Skies were expected to clear Tuesday, giving Californians a brief respite before the next of three back-to-back storms was expected to sweep into the region later in the day. Rainfall totals ranged from 1 to 3 inches along the coast and in the valleys, and from 3 to 6 inches in the mountain areas, said Bill Hoffer, spokesman for the National Weather Service in Oxnard. Forecasters said storms lasting through Friday could drop a total of 20 inches of rain on Southern California.

Rainfall rates hit nearly an inch per hour in portions of the recent burn areas in Los Angeles County and 1.2 inches per hour in part of the burn areas in Santa Barbara County, said Dave Gomberg, a weather service meteorologist. The storm also broke a 1993 rainfall record at Bob Hope Airport in Burbank, where 1.55 inches of rain were recorded.

Authorities ordered nearly 200 homes evacuated or put on alert in foothill communities just below areas devastated by the massive Station wildfire, which charred more than 250 square miles of the Angeles National Forest in August. More than 20,000 customers in Southern California were without power for part of the day as flooding and high winds toppled power lines or sent drivers careening into electric poles. In Orange County, the downpour forced Disneyland to close its gates three hours early and caused a roof to collapse on employees at a medical lab in Santa Ana. No one was injured.

He notes that the overarching impression is that Brussels "decrees over people's heads, over traditions and cultures, and regulates things that could be regulated far more effectively on a national level".

He criticises EU over-regulation and calls for the 27 member states to emphatically reject Brussels' interference in national jurisdiction. Amongst his examples of "grotesque" EU over-regulation, he cites the Commission's decision to make benefits available to single women in Germany, a regulation that was heavily contested by the German government but ultimately overruled. Herzog suggests that this flouts the subsidiarity principle, which states that the EU can only interfere in national jurisdiction during an irresolvable cross border issue. Herzog argues, "National governments must establish a culture of categorically saying 'no' to EU legislation which jars with the subsidiarity principle."

Meanwhile, the Economist's Charlemagne blog argues: "I think much closer [EU] integration will not work, and after five years in Brussels, talking endlessly to politicians, officials, diplomats, think-tankers and the like, I am convinced I sense no mood out there for much deeper integration. And when I say the current system is not working well, it is not Brussels-bashing for the sake of it. I am a European, it pains me to see my continent falling behind. But there it is. I cannot pretend the emperor is wearing lovely robes. I cannot say I think the European Parliament can be fixed with lots of new powers, because I go there, and see a place that has gained huge amounts of new power in recent years, but remains dominated by mediocrities, and just as obsessed with gaining new powers as ever."

The French centre-right nominee for the internal market post, and currently a European deputy himself, appeared to have judged the mood of his interviewers well, with repeated references to a 'social agenda' to protect citizens drawing solid applause. On financial services he quoted the classical liberal economist Adam Smith, noting that even he had said: "The markets cannot work without rules, and they cannot work without ethics."

At the same time, Mr Barnier was quick to emphasise his intention to drive ahead with the completion of Europe's currently fragmented internal market. "To me it all goes together, development of the internal market and social progress," he insisted. Mr Barnier's nomination in November was followed by a media storm that saw some UK voices express concern that the Frenchman would usher in a new era of excessive financial regulation that could strangle the City of London.

"Let's not pretend we are not going to reform. We are going to reform," he told MEPs, adding that he aimed to put "transparency, responsibility and ethics at the heart of the financial system" and would not shy away from the difficult questions posed by derivatives and short-selling. The experienced politician also sought to allay fears over his independence following controversial remarks by French President Nicolas Sarkozy that the UK would be the "big loser" following his appointment.

"I won't take orders from Paris, London or anywhere else," he said, denying that he had been forced to take on a British director-general to ease UK concerns.

Medical teams pouring in to set up mobile hospitals say they are already overwhelmed by the casualties and fear the worst is yet to come as infection and disease take hold. "The number one risk is always bacterial infections where they have open wounds," said Josh Ruxin, a Columbia University public health expert living and working in Rwanda.

Haitian government officials said the death toll from Tuesday's magnitude 7 quake was likely to be between 100,000 and 200,000, and no one has even begun to get a count of injuries, which include crushed or amputated limbs, compound fractures and lacerations. Without quick treatment, these wounds will become infected. "Things are going to get much much worse before they are going to get better," Ruxin said.

Water is at a premium and diarrhea is likely. Children, the weak and elderly will die unnecessarily from diarrheal disease that would be easily treated with water and rehydration salts under more normal conditions, doctors said. "This could turn into a children's disaster of unprecedented proportions," said Dr Irwin Redlener of Columbia University's National Center for Disaster Preparedness. He said 40 percent of Haiti's population is made up of children under the age of 14, far more than in most countries.

Mehmet Ali Agca, 52, waved to journalists as he left the prison in a convoy of several vehicles. Turkish authorities plan to monitor him closely because of long-standing questions about his mental health. Agca shot John Paul on May 13, 1981, as the pope rode in an open car in St Peter's Square. The pontiff was hit in the abdomen, left hand and right arm, but the bullets missed vital organs. John Paul met with Agca in Italy's Rebibbia prison in 1983 and forgave him for the shooting.

