Eurozone governments and the IMF are preparing a 45 billion euros (39 billion pounds) loan package for Greece after market concerns about its ability to meet its financial commitments. Treasury sources say privately that politicians and officials have sent mixed messages on the support package, which has made a difficult situation worse. Until a few days ago Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, was insisting Greece could get by without assistance. IMF officials have been in Athens since Wednesday working on the rescue.

Darling’s view was echoed by Tim Geithner, the US Treasury secretary, who met George Papaconstantinou, the Greek finance minister, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the IMF managing director, and several EU officials. A US Treasury official said: "Secretary Geithner encouraged them to move quickly to put in place a package of strong reforms and substantial concrete financial support."

A former IMF chief economist warned yesterday that Greece's problems could spread. Simon Johnson said market reaction to the Greek deal suggested the eurozone's problems are about to get worse. The value of government bonds issued by Portugal, Spain and Ireland all fell in the wake of the deal, Johnson said. He warned that property prices across the eurozone could slump as a result of the bailout deal, raising fresh concern about the health of banks

Panetta addressed the Sacramento delegation that includes 43 elected officials and hundreds of business and civic leaders who are in Washington DC for the annual program that advocates for the region's most pressing policy issues. He spoke on Monday, April 19, during the Cap-to-Cap opening breakfast.

"Cyber terrorism" is a new area of concern for the CIA, Panetta said. The United States faces thousands of cyber attacks daily on its Internet networks. The attacks are originating in Russia, China, Iran and from even hackers. "The next Pearl Harbor is likely to be a cyber attacking going after our grid ... and that can literally cripple this country," Panetta said. "This is a whole new area of threat."

Across the Internet, climate blogs are no less venomous, underscoring the surge in abuse over the past six months triggered by purported evidence that global warming is either a hoax or the threat from a warmer world is grossly overstated. A major source of the anger is from companies with a vested interest in fighting green legislation that might curtail their activities or make their operations more costly.

"The attacks against climate science represent the most highly coordinated, heavily financed, attack against science that we have ever witnessed," said climate scientist Michael Mann, from Pennsylvania State University in the United States. "The evidence for the reality of human-caused climate change gets stronger with each additional year," Mann told Reuters in emailed responses to questions.

Greenpeace and other groups say that some energy companies are giving millions to groups that oppose climate change science because of concerns about the multi-billion dollar costs associated with carbon trading schemes and clean energy policies. "There are two kinds of opponents - one is the fossil fuel lobby. So you have a trillion-dollar industry that's protecting market share," said Stephen Schneider of Stanford University in California, referring to the oil industry's long history of funding climate skeptic groups and think tanks.

"We in Arizona have been more than patient waiting for Washington to act," said Governor Jan Brewer. "But decades of inaction and misguided policy have created an unacceptable situation." We have a crisis in Arizona because we have a failed state in Washington. What is the response of Barack Obama, who took an oath to see to it that federal laws are faithfully executed?

He is siding with the law-breakers. He is pandering to the ethnic lobbies. He is not berating a Mexican regime that aids and abets this invasion of the country of which he is commander in chief. Instead, he attacks the government of Arizona for trying to fill a gaping hole in law enforcement left by his own dereliction of duty.

He has denounced Arizona as "misguided." He has called on the Justice Department to ensure that Arizona's sheriffs and police do not violate anyone's civil rights. But he has said nothing about the rights of the people of Arizona who must deal with the costs of having hundreds of thousands of lawbreakers in their midst.

The state has a fiscal crisis caused in part by the burden of providing schooling and social welfare for illegals and their families, who consume far more in services than they pay in taxes and who continue to pour in. Even John McCain is now calling for 3,000 troops on the border. Police officers and a prominent rancher have been murdered. There have been kidnappings believed to be tied to the Mexican drug cartels. There are nightly high-speed chases through the barrios where innocent people are constantly at risk.

If Arizona does not get control of the border and stop the invasion, US citizens will stop coming to Arizona and will begin to depart, as they are already fleeing California.

Air and train services have been disrupted in West Bengal, and attendance in offices across the states is reported to be patchy. Food prices in India have risen by as much as 20% over the past year. Farm produce has fallen following droughts and floods and this has led to rising prices.

The cost of pulses, milk, wheat, rice and vegetables has gone up sharply. Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee has said food prices are an "area of concern". Annual inflation has also risen sharply over the past few months, from 0.5% in September to 9.9% in March, its highest level in 17 months.

The Senate panel released its findings ahead of its hearing on Tuesday into the Goldman affair. Goldman vigorously denies any wrong-doing.

The Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations has been sifting through emails and other Goldman documents obtained in an 18-month investigation. Excerpts from the documents were published Monday, a day before Goldman chief executive Lloyd Blankfein and other top Goldman executives appear before the committee.

