Another for six-year-olds asks them to answer what happens to someone who dies who is not a believer in Islam. The answer being looked for is 'hellfire'. A BBC Panorama investigation, to be screened tonight, identified a network of more than 40 weekend schools teaching around 5,000 children, from age six to 18. The schools - which offer the hardline Saudi National Curriculum - are run under the umbrella of 'Saudi Students Clubs and Schools in the UK and Ireland'.

They are not state-funded, and do not use Government buildings. They are able to exploit a loophole which means weekend schools are not inspected by Ofsted. Last night, experts at the Policy Exchange think-tank warned that similar extremists could seek to exploit the Government's policy of giving greater freedoms from state control to free schools and academies. They call for the establishment of a due diligence unit to check whether those applying to open the schools have an extremist background. Current checks are largely limited to fraud, criminal convictions and funding.

Education Secretary Michael Gove, who is believed to be supportive of the idea, said he would not tolerate anti-Semitism and homophobia in English schools. Panorama alleges that a building used for one of the schools, in Ealing, West London, is owned by the Saudi government. Mr Gove told the programme: 'I have no desire or wish to intervene in the decisions that the Saudi government makes in its own education system. But I'm clear that we cannot have anti-Semitic material of any kind being used in English schools. Ofsted are doing some work in this area.'

In the time since European leaders named the Belgian politician Herman Van Rompuy president of the European Council a year ago, the public has taken little notice of the reserved native of Belgium's Flanders region. But that changed last Tuesday, when Van Rompuy made headlines across Europe with a brief remark.

"We all have to work together in order to survive with the euro zone, because if we don't survive with the euro zone we will not survive with the European Union," Van Rompuy said during a panel discussion. With his comments, he expressed what many people in Brussels had been thinking but few had dared to say out loud. As it happens, Van Rompuy would also have preferred not to say what he said. Two days later, he claimed that he had been misunderstood. He had apparently stuck his neck out too far. But that doesn't change the fact that the statement itself was correct.

Euro-zone governments have spent months trying to end the crisis facing their common currency, but the danger has not been averted. On the contrary, the crisis meetings have returned and billions in emergency funds are needed once again. And there is still no end in sight to the crisis.

Chief among Gregg's concerns is the massive deficit under which the US is currently operating. Gregg says the economy is on an "unsustainable track" that, if continued at its current pace, "will double the federal debt in five years, and triple it in 10 years." Gregg compared financial problems here in the US to those Greece is currently having, noting that while the US is a "more vibrant nation, we are still on the exact same track" as the troubled country when it comes to finances.

Gregg insists we need to cut spending, especially as the nation gets ready to take on "70 million retirees" as opposed to the "35 million retirees" the US is currently sustaining via Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid programs. Gregg says the government needs to create incentives for Americans to get involved and better understand the tax process, which he called complex. "Making tax laws simpler to understand" will result in higher compliance from taxpayers and "produce more economic activity" across the country.

The agency, a marvel of nearly instant government when it was launched in the fearful months following the 9/11 terror attacks, started out with a strong measure of public goodwill. Americans wanted the assurance of safety when they boarded planes and entrusted the government with the responsibility.

But in episode after episode since then, the TSA has demonstrated a knack for ignoring the basics of customer relations, while struggling with what experts say is an all but impossible task. It must stand as the last line against unknown terror, yet somehow do so without treating everyone from frequent business travelers to the family heading home to visit grandma as a potential terrorist.

The TSA "is not a flier-centered system. It's a terrorist-centered system and the travelers get caught in it," said Paul Light, a professor of public service at New York University who has tracked the agency's effectiveness since it's creation. That built-in conflict is at the heart of a growing backlash against the TSA for ordering travelers to step before a full-body scanner that sees through their clothing, undergo a potentially invasive pat-down or not fly at all.

"After 9/11 people were scared and when people are scared they'll do anything for someone who will make them less scared," said Bruce Schneier, a Minneapolis security technology expert who has long been critical of the TSA. "But... this is particularly invasive. It's strip-searching. It's body groping. As abhorrent goes, this pegs it."

A US nuclear scientist who recently toured the site says he was "stunned" by the sophistication of the reactor. Japan called the revelation "absolutely unacceptable". Enriched uranium can be used for fuel or made into weapons. North Korea's claim to have developed an advanced uranium enrichment facility has prompted widespread condemnation, with senior officials in Washington, Tokyo and Seoul expressing concern.

"This is obviously a disappointing announcement. It is also another in a series of provocative moves," said Mr Bosworth, who is in the region to try to find ways of restarting nuclear disarmament talks. He said the new evidence showed North Korea to be in violation of a UN resolution and a September 2005 six-nation deal, under which the North agreed to end its nuclear programme in return for aid, and diplomatic and security benefits.

