Greece clearly needs help escaping from its financial quagmire, according to German European Union Energy Commissioner Gunther Oettinger. In fact, the EU should consider using some "unconventional" methods to increase motivation among Greek officials for solving the country's problems, he told daily Bild on Friday.

"There has been the suggestion too of flying the flags of deficit sinners at half mast in front of EU buildings," the member of Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservative Christian Democrats told the paper. "It would just be a symbol, but would still be a big deterrent."

Another tactic for pulling the debt-stricken country out of crisis could be replacing "the obviously ineffective administrators" there, he added. Because Greek officials have failed at collecting outstanding taxes and selling state-owned assets as planned, Oettinger alleged, experts from other EU nations should be sent in to do their jobs instead. "They could operate without concern for resistance and end the inefficiency," he told Bild.

After all: "Those who demand solidarity from the other countries must also be prepared to give up partial responsibility for a certain time."

But isn't there a glaringly obvious alternative way of financing these desperately needed reforms, one that would avoid any need to increase extortionate charges still further? Even if the 10 billion pounds figure for separating banks' high street operations from their high-risk investment arms proves correct - a very big 'if' - it is dwarfed by the sums bankers pay themselves in their annual orgy of bonuses.

In the last financial year alone, at a time of growing hardship for millions, the City helped itself to bonuses of a staggering 14 billion pounds. Indeed, many will wonder what possible justification there can be for paying bankers any bonuses at all, while the big five banks still enjoy taxpayers' subsidies estimated at 46 billion pounds a year. Reforms have become necessary because of the bankers' recklessness with our money. As Business Secretary Vince Cable insists, it is the guilty and not their victims who must pay for them.

The International Air Transport Association, whose members include British Airways, Virgin Atlantic and more than 200 global airlines, said main airports were struggling to cope with mounting layers of safety regulations that now cost the financially troubled industry $7.4 billion (4.6 billion pounds) a year to implement. Tony Tyler, director general of IATA, said: "We spend a huge amount of resource on screening people who quite frankly do not need it."

"We need to find a better way of doing it. Apart from the cost, we are putting our customers through an immensely complicated and, most of the time, unnecessary, hassle. And airports are creaking at the seams to find the space and capacity to deal with this," he added.

Philipp Roesler, Germany's economy minister, said an "orderly default" for Greece could no longer be ruled out and branded the country's deficit-reduction measures "insufficient". The warning is likely to spook financial markets further and comes despite Greece yesterday announcing a fresh 2 billion euros (1.7 billion pounds) of budget cuts and the introduction of a country-wide real estate tax.

Evangelos Venizelos, the finance minister, said the cuts and tax measure were necessary to allow Greece to meet obligations demanded by the European Union and IMF in exchange for bail-out funds. Writing in the Die Welt newspaper, Mr Roesler said: "To stabilise the euro, we must not take anything off the table in the short run. That includes as a worst-case scenario an orderly default for Greece if the necessary instruments for it are available."

He said such a default would mean "re-establishing the affected state's ability to function, perhaps with a temporary restriction of its sovereign rights".

It came less than a week after Turkey, Israel's other major ally in the Muslim world, announced it was expelling the Israeli ambassador and downgrading its relationship to the lowest possible level after a deadly skirmish involving a Turkish aid vessel that was attempting to deliver supplies in defiance of Israel's blockade of the Gaza Strip.

With another potential predicament brewing later this month when the Palestinians are expected to request membership and statehood at the United Nations, Israeli-Arab relations appear to be plunging to their lowest point in years. "Within a week Israel has found itself two friends down and about to face a so-called diplomatic tsunami with the Palestinians," said one European envoy in Jerusalem, who spoke on condition of anonymity under diplomatic protocol. "I would be nervous if I was an Israeli diplomat today."

The damage to relations with Egypt and Turkey has struck many Israelis. Turkey was the first Muslim-majority country to recognize Israel as a Jewish state in 1949 and Egypt was the first Arab country to sign a peace treaty with Israel in 1979.

Palestinian legislator Hanan Ashrawi, who will help launch the bid at the UN, told McClatchy that Israel had "put itself in a corner."

