Obama wants to slap a 0.15 percent tax on the liabilities of the biggest US financial institutions to recoup the costs to taxpayers of the financial bailout. "We need to impose a fee on the banks that were the biggest beneficiaries of taxpayer assistance at the height of our financial crisis - so we can recover every dime of taxpayer money," Obama said in his weekly radio and Internet address.

Obama, who is in Canada to attend gatherings with leaders of the world's biggest economies, also used the address to welcome a deal by congressional negotiators on a historic rewriting of US financial regulations. Obama hopes to tout the changes as a model for other countries at the G20 summit on Saturday and Sunday. "I hope we can build on the progress we made at last year's G20 summits by coordinating our global financial reform efforts to make sure a crisis like the one from which we are still recovering never happens again," he said.

The financial regulation package would set up a new financial consumer watchdog, create a protocol for dismantling troubled financial firms and mandate higher bank capital standards, with the aim of avoiding a repeat of the 2007-2009 financial meltdown.

A group, dressed all in black, smashed the windows of a bank, a coffee shop and some stores before heading to an area where Canada's largest banks are headquarted, smashing restaurant windows there. Police with shields and clubs earlier pushed back a small group of protesters who tried to head south toward the security fence around the site of the G-20 summit. Some demonstrators hurled bottles at police.

Previous summit gatherings have attracted massive protests by anti-globalization forces. But so far the Canadian protests have been smaller, and police hoped the rain would further thin the protesters' ranks. Toronto's downtown core resembles a fortress, with a big steel and concrete fence erected along several blocks to protect the summit site.

Previous protests during global meetings have turned violent. In 1999, 50,000 protesters shut down World Trade Organization sessions in Seattle as police fired tear gas and rubber bullets. There were some 600 arrests and $3 million in property damage. At a G-20 meeting, held in London in April 2009, thousands protested, and one man died after a confrontation with police.

At the last G-20 summit in September, police fired canisters of pepper spray and smoke and rubber bullets at marchers in Pittsburgh.

Nerve endings in the brain are not sufficiently formed to enable pain to be felt before 24 weeks, according to the report by the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, which had been commissioned by the Department of Health. The report said: "It can be concluded that the foetus cannot experience pain in any sense prior to this gestation."

Professor Allan Templeton, president of the Royal College, who chaired the review, told The Times that research put forward by anti-abortion campaigners that the human foetus did feel pain at or before 24 weeks was based on evidence from premature babies. This did not apply to the foetus in the womb, he said.

A second finding is that the foetus is naturally sedated and unconscious in the womb, leading the panel to advise that anaesthetics for the foetus are not needed when it is terminated. "There's nothing in the report that suggests any need to review the upper limit," said Professor Templeton. The review would appear to remove one strut of the argument by pro-life campaigners that the current abortion limit needs to be lowered, although they are likely to challenge the Royal College's findings.

Anti-abortion campaigners also argue that survival rates for very premature babies have improved markedly in the last decade - although the statistics are not clear-cut - and that abortion is still the termination of a human life.

But the truth is that is simply not going to happen. Right now the United States is heading for another real estate crash. The only thing that has been holding it back was the huge bribe (called a tax credit) that the US government was giving people to buy houses. Now that the tax credit has expired, there is no artificial incentive to buy homes and the real estate market has fallen through the floor. Unfortunately, there is every indication that things are going to get even worse.

The following are 7 reasons why the US real estate market is already a total nightmare...

- In May, sales of new homes in the United States dropped to the lowest level ever recorded.

- The median price of all new US homes sold in May was $200,900, which represented a 9.6% drop from May 2009.

- New home sale figures for the previous two months were also revised down sharply by the government. Apparently their previous estimates were far too optimistic.

- Newly signed home sale contracts in the US dropped more than 10% in May.

- According to the US Commerce Department, housing starts fell approximately 10 percent in May

- Internet searches on real estate websites are down about 20 percent compared to this same time period in 2009.