North Korea - which conducted nuclear tests in 2006 and 2009 - pulled out from the six-nation talks last year.

Germany has the strongest economy in Europe, and can borrow for ten years at an interest rate of 2.61 per cent. This compares with the United States, outside the eurozone, which has an interest rate of 2.85 per cent. Britain has a respectable rate of 3.3 per cent. In the eurozone itself, Germany sets the standard, and reasonably so, with low inflation and excellent exports.

In recent months, Greece and Ireland have found that their borrowing had become much more expensive. The current rate for Greece is 11.72 per cent, approximately four times the German rate. Ireland has a rate of 8.43 per cent. Portugal has a rate of 6.82, WHICH IS GETTING CLOSE TO THE POINT AT WHICH PEOPLE WILL NOT BE WILLING TO LEND. Essentially this is a crisis of the burden of borrowing beyond what countries could afford, of current debt and the potential loss of credit which might make future borrowing impossible.

Britain has been dragged into attempts to provide assistance to Ireland, even though we are not members of the eurozone. The reasoning is that Ireland is a very important trading partner to us, as are the eurozone countries collectively. It looks as if George Osborne will concede that Britain ought to help Ireland, either directly or as part of a European package. The Anglo-Irish trade figures are indeed astonishing. There are 4.5 million people living in Ireland, but United Kingdom trade with them is greater than our exports to China, India, Brazil and Russia combined. In terms of British exports, Ireland can be regarded as a superpower.

The British feeling is that our European partnerships should not involve an extension of the powers of the European Union relative to Britain. We do not want to be sucked into a European Federation. Even many Germans are coming to see the burdens which that would put on their economy. But Britain does want stable economic partners, so that the British economy can continue to recover from the 2007 recession. In that endeavour, Germany, with a conservative economic policy, has been one of our most valuable partners. And Ireland is another.

His reply sent shockwaves around Europe and sparked claims by critics that it could turn into a self-fulfilling prophecy and trigger a mass loss of confidence in the euro. Mr Hague's comments - which came amid growing fears of a run on Irish banks - were made at the Nato summit in Lisbon attended by David Cameron and other world leaders. His remarks were immediately dismissed by politicians in Germany, which has invested the greatest political capital in the success of the euro project. Ireland's economy has been brought to the brink of collapse by the bursting of a property bubble, which has left its banks saddled with ruinous debts.

This weekend the Irish government was fighting a losing battle to avoid the humiliation of an international bailout by Brussels and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Economists fear that unless a solution is found quickly, the financiers will turn the screw on other European countries with deepening financial problems, particularly Greece, Portugal and Spain. Ireland's second largest bank, Allied Irish, added to the panic yesterday when it revealed that 13 billion euros had been withdrawn from its accounts this year. Rumours swept Dublin that banks would be locking their doors on Monday morning to prevent a 'run' by panicking investors.

Asked if the euro could be destroyed by Ireland's problems, he said: 'Well, I hope not. No one has pointed out more of the problems over the years than I have in having a currency where we lock together the exchange rates and interest rates in countries with different economies.' Pressed to say if the euro could collapse, Mr Hague said: 'Who knows? If an economist knew that, let alone a politician, they would be very gifted people but clearly we want to make sure that there's stability in the eurozone.'

A collapse in the Brussels-based currency would plunge Europe into its biggest-ever financial crisis. Experts say it would make the recession far worse and that Britain would be hit badly, although our decision to keep the pound could protect us from the worst effects.

The proposal from so powerful a figure will dismay Ireland and other peripheral euro-zone nations already fearful of a loss of sovereignty as the price of a bail-out. Ireland is expected to agree a rescue of up to 100 billion euros (85 billion pounds) within days, in the form of a low-cost loan to shore up the banks. The scale of Ireland's problems was laid bare on Friday by Allied Irish Banks, which revealed that it has lost 13 billion euros of customer deposits - mostly "institutional and corporate" - since the start of the year, 17 per cent of its entire deposit base.

The deepening debt crisis in Ireland which has spread to other parts of the eurozone has left the single currency and European Union fighting for their "survival", Herman Van Rompuy warned. "We are in a survival crisis," he told an audience of Brussels policy-makers yesterday. "We all have to work together in order to survive with the euro zone because if we don't survive with the euro zone, we will not survive with the EU."

