The Greek government is preparing to unveil a fresh round of sweeping efficiencies, expected to include further tax rises and deeper cuts in pensions and public service pay. Mr Papandreou and his Finance Minister, George Papaconstantinou, were expected to announce full details of the austerity measures at a news conference immediately after Sunday's meeting.

Mr Papaconstantinou will then head straight to Brussels for an extraordinary gathering of the 15 other eurozone finance ministers. They could finally sign off a bail-out deal, which is designed to prevent Greece from defaulting on its enormous debt. The eurozone countries are speeding up rescue efforts for Greece amid fears its debt crisis could pull down other members. The EU is demanding austerity cuts in exchange for a huge bail-out. The rescue package is expected to amount to as much as 120 billion euros (100 billion pounds; $160 billion) over three years.

Angry protesters marched through Athens shouting: "Hands off our rights! IMF and EU Commission out!" There is huge public resistance to the wage cuts, tax rises and pension reductions that are expected to be implemented. Our correspondent says the unions hope the rallies will demonstrate to the government, the eurozone, the IMF and the international markets, that they can mobilise enough people to defeat the new austerity programme.

The BBC's Malcolm Brabant in Athens says the latest study of Greek attitudes shows most people are angry and dismayed about the bail-out, because they do not feel responsible for causing the crisis. Most people on the streets want the government to make the rich pay for the deficit, rather than ordinary working citizens, he says.

Mr Obama has formulated a secret plan with leading European allies to convene an international peace conference by the end of the year, according to Israel's Haaretz newspaper. The move would fulfil one of Israel's deepest fears by effectively stripping the Jewish state of its power to dictate the course of talks.

The conference would attempt to end decades of Israeli-Palestinian conflict by pressing both sides to accept difficult compromises on issues ranging from the future of millions of Palestinian refugees to the status of Jerusalem. Mr Obama is also eager to gain international recognition for the creation of a Palestinian state.

Officials in the government of Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, have voiced their dismay in recent weeks over reports that Mr Obama was planning an effective takeover of negotiations by imposing his own peace deal on the two sides. Such a step, they said, would undermine indirect peace talks, brokered by the US, that could begin as early as next month.

According to Haaretz, the conference would be convened under the auspices of the Quartet for Middle East peace, whose membership comprises the United States, the EU, the UN and Russia. It would mark the first time in 17 years of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations that the United States had handed control of the peace process to the international community.

They want Congress to introduce laws to give US children better nutrition in schools, with less sugar, salt and fat. John Shalikashvili and Hugh Shelton, both former chairmen of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, wrote: "Obesity rates threaten the overall health of America and the future strength of our military."

"We consider this problem so serious from a national security perspective that we have joined more than 130 other retired generals, admirals and senior military leaders in calling on Congress to pass new child nutrition legislation," the commanders added. The warning comes amid mounting fears that childhood obesity has turned into an "epidemic" affecting an astonishing one in three young American people.

Mr Shalikashvili and Mr Shelton pointed to post-school lunch laws from 1946, which recognised that poor nutrition reduced the pool of military recruits. "We must act, as we did after World War II, to ensure that our children can one day defend our country, if need be."

The National Statistics Institute said the rate rose 1.22 percentage points in the first quarter to 20.05 percent. The announcement came as the Greek government, European Union and the International Monetary Authority raced to seal a bailout deal for Athens by the end of the weekend. Without a bailout, Greece risks defaulting on billions of euros in debt - causing 'incalculable' damage across the eurozone.

Spain - the eurozone's fourth-largest economy - is still contracting after the collapse of a construction boom that had fuelled years of expansion. The government said that as of the end of March, there were 4,612,700 people out of work in the country. The jobless rate is the highest since the last quarter of 1997, when it stood at 20.11 percent. Since Spain slipped into recession in 2008, the rate has roughly doubled, a dramatic development for a country that had been one of Europe's top job-creators.

Now, with the recession forcing the government to spend heavily on joblessness benefits and stimulus measures, the deficit is soaring, triggering worries among investors that Spain might be in danger of a debt crisis like the one that has engulfed Greece. Ratings agency Standard & Poor's downgraded Spanish debt from AA+ to AA this week.

They are set to resign their orders in opposition to the introduction of women bishops and to lead an exodus of Anglican clerics to the Catholic Church despite Dr Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, urging them not to leave. It would be the first time for nearly 20 years that large numbers of priests have crossed from the Church of England to Rome, and comes only weeks ahead of a crucial General Synod debate on making women bishops.

