Fitch said its downgrade to AA from AA+, with outlook negative, "reflects risks to both BP's business and financial profile", reversing an earlier view that the spill would have little impact. Moody's also cut the group's ratings to Aa2 from Aa1, while Standard & Poor's said it is reviewing ratings on 35 oil companies in the Gulf of Mexico.

In a separate blow to the oil giant, BP's Russian joint venture on Thursday gave up a 10-year struggle to develop one of the world's biggest, most gas-rich fields.

TNK-BP, the Russian joint venture 50 per cent owned by BP, put one of its units into bankruptcy proceedings, meaning the giant Kovytka field will be sold off to the highest bidder. The sale will realise cash for TNK-BP - after its attempts at developing Kovytka were repeatedly stymied by the Russia government.

BP produces a quarter of its oil and gas from Russia and a quarter from the Gulf of Mexico. In a sign that BP's problems are becoming an increasingly political issue, BP executives met Charles Hendry, Britain's new energy minister on Thursday. BP was the UK's biggest company before it lost a third of its value following the accident that killed 11 men last month.

The figures showed that there was a 22.4 per cent drop in the number of passengers on services to and from the Asia-Pacific region. However, there was only an 8.5 per cent reduction in passengers on North and South American routes. The figures produced by the airline covering May included 14 days of industrial action which, BA estimates, cost it 98 million pounds. BA admitted that the full financial impact of the stoppages, taking into account lost bookings, will only become clear once the dispute is over.

However the group said that an increasing number of cabin crew were defying the strike call by the Unite trade union, which meant it was able to operate four out of five longhaul services including all flights to and from JFK. In addition all services to South Africa will run, ensuring that fans attending the World Cup will face no disruption.

However, a Unite spokesman insisted that the wave of strikes was hitting BA hard in the pocket. "It's costing BA a fortune. It was never our intention to hurt passengers but to cause BA enough damage that the airline would address our concerns."

The string of emergency rescues led by global central banks was certainly popular among the banks - hardly surprising considering their continued existence was at stake. But now, bankers are bemoaning the very deficits incurred by various national governments in part because of financial sector bailouts. They worry all of the commitments made in Europe and the United States might have put governments - and perhaps even the central banks themselves - on the path to insolvency.

Of course, central banks can't really become insolvent in a strict sense, since they can always print money. The anxiety then becomes the ability of the monetary authorities to tighten their purse strings in time to prevent spikes in inflation and interest rates. Central banks can extend unlimited amounts of credit to banks and governments. But they do so by issuing ever more of their own liabilities - money. And just as the trust in banks' and governments' liabilities eroded when they issued ever more, we believe that the trust in money will erode if central banks issue ever more of it.

Greek militant groups have also detonated bombs, one of which killed an Afghan youth and another targeting the bourse. Analysts say in southern Europe in particular, street protests are likely to recur periodically, but the main concern is whether governments rethink austerity measures as a result.

"There are going to be protests and people are going to try to torch banks from time to time," said Eurasia Group analyst Jon Levy. "It is going to be occasional and far from the sort of thing that will bring society crashing down. But it will get a lot of media coverage and that means it may well have market impact." The violence in early May hit Greek assets, the euro and broader global markets as 24-hour news channels focused on Greece and investors worried the backlash might prompt the government to backtrack on vital reforms.

Insurers say they have seen a notable uptick in enquiries about political risk cover - which protects against expropriation, political violence and exchange controls - particularly for Portugal and Spain as they face stringent cuts. "The main risk is going to be in capital city centers where you have a risk of protest," said Daniel Riordan, head of political risk at insurers Zurich. Overall, most analysts say Italy has probably the greatest risk of violent unrest along with France.

Speaking before two days of talks bringing together the world's top 20 developed and emerging economies, South African Planning Minister Trevor Manuel said he could not think of a more challenging time than the present for the Group of 20. The meeting of G20 finance ministers and central bank governors was an opportunity to take decisions to banish the specter of a double-dip recession, Manuel said. "It's important that we all understand just how fragile the recovery is," he told reporters in this southern port city.

