As many as 40,000 people, including teachers, students, firefighters and prison guards, swarmed the Capitol on Friday, raising the noise in its rotunda to earsplitting levels as they rallied to block Republican Governor Scott Walker's efforts to ease Wisconsin's budget woes by cutting many government workers' pay, benefits and bargaining rights.

Some say this week's rallies are unmatched in their sustained, impassioned energy - bolstered by Senate Democrats who fled the state to delay action on Walker's proposal and threatened to stay in hiding for weeks if calls for negotiation go unheeded. State troopers were sent to retrieve the Democratic minority leader from his home Friday, but their knocks went unanswered.

"That's jaw-dropping. This is uncharted," said Mordecai Lee, a UW-Milwaukee political scientist and former state lawmaker who said he's been reminded this week of when a motorcycle riders' protest of a helmet law in the late 1970s persuaded legislators to overturn the measure. Simac, a small business owner, says "it's embarrassing for the state of Wisconsin" that half of the Senate has "gone AWOL." Tea Party member Dan Hunt says a similar effort is under way in Kenosha where an exploratory committee will consider recalling Senator Robert Wirch.

Sarah Palin weighed in with a Friday night posting on her Facebook page that urged "union brothers and sisters" not to ask taxpayers to support "unsustainable benefits packages. Real solidarity means everyone being willing to sacrifice and carry our share of the burden," Palin said in her post, which did not indicate whether she would join conservatives in Madison this weekend.

The protests are growing so large that Capitol workers and lawmakers' staff cannot safely move through the halls, Fitzgerald said, calling the situation "a powder keg." The protests have attracted as many as 25,000 teachers, grade school children, college students and other workers over four days. "I'm starting to hold Senator Miller responsible for this," Fitzgerald said. "He shut down democracy." The changes would save the state $30 million by June 30 and $300 million over the next two years to address a $3.6 billion budget shortfall.

The bill passed the legislature's budget committee on Wednesday night and was to have been debated on the floor of the state Senate on Thursday, but several Democratic legislators fled to neighboring Illinois to ensure the lack of a quorum. Republicans hold a 19-14 majority in the Legislature, but without a quorum, no vote may be taken.

According to the Wisconsin senate majority leader, the Governor's office is sending out state troopers to go after Wisconsin's Democratic Senate members to bring in a vote on Governor Walker's budget bill which would dramatically limit government workers union's ability to negotiate many of their benefits.

"They are prepared to dispatch state troopers to go out to some of the residences of some of the senators," said Republican State Senator Scott Fitzgerald on Newsradio 620 WTMJ's 'Midday with Charlie Sykes.'

Egyptian industrialist Shafik Gabr was in Davos, Switzerland, when the revolution began. It was January 26, the second day of protests in Tahrir Square, and from 1,600 miles away at the World Economic Forum - teeming with financiers, celebrities, and heads of state in the crisp, Alpine air - it didn't look much like a revolution. But by the time Gabr arrived in Cairo on Friday the 28th - having cut short his trip to rush home on his Gulfstream 200 - the planet's most populous Arab country had changed forever. And not necessarily for the better

"The stock market is closed, the banks are closed, transfers are delayed. The economy is in paralysis," Gabr told me this week from Cairo, where he is chairman and managing director of the ARTOC Group, a real estate-engineering-consumer products-media conglomerate that employs 3,500 Egyptians. "I am a person who has always believed in the importance of orderly transition with law and order, because the minute you lose law and order is the minute you enter into a dark tunnel, a vicious circle. If we do not have law and order - which as of yet we do not - then Egypt will become a very complex, dangerous, fluid place."

It was obvious to Gabr that there was method to the madness.

"There was a serious plan to scare the populace, no question about it," he said. "There was a huge number of police stations that were torched all at the same time, all in the same manner. I cannot attribute it to any party. I can say very honestly that there were factors playing a major role beyond the youths in Tahrir Square, to torch, attack, break cells in the prisons for prisoners to be released, to steal police uniforms, to steal armaments, in the very same exact manner across Egypt, not just Cairo. And that requires planning. It's almost like one of those movies where you have sleeper cells."

Although Barclays was not directly rescued by the UK government - unlike Lloyds and Royal Bank of Scotland - it has been able to borrow extremely cheaply because of the Bank of England's decision to slash interest rates, and because markets perceived that the government would not allow any big bank to fail.

Barclays has a legal responsibility to its owner - its shareholders - to keep costs including tax to a minimum. At the same time the Barclays boss himself said that paying tax was one of a bank's key obligations to society. Many members of that society will not be pleased to learn that only 113 million pounds in corporation tax was paid whilst the bonus pool amounted to 3.4 billion pounds.

On Thursday, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said: "Bahrain is a friend and an ally and has been for many years and while all governments have a responsibility to provide citizens with security and stability, we call [for] restraint.'' President Barack Obama on Friday again spoke of universal rights, including the right to freedom of assembly, but American national interests hang in the balance, perhaps even more so than with Egypt.

Hosni Mubarak had been a US ally for the last 30 years, a moderate president of a country with a peace treaty with Israel and a key partner in the peace process. But with the loud, overwhelming demand from the streets of Cairo for Mr Mubarak's departure, it became untenable to continue supporting him while professing to support those universal rights, so Washington took a gamble.