Other ideas involved getting the Pope to launch a range of 'Benedict' condoms, apologise for the Spanish Armada and bless a gay marriage. The leader of the world's one billion Catholics could also, it was suggested, back a Miss Developing World beauty contest and sing a duet with the Queen. Papal aides have privately rejected a grovelling apology issued on behalf of David Miliband.

The Foreign Secretary is said to have been 'appalled' by the memo. The list was dreamt up by his officials during a 'brainstorming session' and circulated within Whitehall. It also contained serious suggestions, such as meeting the unemployed, indicating it was not devised purely as a joke. Other ideas floated included getting the Pope to spend the night in a council flat in Bradford and performing forward rolls with children to promote healthy living.

A senior Vatican source said: 'There are clearly dark forces within the British Government. While some are very eager for the visit to go well, there are others who are opposing it. This runs the risk of the trip being remembered for the memo and nothing else.' The aide added: 'The Pope went to Turkey, a Muslim country, and had no problem at all. He visited Israel, no problem, and Jordan, an Arabic country, without any difficulty. However in Britain, which one would expect to see as a tolerant and democratic country, the climate is very different.'

That has changed. As the International Monetary Fund has stressed in the run-up to this week's meetings of world finance officials in Washington, the biggest threats to the global recovery are concentrated in advanced economies now. Households and governments are shouldering unsustainable debt burdens, and Greece's woes illustrate how quickly such fiscal strains can explode.

Emerging markets, scarred by debt crises of the late 1990s, have built up an estimated $5.5 trillion in reserves as a form of self-insurance against future problems, but the rich world has no such cushion. Indeed, emergency rescue efforts have driven government debt loads in the United States and Europe near World War Two highs and benchmark interest rates to record lows, leaving little leeway to respond should another crisis strike.

"Emerging countries are becoming a very important force, not only because they're driving the recovery but also because their fiscal policies are much more sound than in developed countries," said Domenico Lombardi, president of the Oxford Institute for Economic Policy and a senior fellow at Washington's Brookings Institution. "In the case of the next crisis, their role could be even more important in stabilizing the global economy."

Obama hosts a two-day Presidential Summit on Entrepreneurship that will bring together about 250 successful business and social entrepreneurs from more than 50 countries, most with large Muslim populations, fulfilling a pledge he made in his Cairo speech to the Islamic world last June. The president will address the summit at the end of the first day to underscore his commitment to "deepening our engagement around the world with Muslim-majority communities," Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes said.

While the summit is widely viewed as a positive step that demonstrates follow-through on the Cairo address, analysts said Obama would ultimately be judged on his handling of the bigger issues in the Muslim world - the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, Iran's nuclear program, and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The invitation was extended by Obama's Middle East envoy George Mitchell during a weekend visit to the region where he was trying to restart indirect peace talks between the Palestinians and Israelis. Mitchell is expected to return next week, signaling he is making progress.

The visits come amid rising tensions between Washington and Jerusalem. But the State Department reported that Mitchell had "positive and productive talks with Israeli and Palestinian leaders" during his three-day visit.

"His meetings continued our efforts to improve the atmosphere for peace and for proceeding with proximity talks," spokesman P J Crowley said in a written statement. Abbas needs to decide whether to engage with Israel, with Mitchell as a go-between, even though Israel has rejected his demands to freeze new construction for Jews in east Jerusalem, the Palestinians' hoped-for capital.

The Palestinians have low expectations of the US-brokered talks, but also want to avoid offending Obama and do not want to be cast in the role of naysayers. At the start of Israel's weekly Cabinet meeting, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described Israel's talks with Mitchell as "very positive" and voiced hope that the Palestinians would return immediately to the negotiating table. Mitchell has been shuttling between the two sides for more than a year, hoping to relaunch negotiations that collapsed in late 2008.

The quake hit at 10:59 am local time (0259 GMT), 195 miles (295 kilometers) off the southern Taiwan city of Taitung at a depth of 6.2 miles (10 kilometers), the USGS said. The agency's initial report had put the quake's magnitude at 6.9. In Taipei buildings swayed for up to 20 seconds when the quake hit but local television said there were no immediate reports of casualties or damage anywhere on the island.

Earthquakes frequently rattle Taiwan but most are minor and cause little or no damage. However, a 7.6-magnitude earthquake in central Taiwan in 1999 killed more than 2,300 people.

The Democratic party, which currently holds a majority in both houses of Congress, will bear the brunt of growing voter anger, the Pew study concludes. It stated, "The study finds a perfect storm of conditions associated with distrust of government - a dismal economy, an unhappy public, bitter partisan-based backlash, and epic discontent with Congress and elected officials."

The mood of the country in one word, increasingly, is "anger." The study did not question respondents on specific issues, such as foreign policy and the health reform law, but the mood of the country suggests that a large enough rebellion at the polls that could upset President Obama's plans, including those for Israel. A small but growing number of voters are strongly anti-government. The proportion saying that they are angry with the federal government has doubled since 2000 and matches the high [of 20 percent] reached in October 2006," Pew stated.

