"It's our fundamental right to decide how we want to teach our children," says Uwe Romeike, an Evangelical Christian and a concert pianist who sold his treasured Steinway to help pay for the move. Romeike decided to uproot his family in 2008 after he and his wife had accrued about $10,000 in fines for homeschooling their three oldest children and police had turned up at their doorstep and escorted them to school. "My kids were crying, but nobody seemed to care," Romeike says of the incident.

So why did he seek asylum in the US rather than relocate to nearby Austria or another European country that allows homeschooling? Romeike's wife Hannelore tells TIME the family was contacted by the Virginia-based Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA), which suggested they go to the US and settle in Morristown, Tennessee. The nonprofit organization, which defends the rights of the US homeschooling community - with its estimated 2 million children, or about 4% of the total school-age population - is expanding its overseas outreach. And on January 26, the HSLDA helped the Romeikes become the first people granted asylum in the US because they were persecuted for homeschooling.

The ruling is tricky politically for Washington and its allies in Europe, where several countries - including Spain and the Netherlands - allow homeschooling only under exceptional circumstances, such as when a child is extremely ill. That helps explain why in late February, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement formally appealed the Romeike ruling, which was issued by an immigration judge in Memphis, Tennessee. His unprecedented decision has raised concerns that the already heavily backlogged immigration courts will be flooded with asylum petitions from homeschoolers in countries typically regarded as having nonrepressive governments.

In all, 23 percent of around 1000 respondents in the survey said they would be prepared to have a chip inserted under their skin "for certain benefits". Around one in six (16 percent) said they would wear an implant to allow emergency services to rescue them more quickly in the event of a fire or accident.

And five percent of people said they would be prepared to have an implant to make their shopping go more smoothly. But 72 percent said they would not "under any circumstances" allow electronics in their body. The results appeared to surprise even the high-tech sector. "This is of course an extreme example of how far people can imagine networks going," said BITKOM chief August-Wilhelm Scheer.

The CeBIT, the world's biggest high-tech fair, throws its doors open to the public on Tuesday, with Spain, the current EU president, this year's guest of honour. German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero were due to speak later on Monday in an official opening ceremony before touring the exhibition early Tuesday.

"There have been absolutely no other decisions taken. I would like to say that quite clearly," she said. The emphatic tone suggests that EU officials and a French-led bloc of states have gone too far in trying to create a sense of inevitabilty behind the rescue package. There is clearly irritation in Berlin that EU integrationists are trying to bounce Germany into an historic commitment, entailing a quantum leap towards EU fiscal federalism and the creation of a debt union.

Professor Paul Kirchhof, a leading German jurist, told Der Spiegel that alleged bail-out plans breach of Germany's constitution, and may trigger court challenges. Both the Free Democrats and Bavarian Social Christians in the Merkel coalition have raised doubts over use of KfW [a government owned development bank, the name means 'Reconstruction Credit Institute'] for a Greek rescue, viewing any diversion of funds to support foreign policy as an abuse of its core role as banker for Mittelstand family firms. The Bundestag's finance committee has also questioned whether it is legal for German state bodies to buy eurozone debt. The mood has been poisoned by Greek rhetoric over Nazi war crimes.

Mrs Merkel offered scant hope yesterday. "The euro is certainly in the most difficult phase since it was created. Its important we remember that it is our common currency on the one hand, but also on the other of the need to tackle the causes of the troubles at their roots which are high Greek deficits and lost credibility."

"Iran sits on 50 percent of the world's energy, and if it wants, Europe will spend the winter in the cold," Salami told Iranian troops in the city of Kerman. His speech was published by the Iranian Fars news agency. Iran is in possession of roughly 16 percent of the world's natural gas and is the fourth-largest exporter of crude oil. In addition, Iran borders the Strait of Hormuz (Persian Gulf), through which much of the world's oil supply passes.

Salami also mentioned Iran's missiles. The country has recently tested long-range missiles, and announced just weeks ago that it had launched a satellite-capable rocket. "Our missiles are now able to target any spot which the conspirators are in," he said.

But the introduction of the Lisbon Treaty has triggered bitter in-fighting between Mr Van Rompuy, Baroness Ashton, the foreign minister, and the Commission over who is in charge of representing Europe on the global stage. Diplomats are increasingly worried that amid the turf wars there is a danger of Brussels "mission creep" as squabbling EU chiefs try to enlarge their empires at the expense of each other and national sovereignty.

National governments, led by Germany, are incensed by an attempt by Mr Van Rompuy to take on new powers he claims were agreed at an informal summit two weeks ago. There has been particular anger over a letter he sent to EU leaders following the chaotic February 11 meeting in Brussels that was dominated by the economic crisis in Greece and talk of a European bail-out.

Despite the fact that the meeting only lasted three hours, with Greece the main topic of discussion, Mr Van Rompuy insisted that eight to ten specific points were agreed, a view that has been disputed by most EU leaders. One of the points of the classified letter, seen by The Daily Telegraph, gives Mr Van Rompuy the right to lead the EU's negotiating team at G20 summits, usurping the role of national governments and the Commission.

