He said the FSA would be taking on an extra 460 members of staff. It is to expand its workforce to 3,700 people. "Our benchmark should seek to have a market that participants really believe to be clean and fair," said Mr Stants. "And, as a general test, I think that if you were to ask the market participants, they would share my view that there is too much market abuse."

It announced last week that it will start to investigate financial products to ensure they are suitable before they go on sale, rather than focusing in assisting consumers to get redress once problems emerge. Mr Sants comments come a week after a retired stockbroker was jailed for 21 months after being found guilty of insider dealing. Malcolm Calvert, a former employee of investment bank Cazenove, used his contacts to get inside information on business deals before getting a friend to buy shares which subsequently went up in value.

The proposals, which have been leaked to The Sunday Telegraph and which are expected to be announced soon, would sweep away centuries of tradition and set ministers on a collision course with the current 704-member House of Lords, which is resolutely opposed to having elected members.

The plans would see all members of the new-look assembly being directly elected - ending the system of party patronage - with polling under some form of proportional representation system taking place at the same time as general elections. One third of the new chamber would be elected on each occasion - with members serving three terms, up to 15 years, once elected in a similar system to the one in use to choose members of the US Senate.

There would be a "consultation" on the name of the new chamber - almost certainly putting paid to any chances of retaining the designation "House of Lords", which has been in use since the 14th century. The favourite for the new name would be likely to be The Senate. The remaining 92 hereditary peers - the relic of a deal done under Tony Blair's premiership in 1999 - would also be swept away under the proposed reforms.

The quake struck at 9:57 am local time (7:57 pm ET Saturday). The epicenter was 285 kilometers (180 miles) southeast of Ternate, on Indonesia's Moluccas island group, and 2,415 kilometers (1,500 miles) east of Jakarta, the nation's capital. The quake struck at a depth of 52.4 kilometers (32.6 miles). No tsunami warning was issued following the quake.

That is the central question to emerge from the examiner's report, released late on Thursday by the bankruptcy court in Manhattan, which details examples of Lehman concealing assets and liabilities through accounting techniques. Thomas Baxter, general counsel of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, one of the main banking regulators, told the examiner, Anton Valukas, that he was generally aware of firms using "balance-sheet window dressing," but had no specific information on Lehman.

Banks have wrestled with this issue for years. The old Bankers Trust, for instance, struggled to fend off bank clients that wanted to use BT to help conceal assets, said Ray Soifer, a consultant who previously worked at BT and sat on a task force designed to reduce that business. "Reducing leverage is something that banks do. It's cosmetic," Soifer said.

In 2003, an internal review into accounting irregularities at Freddie Mac (FRE.N) found the government-sponsored mortgage finance firm had periodically rented out its balance sheet to a Credit Suisse Group AG (CSGN.VX) mortgage trader. The review found that Freddie Mac entered into a series of deals with Credit Suisse that allowed the investment bank's trading desk to "park" some $8 billion in mortgage-backed securities on the mortgage firm's balance sheet.

Over the years, one common trick has been to borrow money at the beginning of the quarter and invest it in short-term bonds that mature before the end of the quarter. When the bonds mature, the bank pays back its debt and it has fewer assets and liabilities. The upshot is that the bank generates more profit off what appears to be fewer assets, giving it a better return on assets, a commonly watched measure of profitability.

US defence contractor Northrop Grumman and its European partner EADS withdrew on Monday from a renewed competition to supply tankers to the US Air Force, saying the rules favoured rival bidder Boeing, the top US exporter. Boeing is now the sole known bidder for the contract.

Asked what he thought of the issue during a joint press conference with British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, Sarkozy delivered a scathing attack on how the United States had handled the tender. "I did not appreciate this decision ... This is not the right way to behave," Sarkozy said. "Such methods by the United States are not good for its European allies, and such methods are not good for the United States, a great, leading nation with which we are on close and friendly terms," he said.

"If they want to be heard in the fight against protectionism, they should not set the example of protectionism." Northrop and EADS won the last competition in February 2008, but the Pentagon cancelled that deal after government auditors upheld a protest by Boeing.

When the tool is activated, tweets will link to a Google map of the area the user is in. The growing trend for web services to broadcast people's whereabouts - already picked up by Foursquare, Gowalla and Loopt - is expected to be followed by Facebook soon too.

Avid Twitter users have been warned to be careful about how and when they harness the power of the new technology, which works by shadowing people through their web browsers. The brains behind the microblogging mecca reckon the tool will make Twitter more useful for anyone looking for real-time information.