Following his release, he sat calmly between two plainclothes policemen in the backseat of a sedan that took him to a military hospital. There, doctors concluded that he was unfit for compulsory military service because of "severe anti-social personality disorder," said his lawyer, Yilmaz Abosoglu.

In the statement distributed by Abosoglu outside the prison in Sincan on the outskirts of Ankara, the Turkish capital, Agca declared: "I proclaim the end of the world. All the world will be destroyed in this century. Every human being will die in this century. I am not God, I am not son of God, I am Christ eternal."

It said the quake, 64.2 miles (103.3 km) deep, was centered 60 miles (97 km) southeast of Guatemala City.

A 6.3 magnitude earthquake struck off the southern coast of Argentina on Sunday, the US Geological Survey said. The quake was centered about 220 miles (355 km) southeast of Ushuaia, Argentina, at a depth of 6.2 miles (10 km), USGS said. It struck at 8am local time (1200 GMT). No tsunami warnings were issued by the West Coast and Alaska Tsunami Warning Center or the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center.

Fighting erupted near the Serena Hotel and the presidential palace, although Afghan President Hamid Karzai says security has now been restored. The Taliban said 20 of its fighters had taken part in the attack on Kabul. Two civilians and three security personnel have been killed plus 71 others wounded, officials say.

The attacks began at about 0950 (0520 GMT) when a suicide bomber detonated his explosives in front of the Central Bank, next to the presidential palace, Afghan security officials said. Minutes later, two or three suicide bombers plus armed militants took over a multi-storey shopping centre overlooking the presidential palace, and attacked other government buildings and the five-star Serena Hotel.

While security forces lay siege to the shopping centre, a suicide bomber driving a van painted as an ambulance stopped outside another shopping centre nearby and detonated his explosives, officials said. Taliban militants have launched a number of recent attacks on Kabul. In October, five UN staff were killed in a raid on a UN guesthouse. The Serena Hotel was also targeted in the attack.

Wall Street's big payouts come as the remuneration committee at Royal Bank of Scotland prepares to meet this week to determine the size of its bonus pot. RBS - 84%-owned by British taxpayers - has indicated it wants to pay its investment bankers about 1.5 billion pounds in bonuses, even though it will make a loss this year at group level. The figure could creep higher if it attempts to shelter its bankers from the impact of Alistair Darling's 50% tax on bonuses.

America's bonus payouts come days after President Barack Obama revealed plans for a windfall tax on banks in an effort to curb the "obscene" bonus culture. Anger over the huge payments will be heightened by the fact that many of the banks are not profitable. Of the four due to report figures this week only Goldman is expected to post a profit at the net income level, according to a consensus of analyst forecasts. The losses blow a hole in the argument that the bonuses represent pay for performance.

Minhaj-ul-Quran, a Sufi organisation based in East London which advises the Government on how to combat radicalisation of Muslim youth, will launch the 600-page religious verdict tomorrow. It condemns the perpetrators of terrorist explosions and suicide bombings.

The document, written by Dr Muhammed Tahir-ul-Qadri, a former minister of Pakistan and friend of Benazir Bhutto, declares suicide bombings and terrorism as "totally un-Islamic". It is one of the most detailed and comprehensive documents of its kind to be published in Britain. The fatwa, which was released in Pakistan last month, uses texts from the Koran and other Islamic writings to argue that attacks against innocent citizens are "absolutely against the teachings of Islam and that Islam does not permit such acts on any excuse, reason or pretext".

Inayat Bunglawala, former spokesman of the Muslim Council of Britain and founder of the new group Muslims4UK, set up to counter the radical message of the newly banned Islam4UK and other extremist groups, welcomed the fatwa. "This adds to the view of many Islamic scholars internationally that terrorism and suicide bombings are unacceptable in Islam," he said. "It is a positive initiative. Anything that helps move young people away from violence and from those who promote violence must be welcomed."

Two years ago the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued a benchmark report that was claimed to incorporate the latest and most detailed research into the impact of global warming. A central claim was the world's glaciers were melting so fast that those in the Himalayas could vanish by 2035.

In the past few days the scientists behind the warning have admitted that it was based on a news story in the New Scientist, a popular science journal, published eight years before the IPCC's 2007 report. It has also emerged that the New Scientist report was itself based on a short telephone interview with Syed Hasnain, a little-known Indian scientist then based at Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi.

When finally published, the IPCC report did give its source as the WWF study but went further, suggesting the likelihood of the glaciers melting was "very high". The IPCC defines this as having a probability of greater than 90%. The report read: "Glaciers in the Himalaya are receding faster than in any other part of the world and, if the present rate continues, the likelihood of them disappearing by the year 2035 and perhaps sooner is very high if the Earth keeps warming at the current rate."

However, glaciologists find such figures inherently ludicrous, pointing out that most Himalayan glaciers are hundreds of feet thick and could not melt fast enough to vanish by 2035 unless there was a huge global temperature rise. The maximum rate of decline in thickness seen in glaciers at the moment is 2-3 feet a year and most are far lower.