Another diplomat expressed concern that amid the "biggest shift for 50 years", following the Lisbon Treaty, EU institutions were in danger of overstepping the mark. "It is about getting the right balance between a collective EU voice and the member states. Whoever talks - Van Rompuy, Barroso or Ashton - they need to speak to a position agreed by the 27 member states," he said.

Several fires broke out after the latest quake, including one in a textile factory in the southern city of Tainan, which sent out huge clouds of smoke and stalled lifts. Services on the southern half of Taiwan's high-speed rail linking Taipei with the south were stopped pending safety checks. Subway service in the city of Kaohsiung was temporarily disrupted.

Power outages hit Taipei and at least one county to the south, and telephone service in some parts of Taiwan was patchy. Buildings swayed in the capital when the quake struck. Taiwan is often rattled by earthquakes. A 7.6-magnitude quake in central Taiwan in 1999 killed more than 2,300 people.

It is also feared that the changes would blur the line further between marriage - which churches say must be between a man and a woman - and civil partnerships. It comes after a Government drive to outlaw bias against minority groups such as homosexuals in the Equality Bill. Until now civil partnerships, which entitle same-sex couples to the same legal rights of married spouses, have been restricted to register offices and secular venues such as hotels and stately homes.

But under an amendment to the Equality Bill tabled in the House of Lords by Lord Alli, a homosexual Labour peer, the ban on the events taking place on religious premises will be lifted. But it is feared that same-sex couples would be able to use the protection from discrimination guaranteed - under the Equality Bill or the Human Rights Act - to take legal action against individual clergy in their parish if they refuse to "marry" them in a local church.

At least some of that money was likely to have come from the 150 million pounds raised by Live Aid and Band Aid. More than three million copies of Do They Know It's Christmas sold in just five weeks in late 1984 to raise funds for the estimated eight million Ethiopians facing starvation. Up to a million died.

According to a report published on Wednesday, rebel soldiers disguised themselves as grain traders and handed over sacks of sand hidden beneath genuine food aid, in return for cash from Western donations. The rebel army involved, headed by Ethiopia's current prime minister, Meles Zenawi, went on to overthrow Ethiopia's Marxist government and has run the country since.

Mr Meles has been one of Britain's most favoured African leaders after promising democratic reforms. The investigation by the BBC, will raise further questions over Western support for Mr Meles and his ruling Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front. That party grew out of the Tigrayan People's Liberation Front, the rebel army given Western cash to buy food aid during the 1984-5 famine.

Schadenfreude may be a German word, but it has never been a foreign concept in Great Britain - particularly in recent months as the British watch the trials and tribulations of the European common currency, the euro. The budgetary and debt problems facing Greece, Portugal, Italy, Ireland and Spain have merely reinforced their conviction that staying out of the euro zone was the right decision. Unlike Berlin, London is not under pressure to come to the aid of Athens.

But speculators have not just taken aim at the euro in recent days. The British pound, too, has become a favored target - showing Brits how vulnerable their own currency may actually be. At the beginning of the week, the pound slid to a 10-month low of just $1.4781. Since then, the pound has staged a mini-recovery, moving back above $1.50 on Wednesday. But market pressure on the British currency is not likely to disappear overnight.

Still, the currency remains weak. And though it is unlikely at this point that the rating agencies will downgrade Britain's creditworthiness, the possibility cannot be ruled out. In May 2009, Standard and Poor's cut its view of British bonds from stable to "outlook negative." If Britain were to actually lose its AAA rating, it could have disastrous consequences for the pound. And there would be no holding the speculators back.

MPs will now vote whether to go ahead with lifting the ban. The amendment was moved by Lord Alli, a Labour peer who is himself homosexual, and was backed by lords from all parties on a free vote, in the face of fierce opposition from some church leaders, by 95 to 21.

Supporting the move Baroness Butler-Sloss, the retired high court judge who sits as a cross-bench peer, said: "I believe that same sex couples should be able to have religious services in religious establishments where that particular religious establishment permits them do to so." She added that the Quakers and some liberal Jewish synagogues had expressed an interest in conducting services for homosexual couples.

A Government spokesman said that a decision had yet to be taken over whether MPs would also be allowed to vote with their conscience when the Bill comes back before the Commons in the next few weeks.

There is no clear leadership framework, nor is there a budget. Nevertheless, the service has become the subject of intense debate in capital cities throughout the 27-member bloc. Diplomats from Germany and France are displeased with the personnel preferences being shown by EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Catherine Ashton, according to an article in the Guardian. Citing anonymous sources, the paper says there is concern that four of the 12 positions in her Brussels office have been given to Britons and that several important jobs in the new EU diplomatic service have gone to UK diplomats.

