But his focus on Europe is not principally a health decision for the 82-year-old Benedict, who has seemed energized by his few jaunts to South America, Australia and Africa. Instead, the Pope sees his European forays as journeys to hostile territory where he must try to counter the prevailing forces of secularism sweeping the continent. The London-based National Secular Society said it would stage protests during the Pope's time in Britain. The organization also launched a "Make the Pope Pay" petition to deny public funding for the state visit, which the group estimates could cost upwards of $30 million.

Of course, the Pope might expect this kind of treatment in Britain. There has been a strain of anti-papal sentiment in England dating back to King Henry VIII's break with the Catholic Church in the 16th century. And when the famously conservative Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was elected Pope in 2005, the British press let loose a barrage of criticism and sometimes tasteless jokes about him. But the clash between Britain and the Vatican is now shaping up more than ever as a battle of ideas.

The UK is home to a burgeoning atheist movement - led by the likes of Richard Dawkins, author of the best-selling book The God Delusion - which sees the Pope as a symbol of antiquated doctrine and organized religion's intrusion into public discourse. And Benedict will likely use the trip to shine a light on what he believes is a spreading prejudice in Europe against the devout and public pronouncements of faith.

Austen Ivereigh, a well-known London-based Catholic commentator, who has just launched a committee to help promote the Pope's UK visit, says the trip is a chance for Benedict to flex his intellectual muscle. "The Pope's mission when he comes to Britain will be to confront the rise of aggressive secularism and atheism on its own turf. Although details of the itinerary won't be known for months, there has been talk of a possible papal lecture at Oxford University."

"We talked about Greece, Portugal and Spain and we told our partners we had to solve the problem ourselves without the help of the IMF," Eurogroup chair Jean-Claude Juncker told Reuters on Saturday, the second day of a meeting of finance leaders from the Group of Seven rich industrialized nations. Euro zone countries like Greece, Spain and Portugal are under increasing pressure to bring spending under control.

Stock markets tumbled to three-month lows on Friday as fears rose about a huge bailout and the possible destabilization of the 16-country euro zone. IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn, who is attending the G7 meetings in Canada's remote north, said last week his institution was ready to help Greece if asked.

Guenther Oettinger, a German Conservative leader, warned in a Saturday newspaper interview that the euro currency was "in danger of becoming unstable," although his comments contradicted those from Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble. "The euro will stay stable," Schaeuble told reporters on Friday. "Markets always tend to overreact."

Thunderous mudslides damaged dozens of homes, swept away cars and pushed furniture into the streets of the foothills north of Los Angeles on Saturday as intense winter rain poured down mountains denuded by a summer wildfire. No injuries were reported but residents and emergency responders were caught off guard by the unpredicted ferocity of the storm, which damaged more than 40 homes and dozens of vehicles.Residents of all but about 70 of those homes were allowed to return home under clear skies Saturday night as another round of rains proved tame and moved on quickly. Flash flood warnings for foothill areas also were called off.

Looming above the damaged houses were the wildfire-scarred mountain slopes, still blackened from wildfires. Widespread flooding and downed trees tied up traffic and caused accidents across Los Angeles County. At least three fatalities were reported after vehicles hydroplaned and crashed on Los Angeles County freeways, and water almost a foot deep flowed into businesses on Melrose Avenue. Scattered power outages affected more than 10,000 customers in the Los Angeles area.

There were no immediate reports of damage or casualties. The Japanese agency said the tsunami was expected to be about 1.6 feet high. The quake hit 69 miles off the southern coast of Miyakojima island, in southern Japan, at a depth of six miles, it said.

The small island is about 1,120 miles southwest of Tokyo. Japan is one of the world's most earthquake-prone countries. In 1995, a magnitude 7.2 quake in the western port city of Kobe killed 6,400 people.

The host city enjoyed highs of 11 degrees again on Saturday while meteorological officials said that the warm weather, which has led to 300 dumper trucks and even helicopters being used to transport snow from higher elevations, will continue right up to the opening ceremony on February 12. The imported snow has been piled high on wood and hay which have been laid to form the bumps which test the freestyle skiiers at Cypress Mountain.

Olympics organisers have agreed to set up designated zones where protesters can have their say with a dizzying array of grievances being voiced - from supporting the homeless and poor to claims by pro-Native Canadian groups that the Games are being staged on 'stolen land'. Vancouver Police expect to see around 1,500 demonstrators when the opening ceremony takes place.

"The International Olympic Committee is like the World Trade Organization," claimed Harjap Grewal, a spokesman for Olympic Resistance Network (ORN). "Seven billion dollars have been spent on these Games while people are losing their homes in the Downtown Eastside (a Vancouver neighbourhood, often described as Canada's poorest district)."

