So far, Congress has only passed two spending bills while funding for the US military, homeland security, diplomatic and development missions, the judicial branch among other critical government functions, all hang in the balance. Operating without a full-fledged budget at the start of the fiscal year is not ideal, said a Democratic aide on the House Appropriations Committee, but it's often hard to avoid.

The aide said political disputes and other legislative priorities tend to make it difficult to get all of the spending bills "wedged in" on time.

"The difficulties arise out of partisanship in the process. It's a battle between leadership and other forces," the aide said. 2011 wouldn't be the first fiscal year to start without a budget in hand. Congress has not passed a budget on time since at least 1998, the earliest budget year posted on the House Appropriations Committee website.

As in previous years, that means Congress will be forced to pass at least one "continuing resolution" to prevent a federal shutdown and continue operating at the 2010 budget level, which is on track to record a $1.3 trillion deficit, the second highest deficit - relative to gross domestic product - in 65 years.

The worst offenders were NatWest and Royal Bank of Scotland, part of the RBS group in which the taxpayer holds an 84 per cent stake. Both charged overdraft rates on a range of current accounts of well over 19 per cent. The August average is 38 times higher than the base rate of 0.5 per cent, which means the banks are cashing in every time one of their customers falls into the red. If account holders exceed their overdraft limit they face further penalties in the form of fees and even higher rates.

The idea that banks are profiting from the money troubles of their customers will anger many, who feel that they would not be in the red but for the recession caused by the banks' reckless behaviour. In addition, margins on other services such as credit cards, loans and mortgages have soared while high street banks have enjoyed a surge in profits to 15 billion pounds in the first six months of the year. The overdraft details were released on the day the Bank of England decided to keep the base rate at the record low for the 18th consecutive month.

Last night Eddy Weatherill, of the Independent Banking Advisory Service, said banks are 'fleecing their customers'. He said: 'Banks have been allowed to increase their margins despite the bank rates being so low. There is no incentive for them to do otherwise. The level of profiteering is completely out of control. Nothing about it is fair or reasonable.'

He will praise Britain's role in establishing religious liberty, but warn that it will suffer if it allows a secular agenda to destroy its Christian heritage. Senior Roman Catholic sources said his message would be seen as a criticism of the introduction of equality laws that have impinged on the freedom of religious groups, although he will not directly refer to government policy.

A number of Christians have lost their jobs or faced disciplinary action for practising their faith at work by wearing a crucifix or sharing their views on biblical teaching. The Pope will also use the visit to try to heal the rift with the Church of England following his offer last year to disaffected Anglicans to defect to Rome.

Writing in The Sunday Telegraph, the Most Reverend Vincent Nichols, the leader of the Catholic Church in England and Wales, says Pope Benedict XVI will stress that religious belief should not be seen as divisive, but as "a source of energy and inspiration". Archbishop Nichols added: "When we forget, minimise or even reject this inheritance, then we risk losing our profound identity and creating a vacuum of values at the heart of our society." He described the visit as "an event of great cultural and historic resonance".

Last month, unnoticed in the UK, Denmark's giant state-owned power company, Dong Energy, announced that it would abandon future onshore wind farms in the country. "Every time we were building onshore, the public reacts in a negative way and we had a lot of criticism from neighbours," said a spokesman for the company. "Now we are putting all our efforts into offshore windfarms."

But it is in Denmark, the great windfarm pioneer, where some of the most interesting changes are taking shape. In 1980, the Danish government was Europe's first to bring in large-scale subsidies - on which, just as in Britain, the wind industry depends. The results have been dramatic. According to the Danish Wind Energy Association, there are more than four thousand onshore turbines - two-thirds more than Britain - in a country a fifth the size. Nowhere else has more turbines per head, and Denmark is also a global centre of wind turbine manufacturing - with Vestas, the world's leading turbine firm, based in the country.

Unfortunately, Danish electricity bills have been almost as dramatically affected as the Danish landscape. Thanks in part to the windfarm subsidies, Danes pay some of Europe's highest energy tariffs - on average, more than twice those in Britain. Under public pressure, Denmark's ruling Left Party is curbing the handouts to the wind industry.

"Westboro Baptist Church, the small Topeka, Kansas, church that pickets funerals of American soldiers to spread its message that God is punishing the country for being tolerant of homosexuals, has vowed to hold a Quran burning if Gainesville's Dove World Outreach Center calls its off" (www.ocala.com).

The founder of the Wyoming Tyranny Response Team plans to burn a copy of the Quran on the steps of the State Capitol on Saturday.

Duncan Philp said he will protest the location of a proposed Islamic Center near Ground Zero in New York City. He also will protest President Barack Obama's support for the location (www.wyomingnews.com).

The latest entrant is the Happy Meal Project, a burger and a packet of fries that have soldiered on undecayed for 143 days. Started by New York photographer Sally Davies, as a part-art, part-food science experiment, the Happy Meal Project involves Davies documenting a Happy Meal every few days until it spoils. At day 137, the meal still looks pretty great. For its part, McDonald's has remained largely silent. The fast food giant's Chinese arm released a statement this May to counter the hysteria over Joann Bruso's year-long experiment. It announced that all its patties are made of 100 percent USDA-approved beef and are completely preservative-free. Sneakily, though, it made no mention of its fries, bread, cheese or sauce.