- The "twin pillars" of the mortgage industry are a complete and total financial mess. The Congressional Budget Office is projecting that the final bill for the bailouts of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac could be as high as $389 billion. Both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac continue to hemorrhage cash at an alarming rate, but the truth is that without them there wouldn't be much of a mortgage industry left in the United States.

Leaders from the Group of Eight leading economies will meet Friday in Huntsville, before joining up with other officials from the Group of 20 developed and emerging nations in Toronto on Saturday and Sunday. In a huge operation, police combed Toronto's streets barricaded by wire fences and miles of concrete blocks, backed by overhead helicopters, with many schools and businesses closed, and the main Union Station partially shut down.

Local trains only were allowed to unload passengers, who arrived to find the platforms mostly deserted, and security personnel posted at every corner. Protestors are planning days of demonstrations to focus attention on issues from the environment to the rights of indigenous peoples.

Tensions are already running high after Canadian authorities Wednesday said they had uncovered a plot to bomb the summit, charging a 37-year-old Toronto man and his common-law wife with possession of explosives.

"This year's White House fellows are comprised of some of the best and brightest leaders in our country," Michelle Obama said in the June 22 announcement. "I applaud their unyielding commitment to public service and dedication to serving their community." White House fellows spend a year as full-time, paid assistants to senior White House staff, the vice president, Cabinet secretaries and senior administration officials.

Samar Ali of Waverly, Tennessee, is the first name appearing on the White House list. She is an associate with the law firm Hogan Lovells - a firm that claims to have advised on more than 200 Islamic finance transactions with an aggregate deal value in excess of $40 billion.

Shariah finance institutions have funded militant Islamism for more than 30 years. Alexiev cited Islamic Development Bank's hundreds of millions of dollars in contributions to Hamas in support of suicide bombing. Bank Al-Taqwa and other banks and charities run by Saudi billionaires that have funded al-Qaida activities.

Additionally, Shariah law mandates that Muslims donate 2.5 percent of their annual incomes to charities - including jihadists. When 400 banks regularly contribute to such charities, potential financial sums can be virtually limitless. If Western banks endorse Shariah, they will "end up becoming what Lenin called useful idiots or worse to the Islamists," Alexiev wrote. "And it is a very thin line between that and outright complicity in the Islamist agenda."

According to the ONS analysis of data from its monthly Labour Force Survey of 60,000 households, 3.8 million children live with only one of their biological parents because they have a lone mother or their father or mother has left home. There are 2.7 million who live with a single mother and 200,000 with a lone father. A further 500,000 are in cohabiting step-families, and 400,000 in married step-families.

The figures include youngsters up to the age of 16 and 16-18 year olds in full-time education. Their numbers have grown by 600,000 since 1999, the ONS said. The increase in children of broken homes came during the years when the Labour government maintained that all family types are equally good for children and the benefit system was re-shaped to reward single parents and penalise couples.

But supporters of the traditional family called on David Cameron's government to act to try to help two-parent families stay together. Patricia Morgan, a researcher and author on the family, said: 'This isn't diversity. This is a disaster.'

'All the independent evidence shows that this is a bad thing. These figures show that the disintegration of the family is speeding up, with all the inevitable troubles that will follow.' Jill Kirby, of the centre-right think-tank Centre for Policy Studies, said: 'Growing up in a disrupted family at least doubles the risk for a child of doing badly at school, suffering poor health, and growing up to be unemployed, to teenage pregnancy, or to fall into crime.'

'It is crucial that the Government does something to try to give children a better start. Labour preferred diversity to stability and failed children - the new Government needs to turn this around.'

Now Greece is making it easier for the rich and famous to fulfill their dreams by preparing to sell, or offering long-term leases on, some of its 6,000 sunkissed islands in a desperate attempt to repay its mountainous debts. The Guardian has learned that an area in Mykonos, one of Greece's top tourist destinations, is one of the sites for sale. The area is one-third owned by the government, which is looking for a buyer willing to inject capital and develop a luxury tourism complex, according to a source close to the negotiations.