Barack Obama has banned the Bush-era term "war on terror" and dithered about sending extra troops to Afghanistan, but across the border in Pakistan, the US president has dramatically stepped up the covert war against Islamic extremists.

US airstrikes in Pakistan, launched from unmanned drones, are now averaging three a week, triple the number last year. "We're quietly seeing a geographical shift," an intelligence officer said. For the past month drones have pounded the tribal region of North Waziristan in apparent retaliation for the murder of seven CIA officers in Afghanistan by a Jordanian suicide bomber working with the Pakistani Taliban.

Last week America launched its first multiple drone attack, according to Pakistani security officials. Eighteen missiles were fired from eight unmanned aircraft in Dattakhel village, killing 16 people. The discovery of the dead US soldiers revealed that America's shadowy war in Pakistan not only involves drones but also small cadres of special operations soldiers.

With Greece already expected to need a bail-out of up to 16 billion pounds from the European Central Bank, there are real concerns that the Eurozone may become unviable in its present form. In London, the FTSE 100 share index fell 78.39 points to close at 5060.92, a 1.5 per cent drop and a two-day decline of 191 points.

The pound rose sharply against the euro because of the turmoil. It now stands at 1.144euros, a climb of almost 15 per cent since October. But it fell to $1.56 against the dollar, seen as a safer haven by investors. Earlier in the day, Asian stock markets also fell, with Japan's Nikkei index down by three per cent. In New York, Wall Street dropped by more than 100 points.

Some economists say the turbulence in Europe could be enough to tilt the UK back into recession.

The economy grew by a disappointing 0.1 per cent in the final quarter of last year, and the fragile revival could easily be derailed.

Jim Reid, a strategist at Deutsche Bank in London, warned: 'These problems could be a dress rehearsal for what the US and UK may face further down the road.' Around half the UK's trade is with Europe, so if countries there are forced to curtail their spending and raise taxes, it is likely to depress demand for our exports.

It comes just days after Benedict XVI made an unprecedented attack on Labour's "unjust" equality laws, claiming that they restricted religious freedom. The pope went on: "The Church offers the world a positive and inspiring vision of human life, the beauty of marriage and the joy of parenthood."

"All too often the Church's doctrine is perceived as a series of prohibitions and retrograde positions, whereas the reality, as we know, is that it is creative and life-giving, and it is directed towards the fullest possible realization of the great potential for good and for happiness that God has implanted within every one of us."

Homosexuality rights campaigners and secular groups have announced that they will stage protests when Benedict XVI arrives in Britain - likely to be in September - after he spoke out so strongly against equality law. He had in mind the order that Catholic adoption agencies must consider same-sex couples as potential parents, and the clause in the Equality Bill currently before Parliament that could have left churches unable to require that employees are Christians, and forced to admit homosexuals to the priesthood.

Labour later disclosed that it would not seek to reintroduce the contentious clause of the bill, saying: "The Pope's intervention has been noted."

The move is a significant snub to both the IPCC and Dr Pachauri as he battles to defend his reputation following the revelation that his most recent climate change report included false claims that most of the Himalayan glaciers would melt away by 2035. Scientists believe it could take more than 300 years for the glaciers to disappear.

The body and its chairman have faced growing criticism ever since as questions have been raised on the credibility of their work and the rigour with which climate change claims are assessed. In India the false claims have heightened tensions between Dr Pachauri and the government, which had earlier questioned his glacial melting claims. In Autumn, its environment minister Mr Jairam Ramesh said while glacial melting in the Himalayas was a real concern, there was evidence that some were actually advancing despite global warming.

Dr Pachauri had dismissed challenges like these as based on "voodoo science", but last night Mr Ramesh effectively marginalized the IPC chairman even further. He announced the Indian government will establish a separate National Institute of Himalayan Glaciology to monitor the effects of climate change on the world's 'third ice cap', and an 'Indian IPCC' to use 'climate science' to assess the impact of global warming throughout the country.

"There is a fine line between climate science and climate evangelism. I am for climate science. I think people misused [the] IPCC report, [the] IPCC doesn't do the original research which is one of the weaknesses... they just take published literature and then they derive assessments, so we had goof-ups on Amazon forest, glaciers, snow peaks."

Nearly 2ft (60cm) of snow had fallen by noon on Saturday in cities across the region, the Associated Press reports. The governors of Washington DC, Virginia and Maryland have declared states of emergency. West Virginia, Delaware, Pennsylvania and New Jersey are also affected.

The National Weather Service declared a 24-hour blizzard warning for the Washington-Baltimore region until 2200 on Saturday (0300 GMT on Sunday). Most flights from the Washington-Baltimore area's three main airports and Philadelphia International Airport have been cancelled.