Police boats patrolled near the beach hotel where the meetings are taking place. Authorities have stepped up security in the city in the face of the some of the most war-like rhetoric on the divided peninsula after the South accused North Korea of sinking one of its warships.

As well as a 110 billion euro bailout for Greece, the 16-member euro zone is slinging a financial safety net under other heavily indebted countries that use the single currency. Together with money from the International Monetary Fund, the support could total 750 billion euros ($910 billion).

Investors first responded enthusiastically to the rescue package, but the euro has since slumped on concern about the ability not only of Greece, but also countries such as Portugal and Spain, to plug holes in their budgets. "I don't think the Greece problem is over yet. We are not out of the woods," Youssef Boutros-Ghali, Egypt's finance minister, told Reuters.

The MV Rachel Corrie, a 1,200-ton converted merchant ship purchased by pro-Palestinian activists, set off Monday from Malta, Reuters reports. The vessel is named after an American woman killed in the Gaza Strip in 2003. The ship left for Gaza on the day Israeli commandos stormed a Turkish-backed aid vessel purportedly carrying humanitarian aid to the Hamas-governed territory, igniting a confrontation that left nine people dead and launched an international firestorm of protest.

"We're on our way to Gaza," crew member Derek Graham told Reuters by phone. "Everybody was very upset at what happened. Everybody has been more determined than ever to continue on to Gaza." Graham said the ship is carrying 15 activists - including Nobel Laureate Mairead Corrigan-Maguire - and was roughly 280 miles from Gaza on Thursday. Former UN Assistant Secretary-General Denis Halliday is also on board the ship, the Irish Times reported.

Israel has offered to escort the vessel and deliver the civilian aid items aboard, and it says Egypt is prepared to do the same. But Graham said he was concerned that not all of the cargo - including medical equipment, school supplies and cement - would be delivered. Israel maintains that cement can be used in rocket launchers, and not just for building construction.

Israeli Foreign Minister Avidgor Lieberman said Israel would not allow its Gaza blockade to be breached, meaning the ship would have to be boarded and inspected before it was allowed to pass. "No ship will reach Gaza," he told Israel Radio. "The Rachel Corrie will not reach Gaza."

North Korea's troops were on "full alert and readiness to promptly react to any retaliation," including the scenario of all-out war, he told the forum. Ri, departing from his prepared remarks, said that only the conclusion of a peace treaty between the two countries would lead to the "successful denuclearization" of the peninsula. The 1950-53 Korean War ended with an armistice but no formal peace treaty.

Communist North Korea, hit with UN sanctions after testing nuclear devices in 2006 and 2009, is still under international pressure to dismantle its nuclear programme. Ri repeated Pyongyang's assertion that North Korea had nothing to do with the sinking of the Cheonan warship which killed 46 sailors - the deadliest military incident since the Korean War.

US disarmament ambassador Laura Kennedy also rejected Ri's accusations that Washington had backed Seoul in "groundlessly" blaming the sinking on a North Korean submarine. "I agree that the situation on the Korean peninsula is very grave but I disagree with the statement made and reject those allegations against my country," Kennedy said. "The investigation carried out was scrupulous and painstaking and we certainly accept without doubt the results which clearly indicated where the blame lay," she added.

Across the world, secretaries to the rich and the powerful have blocked out the next three days in their bosses' calendars for their annual gathering, this time at the Dolce in Sitges, one of Spain's most exclusive resorts. Normally, every minute of their working lives is accounted for but, each year, a couple of hundred of the world's financial elite and the more business-friendly members of the political class disappear from view; supposedly to save the planet from the dangers of parochialism, the nationalist genie.

