Savvas Savouri, partner and chief economist at Toscafund, has called for tighter scrutiny despite a wave of recent regulation tackling bank capital requirements and bonuses as lawmakers try to avert a repeat of the credit crisis. "Finance is almost lawless. The nature of regulation is so light touch that it may as well not be there at all," Savouri said at the London School of Economics' Alternative Investments Conference.

"It (the financial services sector) is like medicine in the 18th century - it's full of frauds... and is very poorly regulated... You need to be that much better (than your rivals) if you don't perform underhand or insider trades." Savouri's comments make Toscafund one of the few hedge fund firms to argue the case for more regulation following the European Union's Alternative Investment Fund Managers directive which seeks closer supervision of hedge funds even though many regulators say they were not directly responsible for the crisis.

The UK was the first country in the G7 to release economic growth figures for the last quarter of last year and the 0.5 percent GDP contraction, instead of an expected 0.5 percent expansion, sent the pound 1 percent lower against the dollar and the euro and knocked down European stocks.

David Blanchflower, a former Bank of England Monetary Policy Committee member known for his dovish stance and currently a professor of economics at Dartmouth College, said the figure was "awful, dreadful." Britain's government, formed of a coalition of Conservatives and Liberal Democrats, has implemented tough austerity measures to cut state spending and increase revenues in order to persuade markets it is still worthy of its triple-A investment grade.

The Bank of England's hands are tied when it comes to fighting inflation, as it will probably have to take more quantitative easing steps, according to Blanchflower. "I think people have underestimated the sheer size of this shock," he said.

According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, there were 846,181 abortions in the US in 2006, the latest year for which government records are available.

The pro-abortion rights Alan Guttmacher Institute reports that there have been nearly 50 million abortions performed since 1973, the year the Supreme Court issued the Roe vs Wade decision ushering in legal abortion nationwide. In 2008, Guttmacher says, there were 1.2 million "legally terminated pregnancies" in the United States, based on reports complied from state and local health agencies -- down from 1.3 million the year previous.

According to Guttmacher, 35 percent of all US women will have had an abortion by age 45. Guttmacher also reports that 93 percent of all abortions occur for "social reasons" such as a mother's decision that the child is unwanted or "inconvenient."

In Washington, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton warned that formation of a government dominated by Hezbollah would mean changes in US relations with Lebanon. The militant group and its allies ousted the government backed by Washington two weeks ago when they walked out of the Cabinet.

"A Hezbollah-controlled government would clearly have an impact on our bilateral relationship with Lebanon," Clinton said. The United States deems Hezbollah a terrorist organization and has imposed sanctions against the group and its members. The ascendancy of Hezbollah is a setback to the United States, which has provided Lebanon with $720 million in military aid since 2006 and has tried in vain to move the country firmly into a Western sphere and end the influence of Iran and Syria. Hezbollah's opponents maintain having an Iranian proxy in control of Lebanon's government would be disastrous and lead to international isolation. The militant group has its own arsenal and is the country's most powerful military force.

A telecoms tycoon and former prime minister, Mikati, a 55-year-old Sunni, is seen as a neutral figure in Lebanese politics. He is a friend of Syrian President Bashar Assad and also enjoys close ties with US ally Saudi Arabia. His nomination does not alter Lebanon's power-sharing system, in which the prime minister must be a Sunni, the parliament speaker a Shiite and the president must be a Christian Maronite. Each faith makes up about a third of Lebanon's population of 4 million. But the very fact that Hezbollah, a group known as much for its ties to Shiite Iran as for its hostility to Israel, chose him and secured enough lawmakers' votes to make him prime minister is enormously significant. It underscores Iran's growing influence in the region at a time when Washington's is waning.

Five big themes are dominating the Davos agenda:

1. How will the rise of India and China alter the global balance of power?

2. How can Western economies cope with debt, austerity, joblessness and potentially years of low growth?

3. Will rapid economic growth in emerging economies trigger run-away inflation, and could it lead to dangerous bubbles? Economists at IHS Global Insight already compare China's property market to that in Japan before the big crash of the early 1990s.