Ashton has occupied her new position, created when the Lisbon Treaty entered into force last December, for three months. More time will pass before she submits her official proposal for how the EU's new foreign policy apparatus should look. Ultimately, it will likely include some 130 European Union ambassadors and 7,000 diplomats - and discussions on how those positions might be divvied up are underway among Europe's 27 foreign ministers. Already, though, the first governments are sounding the alarm.

Further criticism is inevitable. Skeptics say the EU's new diplomatic service is doomed to failure. The experiment will end in disappointment, the Europe columnist of Britain's Economist magazine wrote in his Charlemagne blog. Even the upgraded service won't be able to achieve any more than the EU Commission has in its diplomatic efforts to date, the columnist added, because it doesn't enjoy confidence: every member state will continue to put its interests first and even go as far as undermining the common EU interest, if necessary.

The question of how to deal with Greece's debt, which has triggered talk about the possible breakup of the euro zone, is set to come to a head on Friday at talks in Berlin between Merkel and Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou. "The pressure is growing - the chancellor knows that. She is still waiting for the right time to justify the billions (in aid) for Greece," wrote the center-right Die Welt. "But by then the situation in the financial markets could have spun out of control... The billion euro question is now therefore 'when will Merkel move?'" it added.

Polls show most Germans are against taxpayers bailing out Greece and the debate has at times degenerated into a spat between Berlin and Athens about war claims dating back to the Nazi occupation. However, there are discrete talks among euro zone governments on possible mechanisms to support Greece if necessary, EU sources say. Germany would have to be involved.

"We think some sort of financial help will be needed at some point," said Giada Giani, an European economist at Citigroup, adding euro zone states seemed to be working on a coordinated deal in which France and Germany would play the biggest roles. "They (politicians) in Germany and elsewhere are trying to prepare public opinion and they will try to find a form of financial help that is not a direct loan... they are looking for the most politically acceptable solution," she added.

"If aid is to come, Merkel's job may be made easier by a more understanding media. One of the strongest arguments for aid was put by the center-left Berliner Zeitung. What would happen if the European currency Union actually fell apart? German banks - among the country's biggest creditors - would be dragged into the mess," it wrote. "But the most important reason to keep the euro is political. If the currency union were to collapse, conflict, uncertainty and economic losses would loom and THIS COULD PIT THE PEOPLES OF EUROPE AGAINST EACH OTHER.

Whether it's textiles in the Carolinas, paper in New England or steel in the Midwest, most industrial cities and mill towns "are on pins and needles," says Donald Schunk, an economist at Coastal Carolina University. "Day to day, week to week, any manufacturing facility seems vulnerable. People don't know if they'll be there." Anxiety over possible layoffs or closings can disturb workers as much as the real thing, experts say.

Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert says it's uncertainty that really bothers people: They feel worse when they think something bad might happen than they do when they know it will happen. Kate Bronfenbrenner, a Cornell labor relations professor who studied the 1990 Ravenswood lockout, says that if the second plant closes "that town would die." Other communities sustained by manufacturing face a similar fate, she adds: "We had ghost towns in the past. We could have them again."

The difference is that people could leave a ghost town - miners to work new veins, farmers to till fresh land, merchants to move closer to road or rail. Today, Tim Shumaker sees no such options. In past layoffs, he always found work somewhere; now there seems to be none anywhere. So, like almost everyone else here, he's staying put, wondering whether Ravenswood could become a new kind of ghost town: a place where people stay, because they have nowhere else to go.

In the report, the panel, that includes Rob Johnson of the United Nations Commission of Experts on Finance and bailout watchdog Elizabeth Warren, warns that financial regulatory reform measures proposed by the Obama administration and Congress must be beefed up to prevent banks from continuing to engage in high risk investing that precipitated the near collapse of the US economy in 2008.

The report warns that the country is now immersed in a "doomsday cycle" wherein banks use borrowed money to take massive risks in an attempt to pay big dividends to shareholders and big bonuses to management - and when the risks go wrong, the banks receive taxpayer bailouts from the government. "Risk-taking at banks," the report cautions, "will soon be larger than ever."

Without more stringent reforms, "another crisis - a bigger crisis that weakens both our financial sector and our larger economy - is more than predictable, it is inevitable," Johnson says in the report, commissioned by the nonpartisan Roosevelt Institute. The institute's chief economist, Nobel Prize-winner Joseph Stiglitz, calls the report "an important point of departure for a debate on where we are on the road to regulatory reform."

The study says that "In 2008-09, we came remarkably close to another Great Depression. Next time we may not be so 'lucky.' The threat of the doomsday cycle remains strong and growing," they say. "What will happen when the next shock hits? We may be nearing the stage where the answer will be - just as it was in the Great Depression - A CALAMITOUS GLOBAL COLLAPSE."

"Far ranging plans have been put on the negotiating table, not only in east Jerusalem, but proposals have been made for Israel to relinquish Jewish sovereignty over Temple Mount, the Mount of Olives, and the City of David," said Begin. Begin went on to say that "in the name of the Israeli government, such proposals and ones like them will not be considered under any condition."