The Sunday Telegraph has learnt that bishops travelled to the Holy See last week to hold face to face discussions with senior members of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the most powerful of the Vatican's departments. The Right Reverend John Broadhurst, the Right Reverend Keith Newton and the Right Reverend Andrew Burnham, the bishops of Fulham, Richborough and Ebbsfleet respectively, are understood to have informed senior Catholic officials that Church of England clergy are keen to defect to Rome.

It is the first significant response to the Papal offer made last year, which opened the doors for Anglicans to convert while retaining key elements of their tradition.

She was suspended while police investigated the matter, but has been cleared to return to work. This has left the boy's mother furious and demanding her son is moved to another school in September.

She refuses to send him back to Monteney Primary School in Sheffield... and staff there are probably happy to see the back of him. He is attending a 'primary inclusion unit', seeing an educational psychologist and being taught at home by his jobless single mother. Jessica Wilson, 29, who also has a daughter Chelsea, 12, and son Dean, ten, blames Dylan's problems on the suicide two years ago of his father Shaun, who was suffering from depression.

She said: 'The school don't seem able to cope. In my opinion, they have not been fair to Dylan. There have been a number of incidents where he has lashed out at other pupils or staff. Each time he has been sent home for between two and four days.'

After weeks of hesitation over the German response to the Greek crisis, Chancellor Angela Merkel is suddenly calling for swift action. "It is clear that the negotiations must now be accelerated," she said Wednesday at an appearance with Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), in Berlin. A serious-looking Merkel called for an agreement to assist Greece "within the next few days," adding: "We will not back out."

Observers were surprised by Merkel's strong words. Until now, the chancellor has not exactly come across as a driving force when it comes to action on the Greek crisis. Merkel has long been reluctant to promise the Greeks billions of euros in European aid, something which has earned her the nickname "Madame Non" in the European Union. At home in Germany, however, she has been feted by the tabloid press as the "Iron Chancellor" because she had rebuffed the "bankrupt Greeks."

Merkel thought she could sit out the crisis, postponing any unpopular promise to give aid to the Greeks at least until after key state elections in North Rhine-Westphalia on May 9. The vote is crucial to Merkel because it will determine whether her conservative Christian Democrats and their coalition partner, the business-friendly Free Democrats, are able to maintain their majority in the Bundesrat, Germany's upper legislative chamber which represents the interests of the states.

But Merkel's calculation that the markets could be kept calm until then with vague promises did not work out. After all, global economic forces do not care about a German state election.

President Barack Obama has pledged "every single available resource" to help. The US navy has been deployed to help avert a looming environmental disaster. The US Coast Guard said it had sent investigators to confirm whether crude oil had begun to wash up on parts of the Louisiana shoreline.

The US government has designated the Gulf of Mexico oil spill as an "incident of national significance". This allows it to draw on resources from across the country. Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal has declared a state of emergency and asked for federal funds to deploy 6,000 National Guard soldiers to help with the clean-up.

The Louisiana coastline, with its rich shrimp and oyster beds, is the most threatened by the spill. There are also fears of severe damage to fisheries and wildlife in Mississippi, Alabama and Florida. A resident of Bay Saint Louis in Mississippi, John Gerger, told the BBC the smell of oil was becoming stronger along the Gulf Coast.

"It's as though a diesel truck is parked in the front yard," he said. "The potential impact of the slick could be devastating on an area that has just recovered from [Hurricane] Katrina." Under US law, BP will be expected to meet all the costs of the spill clean-up operation.

The European Union (EU) has said it is close to aproving the details of an emergency plan to help tackle Greece's crippling debt. EU commission chief Jose Manuel Barroso said "rapid progress" was being made. "I'm confident that the talks will be concluded soon, meaning in the next days," Mr Barroso told a news conference following the clashes. "We believe that these solutions will be conducive to our actions and will prevent further possible effects of the contagion."

Officials from the EU, the International Monetary Fund, and European Central Bank are in Athens to negotiate the bailout. The Greek government says it needs a deal by 19 May to avoid a devastating debt default.

The latest protests followed a meeting between Prime Minister George Papandreou and trade union leaders, who reacted angrily to his planned austerity measures. "We got a flavour of a very harsh package of measures, measures that will lead to recession," Yiannis Panagopoulos, head of the powerful GSEE umbrella trade union, was quoted by AP news agency as saying. The unions have now called a general strike for 5 May.