Two governmental military experts with extensive experience working with missiles and computer security systems have examined the television video and conclude the mysterious contrail originating some 30 miles off the coast near Los Angeles did not come from a jet - but rather, they say the exhaust and the billowing plume emanated from a single source nozzle of a missile, probably made in China.

They further suggest the missile was fired from a submerged Chinese nuclear submarine off America's coast, and point out that the timing of the alleged Chinese missile shot coincided with an increasing confrontation between the US and China, and was likely meant to send a message to Washington. Indeed, the Federal Aviation Administration documents that there were no aircraft flying in the area at that time, the night of November 8. "The question that still must be answered is why NORAD's muted response was simply that North America was not threatened, and later our government approved the lame excuse that the picture recorded was simply an aircraft leaving a contrail," said retired US Air Force Brigadier General Jim Cash.

A former US Air Force fighter pilot and commander of an F-15 squadron and an F-16 wing, Cash was assigned to NORAD as an assistant director of operations at the Cheyenne Mountain complex near Colorado Springs, Colorado, and is fully knowledgeable of NORAD procedures. "There is absolutely no doubt that what was captured on video off the coast of California was a missile launch, was clearly observed by NORAD, assessed by a four-star general in minutes, and passed to the president immediately," he said.

Even more ominously, cautioned Cash: "We must question the timing of this shot across our bow. The president was abroad being diplomatic, which means trying to placate China which is becoming overly concerned with our handling a totally out-of-control deficit in spending." Wayne Madsen, a former naval officer who has worked at the National Security Agency and the Naval Data Automation Command, said the inability to pick up what he described as a Chinese Jin-class submarine-launched ballistic missile isn't the first time US Navy anti-submarine warfare sensors have failed.

Madsen, who today is an investigative journalist, said the Pentagon is working "overtime with the media and on the Internet to cover up the latest debacle. However, even some reporters who cover the Pentagon full-time are beginning to question the Pentagon's version of events... over the skies west of Los Angeles." Dr Lyle J Rapacki of Sentinel Intelligence Services, LLC, said the contrail incident off the Los Angeles coast is "fraught with peril" due to the defense systems and protocols in place that should have detected the alleged submarine.

"The decision to officially announce that North America was not threatened," he said, "and all the excitement was due to an aircraft leaving a contrail is a decision that reaches beyond the four-star general level and goes directly to a decision made by the commander-in-chief."

G2Bulletin calls to the Pentagon and NORAD for comment beyond previous official statements were not returned.

Right back in 1990, Mrs Thatcher foresaw with painful clarity the devastation it was bound to cause. Her autobiography records how she warned John Major, her euro-friendly chancellor of the exchequer, that the single currency could not accommodate both industrial powerhouses such as Germany and smaller countries such as Greece. Germany, forecast Thatcher, would be phobic about inflation, while the euro would prove fatal to the poorer countries because it would "devastate their inefficient economies".

It is as if, all those years ago, the British prime minister possessed a crystal ball that enabled her to foresee the catastrophic events of the past year or so in Ireland, Greece and Portugal. Indeed, it is one of the tragedies of European history that the world chose not to believe her. President Mitterrand of France and Chancellor Kohl of Germany dismissed her words of caution. And when Mrs Thatcher was driven from office in 1990, a crucial voice was lost, and a new consensus started to form in Britain in favour of the euro.

William Hague, then leader of the opposition, made a series of speeches which, reread today, rival Margaret Thatcher's in their prescience. He predicted that membership would "lead to huge booms and deep recessions". Hague chillingly added that "the single currency is irreversible. One could find oneself trapped in the economic equivalent of a burning building with no exits." He noted that euro membership could lead to a "full-blown banking and financial crisis."

Nobody listened, many mocked, and Hague was accused of dragging the Tory party to the Right. The BBC, an integral part of the pro-European alliance, played its full role in marginalising critics such as Hague. The state-owned national broadcaster lumped the Tory leader in with cranks and xenophobes. By contrast, euro supporters were invariably presented as mainstream and sensible.

The last Italian Pope was John Paul I, who was elected in August, 1978, but died just 33 days later, his sudden death still the subject of conspiracy theories. The new members bring the College of Cardinals to 203, 121 of whom are under age 80 and thus eligible to vote in a conclave - the process by which a new Pope is elected in secrecy in the Vatican's Sistine Chapel.

Of the cardinals from European countries, nearly half those of voting age will be Italian. With the new cardinals, Benedict will have chosen 40 per cent of the College of Cardinals, infusing the group with conservative, tradition-minded prelates like himself. That will virtually guarantee that a future Pope will not radically overhaul the direction of the Church.

Generating employment "is at the heart of the strategy of some countries to keep their currencies undervalued," Lamy said in New Delhi. "Just as it is also at the heart of other countries' loose monetary policies."