Potential investors also looking at property on the island of Rhodes, are mostly Russian and Chinese. Investors in both countries are looking for a little bit of the Mediterranean as holiday destinations for their increasingly affluent populations. Roman Abramovich, the billionaire owner of Chelsea football club, is among those understood to be interested, although a spokesman denied he was about to invest.

Greece has embarked on the desperate measures after being pushed into a 110 billion euros (90 billion pounds) bailout by the EU and the IMF last month, following a decade of overspending and after jittery investors raised borrowing costs to unbearable levels. As strikes almost paralysed the country and hedge funds bet against the economy, German politicians called for Greece to start selling islands, historic buildings and artworks. It now appears that the Greek government has heeded their demands.

Police have also raided the home of retired Archbishop Godfried Danneels. Belgium is one of several countries in which a stream of abuse claims have shaken the Roman Catholic Church. Brussels prosecutors were looking for material relating to allegations of sex abuse, a spokesman for the prosecutors' office said.

"This is a case that the Brussels prosecutors' office received recently, containing a statement of facts in relation to alleged sexual abuse of minors by a number of people within the church," said Jean-Marc Meilleur. "The object of the searches is to verify the declaration and eventually gather evidence about these declarations," he added. At the home of retired Archbishop Godfried Danneels in Mechelen, just north of Brussels, police took documents but did not question the archbishop, said his spokesman, Hans Geybels.

In recent months, allegations of abuse levelled against Catholic priests have surfaced in many countries. There have also been accusations that Church authorities in Europe and North and South America failed to deal with cases openly or properly.

Pope Benedict XVI himself has been accused of being part of a culture of secrecy, and of not taking strong enough steps against abusers when he had that responsibility as a cardinal in Rome.

In the wake of recent developments in Europe, increased stress in financial markets has pushed that index halfway back to its immediate post-Lehman crisis lows. The index is built from an array of financial indicators such as US treasury yields, the volatility index (VIX), the stock market, Broker-Dealer leverage, among others. It's a bit of a black box, but it's calculation is giving a similar reading to what we saw during the worst of the financial crisis.

The broad index shows a significantly larger net drop than other financial conditions indices from most recent peaks partly because it gives greater weight to financial stock and flow variables and partly because it factors in the extent to which conditions have failed to respond positively to the recovery of GDP. The continued absence of private securitization of mortgages and subdued activity in ABS markets persists in weighing on broad conditions.

Factors that have tended to give an offsetting lift to financial conditions have included a slowdown in the tightening of lending standards and more recently a drop in Treasury yields and associated easing of mortgage rates. Deutsche believes this is a red flag for the economy, and explains why we should expect ultra-low interest rates from the Federal Reserve to continue for quite some time.

The worsening of financial conditions increases negative risks for economic prospects going forward and tends to delay the expected timing of Fed rate hikes.

Both reports follow by less than a week the Pentagon's confirmation that an unusually large American fleet sailed through the Suez Canal Saturday. Several reports stated that an Israeli ship joined the armada. The Pentagon played down the news, saying the American maneuvers were routine.

However, a report by Iran on Wednesday that it has enriched dozens of pounds of 17 per cent enriched uranium serves as a reminder that time is running out to stop Iran from being able to produce a nuclear weapon. Iran's Fars News Agency said the Israeli military aircraft landed 10 days ago at the Saudi base near the city of Tabuk, located in northwest Saudi Arabia, one of the closest areas in the oil kingdom to Iran.

Fars said that the Tabuk base will be the central station for an Israeli attack on Iran. It quoted an Islamic news site that a commercial airline passenger said the airport in Tabuk was closed to all other traffic during the alleged Israeli landings. The passenger said that "no reasonable explanation" was given for shutting down the airport and those passengers were compensated financially and booked in four-star hotels.