Scientist Alexei Surov described the experiment, in which they monitored the behavior, weight gain and birthrate of several groups of hamsters. Upon birth of the second generation they noted slower rates of growth and sexual maturity. The next generation was unable to produce. Genetically modified foods will feed the hungry. I guess that's one way of putting it.

Russian scientists are not the only ones that have warned of noted health effects caused by genetically modified foods. Let us not forget the scientists that were fired after they discovered serious health effects in animals after feeding them GM food products. Believing in the potential of GM foods, UC Berkeley's Ignacio Chapela and Arpad Pusztai, a plant genetic modification expert from Scotland Rowett Research Institute, were commissioned to conduct the first independent study on animals fed GM foods.

Studies showed stunted growth, impaired immune systems, bleeding stomachs, abnormal and potentially pre-cancerous cell growth in the intestines, impaired blood cell development, misshaped cell structures in the liver, pancreas and testicles, altered gene expression and cell metabolism, liver and kidney lesions, partially atrophied livers, inflamed kidneys, less developed organs, reduced digestive enzymes, higher blood sugar, inflamed lung tissue, increased death rates and higher offspring mortality as well.

The world is watching as Monsanto and the US Government promote the growth and continued expansion of their genetic modification program. They have patented the pig, the salmon and other species and genetically engineered their genes to produce offspring with more meat. An estimated seventy-five percent of our processed foods contain some form of genetically modified (GM) ingredients. Are we willing as a nation to risk the lives of our future children and grandchildren to discover that these effects are only observed in animals? How likely is it that we will be experiencing these same effects on a personal level as we consume more genetically modified organisms against our will?

That's right. The same country which boycotts Israel, finances the spread of radical Islamist fundamentalism worldwide and, less than a decade ago, spawned 15 of the terrorists involved in the September 11 attacks, now plans to develop nuclear technology. According to the report, the Saudi regime will open a new center, dubbed the King Abdullah City for Nuclear and Renewable Energy, ostensibly because of "sustained growth in demand for power and desalinated water due to high population growth and subsidized prices of water and power." In other words, the Saudis are insisting that their motivation is entirely peaceful.

But it's hard to take such claims seriously. After all, according to the US Energy Information Administration, Saudi Arabia has some 264 billion barrels of oil reserves, which amounts to "around one-fifth of proven, conventional world oil reserves." In addition, it maintains "the world's largest crude oil production capacity," estimated at some 11 to 12 million barrels a day. So it is not as if Saudi citizens are in danger of having to dim the lights. Clearly, Riyadh is casting a wary eye northward, watching nervously as Teheran sprints virtually unhindered toward the nuclear finish line.

And at a conference in Paris last month, Syrian Deputy Foreign Minister Feisal Mekdad said Damascus is looking at "alternative energy sources, including nuclear energy." He insisted that "the peaceful application of nuclear energy should not be monopolized by the few that own this technology but should be available to all."

And so we have all the makings of a region-wide proliferation of nuclear know-how. Of course, all the countries involved have adamantly maintained that they are only seeking to split atoms for "peaceful purposes" and that they have no military aims in mind. But can we really rely on the assurances of an array of Middle Eastern dictators and despots?

However, the agenda of BASIC at the United Nations has been to pressure the industrialized nations (America, Europe, Japan) to commit to ambitious cuts in emissions while staying free of any restrictions on their own activities. They have also demanded technical and financial support to speed the transfer of production capabilities from the West to the Third World.

The three core members of BASIC are also part of BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China.) The BRIC group met in Brasilia on April 14-16 to draw up a common plan for a "new international order" to be presented at the G20 meeting in June. The BRIC nations account for 42% of the world's population but only 15% of the world's gross domestic product. Promoting economic growth to improve per capita incomes and living standards is their top priority, but they believe they will need greater political clout in world affairs to gain the wealth they seek. The coalition may expand further, as it has been suggested that Indonesia join both BRIC and BASIC.

The Obama administration seems asleep at the switch as new powers not only rise, but cooperate on strategic issues that directly target American interests. If the White House pushes Congress to adopt a crippling energy tax and other restrictions on domestic growth as a result of climate paranoia, the need to adopt universal mandates at the UN will be increased. Unilateral anti-growth policies by the US would put American firms and workers at a terrible disadvantage in global competition. Yet, pushing for UN restrictions on the developing world to make stagnation more "symmetrical" will only make the BASIC-BRIC bloc stronger, with major negative consequences to US security as well as to prosperity in the years to come.