The Vatican's campaign to defend the Pope's reputation and resolve in combatting clergy abuse of minors followed acknowledgment by the Munich archdiocese that it had transferred a suspected pedophile priest to community work while Benedict was archbishop there. Benedict is also under fire for a 2001 church directive he wrote while a Vatican cardinal, instructing bishops to keep abuse cases confidential.

Germany's Justice Minister has blamed the directive for what she called a "wall of silence" preventing prosecution. Skeptical about the Vatican's handling of abuse, a US-based advocacy group for abuse victims, Survivors Network of those Abused for Priests, urged faithful to bring candles and childhood photos to vigils outside churches, cathedrals and German consulates across the US this weekend to remind people to "call police, not bishops" in cases of suspected abuse.

But the Holy See's so-called prosecutor for clergy sex abuse cases, providing some of the first statistics about his office's handling of allegations, decried what he called "false and defamatory" contentions that Benedict had promoted a "policy of cover up." At the Vatican, rules on handling sexual abuse were "never understood as a ban on making a complaint to civil authorities," Monsignor Charles Scicluna told Italian bishops conference daily Avvenire.

But Irish bishops have said the document was widely taken to mean they shouldn't go to police. And victims' lawyers in the US say the document shows the church tried to obstruct justice. Shortly before becoming Pope, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger denounced what he called "filth" in the priesthood, but so far hasn't directly commented on the cases in his homeland.

The 2,200-page report, published yesterday in America, found that Linklaters allowed 'balance sheet manipulation' while investors remained in the dark as to what was going on. Crucially, Lehman had turned to the UK after it failed to find an American law firm who would sign off the activities, the report said. Linklaters advised Lehman that the accounting practice was allowed under English law.

The report was produced by US lawyer Anton Valukas, who was appointed by a judge to investigate the collapse of Lehman Brothers in September 2008. It was the largest bankruptcy in American history and triggered a panic which brought the global economy to its knees. The domino effect resulted in the state bail-out of UK banks RBS and HBOS. The disclosure that one of the country's largest and respected law firms was involved in controversial accounting practices will be an embarrassment to the City.

Mr Valukas found that Lehman had been insolvent for weeks before it filed for bankruptcy. Executives had used a complicated transaction that enabled them to remove liabilities from Lehman's balance sheet for a short time, when results were due, and hide the true level of its debts. It was approved by Linklaters and signed off by the bank's auditors Ernst & Young. The report found that Lehman used this transaction 'to create a materially misleading picture of the firm's financial condition in late 2007 and 2008'.

He also found that Barclays, which bought a large chunk of Lehman's US business after it filed for bankruptcy, received some assets it was not entitled to, including office equipment, but they were worth less than 6.6 million pounds.

The ban, however, prompted a response from the Alliance Defense Fund, which filed an appeal with the city as the first step in its campaign to overturn a provision it describes as illegal. "The interpretation and enforcement of the town's code is clearly unconstitutional, " said Daniel Blomberg, a member of the litigation team for ADF. "It bans 200,000 Gilbert residents from meeting in their private homes for organized religious purposes - an activity encouraged in the Bible, practiced for thousands of years, and protected by the First Amendment."

The appeal was filed on behalf of the members, all seven, of the Oasis of Truth Church. Pastor Joe Sutherland had been told in a letter from code compliance officer Steve Wallace that the people were not allowed to meet in a home for church activities under the city's Land Development Code. There had been no complaints about the meetings, which had been rotating among members' homes before the officer wrote the letter and ordered the group to "terminate all religious meetings ... regardless of their size, nature or frequency," because he noticed signs about the meetings.

The town interprets its law so that "churches within its borders cannot have any home meetings of any size, including Bible studies, three-person church leadership meetings and potluck dinners," ADF said. A city letter confirmed, "Given that the church is considered to be religious assembly, and given the LDC provisions prohibiting that use on Local streets without Use Permits and prohibiting it in single family residential structures, it follows that the church meetings cannot be held in the home. The assembly activities associated with the church, including Bible studies, church leadership meetings and church fellowship activities are not permitted," wrote Mike Milillo, the city's senior planner.

Despite its thinness, the corona can pack a deadly punch. Occasionally, the Sun's surface erupts in a solar quake, a paroxysm of gigantic storms and flares. Sometimes these are powerful enough to eject vast blobs of corona gas into space at millions of miles per hour.

In 1859, one such eruption hit the Earth square on, generating a brilliant aurora in the night sky (bright enough to wake sleeping Gold Rush miners in the Klondyke) and shorting out much of the world's nascent telegraph system. Though solar storms can't hurt humans directly, the 1859 event was powerful enough to melt copper cables.