US national rail service Amtrak cancelled a number of trains between New York and Washington, and also between Washington and some southern destinations. Local weather forecasters said the Washington area could see its heaviest snowfall in 90 years. It comes less than two months after a December storm dumped more than 16in (41cm) of snow in Washington. The usually traffic-heavy roads of the capital were deserted, while the city's famous sites and monuments were covered with snow.

As the storm approached on Friday, residents poured into supermarkets, stocking up on food and other supplies. One Washington resident described the scene at her local supermarket. "I got there at 0700 [on Friday] and there were really long queues," Jane Bate, 41, told the AFP news agency. "The place looked like it had been ransacked."

Pottering was president of the European Parliament from 2007 till last July. "If we want to preserve freedom and if we want to increase justice, then we have to place the value of fraternity or solidarity at the center of our political thinking," Pottering said in presenting the message.

He said taking further responsibility is a "moral obligation. It is exactly here that politics has to adopt the Lenten Message of the Holy Father," Pottering declared. "We need again a European spirit of solidarity. And, more than ever, we need a European spirit of solidarity with all peoples and cultures of this one world. Those are the two most important social-ethical tasks that the European Union faces."

The former Parliament leader went on suggest that Europe needs to bring about a "spiritual renewal. This is," he said, "about approaching the tasks that we face in the spirit of solidarity and that we seize the possibilities that we possess in a comparatively rich and privileged Europe so that justice becomes a reality for as many people as possible. Where justice is experienced, the value of freedom is equally strengthened."

Cardinal Keith O'Brien, archbishop of St Andrew's and Edinburgh, stated this in an address today upon being received in audience by Benedict XVI. The meeting was attended by 11 bishops from Scotland who are in Rome for their five-yearly visit, which will end Wednesday.

He noted that "many people of other Christian denominations and representatives of other faith traditions in our country actually look to our Church for leadership in the great religious, moral and ethical issues of the time. They too welcome the prospect of a visit to our land from Your Holiness in the hope that they may gain a deeper appreciation of Jesus Christ and of the way in which faith and reason come together to shed God's light on the questions which both fascinate and trouble the human spirit," Cardinal O'Brien stated.

Such legal ambiguity could lead potentially to "systemic failure and widespread market disruption", the committee said. Its comments are the latest broadside for the draft Directive which critics say will hit London where much of Europe's private equity and hedge fund industry is based. Opponents will be buoyed by the comments of the committee whose role is to identify legal uncertainty in wholesale markets which might cause material risks.

Its report highlights uncertainty as to the meaning of the terms Alternative Investment Fund and Alternative Investment Fund Manager and finds potential for legal ambiguity owing to "inconsistencies and inherent conflicts" between the draft and existing financial services directives. It also raises concerns over the definition of "leverage" and sees legal problems verifying whether assets are owned by the manager or the fund.

The committee warning came as Spain, which took over the EU presidency at the start of 2010, published its first update of the draft directive.

Mikey Weinstein, founder of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, said an Air Force Academy staffer spotted the cross - erected with railroad ties - lying against a rock at a worship area for pagan groups at the academy in Colorado Springs, Colorado, on January 17. Weinstein, whose New Mexico-based group represents more than 16,000 active duty and retired servicemembers, said the incident was "clearly" a hate crime and characterized any denial of that assertion to be preposterous."We don't think, we know it was a hate crime," said Weinstein, who compared the incident to spray-painting a swastika on a synagogue.

David Cannon, director of communications at the Air Force Academy, said the incident remains under investigation. He declined to indicate whether it could be classified as a hate crime pending completion of the probe. Regardless of who left the cross, some critics say Gould's characterization of its placement as "destructive behavior" is inaccurate.

"What I think people are saying here is, 'We reject the idea of paganism and we are expressing another religious symbol,'" said Herb London, president of the Hudson Institute, a Manhattan-based think tank. "I'm not sure I would characterize that as a destructive act. A symbol put next to another symbol does not represent destructive behavior. It's somewhat exaggerated - you have your symbol, we have our symbol.'"

The tax on milk, meat, vegetables and other food purchased by shoppers will generate an estimated $12.5 million for the fiscal year that ends June 30. It will raise another $50 million for fiscal 2011. Food purchased with food stamps will not be taxed. The extra tax revenue means Phoenix will have more money in its coffers to help close a $241 million general-fund budget deficit through June 2011.

Last week, budget officials proposed cutting $140 million in services. Other special funds for things like transit also could get money. City Manager David Cavazos proposed eliminating 1,379 citywide positions, including nearly 500 police officers and firefighters. Among the dozens of targeted cuts, libraries and senior centers would be closed, an after-school program would be dismantled, and bus and light-rail service would be significantly reduced.