enrolled in the Hitler Youth, said "only a few" Germans were able to see the contempt for humanity the Nazis displayed on Kristallnacht in 1938 when they burnt synagogues and Jewish stores. Adolf Hitler, he said, was a "pagan idol who wanted to take the place of the Biblical God" and that the concentration camps showed what man is capable of doing when he rejects God.

Beefed up police and troops are preparing for the rallies to turn violent and surge out of the Palestinian towns. They are also deployed at mixed population centers of Jews and Arabs up and down the country to avert clashes and concentrated on the Green Line enclosing the West Bank and the approaches to Jerusalem.

In defiance of Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas' directive for rallies to stay within the limits of Palestinian towns and remain orderly, the PA's Religious Affairs Minister Mahmoud Habbash secretly instructed the imams Thursday to turn up the volume of their loudspeakers at Friday prayers and keep on shouting Allah is Great! This call coming from Al Aqsa on Temple Mount aims at reaching every Muslim in the West Bank and Israel. Israeli security chiefs are treating this call, characteristic of suicide bombers, as a war cry for stirring up riots.

Earlier, the president of the World Bank, Robert Zoellick, said the world's economy was "in a danger zone". The comments came after the Federal Reserve warned that the US economy faced "significant downside risks". In Europe, the UK FTSE 100 closed down 4.7%, while France's Cac 40 fell 5.25% and Germany's Dax ended 5% lower. In the US, the Dow Jones was 4.3% in afternoon trading. The FTSE 100's tumble was its biggest one-day fall since the index fell 5.3% on 2 March 2009. Oil prices also fell sharply on worries that a global slowdown will hit demand. Brent crude for delivery in November tumbled $4.71 to $105.65 a barrel. West Texas crude dived $5.22 to $80.70 a barrel.

Mrs Lagarde told a news conference at the IMF's annual meeting in the US that the "path to recovery is narrower than three years ago," when developed economies sank into recession. She said that international leaders must act quickly on fiscal consolidation, the repair of household debt, and reforms of the public sectors. "Time is of the essence," she said. It was key, she added, that the banks were supported because international lending was essential to "fuel growth".

On Wednesday, the Bank of England said members of its Monetary Policy Committee had considered a new round of quantitative easing to pump money into the economy.

An unprecedented meeting between Benedict and Patriarch Kirill could begin to heal the 1,000-year-old rift between the Western and Eastern branches of Christianity, which split in the Great Schism of 1054. Since the break-up of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, the Russian Orthodox Church has accused Catholics of using their new freedoms to poach souls from the Orthodox, a charge the Vatican denies.

But the biggest bone of contention concerns the fate of many church properties that Soviet leader Joseph Stalin ordered confiscated from Eastern Rite Catholics, who worship in an Orthodox rite but owe their allegiance to Rome. Stalin gave the property to the Russian Orthodox Church but after the fall of communism, the Eastern Rite Catholics took back more than 500 churches, mostly in Western Ukraine.

"Not very much was done or is being done in order to solve this problem," said Hilarion, who is head of the external relations department of the 165-million-member Russian Orthodox Church and one of the closest aides to Patriarch Kirill. "As soon as we have this understanding, we will be ready to begin preparations for such a meeting," he said.

"Hate crimes are a security issue and may contribute to destabilising regional or even inter-state relations," he told OSCE conference whose title was "Preventing and Responding to Hate Incidents and Crimes Against Christians." The conference heard reports of growing acts of intolerance against Christians, including attacks on churches in Spain, France and Austria and attacks on anti-abortion activists in Vienna.

Lenarcic, the head of the OSCE's Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights, said the OSCE was monitoring "hate crimes against Christians, as well as intolerance and discrimination against Christians more broadly" than before. The conference echoed recent concerns by the Roman Catholic and other Christian Churches over what they see as growing "Christianophobia" in an increasingly secular Europe.

Metropolitan (Archbishop) Hilarion, foreign minister for the Russian Orthodox Church, warned that some in Europe were looking for "an excuse to exclude signs of Christian civilisation from the public and political realities of the continent." Archbishop Dominique Mamberti, the Vatican's foreign minister, said the OSCE reports provided "irrefutable proof of a growing intolerance against Christians" and that authorities could not ignore the warning signs. "Sadly, acts motivated by bias against Christians are fast becoming a reality also in those countries where they constitute a majority," Mamberti said.