It came to the conclusion it could let go of a president who had failed to implement reforms because the Egyptian army, underwritten by the US, would probably maintain the country on a moderate path that would be mostly acceptable to Washington and, by extension, Israel, at least in the short term.

But when the US looks at Bahrain, it sees Iran and the picture blurs. Tehran and Washington have been foes since 1979 and Sunni kingdoms like Bahrain, but also its bigger neighbour Saudi Arabia, a vital US ally, are a crucial counterweight to Iran's growing influence in the region.

Protesters say they are willing to break the law and face a 1,000 pounds fine and a criminal record by refusing to fill in the 32-page questionnaire. Resistance to the decennial census is growing as a coalition of anti-war groups, pacifists, religious organisations and digital activists begin raising public awareness about the role of Lockheed Martin, America's largest arms manufacturer.

The company, which makes Trident nuclear missiles, cluster bombs and F-16 fighter jets, won the 150 million pounds contract to run the census on behalf of the Office for National Statistics (ONS). A spokesman for the Stop the War Coalition said: "We will certainly be calling for a boycott and telling people not co-operate with the warmongers."

"The really worrying thing is the fact that the information being collected in the next census - including new questions on sources of income and place of birth [to help monitor immigration] - would be ideal fodder for the kind of anti-terror analyses being carried out by Lockheed, and could lead to a faraway database identifying thousands of us as potential 'threats'."

Lockheed Martin - which does 80% of its work for the US defence department - assists more than two dozen American government agencies and is involved in surveillance and data processing for the CIA and FBI. It has controversially provided private contract interrogators to the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. All US-based companies are subject to the Patriot Act, which allows the US government to have access to any data in the company's possession. Campaigners have warned this could give the US government access to detailed and personal data on the UK's entire population.

Should the strike go ahead, it is likely to lead to petrol forecourts running dry within days, due in part to panic buying. Talks between the Unite union, which represents about 3,000 drivers, and petrol delivery companies are due to take place on Friday in a dispute over working conditions and pensions.

Industry sources have suggested the negotiations have almost no chance of success because of the union demands and the number of private haulage companies involved in the dispute. Unite, which is led by Len McCluskey, will then hold a series of meetings with shop stewards around the country - to take place next weekend - which will gauge grassroots support for a strike.

Any industrial action would take a further four to five weeks to organise, meaning strikes would be likely to begin in early to mid April. An industry source said: "If this goes ahead, parts of the country will grind to a halt very, very quickly. If they begin balloting at the beginning of March that takes us into Easter and the run-up to the wedding."

Amnesty said in a statement sources at al-Jala hospital in Benghazi had reported 28 deaths and more than 110 people injured in Thursday's protests in the city, and at least three further deaths on Friday. Local human rights activists reported at least 15 deaths on Thursday during protests in the nearby town of Al Bayda, an Amnesty International spokeswoman said.

"This alarming rise in the death toll, and the reported nature of the victims' injuries, strongly suggests that security forces are permitted to use lethal force against unarmed protesters calling for political change," said Malcolm Smart, Amnesty International's director for the Middle East and North Africa. "The Libyan authorities must immediately rein in their security forces. Those responsible for unlawful killings and excessive force - both the direct perpetrators and those who gave the orders - must be identified and brought to justice," he said in the statement.

Amnesty said the sources at al-Jala hospital in Benghazi had told it the most common injuries were bullet wounds to the head, chest and neck. Thousands of people protested in Benghazi, Libya's second city, on Friday over a security crackdown in which dozens of people were killed but which failed to halt the worst unrest of Muammar Gaddafi's four decades in power.

After centuries of mistrust between religion and science, the intention is to give the public a greater understanding of both sides. The website, which will be available in Italian and English, has information on everything from astronomy to theology, from space missions to philosophy and art.

It will have three portals - one for a general audience, one for students and their professors, and one for scholars. Within each portal, there will be a variety of multimedia platforms, including a cosmology section, and one that will have the latest data collected by satellites and unmanned probes. The venture is being run jointly by the Vatican and the Italian Space Agency, ASI.

Monsignor Gianfranco Basti, the dean of the Pontifical Lateran University's philosophy department, will be the Vatican's point man on the scheme. He says: "From the Church's point of view, this is about getting religious people to see that scientists are not the enemy and getting scientists to see that religious people are not the enemy. The aim is for both sides to come together for the good of humanity. I can believe in God and at the same time accept Einstein's theory that time has not always existed."

In a thinly veiled comparison, he said only Greek military dictators had previously denounced the European Convention on Human Rights. His comments were condemned by David Davis, the Conservative backbencher who was one of the MPs behind last week's Commons vote which backed a motion opposing the European ruling by 234 to 22.