4. How are digital media and technology changing not just whole industries, but human society?

5. And as the enemies of the World Economic Forum (WEF) seem to have disappeared, the capitalists in Davos have to be their own best critics, with a series of sessions examining the failings of the global economic system - from poverty to inequality, resource problems and green issues.

A popular topic at Davos is whether the event "will get it wrong again" - as in 2007 and even 2008, when many business leaders failed to sport the imminent financial and economic meltdown. That may be true, but the organisers can console themselves with the fact that the rest of the world tends to get it even more wrong than the Davos consensus.

Thousands of demonstrators remained in the city centre around Tahrir Square late into the night, vowing to camp out overnight. Activists had called for a "day of revolt" in a web message. Protests are uncommon in Egypt, which President Hosni Mubarak has ruled since 1981, tolerating little dissent.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said her administration supported "the fundamental right of expression and assembly" and urged all parties "to exercise restraint". She added that Washington believed the Egyptian government was "stable" and "looking for ways to respond to the legitimate needs and interests of the Egyptian people".

The events in Cairo were co-ordinated on a Facebook page - tens of thousands of supporters clicked on the page to say they would take part. The microblogging website, Twitter, has confirmed that its website has been blocked in Egypt. Twitter said it believed the open exchange of information and views was a benefit to societies and helped government better connect with their people.

Protests also broke out in other areas, including the eastern city of Ismailiya and the northern port city of Alexandria. In Alexandria, witnesses said thousands joined the protests, some chanting: "Revolution, revolution, like a volcano, against Mubarak the coward." Cairo resident Abd-Allah told the BBC that by Tuesday night some protesters were saying they wouldn't give up until President Mubarak had gone. "People are behaving as if they are ready to die," he said.

"The atmosphere is very tense, it feels like a revolution. I see people who are determined, people who have nothing to lose, people who want a better future." Reports said protesters had earlier gathered outside the Supreme Court holding large signs that read: "Tunisia is the solution." The organisers rallied support saying the protest would focus on torture, poverty, corruption and unemployment, calling it "the beginning of the end".

Two-thirds of the US could become uninhabitable as toxic air sweeps through it, grounding thousands of flights and forcing millions to leave their homes. This is the nightmare that scientists are predicting could happen if the world's largest super-volcano erupts for the first time in 600,000 years, as it could do in the near future.

Yellowstone National Park's caldera has erupted three times in the last 2.1 million years and researchers monitoring it say we could be in for another eruption. They said that the super-volcano underneath the Wyoming park has been rising at a record rate since 2004 - its floor has gone up three inches per year for the last three years alone, the fastest rate since records began in 1923.

The University of Utah's Bob Smith, an expert in Yellowstone's volcanism told National Geographic: 'It's an extraordinary uplift, because it covers such a large area and the rates are so high. Mr Smith, professor of geophysics at the University of Utah, who has led a recent study into the volcano, added: 'Our best evidence is that the crustal magma chamber is filling with molten rock.'

The Yellowstone Caldera is one of nature's most awesome creations and sits atop North America's largest volcanic field. Its name means 'cooking pot' or 'cauldron' and it is formed when land collapses following a volcanic explosion. In Yellowstone, some 400 miles beneath the Earth's surface is a magma 'hotspot' which rises to 30 miles underground before spreading out over an area of 300 miles across. Atop this, but still beneath the surface, sits the slumbering volcano.

More than 30 heads of state, over 1,400 business leaders and eight central bank chiefs will flock to Davos, an expensive Swiss ski resort, for the Forum which opens on Wednesday. The WEF named the risk that parlous government finances will trigger sovereign debt defaults as one of the biggest threats facing the world in 2011 in a report published before the meeting. Klaus Schwab, who chairs the Forum, said nations were suffering from "global burnout syndrome" and were too weak to tackle the plethora of inter-related threats facing business and governments.