It is all terribly confidential - breathe a word about it and you're out of the club - but the Bilderberg watcher Daniel Estulin claims to have a copy of the agenda. The big question this time around is whether the euro will survive. "They are afraid that the countries in trouble will leave and the euro will fall apart," said Mr Estulin. "The biggest nightmare is if EU members return to nationally orientated policies."

Henry Kissinger, 87, the former US Secretary of State, and David Rockefeller, 95, the former chairman of the Chase Manhattan Bank, are the elder statesmen of Bilderberg - but the leaked invitation list reveals that the gathering is made up primarily of elderly white gents.

Remember Richard Perle, 68, George Bush's erstwhile Prince of Darkness? He could perhaps form a Prince of Darkness sub-group with Lord Mandelson. Paul Wolfowitz, 66, formerly of the World Bank? Mario Monti, 67, EU commissioner for the single market between 1995 and 1999? Only the possible attendance of George Osborne, 39, the British Chancellor, will reassure hotel staff that they are not dealing with a Saga Holidays tour. Other members of this clandestine coven include Queen Sofia of Spain and Queen Beatrix of Holland.

If you are planning on bringing a $900 million Los Angeles class submarine through the ice, as the captain might say to the analyst after receiving an ice report: "you'd better be very sure of the ice thickness before I risk the boat and the crew". In 2008, less than half of the ice (47%) was greater than two metres thick. Now, more than 75% of the ice is greater than two metres thick. In 2008, 18% of the ice was more than three metres thick. This year that number has increased to 28%. There has been nearly across the board ice thickening since 2008.

The average thickness has increased from about 2.0 metres to 2.5 metres. That means an extra 20 inches of ice will have to melt this summer. So far, this seems unlikely with the cold Arctic temperatures over the last couple of weeks. A few weeks ago, when extent was highest in the JAXA record, our friends were asking for "volume, not extent." Their wishes have been answered. Ice volume has increased by 25% in the last two years, and those looking for a big melt are likely going to be disappointed.

The internal row was ignited by the release of a sensational new research paper discrediting calculations crucial to the greenhouse gas theory. Word is getting round that junk equations were threaded into the GHG theory to artificially inflate the heating effect of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere by a factor of two. What ignited this latest Climategate-linked rumpus is a sensational new research paper, 'A Greenhouse Effect on the Moon?' otherwise called the 'Moon Paper.'

Researchers for the paper scientifically proved that since at least 1997 climate scientists knew that guesswork was underpinning the whole greenhouse gas theory. In fact, so flaky are these numbers that they can be rendered to show a GHG effect on Earth's moon, where no greenhouse gases exist! Thus, skeptics argue, the burning embers of political heat generated by the discredited theory should now finally and unequivocally be extinguished.

CEI (Competitive Enterprise Institute) is now taking NASA to court for refusing to permit independent auditors the chance to assess the reliability of both government-funded science as well as the validity of current US Administration's expensive green energy policies. At a minimum, NASA-gate raises serious questions about competency and the integrity of certain government space agency employees.

"I had some information passed on to me, sort of inside information, somebody who knew somebody who was well tuned to the people at the Federal Reserve - and they said they are really really concerned about our movement to expose the Fed for what they're doing," said Paul, adding, "What they're upset or worried about is the fact that more and more people are aware of the Federal Reserve now like never before," explaining that exposure will lead to change and a reform of the Federal Reserve.

Paul attributed the success of the freedom movement in the last decade to the growing awareness of the power that the Federal Reserve wields over America. "Even those who defend the Fed are very frightened about it," added Paul, noting that a growing number of Americans were knowledgeable about the central bank despite the fact that the subject is rarely covered by the education system.

Host Jones made reference to a recent Council on Foreign Relations speech by Trilateral Commission and regular Bilderberg attendee Zbigniew Brzezinski in which he warned that a "global political awakening," in combination with infighting amongst the elite, was threatening to derail the move towards a one world government.