McDonald's French fries, for example, which have repeatedly proven their hardiness to spoilage, contain citric acid as a preservative. But a bigger factor might be the fat content of the fries. About 50 percent of the total 250 calories contained in a small order of fries come from fat. McDonald's fries are also coated in a nice, thick layer of salt, something we've been using as a natural preservative for the last 2,500 years. The beef patty is also high in fat - varying between 37 and 54 percent of the total caloric content - and has been cooked at a high temperature. "It's also very thin, which once again means high heat per surface area," says Sean O'Keefe, a professor of food science at Virginia Tech. Davies noted that over time, her patty just shrank and hardened, losing whatever moisture it once contained.

Ultimately, says O'Keefe, the McDonald's haters have gotten their science wrong. "The ingredients are similar to anything you'd see in processed fast food," he says. For better or for worse, McDonald's is no more a chemical laboratory of secret compounds designed to embalm us from the inside than any other processed food maker. A Happy Meal manages to stay unspoiled because it is fatty, salty and practically empty of nutrients - which, really, are all good reasons to avoid it anyway.

"WBC burned the Koran once - and if you sissy brats of Doomed America bully Terry Jones and the Dove World Outreach Center until they change their plans to burn that blasphemous tripe called the Koran, then WBC will burn it (again), to clearly show you some things," the church announced in a news release this week.

In April, a handful of Westboro members picketed outside of the University of Florida Hillel, the Jewish student center, and Trinity United Methodist Church, and Jones and about 30 members of his congregation joined the WBC members outside of Trinity United.

While officials from President Barack Obama to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton have condemned Jones' plan, Fox News reported Thursday that a White House spokesman said the administration is considering contacting Jones to urge him to call it off.

President Hamid Karzai said the stunt had been an insult to Islam, while Indonesia's president said it threatened world peace. Pastor Terry Jones told US breakfast TV he currently had no plans to do it. Mr Jones, pastor of the previously little-known Dove World Outreach Center in Gainesville, Florida, announced on Thursday that he was putting on hold his plan for an "International Burn a Koran Day".

In an Eid message, President Karzai said: "We have heard that in the US, a pastor has decided to insult Korans. Now although we have heard that they are not doing this, we tell them they should not even think of it. By burning the Koran, they cannot harm it. The Koran is in the hearts and minds of one-and-a-half billion people. Insulting the Koran is an insult to nations."

The president of Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim country, warned in a nationally televised address on Friday that Mr Jones's plan threatened world peace. In a speech marking the end of Ramadan, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said: "I'm of course aware of the reported cancellation of the deplorable act by Terry Jones. However, none of us can be complacent until such a despicable idea is totally extinguished."

These highly disturbing video games encourage players to shoot innocent bystanders to win points and to commit acts like using shovels to decapitate people, so dogs can then fetch their chopped-off heads. If you find that shocking to read, just imagine how much more shocking it is for a 7-year-old to see it acted out in gory graphics and to win points for committing such crimes.

Other scenes include having sex with prostitutes and then killing them or committing heinous acts of terrorism. These deadly role-playing games not only desensitize and reward players for acts of extreme violence, but are highly addictive. Parental control isn't the solution, because parents typically have no way to fully review these games before giving or denying permission to their children to play them. Some games are programmed to become more violent while the game is being played, and parents usually don't or can't play the games.

Children don't necessarily know the difference between fantasy and reality. Brain research indicates that teenagers' brains, as well as children's brains, are still developing and may store violent images as real memories. Virtually every school massacre can be traced to the young killers' addiction to violent video games. The video game industry reaps tens of billions of dollars in revenue and now even surpasses Hollywood in profits, revenues and influence.

A case challenging a law limiting the sale of these violent video games to children is now pending before the US Supreme Court. This case reached the high court because a couple of lower federal court judges, the kind we call supremacists, ruled that these games are entitled to as much free speech protection as, for example, Shakespeare, and laws limiting sales to children are unconstitutional. The video game industry is trying to wrap its evil products in the First Amendment. The industry is asking the high court to create a new type of free speech that would make it impossible to put any limit on this victimizing of children.

Italian Father Gheddo is a highly respected figure from the Vatican's Pontifical Institute for Foreign Missions, a society of missionaries. He blamed Christians for failing to live up to their own beliefs and creating a 'religious vacuum' which was being filled by Islam. 'The challenge must be taken seriously,' he said.

'Certainly from a demographic point of view, as it is clear to everyone that Italians are decreasing by 120,000 or 130,000 persons a year because of abortion and broken families - while among the more than 200,000 legal immigrants a year in Italy, more than half are Muslims and Muslim families, which have a much higher level of growth.' He added: 'If we consider ourselves a Christian country, we should return to the practice of Christian life, which would also solve the problem of empty cradles.'