Competitive devaluations, which have raised fears of a global currency war, could trigger "tit-for-tat protectionism", he told a business audience. Lamy singled out "unsustainable and socially unacceptable unemployment" levels around the world as the most serious challenge facing the global economy. But "uncoordinated 'beggar thy neighbour' policies will not result in increased employment," he said.

Washington has urged Beijing to allow its yuan to rise, saying the currency has been undervalued to create an unfair trade advantage and stoke China's economic boom. The United States, where unemployment is nearly 10 percent, has been accused of doing the same with a 600-billion-dollar cash injection announced earlier this month as it seeks to jump start its sluggish economy.

Lamy warned against efforts by nations to achieve a trading advantage similar to moves that worsened the Great Depression of the 1930s.

"The lessons of history are there - showing that it is coordinated action through international cooperation that maximises benefits for citizens of the world," Lamy said.

And now they have become as integral to the new rich as an indoor infinity pool and twinned Doric column portico. "I have seen panic rooms in London houses with fridges, air-conditioning, independent electricity and separate plumbing and water supplies," says Noel De Keyzer, a director of Savills, based in London's Sloane Street. "They first began appearing after 9/11 and have become more popular during the subsequent decade."

"Most of the rooms we have installed have been for overseas clients," says a spokesman for Westminster International, a leading security firm that specialises in building the impregnable four walls. "Occasionally, we have fitted them into grand homes in the middle of the country, where owners are worried about armed robbery and the fact that it may take the police some time to arrive. But otherwise, it is foreign clients in urban areas who feel the need for them the most." These protective pods range from simple rooms with reinforced doors to those built with concrete bases, steel ceilings and bullet-resistant Kevlar panels.

Most panic rooms can be installed for as little as 1,000 pounds, depending on fixtures and fittings. On the other hand, Global Multi Service UK offers rooms that cost up to 90,000 pounds. Its top-of-the-range bespoke models are constructed of steel sheeting, which are capable of seeing off a battery of assault rifles and are equipped with emergency lighting, video monitor and CCTV. There is a separate telephone line, communication system, fresh-air supply, first-aid kit, fire extinguishers and an alarm keypad, all powered by a small generator.

And now they are over here. Although my guess is that it will be only after the last repeat of Dad's Army has been shown and forgotten that the average Brit will be brave enough to install a panic room.

The warning spoke of the "damaging impact" on Ireland's "ability to win and retain investment" should the country's corporation tax rate be increased from 12.5 per cent. It came as talks between members of the Irish government and the European Union and the International Monetary Fund continued around the clock on a financial aid package of as much as 100 billion euros to shore up the country's beleaguered banking system.

Although Brian Lenihan, the Irish finance minister, has indicated Ireland's 12.5 per cent corporation tax rate - the lowest in the eurozone - will not be raised, a number of factions within the European Union are known to have pushed for it to be increased in return for the bail-out. The US warning was written by Lionel Alexander, president of the American Chamber of Commerce in Ireland, and a senior HP executive. Foreign investment equates to 110 billion euros - or 70 per cent - of all exports with US companies alone employing more than 100,000 workers.

While the companies are not threatening to leave at this stage, the statement - signed by senior Irish executives from each of the four companies mentioned - does directly point out that although Ireland's tax rate may be low in European terms, it is not when compared with locations such as Singapore, India and China.

This week however, the German pontiff will say for the first time that there are some circumstances in which it can be acceptable for condoms to be used. While the Pope restates Catholicism's objections to contraception and stresses its emphasis on abstinence as the best policy to fight Aids, he says that using a condom could be a responsible act if it is intended to prevent the spread of the virus.

Perceived as the Vatican's enforcer after heading its Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith - formerly known as the Holy Office of the Inquisition, he is challenging this image by showing himself willing to embrace change. The Pope's reluctant support for condom use in certain circumstances is likely to dismay the most conservative Catholics who believe it is impossible to distinguish the use of condoms as contraceptives and their use as preventers of the transmission of Aids.

Yet it reflects a growing consensus amongst theologians that the stance now adopted by the Pope can be morally justified. Cardinals, such as Godfried Danneels and Lozano Barragan, have argued that it must be better for an infected man to use a condom if the intention is not to avoid life but to prevent death.

Crucially, it may go further in ensuring the Church's relevance in public debate, presenting it as more humane and more flexible - even at the risk of people thinking the Church has changed its mind on the issue. This desire to secure the Church's place in the public square is at the heart of Pope Benedict's thinking and no doubt the guiding reason behind such a brave move.