Rising prices for food, fuel and metals have raised concerns about inflation globally. They could also lead to protectionism and the kind of unrest seen in Tunisia and Algeria in recent weeks. High food prices could also hit consumer spending in fast-growing emerging markets and endanger the fragile recovery in the world economy. "If we don't do anything (about rising food prices) we run the risk of food riots in the poorest countries and a very unfavorable effect on global economic growth," Sarkozy said on Monday.

Michala Marcussen, head of global economics at French bank Societe Generale, says Davos provides a platform for European leaders to explain the region's debt situation to the rest of the world. "What makes Davos unique is the mixing of business leaders and policymakers. Davos will be one of the opportunities for European policymakers to know how the rest of the world sees and understands the European situation," she said.

The EFSF, set up in May to provide financing, can borrow money on the market with euro zone government guarantees of up to 440 billion euros - insufficient if both Portugal and Spain apply for emergency financing. Germany is key to any changes to the euro zone agreement but has so far resisted calls to increase the size of the fund. "We are shifting toward a new economic governance model, a process driven by Germany. It will be done step by step," Marcussen says.

Monday's violence followed a bloody Sunday that left an officer in Indianapolis critically wounded during a traffic stop shooting, four officers in Indianapolis wounded after a gunman opened fire in a precinct and two more officers in Washington wounded in a shootout in a Walmart parking lot. "It's not a fluke," Richard Roberts, a spokesman for the International Union of Police Associations, told MSNBC.com. "There's a perception among officers in the field that there's a war on cops going on."

While all the shootings don't appear to be connected, Roberts says they have one thing in common. "We don't have any data, but there seems to be a type of criminal out there looking to thwart authority," he told the station. According to National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund, an organization that tracks police casualties, there have already been as many officer deaths in January 2011 as in January of last year. The organization reported that officer deaths were 43 percent in 2010 compared to 2009.

Berisha accused the socialist opposition of wanting to trigger "a Tunisian-style scenario for Albania" by staging "a coup to seize power by force," AFP reported. Tens of thousands of people took to the streets for an anti-government protest called by the socialist opposition on 21 January. The demonstration ended with violent clashes between protesters and the police, and three people were killed.

Albania's President Bamir Topi and Western envoys urged warring political parties to settle their differences and called on security forces to launch investigations into the three people deaths. Prosecutors said on Sunday that police had not yet acted on arrest warrants issued for six republican guardsmen suspected of carrying out the shootings in Friday's confrontation.

Berisha and opposition Socialist Party leader Edi Rama blamed one another for the deaths, with each side promising new rallies in an escalating political row. "Restoring political dialogue, respect for the institutions of the state and the expression of maturity and balance is of a vital importance for the present and European future of Albania," a statement from President Bamir Topi and US and European Union ambassadors said on Saturday evening. They said it was "indispensable that law enforcement institutions cooperate with each other to conduct a transparent, professional and unbiased investigation".

One of Europe's poorest countries, Albania is part of NATO but the European Union rejected its application last year to become an official candidate for membership of the bloc, urging it to fight corruption and establish a functioning democracy and the rule of law.

The European Central Bank signaled it could raise interest rates this year to quell inflationary pressure in the euro zone. Last week Brazil's central bank raised interest rates half a percent. As for China, the country raised its rates twice in 2010 and is expected to do so again very soon. Peter Schiff, President of Euro Pacific Capital has been sounding alarm bells on impending inflation for quite sometime. Now that it's finally here, he tells Aaron rising prices have got nothing to do with the conventional wisdom the government would like you to believe.

From the weather, to speculators, to greedy corporations, inflation's "got nothing to do with those factors" and everything to do with the money supply, says Schiff. Inflation "is the consequence of what the government has done to try to stimulate the economy," he says, referring to quantitative easing and stimulus spending. Basically, the Fed has had to print money in order to pay for this country's huge deficits, which in turn has pushed up the price of just about everything priced in dollars, which remains the world's reserve currency.