"The relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel have become the talk of the town," the passenger added. The chief authority in Tabuk, Prince Fahd ben Sultan, was reported be coordinating the cooperation with Israel.

He told German weekly Die Zeit: 'German policy is a danger for Europe, it could destroy the European project.' He added he 'could not rule out a collapse of the euro. Right now the Germans are dragging their neighbours into deflation, which threatens a long phase of stagnation.'

'And that leads to nationalism, social unrest and xenophobia. Democracy itself could be at risk,' he said. 'Germany is globally isolated... Why don't they let their salaries rise? That would help other EU states to pick up.' Soros's comments come after Germany unveiled more than 80 billion euros (66 billion pounds) of deficit-slashing plans on Monday. German Chancellor Angela Merkel said: 'Around 80 billion euros must be saved until 2014 in order to put our financial future on a solid footing.'

Paris and Berlin have also clashed recently on the best way to shape Europe's economic architecture in the wake of the debt crisis in Greece. Soros added: 'If the Germans don't change their policy, their exit from the currency union would be helpful to the rest of Europe.'

Announcing the decision in a secularist group's monthly newsletter, Mr Hall said prayers were 'outdated, unnecessary and intrusive' and added they would no longer be said before meetings at Leicester Town Hall. The ban comes days after he refused to attend a service at Leicester Cathedral welcoming him to his role as the city's new lord mayor.

He later told his 123 followers on the Twitter networking site that he was mayor for 'all the people of Leicester and not just those from the Church of England'. The East Midlands city is regarded as the most multi-faith and multi-ethnic outside London, with 36 per cent of residents from ethnic minorities, according to the 2001 census.

Writing in the Leicester Secularist Society's publication, the mayor said: 'I am delighted to confirm that I will be exercising my discretion as lord mayor to abolish this outdated, unnecessary and intrusive practice. I consider that religion, in whatever shape or form, has no role to play at all in the conduct of council business. This particularly applies in Leicester, where the majority of council members, myself included, do not regularly attend any particular faith service.'

Mr Hall was yesterday unavailable to discuss his decision to scrap the prayers, which have been said before meetings since 1997.

Rivers, lakes and reservoirs across the region are at their lowest for the time of year since the 1960s following four exceptionally dry months. The water company United Utilities is due to apply for an official drought order today - giving it the power to remove more water than usual from lakes.

The move follows the driest start to the year across the UK since 1964, and the driest January to May in the North-West since the 1920s. The Environment Agency warned that North Wales was also on the brink of drought - but stressed that water levels in the rest of the UK were safe for now.

Rainfall in May was only 38 per cent of the North-West's long-term average, while June looks likely to turn out just as parched. United Utilities - which made pre-tax profits of 474.2 million pounds last year - has applied to take more water from Ennerdale Water in West Cumbria to supply the Whitehaven area.

Less than two months after celebrating its opening, the Alpha Ventus test wind park in the North Sea is already running into problems. Intended to be the initial thrust in a plan that foresees dozens of new offshore wind parks off the German coast, shoddy building materials have caused two turbines to overheat and fail. An additional four turbines will need to be replaced.

Each of the struggling turbines was manufactured by the French firm Areva, which is responsible for half of the 12 turbines in the four-square-kilometer park (1.5 square miles), located about 45 kilometers (28 miles) north of the island of Borkum. Areva said Friday that overheating was unforeseen and "not sufficiently considered" from the outset. As a result, the company will invest in a facility in Bremerhaven to test its turbines under full-load capacity before sending them out to sea.

The turbines, which had only been in operation for eight months, will be replaced by late summer, according to Areva. The wind park's operators, European energy giants E.on, EWE and Vattenfall, played down the incident in a hurriedly called crisis meeting at the Environment Ministry in Berlin. As a result of the Alpha Ventus embarrassment, they are reviewing the billions of euros they have pledged for the development of other offshore wind parks.