Pew said that the worst problem for Democrats may be that "the link between dissatisfaction with government and voting intentions is at least as strong among independent voters." Independents favor the Republican party in their districts by a 41-34 percent margin, according to the survey. The margin grows to 66-13 percent when taking into account only the Independents who are "highly dissatisfied." Distrust in the American government has reached its lowest level in 50 years, with only 22 percent trusting it most or all of the time.

A larger minority of the public also feels the government is a major threat to personal freedom, far more than registered in a media survey conducted seven years ago.

As the satellite images of the so-called 'aerosol index' published for the first time, the sky above Britain was totally clear of ash from Iceland's Eyjafjallajoekull volcano.

Inquiries by this newspaper have disclosed that:

- Attempts to measure the ash's density were hampered because the main aircraft used by the Meteorological Office for this purpose had been grounded as it was due to be repainted.

- Computers at the Met Office, which earlier forecast a 'barbecue summer' last year and a mild winter for this year, produced a stream of maps predicting the ash would cover a vast area, eventually stretching from Russia to Newfoundland. But across almost all of it, there was virtually no ash at all, and none visible to satellites.

- Though there was some ash over Britain at times during the ban, the maximum density measured by scientists was only about one twentieth of the limit that scientists, the Government, and aircraft and engine manufacturers have now decided is safe.

'We never understood why a blanket ban had been imposed - something that would not have happened in other parts of the world,' a senior airline executive said yesterday. While money has been thrown at climate change studies - the Met Office has received over 200 million pounds - other meteorological research has been starved of funds. The LVAAC depends on Eurocontrol en route charges for its funds, a sort of toll paid by airlines that fly through its space. It is clearly not enough.

The blanket ban was, then, governed as much by what we did not know as what we did. And while there is no EU law governing what to do in the event of an eruption affecting the skies in this way, we are bound to European states by treaties which stop us closing or opening our skies unilaterally

Perhaps the sector most unhappy with the government is called the Tea Party movement, ultra-conservatives who came a year ago in protest against the economic stimulus bill, which grew in visibility in the campaign against health reforms proposed by the government of Barack Obama. This movement is mostly composed of white men, aged 45 or so, who describe themselves as upset or angry with Washington.

Recent research from the New York Times / CBS News poll revealed that 18% of Americans identify themselves as supporters of the Tea Party, classify themselves "very conservative" and are very pessimistic about the direction of the country and severely critical of Washington and, of course, Obama. Over 90% of them believe that the country moves to a wrong path and the same percentage disapproves of the president and his administration policy. Already 92% of respondents estimated that Obama leads the country "toward socialism" (an opinion shared by more than half the population in general).

Moreover, the expressions of popular right-wing anger are registered when referencing more hate crimes, a rise of radical right-wing groups, as well as unofficial reports of a growing number of death threats against the president. Public safety agencies have raised the alert status for what is called "domestic terrorism."

The wave of disillusionment with the government and its rulers causes concern among some politicians who do not know what impact this might have on the elections of next November. But for others the issue is more alarming.

"It's very similar to Weimar Germany, the parallels are striking." Here, too, there is a tremendous disappointment with the parliamentary system, Chomskypointed out during his interview on Truthdig. "The United States is very lucky that no honest and charismatic figure has appeared, and if this were to happen this country would be in real trouble for the frustration, disillusionment and the justified anger combined with the absence of a coherent response," he concludes.

In Germany, he recalls, an enemy was created to explain the crisis which was the Jew. "Here they are the illegal immigrants and blacks. We will say that white men are a persecuted minority. We will say that we must uphold and defend the honor of the nation. Military force will be exalted. There will be blows. This could be converted into an undeniable force. And if it takes place, it will be more dangerous than Nazi Germany. The United States is a world power ... I do not believe that this is far from happening," he says.

The suggestions come in a new documentary series in which Hawking, one of the world's leading scientists, will set out his latest thinking on some of the universe's greatest mysteries. Alien life, he will suggest, is almost certain to exist in many other parts of the universe: not just in planets, but perhaps in the centre of stars or even floating in interplanetary space.

Hawking's logic on aliens is, for him, unusually simple. The universe, he points out, has 100 billion galaxies, each containing hundreds of millions of stars. In such a big place, Earth is unlikely to be the only planet where life has evolved. "To my mathematical brain, the numbers alone make thinking about aliens perfectly rational," he said. "The real challenge is to work out what aliens might actually be like."

Similarly, Lord Rees, the astronomer royal, warned in a lecture earlier this year that aliens might prove to be beyond human understanding. "I suspect there could be life and intelligence out there in forms we can't conceive," he said. "Just as a chimpanzee can't understand quantum theory, it could be there are aspects of reality that are beyond the capacity of our brains."