Mr Davis said last night: "It is farcical to compare the oldest democracy in Europe with a military dictatorship. No one has any argument with the Convention as originally drafted and signed but that does not give the court the right to add on any authorities it sees fit. And it does not give the court the right to be insulting." Asked why he said it would be a "disaster" for Britain if it was to defy the judgment, Mr Costa told the BBC: "The only country which denounced the Convention [on Human Rights] was Greece in 1967 at the time of the dictatorship of the colonels. I cannot imagine, even if I can understand some irritation, that the UK, which is a great country, could be in the same situation as the colonels in 1967."

David Cameron set a collision course with both European and domestic judges on Wednesday when he said it was time Parliament decided laws. He spoke out after an "appalling" decision by Britain's Supreme Court that paedophiles and rapists should be allowed to appeal against being held on the sex offenders' register for life. The Coalition is still deciding how to abide by the prison vote ruling, which Mr Cameron has said makes him "physically sick". Today the High Court will rule on a Government attempt to throw out the claims of hundreds of prisoners who demanded compensation for not being able to vote in last year's general election

Mr Costa acknowledged that "it seems a little paradoxical" to give rapists and murderers the vote. He also said he understood the anger the court's decision had caused in Britain as some countries felt such matters were for parliaments not the courts. Mr Costa was one of only three European judges, out of 17, who was against the court's decision and felt Britain was not breaching human rights by having a blanket ban on votes for prisoners. He was overruled by the other judges.

She said it was now a "de facto one party system". Opening the debate, Hungarian European Affairs Minister Eniko Gyori - representing the Council of Ministers - said there was "unacceptable" violence against journalists and human rights activists, particularly in the turbulent North Caucuses region.

She criticised the immunity from arrest of Russian security forces in the region - a decision she said was leading to "grievances and terror".

In November 2010, a leading Russian journalist Oleg Kashin was severely beaten outside his Moscow home. The editor of the liberal Kommersant newspaper said the attack was probably retribution for articles Kashin wrote. He has recently covered anti-Kremlin protests and extremist rallies. MEPs passed a resolution urging action on human rights in Russia at the daily voting session on 17 February 2011.

The Class X flash - the largest such category - erupted at 0156 GMT Tuesday, according to the US space agency. "X-class flares are the most powerful of all solar events that can trigger radio blackouts and long-lasting radiation storms," disturbing telecommunications and electric grids, NASA said Wednesday.

Geomagnetic storms usually last 24 to 48 hours - but some could last for many days, read a statement from the US National Weather Service. "Ground to air, ship to shore, short-wave broadcast and amateur radio are vulnerable to disruption during geomagnetic storms. Navigation systems like GPS can also be adversely affected."

The China Meteorological Administration reported that the solar flare caused "sudden ionospheric disturbances" in the atmosphere above China and jammed short-wave radio communications in the southern part of the country. The CMA warned there was a high probability that large solar flares would appear over the next three days, the official Xinhua news agency reported.

Al-Qaradawi last delivered a Friday prayer sermon in Egypt in 1981 after the assassination of former President Anwar el-Sadat. Other prominent Muslim scholars were also banned from delivering the Friday sermon, such as Abd al-Hamid Kishk, Sheikh Mohammed al-Ghazali, and Sheikh Ahmed El-Mahallawi. El-Mahallawi lately returned to leading Friday prayers during the revolution at al-Qaed Ibrahim Mosque in Alexandria.

Sheikh Qaradawi confirmed in a telephone call with the German Press Agency that he would lead tomorrow's prayers in Tahrir, with hundreds of thousands expected to attend. Some of Qaradawi's sons and daughters took part in the Tahrir demonstrations leading up to the overthrow of Mr Mubarak.

The demonstration was organised through websites such as Facebook and Twitter and was closely coordinated with hundreds of other people who are based in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip, one of the organisers told AFP. "We are giving the Palestinian factions until March 5 to make a reconciliation deal," said Badur Zamara, one of the protest organisers who works for a youth organisation called Sherek Forum.

Zamara said the group was planning a sustained pressure campaign which would include marches, rallies and protests, all calling for Hamas and Fatah to reconcile their differences. "They have already failed to do this but we feel that we can do what the factions couldn't do," he told AFP, saying the protesters wanted to use "Egyptian tactics" to bring about reconciliation within the bitterly divided Palestinian national movement.

Last month, a group of young, disgruntled Egyptians organised a series of anti-government rallies that mushroomed into an unprecedented civil protest movement that succeeded in bringing down the 30-year regime of Hosni Mubarak within the space of just 18 days. The uprising sparked shock waves across the Middle East, and has prompted widespread calls for democratic reform. Zamara said activists in Gaza were planning to hold a rally on Friday.

"King Abdullah... is the only person who can carry out these reforms," the prince told the broadcaster. "On his departure, may that be in many years to come, latent trouble will surface and I have warned of this on many occasions. We need to resolve the problems in his lifetime," the prince added. Talal added that if Saudi authorities "don't give more concern to the demands of the people, anything could happen in this country".

Talal has long called for reform in Saudi Arabia and formed the liberal political group "Free Princes Movement" in 1958 in reaction to the hostility between former kings Saud and Faisal. Because of his involvement with the Free Princes Movement it is unlikely that Talal, a former ambassador to France, will ever become king. Leaders throughout the Arab world are anxiously studying the spread of protests which have already unseated the presidents of Tunisia and Egypt.