In the case of China, "the only way it can stop its inflation problem is to stop importing it from us, which means... they have to let their currency rise," Schiff says. As resistant as the Chinese have been to doing this, Schiff believes that they are slowly, but surely, starting to realize their economy could benefit from a stronger currency - more purchasing power and a greater standard of living. If that happens, "the US had better brace itself," says Schiff. "It will unleash an inflationary nightmare here in the United States."

"As the Chinese currency increases in strength, the dollar must decrease," he explains. "And, so Americans would experience higher prices, falling purchasing power and a lower standard of living."

The Japanese company reported 8.42 million sales worldwide last year. That's 30,000 more than GM's 8.39 million in global sales for 2010. GM expects its sales growth to continue, and industry analysts say it may dethrone Toyota as the global sales leader this year. The news came the same day that GM announced it was adding a shift and workers to a plant in Flint, Michigan, that makes hot-selling pickup trucks.

GM and Toyota tied for the global sales lead in 2007, ending GM's 76-year string of dominance. Toyota took the title in 2008 and has held it ever since, but last year's string of embarrassing safety recalls and a resurgent GM combined to make the race close again.

Hezbollah and its allies earlier won the nomination of their candidate Najib Mikati as the next prime minister. The US expressed "great concern" over Hezbollah dominating government. "Our view of Hezbollah is very well-known. We see it as a terrorist organisation, and would have great concerns about a government within which Hezbollah plays a leading role," State Department spokesman PJ Crowley said. "The larger the role played by Hezbollah in this government the more problematic our relationship will be."

Lebanon's national unity cabinet collapsed on 12 January after a row over a UN tribunal investigating the 2005 murder of Mr Hariri's father, Rafik. Saad Hariri had refused to renounce the UN inquiry that correspondents say will blame senior Hezbollah figures for the murder. Hezbollah says the investigation is politically motivated. Reports on Monday said demonstrations broke out in various regions with a significant Sunni Muslim population.

He ordered increased security across Russia's capital, its airports and other transport hubs. Mr Medvedev also called an emergency meeting with officials and also postponed his planned departure for this week's World Economic Forum at Davos.

The airport - the busiest serving Russia's capital - is 40km (25 miles) south-east of the city centre. Russian investigators said two Britons were among the dead. Footage from mobile phones showed the arrivals area filled with smoke, with bodies strewn across the floor, shortly after the attack around 1630 (1330 GMT). BBC security correspondent Gordon Corera said immediate suspicion about Monday's attack would fall on militants from the Caucasus region.

Militant groups fighting in the Caucasus know how important the perception that the president and prime minister provide a secure society is, and to undermine that is a key aspect of their aims, adds our correspondent. Last March the Russian capital's underground system was rocked by two female suicide bombers from Russia's volatile Dagestan region, who detonated their explosives on the busy metro system during rush hour, killing 40 people and injuring more than 80.

The latest leaks show the Palestinians agreed to limit the number of refugees allowed to return to their homes in what is now Israel under a peace deal. The BBC has been unable to verify the documents independently. The documents have been released by al-Jazeera TV, which says it has more than 1,600 confidential records of meetings, e-mails, and communications between Palestinian, Israeli and US leaders covering the years 2000-2010.

The papers, believed to have originated from the Palestinian side, show an apparent willingness to accept Israel's annexation of much of East Jerusalem. They reportedly proposed an international committee to take over Islamic and Jewish holy sites in Jerusalem, and offered to limit the number of refugees returning to a future Palestinian state to 100,000 over 10 years. These highly-sensitive issues have previously been non-negotiable. All were apparently rejected by the Israelis.

Palestinian negotiators are said to have proposed an international committee to take over Jerusalem's Temple Mount/Haram al-Sharif, which houses the Dome of the Rock and al-Aqsa Mosque - Islam's third holiest site.