Obama used his commencement speech at the University of Michigan to respond to foes who portray government as oppressive and tyrannical - and to warn that overheated language can signal to extremists that "perhaps violence is ... justifiable." Just 45 miles from the immense Michigan Stadium, capacity 106,201, the GOP's 2008 vice presidential nominee, Sarah Palin, told an anti-tax gathering Obama's policies are "big government" recipes that are "intrusive" in the lives of average Americans.

In Obama's 31-minute address to what the White House said was his biggest audience since the inauguration, the president made no mention of Palin or the tea party movement. He did say that debates about the size and role of government are as old as the republic itself. "But what troubles me is when I hear people say that all of government is inherently bad," said Obama, who received an honorary doctor of laws degree. "When our government is spoken of as some menacing, threatening foreign entity, it ignores the fact that in our democracy, government is us."

Government, he said, is the roads we drive on and the speed limits that keep us safe. It's the men and women in the military, the inspectors in our mines, the pioneering researchers in public universities. The financial meltdown dramatically showed the dangers of too little government," he said, "when a lack of accountability on Wall Street nearly led to the collapse of our entire economy."

Palin told an audience at a meeting sponsored by the anti-tax Americans for Prosperity Foundation that Obama is overreaching. "The fundamental transformation of America is not what we all bargained for," she said.

Obama urged both sides in the political debate to tone it down. "Throwing around phrases like 'socialists' and 'Soviet-style takeover, 'fascists' and 'right-wing nut' - that may grab headlines," he said. But it also "closes the door to the possibility of compromise... At its worst, it can send signals to the most extreme elements of our society that perhaps violence is a justifiable response."

The oil is spilling out of the seafloor at 5,000 barrels a day - the equivalent of 210,000 gallons - maybe much more, from a well about 50 miles out in the Gulf of Mexico, and it could soon eclipse the volume of the infamous Exxon Valdez spill in 1989. That disaster spilled oil onto rocky Alaskan beaches, but it is at least possible to wash oil off a rock. In the Gulf, the oil is floating into wetlands that could hold on to its toxins for years.

And, scientists said, the spill's damage could be magnified by its awful timing. Among the animals that live along the Gulf Coast, this is the time for hatching and rearing: Species as diverse as pelicans, shrimp and alligators are all reproducing, or preparing to. That could bring sensitive young animals in contact with toxic oil or cause their parents to plunge into oily waters looking for food.

Oil is damaging for birds because it coats their feathers, destroying the natural chemistry that keeps them buoyant, warm and able to fly. When birds "preen" and try to remove the oil, they can swallow it and be poisoned. So it is terrible timing that, at this time of year, huge numbers of birds converge on the marshes and empty barrier islands on this stretch of the Gulf Coast. Some are just stopping to recharge after a long flight over the Gulf from South America. But others have come to stay, preparing to raise their young in nests in the marsh and along sandy beaches.

Among other wildlife, scientists said, some fish would swim away from the oil - provided they can flee to an oil-free place. The situation is worse for dolphins, which must surface twice a minute to breathe: They would inhale fumes from the oil. The natural rhythms of many other species make them also particularly vulnerable. Tiny shrimp, just hatched and only a few millimeters across, will be swimming at the oily surface. Alligators, nearing their nesting season, might ingest the oil as they feed. Sea turtles will be coming ashore to lay their eggs on beaches.

Israeli-Palestinian peace talks have been stalled since 2008. "We will be starting with proximity talks next week," Mrs Clinton said. "Ultimately we want to see parties in direct negotiations and working out all the difficult issues that they must." Washington expected that Arab foreign ministers meeting on Saturday would endorse the new talks, she added.

Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said: "We are making every possible effort to begin these talks. But the official decision will be made by the Arab foreign ministers and the PLO [Palestinian Liberation Organisation] executive committee." Israeli officials have not publicly commented on Mrs Clinton's remarks.

Israel has occupied the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, since 1967. It insists Jerusalem will remain its undivided capital. Nearly half a million Jews live in more than 100 settlements in the West Bank, among a Palestinian population of about 2.5 million. The settlements are illegal under international law, although Israel disputes this.

The law requires local police to question anyone they suspect of being in the United States illegally. The protesters say the law could lead to Hispanics being targeted, and inflame racial tensions. In Los Angeles, police estimated 100,000 people had joined a march led by singer Gloria Estefan. "It's the right of every American to protect where they live," she told the crowd. "But that doesn't give them a reason to place a law that could create racism and discrimination."

The BBC's Rajesh Mirchandani, at the rally, says there were banners calling for a boycott of Arizona, and even one portraying the state's governor, Jan Brewer, as Hitler. Many of the protesters waved the US flag, while some carried slogans appealing for US President Barack Obama to intervene. The law was signed earlier this month by Arizona's Republican Governor Jan Brewer, who said it "protects every American citizen".

Under the new rules, those unable to show that they are legally allowed in the US could be given six-month jail sentences and fined $2,500 (about 1,600 pounds). Supporters of the bill say it will help bring illegal immigration under control in Arizona - a state which is the main entry point for undocumented immigrants into the US. The state is home to an estimated 460,000 illegal immigrants.

Attorneys general from five affected US states will meet to discuss legal options, as pressure mounts on BP. Choppy seas and strong winds have been hampering the clean-up operation. The BP-operated Deepwater Horizon rig sank on 22 April, two days after a huge explosion that killed 11 workers.

Later on Sunday, Louisiana's Republican governor will meet Mr Obama to discuss the disaster, for which the president has warned BP will be held ultimately responsible.

Mr Jindal told a news conference on Saturday: "This oil spill threatens not only our wetlands and our fisheries, but also our way of life." Keeping up pressure on the British energy giant, Mr Jindal said he had still not received detailed plans from the firm on how it would stop the spill. As sheen from the slick began washing up on the shore, the governor said "BP will need to fund these plans" to protect coastal communities.

The energy giant's chief executive, Tony Hayward, is also expected in Louisiana on Sunday. The company has said it will honour legitimate claims for damages. The BBC's Andy Gallacher, in Louisiana, says the slick is threatening some of America's most important eco-systems. The Louisiana wetlands host a multi-billion-dollar fishing industry and is a prime spawning area for fish, shrimp, crabs and oyster beds.

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?