Should such an event happen today, it would cause utter chaos and could well precipitate an economic meltdown. Our electricity grids would be fried and phone and internet lines would be shut down. But what's the likelihood of that happening? Unfortunately, it's impossible to say - though some scientists predict another corona eruption in the summer of 2012, when the Sun is predicted to enter a new 'manic' phase of turbulence.

Photos can be viewed here

The rainbow trout's enhanced muscle mass is between 15 to 20 per cent higher than that of a standard fish, thanks to Professor Bradley's research into the inhibition of myostatin, a protein that slows growth. The increased muscle mass will have commercial benefits in that larger fish can be grown without increasing the amount of food they need. While the physical differences in the fish include a prominent dorsal hump, making it look as if it has muscular shoulders, and the appearance of 'six pack abs', no differences in behaviour have been noted.

The team injected thousands of rainbow trout eggs with various DNA types designed to inhibit myostatin. Of the eggs that hatched, those which carried the gene began to develop 'body-builder' physiques. Professor Bradley added: 'The results have significant implications for commercial aquaculture and provide completely novel information on the mechanisms of fish growth.'

But modern mainstream Christianity has apparently pensioned off Old Nick as an embarrassing reminder of a past when it used too much stick and not enough carrot in spreading the Good News. You have to go back to 1972 to find a Pope offering any detailed reflection on Satan. Paul VI described him as 'not merely a lack of something, but an effective agent, a living spiritual being, perverted and perverting'.

So the remarks by 85-year-old Father Gabriele Amorth, for decades the chief exorcist in Rome, have taken many by surprise. Far from being superstitious medieval nonsense, Amorth has said in promoting his new book, Memoirs of An Exorcist, the Devil is 'lodging in the Vatican' and can be seen in the activities of paedophile priests, over-ambitious clerics and 'cardinals who don't believe in Jesus'.

Even Amorth's title sounds as if it belongs more to Hollywood blockbusters than the contemporary life of the Catholic Church which makes only the most fleeting of references in its encyclopaedic Catechism, published in 1993, to the Devil as the 'seductive voice' who tempted Adam and Eve (article 391). But despite its official silence about Lucifer, the fallen angel who was ejected from heaven and will, according to the Book of Revelation, roam the earth until the final day of Judgement spreading evil and lies, the Vatican has never dismantled its medieval network of exorcists in every diocese. It just prefers not to mention them - until Father Amorth blew their cover.

In Rome, of course, they are less coy about such matters, and that is where I finally got to meet Father Amorth. He's a giant of a man with a deeply lined bulldog face who was working out of a subterranean office in an anonymous church building on the outskirts of Rome. 'Our language may be more discreet today,' he told me, referring back to the Devil's medieval heyday, 'but the idea remains the same.' He had, he said, carried out more than 50,000 exorcisms, but added that the centre of Catholicism was unusual because it was special focus for Satan's schemes. Only 84 of the 50,000, he added, had been genuine cases of possession, but then he described, in that very room the day before, exorcising 'the demon of the media' from a young man who had, as a result, vomited fragments of radio equipment. At a distance, it sounds almost comical. At the time, I was so disturbed I brought the interview to a rapid conclusion.

The 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals panel rejected two legal challenges by Sacramento atheist Michael Newdow, who claimed the references to God disrespect his religious beliefs. "The Pledge is constitutional," Judge Carlos Bea wrote for the majority in the 2-1 ruling. "The Pledge of Allegiance serves to unite our vast nation through the proud recitation of some of the ideals upon which our Republic was founded."

In a separate 3-0 ruling Thursday, the appeals court upheld the inscription of the national motto "In God We Trust" on coins and currency, saying THAT THE PHRASE IS CEREMONIAL AND PATRIOTIC, NOT RELIGIOUS.

The article continues, "Between Barroso and Van Rompuy, between Commission and Council, the real power struggle is being conducted ... Van Rompuy builds his influence steadily. He has created a culture shock in the Council Building as "instructions are now coming from above". Adding that, now installed in his second term as Commission President, Barroso has "suddenly discovered his heart for the European Parliament" at the expense of member state governments.

In her speech to the European Parliament yesterday, Ashton said, "People raise the question whether the EU should have its own permanent operations HQ. This is a serious issue that deserves a serious debate." Herve Morin, the French Defence Minister, has recently stepped up calls for the creation of a central military HQ, seen as a step towards a European army.

The article notes that EU officials have said that as Europe's Foreign Minister, Lady Ashton's job "is not to put the British view" ahead of negotiations on the HQ next month. "She has an open mind on the issue," said an aide.