It comes despite the fact that non-white people make up about a tenth of the population, and deliberately favouring one race over another for jobs is illegal. The official figures are disclosed just a day after it emerged that a council banned white people from applying for an 18,000-pounds-a-year traineeship in order to increase staff diversity. Bristol City Council said its policy did not break race relations laws against "positive discrimination" because the two-year placement does not guarantee a job.

In the latest case, figures obtained through the Freedom of Information Act show that 51 places have been made available under the BBC's Journalism Trainee Scheme since 2007. Of these 24 have gone to candidates from ethnic minorities - 47 per cent. The latest estimate by the Office for National Statistics is that 6million of the 54million population of England and Wales is non-white - 11 per cent. The BBC also disclosed that 33 of the successful entrants to the scheme were female - 64 per cent - and that of these, 16 were non-white.

Over the first three years of the scheme, which offers up to a year of on-the-job training as well as tuition and assessment - 5,816 people had applied for a place. Those who finish the course are not guaranteed a full-time contract but rather considered good enough to "compete for jobs". The BBC was memorably described as "hideously white" by Greg Dyke, the former director-general, and has a target of recruiting at least 12.5 per cent of its 23,000 staff from ethnic minorities. Its own figures show that by January 2009 it had almost reached the goal, with 12 per cent of employees at the publicly-funded broadcaster non-white.

Among the island chains to have increased in land area are Tuvalu and neighbouring Kiribati, both of which attracted attention at last year's Copenhagen climate summit. In the study, researchers compared aerial photographs and high-resolution satellite images of 27 islands taken since the 1950s.

Only four islands, mostly uninhabited, had decreased in area despite local sea level rises of almost five inches in that time, while 23 stayed the same or grew. Seven islands in Tuvalu grew, one by 30 per cent, although the study did not include the most populous island. In Kiribati, the three of the most densely populated islands, Betio, Bairiki and Nanikai, also grew by between 12.5 and 30 per cent.

Professor Paul Kench, of Auckland University, who co-authored the study with Dr Arthur Webb, a Fiji-based expert on coastal processes, said the study challenged the view that the islands were sinking as a result of global warming. "Eighty per cent of the islands we've looked at have either remained about the same or, in fact, got larger. Some have got dramatically larger," he said. "We've now got evidence the physical foundations of these islands will still be there in 100 years," he told New Scientist magazine.

The 52-year-old taxi driver is thought to have gunned down his twin brother, David, and a local solicitor at the start of a three-hour massacre across rural Cumbria that left a further 25 in hospital. Bird, who had armed himself with two weapons, also targeted colleagues with whom he had a row the previous night.

He had warned them: "There's going to be a rampage tomorrow," before returning to the cab rank in Whitehaven the following day where he shot three taxi drivers, two of them fatally. Over the following three hours, he fired on dozens of people in 30 locations before he shot himself in woodland in the Lake District National Park. Police are trying to establish what turned the quiet father of two into a mass murderer.

It's known the flotilla of 6 ships was in part organized by the IHH group in Turkey, which reportedly has links to Al Qaeda. And three members of Yemen's Parliament, from the Islah Party, were also among the more than 600 activists detained by Israel after ships refused to stop for Israeli patrol boats and were boarded by Israeli Navy SEALs who eventually opened fire, killing 9 people. The Islah party is also said to have shadowy links to Al Qaeda. Both groups certainly support the Hamas organization in Gaza.

Israel believes the larger danger is that Turkey, a NATO ally, is becoming a foe of the US and Israel. Israel's intelligence Chief, Meir Dagan, told top government ministers here that Turkish President Recip Tayyip Erdogan has "a dream of returning Turkey's dominance through going down the Islamic hall." He cites Turkey's warmer relations with the Palestinians and Hamas, and improving relations with Syria, Iran and others. Dagan described a new anti-Israel coalition. Turkey facilitated the flotilla and the Marmara is Turkish-flagged.