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."

Mississippi Emergency Management Agency spokesman Greg Flynn said five people were killed in Choctaw County, 3 in Yazoo County and 1 in Holmes County. No names have been released and details are not available. Two of those dead in Choctaw county are children.

Governor Haley Barbour told The Associated Press there was "utter obliteration" in parts of Yazoo County, an area where he is from. More than 15 other counties were also damaged. The swath of debris forced rescuers to pick up some of the injured on all-terrain vehicles.

The weather hampered crews trying to clean up an oil spill after an offshore rig exploded earlier this week off the coast of Louisiana. Several sporting events and festivals also were rescheduled. The storms also damaged a tank at a chemical plant in Tallulah, causing a small nitrogen leak.

He is expected to visit Birmingham - as part of the planned beatification of Cardinal John Newman - and Scotland. Dates for the trip have not been set. The Pope was formally invited to visit the UK by Prime Minister Gordon Brown last February. Scottish Secretary Jim Murphy also invited him to visit Scotland

The petition states: "We the undersigned, petition the Prime Minister to ask the Catholic Church to pay for the proposed visit of the Pope to the UK and relieve the taxpayer of the estimated 20 million pounds cost. We accept the right of the Pope to visit his followers in Britain, but public money would be better spent on hard-pressed schools, hospitals and social services which are facing cuts." The National Secular Society says that 28,000 people have now signed their petition.

BBC religious affairs correspondent Robert Pigott said Roman Catholics were trying to improve the way they get the Church's message across to an increasingly sceptical public in preparation for the visit. Articulate Catholics are being trained as spokesmen and women to answer some of the awkward questions about contraception and Aids, homosexuality, and the meaning of sainthood in the 21st Century that his visit is likely to prompt. He said they know the visit represented a great opportunity, but also something of a danger.

Our correspondent said: "So secularists have also spotted an opportunity. They can see the potential for creating a coalition of people unhappy with the traditionalist Christian message in a variety of limited fields. The Pope might not exactly be a stick with which to beat religion, but his visit will focus attention on areas which the National Secular Society suspects will inspire scepticism as much as faith."

Scientist Dr Grant Allen, of Manchester University's Centre for Atmospheric Science, uses words of evasion that are almost self-parodying: 'Analysis of these atmospheric measurements is early and still ongoing and being supplemented with new measurements all the time.'

In 1996, Britain spent 7 billion pounds killing millions of the nation's cows in response to the alleged threat of CJD killing humans eating burgers made from cattle infected by BSE. We now know that the likelihood of this was almost infinitesimally slight.

In 2009, the government spent 1 billion pounds on unneeded vaccines against swine flu, which we were told might kill half a million people. The SARS virus, said some 'experts', could prove more devastating to humanity than Aids. It was once suggested that bird flu might kill 150 million people worldwide.

Back to transport. After 9/11, many Americans were reluctant to fly, so drove to their destinations instead. One statistical analysis suggests that 2,500 extra road deaths ensued. Flying would have been much safer.

The British are grotesquely sensitive to rail accidents, though figures show that train travel is by far the safest means of going anywhere. After the Ladbroke Grove rail smash, in which 31 people died, a new Train Protection and Warning System was installed throughout the system. It has been estimated that each life thus saved has cost 15.4 million pounds.

No minister - Tory, Labour or lib Dem - readily defies those who invoke the sacred principle of making us safer. We have become an almost insanely risk-averse society, demanding to be babied from cradle to grave. The great volcanic ash air shutdown is part of the price we pay for this. Until, as a society, we learn to measure risk realistically, we shall continue to face draconian responses to even marginal threats.

The 1,166 requests for information - which relate to the second half of 2009 - came from agencies such as local and national police, and usually formed part of a criminal investigation. France asked for 846 pieces of information, and Germany for 428. The search engine also received 59 requests from British government departments and other official sources to remove items from Google's services.

A Google spokesman said that the company regularly gets asked by governments for information relating to users' emails or on how and where they have logged on. The company added, however, that where broad requests are made it endeavours to release as little information as is necessary by law. It complies with approximately 77 per cent of all British requests for removal.

Google has launched its Government Requests Tool to highlight the extent to which governments are using their legal systems to gather information about citizens or censor the web. However, it admitted it could not provide data for China as Beijing considers such figures as a state secret.

David Drummond, the company's general counsel, said that "We believe that greater transparency will lead to less censorship." Google said, however, that because there is not internationally accepted criteria for requests then presenting data from around the world is impractical. "We're still learning the best way to collect and present this information," the company said. "We'll continue to improve this tool and fine-tune the types of data we display."

He said we found it hard to accept that Germany had become a 'vastly more prosperous nation' and that 'we need to be put back in our place'. His views, outlined in a newspaper article when he was a member of the European Parliament, cast grave doubts over his judgment of international affairs ahead of the second leaders' debate this evening, when the topic will be foreign policy. The jibes threatened to undermine the surge which has taken Mr Clegg from also-ran to serious player in the opinion polls.

'All nations have a cross to bear, and none more so than Germany with its memories of Nazism. But the British cross is more insidious still. A misplaced sense of superiority, sustained by delusions of grandeur and a tenacious obsession with the last war, is much harder to shake off. We need to be put back in our place.'

Tory MP Nicholas Soames, grandson of wartime leader Sir Winston Churchill, said: 'These views will disgust people the length and breadth of the country. They show that Nick Clegg is unfit to lead his party, let alone the country. They are an insult to the memory of Britain's war dead and to a time when the British public all pulled together for the common good. They prove that Mr Clegg shares the European view of Britain rather than the British view.'

Making clear his love affair with all things European, he condemned the British 'belief in our innate difference from our mainland continental cousins'. He went on: 'No other culture in Europe is quite so enamoured by such a false notion of difference. We Brits concoct a historically illiterate notion that we are divorced from outside influences. Maybe it was loss of empire, the choppy waters of the Channel, or the last war.'