The Bank of Japan agreed at an emergency meeting to boost its special loan facility by 10 trillion yen to 30 trillion yen (220.7 billion pounds). "We need to watch out more carefully for downside risks to Japan's economy," said Governor Masaaki Shirakawa, who cut off his trip to the Jackson Hole forum in the US.

"Several weak US figures came out, while the yen rose and stock prices fell. When we saw this, we decided that we need to take more precautions." Premier Naoto Kan said Tokyo would tap into its reserve fund for a 920 billion yen spending package on jobs and investment. "We want to take swift measures as the second pillar of stimulus to support easing by the bank," he said. The sums are tiny, a sign of Mr Kan's limited room for manoeuvre as public debt reaches 225 percent of GDP. Rating agencies are already circling ominously.

Haunted by memories of Japan's hyperinflation, the bank is moving gingerly. Even so, it is the first central bank to start loosening again. While the Bank of England has hinted at more quantitative easing, and the Fed is taking steps to avoid "passive tightening", neither has yet launched fresh QE.

Equity investors learned this week that they had misjudged the risk of a relapse as fiscal stimulus wears off, and misread the willingness of the US Federal Reserve to respond. Wrongly viewing Ben Bernanke's Fed as a soft touch, they took a fresh blast of quantitative easing for granted before it was agreed.

What has emerged since the acrimonious Fed meeting on August 10 is that Bernanke was unable to marshal a consensus behind fresh QE. Seven members argued that Fed should not take such a drastic step until the economy was in serious trouble, according to Wall Street Journal Fed-watcher Jon Hilsenrath. They settled on a compromise that the Fed should roll over holdings of bonds as they reach maturity to avoid passive tightening. But there was no deal on further action. Philadelphia's Charles Plosser grumbled that the Fed had sent "a garbled message".

Market tensions have been simmering for days. They erupted on Tuesday when Japan's yen smashed through resistance against all major currencies, reaching a 15-year peak against the US dollar. The Nikkei index buckled below 9,000 as yen strength pushed Japan's export industry deeper under water. "This has been one of the most interesting days in finance ever," said Andrew Roberts, head of credit at RBS. "We are right at the tipping point. Yields are about to collapse even further, equities are about to turn over. THE END GAME APPROACHES, PROBABLY IN NEXT FEW WEEKS."

"The policy of forced 'internal devaluation', deflation, and depression could risk driving Greece to the edge of a civil war. It is impossible to cut wages and prices by 30 percent without major riots," he said, speaking at the elite European House Ambrosetti forum at Lake Como. "Greece would have been bankrupt without the rescue measures. All the alternatives are terrible but the least terrible is for the country to get out of the eurozone, even if this kills the Greek banks," he said.

Dr Sinn said Greece is an entirely different case from Spain and Portugal, which still have manageable public debts and can bring their public finances back into line with higher taxes. "Greece would have defaulted in the period between April 28 and May 7, had the money not been promised by the European Union," he said, describing the failure of the EU's bail-out strategy to include a haircut for the banks as an invitation to moral hazard. "There should be a quasi-insolvency procedure for countries. Creditors have to accept a haircut before any money flows for rescue plans, otherwise we'll never have debt discipline in the eurozone," he said.

Dr Sinn said Germany is now super-competitive after clawing back 18 percent in competitiveness during its long slump. "We're in a new phase of history. The toggle switch has turned and we are going to see a mirror image of the last 15 years. This time it is Germany that will have an internal boom," he said. Germans will not recyle their savings in the Club Med region. They will invest at home.

"More quantitative easing (bond purchases) by the Federal Reserve is not going to make any difference. Treasury yields are already down to 2.5 percent yet credit spreads are widening again. Monetary policy can boost liquidity but it can't deal with solvency problems," he told Europe's policy elite. Dr Roubini said the US growth rate was likely to fall below 1pc in the second half of the year, despite the biggest stimulus in history: a cut in interest rates from 5 percent to zero, a budget deficit of 10 percent of GDP, and $3 trillion to shore up the financial system.

The anaemic pace compares with rates of 4-6 percent at this stage of recovery in normal post-war recoveries. "We have reached stall speed. Any shock at this point can tip you back into recession. With interbank spreads rising, you can get a vicious circle like 2008-2009," he said, describing a self-feeding process as the real economy and the credit system hurt each other. "There is a 40 percent chance of double-dip recession in the US, and worse in Japan. Even if it is not technically a recession it will feel like it," he added.

Hans-Werner Sinn, head of Germany's IFO Institute, said the US would have to purge its debt excesses the hard way. "The bitter truth is that there is no way out of this with monetary and fiscal policy. They will just have to see their living standards go down. I see a decade of difficulties for the US," he said.

Students taking English 333 will watch 16 classic zombie films and read zombie comics. As an alternative to a final research paper they may write scripts or draw storyboards for their ideal zombie flicks. The university isn't the first to have a class on the undead. Columbia College in Chicago has offered a course on Zombies in popular media for years, and at Simpson College in Iowa students spent the spring semester writing a book on "The History of the Great Zombie War."