"We will go forward with this despite the threats from Israel and its allies. When the vote happens Israel will see how isolated it truly is," Ashrawi said. She added that the United States, Israel's main ally, would also be "embarrassed. I think the United States has been warned time and time again - from its own people - that its partnership with Israel might not be in its best interest right now," she said. "But they continue to stand by Israel, and ignore the changes in the region that the Arab Spring is bringing."

One protester in Grosvenor Square said: 'You will always face suffering, you will always face humiliation, unless you withdraw your troops from Muslim lands.' A small group of Muslims staged a counter-demonstration nearby, holding up placards reading 'Muslims Against Extremism' and 'If You Want Sharia, Move To Saudi'. Abdul Sallam, 41, who was waving a sign that read 'Keep The Silence', travelled down to London from his home in Glasgow to show the strength of his feelings.

He said: 'I'm a Muslim. What they're doing is bringing shame on all Muslims. This is not part of the teachings of Islam. Islam is all about peace, but what they want to do is hate other people. Islam teaches you that when you see anything bad or evil, you should speak out against it. If the moderate Muslims all came out and spoke out, that would defeat them. I am proud to be British. I love my country. All these people are doing is breaking Britain apart.'

Earlier, a group of English Defence League protesters were ordered to move on to accommodate the anti-American demonstration. The 60-strong group briefly scuffled with police as they were forced away from their original location to a different part of Grosvenor Square. Twenty people were arrested for breach of the peace as the group was dispersed towards Oxford Street. And at least four more arrests were made as police escorted the Muslim group back towards the Central London Mosque in Regents Park.

The smoke was still rising from the rubble of the World Trade Center when Richard Armitage, at the time the US deputy secretary of state, spoke in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. "History begins today," he said. In the coming decade, Armitage would turn out to be right - except the politician could not have foreseen how tragic the history would be following the epochal event. It is the history of the decline of the USA as a superpower.

Immediately before the attacks, this country was in full bloom - like Rome at its peak, as TV host Joe Scarborough recalls today. The Republican President George W Bush had inherited a fat budget surplus from the Democrat Bill Clinton. In Kosovo, the US, which Madeleine Albright dubbed "the indispensable nation," had just shown the Europeans how it could resolve conflicts, even in their own backyard. Bill Gates and Microsoft were still cool.

Then came the planes, piloted by the followers of Osama bin Laden - and for a brief moment, the superpower seemed even more powerful than ever. Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat had himself photographed donating blood for the victims. Even the French all suddenly wanted to be Americans. German Chancellor Gerhard Schroder promised "unlimited solidarity." What followed was an unlimited mistake. Bin Laden had hoped to entangle the Americans in bloody wars. How well he would succeed in doing this, he probably could not have imagined himself.

America was trapped in Iraq for years, where a victory was a long time coming and was never a real one. It is currently trapped in Afghanistan, where victory no longer even seems possible. And it is trapped in an embrace with its ally Pakistan, which it does not trust and yet cannot release.

These are costly defeats for America and the rest of the world. According to a conservative estimate by Brown University, there have been almost 140,000 civilian casualties in Afghanistan and Iraq. The massive retaliation cost more than $3 trillion (2.2 trillion euros) - dollars that would have been better used in America's schools or in the wallets of US citizens.

The diplomatic crisis, in which winds unleashed by the Arab Spring are now casting a chill over the region, was crystallized by the scene of Israeli military jets sweeping into Cairo at dawn on Saturday to evacuate diplomats after the Israeli Embassy had been besieged by thousands of protesters. It was an image that reminded some Israelis of Iran in 1979, when Israel evacuated its embassy in Tehran after the revolution there replaced an ally with an implacable foe.

"Seven months after the downfall of Hosni Mubarak's regime, Egyptian protesters tore to shreds the Israeli flag, a symbol of peace between Egypt and its eastern neighbor, after 31 years," Aluf Benn, the editor in chief of the left-leaning Israeli newspaper Haaretz, wrote Saturday. "It seems that the flag will not return to the flagstaff anytime soon." Egypt and Israel both issued statements on Saturday reaffirming their commitments to their peace treaty, but in a televised address on Saturday night, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel warned that Egypt "cannot ignore the heavy damage done to the fabric of peace."