The revelation is the latest crack to appear in the scientific concensus over climate change. It follows the so-called climate-gate scandal, where British scientists apparently tried to prevent other researchers from accessing key data. Last week another row broke out when the Met Office criticised suggestions that sea levels were likely to rise 1.9m by 2100, suggesting much lower increases were likely.

The pontiff responded after an Italian Jewish leader spoke of the painful "silence" of wartime Pope Pius XII. It comes amid Jewish anger at Benedict's moves to beatify Pius. The Pope conceded that "unfortunately, many remained indifferent", to the suffering of the Jews, six million of whom were killed in the Holocaust.

But he said "The Apostolic See [the Vatican] itself provided assistance, often in a hidden and discreet way," without mentioning Pius XII by name. His remarks came directly after the president of Rome's Jewish community, Riccardo Pacifici, told him "the silence of Pius XII before the Shoah [Holocaust], still hurts because something should have been done".

"Maybe it would not have stopped the death trains, but it would have sent a signal, a word of extreme comfort, of human solidarity, towards those brothers of ours transported to the ovens of Auschwitz," he said. The visit, Benedict's third to a Jewish temple since becoming Pope in 2005, is seen as a gesture of reconciliation between Catholics and Jews.

Giovanni Ferrara, the Rome prosecutor, is invoking the 1929 Lateran Treaty between Italy and the Vatican, which stipulates that an insult to the Pope carries the same penalty as an insult to the Italian President. Prosecution requires authorisation from the Ministry of Justice, for which Mr Ferrara has applied.

The incident has strong political overtones as Mr Berlusconi has been at pains to court the Vatican - and the Catholic vote - since returning to power for the third time in May. Last weekend he accompanied Benedict to Cagliari in Sardinia and attended mass there.

Mr Berlusconi, who owns Italy's three main commercial television channels and as Prime Minister also wields influence over RAI, the state broadcaster, has been accused by the Left of using his media power to muzzle critics and satirists. The move to prosecute Guzzanti over her anti-papal remarks was praised by some on the centre Right, including Luca Volonte, a Christian Democrat, who said that "gratuitous insults must be punished".

However, many people were strongly critical. Paolo Guzzanti, Ms Guzzanti's father and a centre Right MP, said the move was "a return to the Middle Ages".

The BBC put the contract out to tender to ensure "best value for money", but its timing coincides with a storm over the Met Office's accuracy. Last July the state-owned forecaster's predictions for a "barbecue summer" turned into a washout. And its forecast for a mild winter attracted derision when temperatures recently plunged as low as -22C.

Last week the Met Office failed to predict heavy snowfall in the southeast that brought traffic to a standstill. This weekend a YouGov poll for The Sunday Times reveals that 74% of people believe its forecasts are generally inaccurate. By contrast, many commercial rivals got their predictions for winter right. They benefit from weather forecasts produced by a panel of six different data providers, including the Met Office.

The UN's warning came as the full picture of the horror in the flattened capital of Port au Prince emerged. Haitian ministers claimed the body count could rise far beyond the 50,000 estimate made by the Red Cross officials on Friday, saying that 50,000 bodies had already been buried. Trucks piled high with corpses delivered them to mass graves outside the stricken city, with thousands more still lying uncollected on the streets or buried under heavy rubble.

"We have already collected around 50,000 dead bodies," said interior minister Paul Antoine Bien-Aime. "We anticipate there will be between 100,000 and 200,000 dead in total, although we will never know the exact number." If that casualty count is confirmed, it would make Tuesday's 7.0 magnitude earthquake one of the ten deadliest on record. The death toll would also rival that of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, which claimed roughly 250,000 lives. However, officials with knowledge of both incidents said the Haitian disaster - which hit a country already barely functional - posed an infinitely tougher relief challenge.

"This is a historic disaster," said UN spokesman Elisabeth Byrs, whose own organisation has lost 36 local staff in the earthquake. "We have never been confronted with such a disaster in the UN memory. It is like no other."

The event was nearly cancelled last month when the Pope said he had moved Pius XII, his wartime predecessor, closer to sainthood by bestowing on him the title "venerable". The move infuriated some groups, which claimed Pius did not do enough to speak out against the Holocaust and save Jews from the Nazis. The Pope's visit has split the Jewish community, with the event being boycotted by survivors of the Nazi death camps as well as the president of the Italian Assembly of Rabbis, Giuseppe Laras.

Relations between the Roman Catholic Church and Jews hit their lowest point for years after the Pope's decision last January to rehabilitate Richard Williamson, a British bishop who questions the extent of the Holocaust, and his unexpected announcement last month that he was advancing the beatification process for Pius XII.

The Church has long argued that Pius, who was pope from 1939 to 1958, secretly saved many Jews by allowing them to hide in monasteries and churches, and that he held back from being more critical of Hitler because he feared it would prompt even more savage persecution of the Jews. La Repubblica newspaper claimed yesterday to have unearthed previously unseen documents held in archives in Berlin in which Nazi agents complained that Pius was helping Jews to escape German round-ups.