But there is one small item that never leaves his truck: a green nylon satchel Lackomar jokingly calls "the football," a reference to the briefcase with codes for a nuclear strike kept close to the US president. Inside, along with a pocket knife and a small first aid kit, is a sealed envelope containing codes, rallying points and detailed plans that Lackomar would use to mobilize his squad of armed citizen-soldiers in an emergency.

Lackomar is a team leader in the Southeast Michigan Volunteer Militia (SMVM), the largest and most visible of this state's many small private armies. He is a husband, a father and a musician. But his favorite picture on his Facebook page shows him standing in front of a snowmobile trailer packed with rifles, clips and ammunition boxes, a picture he laughingly admits looks "like an evidence photo from the 6 O'clock News."

The SMVM is one of 200 armed militias in the United States, a number that has quadrupled since 2008, according to the Anti-Defamation League, a civil rights watchdog, which says they may have 6,000 members and many other adherents. The United States is one of the few Western democratic countries that permit independent militias.

Their rapid growth coincides with a sharp rise in partisan rhetoric as the November US congressional elections draw nearer. Depending on your perspective, they are either patriots or paranoid. Experts in law enforcement and academia are divided as to how big an actual threat they may pose. But they all agree on one thing: the groups are very well armed.

Mr Strauss-Kahn was speaking at a news conference in Berlin after trying to persuade reluctant German politicians to back the terms of a rescue deal. But even as politicians were trying to resolve the crisis, Europe's debt problems were flaring elsewhere. The Standard & Poor's ratings agency delivered more bad news by downgrading Spain's debt to AA from AA+.

The agency said Spain's growth prospects were weak after the collapse of a credit-fuelled housing and construction bubble. Mr Strauss-Kahn's comments foreshadowed S&P's news. "What is at stake today is the economic situation of Greece. But it's more than that. We also need to restore confidence... I'm confident that the problem will be fixed. But if we don't fix it in Greece, it may have a lot of consequences on the European Union," Mr Strauss-Kahn said.

Mr Strauss-Kahn, and European Central Bank president Jean-Claude Trichet, were in Berlin to urge German MPs to agree to a rescue deal under which Greece would get billions of euros in loans. But many German politicians are opposed to the bail-out of Greece, and Mrs Merkel has herself been accused of offering only qualified support. Germany is facing elections, and with public opinion against giving billions of euros to Greece, Mrs Merkel must tread a fine line.

As Europe's largest economy, Germany would provide the biggest single loan to Greece among the eurozone nations. The aid package being offered by the EU and IMF is currently 45 billion euros ($59 billion; 39 billion pounds). But support for the bail-out in Germany will not be helped by claims that the total cost of the proposed package could be up to 120 billion euros over three years.

The crisis began when a leading credit agency slashed the status of Greek government bonds to 'junk', raising fears the country could be sent tumbling out of the euro under a mountain of debt. This downgrade - by Standard and Poor's - puts Greece on an economic par with nations like Colombia, Romania and Azerbaijan - an unprecedented humiliation for a eurozone nation.

And there is mounting danger that Athens will default completely on its debts - dragging the rest of the eurozone countries down with it. It also emerged that the International Monetary Fund is looking at raising its share of the rescue bailout for Greece by 8.6 billion pounds amid fears that the planned 39 billion pounds rescue will fail to stem the country's debt crisis.

So far, EU countries have agreed to provide Athens with 26 billion pounds and the IMF 13 billion pounds. But, it is understood the IMF is now in talks about raising its contribution. Portugal's credit rating was also slashed yesterday and there are real fears if the crisis deepens Spain, Italy, or Ireland could be next. In London the FTSE 100 Index fell 2.6 per cent, or 150.33 points, to 5,603.52, while both the euro and the pound slid against the dollar.

Adding to the sense of impending chaos, a leading economist warned Athens could become wholly dependent-on the European Union and IMF for finance. Greece's sovereign debt rescue has become bogged down in political wrangling and back-biting, leading to a sense of mounting panic in financial markets. On Monday Chancellor Angela Merkel said she wouldn't release desperately needed funds until Athens puts into place a 'sustainable, credible' deficit-cutting plan.

Yesterday tension in the markets exploded into near-panic after leading credit rating agency Standard & Poor's lowered its rating on Greece's debt to BB+ from BBB+. Companies in the UK including ratcatcher Rentokil and confectioner Cadbury enjoy higher credit ratings than Greece. S&P also slashed the credit rating of Portugal from A+ to A- level. That is well above the 'junk' status applied to Greece, but it will exacerbate fears that Europe's public debt woes could ripple out across the Mediterranean and even beyond.