Facing crises in relations with Egypt and Turkey, its two most important regional allies, Israel turned to the United States. Throughout the night on Friday, desperate Israeli officials called their American counterparts seeking help to pressure the Egyptians to protect the embassy. President Obama "expressed his great concern" in a telephone call with Mr Netanyahu, the White House said in a statement, and he called on Egypt "to honor its international obligations to safeguard the security of the Israeli Embassy."

Washington - for whom Israel, Turkey and Egypt are all critical allies - has watched tensions along the eastern Mediterranean with growing unease and increasing alarm. And though the diplomatic breaches were not entirely unexpected, they prompted a flurry of diplomatic activity in Washington.

"Egypt is not going toward democracy but toward Islamicization," said Eli Shaked, a former Israeli ambassador to Cairo who reflected the government's view. "It is the same in Turkey and in Gaza. It is just like what happened in Iran in 1979."

The decision by Jurgen Stark to quit comes in the wake of the Frankfurt based European bank's decision to restart its programme of buying the sovereign bonds issued by Greece, Italy and the other struggling euroland nations. Stark is known to be an opponent of the bond buying effort fearing that it undermine the credibility of the European Central Bank and could knock down the value of the euro on the foreign exchange markets and lead to future inflation.

The German official is known to be a monetary hawk and clearly opposes the efforts to prop up the single currency at Germany's expense. His departure for what were described as 'personal reasons' could not come at a worse time for the ailing euro area and sparked a sell off the single currency against the dollar. Immediately after the resignation the euro dropped 1.5 per cent against the American dollar and almost one per cent against the pound to Euro 1.1494.

The shock departure comes in the wake of this week's ruling by the German Constitutional Court which stated that Berlin could support the weaker countries of the eurozone providing the rescues are first approved by the German parliament, the Bundestag. Clearly, Stark was alarmed by this development and fears it could undermine Germany's efforts to keep the euro as a 'hard' currency area and a bulwark against inflation.

Without German support for the bond buying programme, efforts to give Greece and Italy more time to sort out their enormous budget problems could be seriously undermined. This potentially could speed up Greece's journey to default, devaluation and exit from the euro and the return of the drachma. He is to be succeeded by former Goldman Sachs banker and governor of the Bank of Italy Mario Draghi who has been described as 'German' Italian because of his belief in sound money.

And he urged the Government to remedy the crisis by spreading wealth - and ensuring its policies were underpinned by an objective belief in what is right. The Pope told Nigel Baker, Britain's ambassador to the Holy See, that it would be wise for the Government 'to employ policies that are based on enduring values that cannot be simply expressed in legal terms'.

He went on: 'This is especially important in the light of events in England this summer. When policies do not presume or promote objective values, the resulting moral relativism tends instead to produce frustration, despair, selfishness and a disregard for the life and liberty of others.' The theory of relativism holds that there can be no objective standard on which to base morality.

Speaking about a more distant relationship with the EU, he told The Times: 'It's true of the euro, it could be true of more areas in future. In fact we may get ahead as a result of being outside.' Mr Hague said the creation of the eurozone without closer tax and spending rules was 'always a giant mistake' and it 'would stand as a monument in time to how group-think can go so seriously away from what is realistic'.

Prime Minister David Cameron has come under increasing pressure to hold an 'in/out' referendum on Europe. Earlier this week a 100,000-name petition was delivered to Downing Street, enough to trigger consideration of a parliamentary debate on the issue. Mr Cameron insisted there was 'no case to answer' on membership, adding: 'I want us to be influential in Europe about the things that matter to our national interest - promoting the single market, pushing forward for growth, making sure we get lower energy prices.' On Monday, a group of 80 new intake Tory MPs will meet to discuss what reforms they want.

The system also picked up early clues about Osama Bin Laden's location.

Kalev Leetaru, from the University of Illinois' Institute for Computing in the Humanities, Arts and Social Science, presented his findings in the journal First Monday.

The study's information was taken from a range of sources including the US government-run Open Source Centre, and the Summary of World Broadcasts (now known as BBC Monitoring), both of which monitor local media output around the world. News outlets which published online versions were also analysed, as was the New York Times' archive, going back to 1945.

In total, Mr Leetaru gathered more than 100 million articles. Reports were analysed for two main types of information: mood - whether the article represented good news or bad news, and location - where events were happening and the location of other participants in the story.

Mood detection, or "automated sentiment mining" searched for words such as "terrible", "horrific" or "nice". Location, or "geocoding" took mentions of specific places, such as "Cairo" and converted them into coordinates that could be plotted on a map. Analysis of story elements was used to create an interconnected web of 100 trillion relationships.

Media "sentiment" around Egypt fell dramatically in early 2011, just before the resignation of President Mubarak. For Egypt, the tone of media coverage in the month before President Hosni Mubarak's resignation had fallen to a low only seen twice before in the preceding 30 years. Previous dips coincided with the 1991 US aerial bombardment of Iraqi troops in Kuwait and the 2003 US invasion of Iraq. Mr Leetaru said that his system appeared to generate better intelligence than the US government was working with at the time.

"If you look at this tonal curve it would tell you the world is darkening so fast and so strongly against him that it doesn't seem possible he could survive." said Kalev Leetaru - University of Illinois.

The aide said the plane suffered disturbance to its GPS system due to jamming signals from the North's southwestern cities of Haeju and Kaesong as it was taking part in the annual US-South Korea drill, Key Resolve. The incident was disclosed in a report that Seoul's defense ministry submitted to Ahn Kyu-baek of parliament's defense committee, the aide to Ahn said. Spokesmen for the defense ministry and US Forces Korea declined to comment.

Jamming signals - sent at intervals of five to 10 minutes on the afternoon of March 4 - forced the plane to make an emergency landing 45 minutes after it took off, the aide quoted the report as saying. The signals also affected South Korean naval patrol boats and speedboats, as well as several civilian flights near Seoul's Gimpo area, according to the report.

Seoul mobile users also complained of bad connections, and the military reported GPS device malfunctions as the South and the US were staging the drill, which was harshly criticized by the North. The Communist state has about 20 types of jamming devices, mostly imported from Russia, and has been developing a new device with a range of more than 62 miles (100 kilometers) near the heavily-fortified border, the Yonhap news agency has said.

The action came under an unusual legislative procedure spelled out under the August agreement to raise the US debt ceiling and avoid a US credit default. In a 52-45 vote, the Senate blocked an attempt by Republicans to slow down the process that will result in the $500 billion debt-ceiling increase.

The increase stems from a deal between Congress and the White House, finalized last month, that spells out how the borrowing limit would be increased by $500 billion. Under the process, lawmakers in both the House and Senate must vote on a resolution of disapproval against the increase in the borrowing limit. President Barack Obama would then have to veto the resolution of disapproval, and Congress would then vote to try and override that veto.

The complicated procedure, designed by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (Republican for Kentucky), would allow an increase of the borrowing limit while allowing most Republicans to vote against such an increase. There was a twist in this scenario Thursday evening, however. Democrats held firm, rejecting the resolution of disapproval, thereby speeding the process and increasing the borrowing limit immediately.

German finance minister Wolfgang Schauble said there will be no more money until Grecce "actually does" what it agreed to do. "I understand that there is resistance among the Greek population to austerity measures. But in the end it is up to Greece whether it can fulfil the conditions necessary for membership of the common currency. We offer no discounts," he told Deutschlandfunk. The wording has been taken as a threat to eject Greece from EMU, though is there no legal mechanism for such drastic action.

Dutch finance minister Jan Kees de Jager said the Netherlands "will not participate" in further payments to Greece unless it secures the go-ahead from the EU-IMF Troika, which left Athens abruptly last week after talks broke down. The showdown in Greece came as the European Central Bank (ECB) abandoned its push for higher interest rates and slashed growth forecasts for the next two years, warning that the situtation is "extraordinarily demanding" and that "downside risks" have intensified.

It is not clear who is in the stronger position in the latest round of brinkmanship between Greece and the German bloc. If pushed too far, Greece can set off a powderkeg. The International Monetary Fund says European banks are highly vulnerable and need to raise their capital by 200 billion euros. Many of the weakest are in Germany. Barclays Capital said Italy and Spain have already slipped back into industrial recession, ratcheting up the pressure. The question is what will happen if the global economy fails to stabilize quickly. Italy faces 62 billion euros of debt redemption this month, and 170 billion euros by the end of December. The ECB's ordeal by fire may yet be ahead.