Thousands of householders on the Costa Brava were still without electricity today in the wake of the worst snow along the Catalan coast for half a century. Flights were cancelled and commuters faced traffic chaos as drivers battled in the sub-zero temperatures. Around 3,000 people were forced to stay in the town hall after the road closures as they were unable to get home.

British author Tom Sharpe, who lives on the Costa at Llafranc, north of Barcelona, described the cold as the worst he could remember.

In a letter dictated to the Barcelona daily newspaper La Vanguardia after 24 hours without electricity, the 81-year-old humourist wrote: 'I have never experienced such cold as in these last hours... I can't remember anything like it, not even in the Second World War in England.'

The snowfall is the heaviest seen in Barcelona since 1962. As well as Spain, snow also fell in France, Italy and Greece. Thousands of lorries were left stranded on the France/Spain border after 40 roads were blocked by snow that fell to over 3ft deep. In Italy, the snowfall hit tourist hotspots such as Pisa, Siena and Assisi, and brought Rome to a standstill. Snow closed schools on the island of Elba and in the Umbria region, while in Sicily a landslide disrupted rail travel. In the Aude region of southern France, firefighters and local authority workers brought hot food and drink to 1,800 passengers stuck on trains, and 550 retirees and school children on bus tours to Spain.

He added: "When one speaks of 'the smoke of Satan' [a phrase coined by Pope Paul VI in 1972] in the holy rooms, it is all true - including these latest stories of violence and paedophilia."

He claimed that another example of satanic behaviour was the Vatican "cover-up" over the deaths in 1998 of Alois Estermann, the then commander of the Swiss Guard, his wife and Corporal Cedric Tornay, a Swiss Guard, who were all found shot dead. "They covered up everything immediately," he said. "Here one sees the rot". A remarkably swift Vatican investigation concluded that Corporal Tornay had shot the commander and his wife and then turned his gun on himself after being passed over for a medal. However Tornay's relatives have challenged this. There have been unconfirmed reports of a homosexual background to the tragedy and the involvement of a fourth person who was never identfied.

Father Amorth, who has just published Memoirs of an Exorcist, a series of interviews with the Vatican journalist Marco Tosatti, said that the attempt on the life of Pope John Paul II in 1981 had been the work of the Devil, as had an incident last Christmas when a mentally disturbed woman threw herself at Pope Benedict XVI at the start of Midnight Mass, pulling him to the ground.

Father Amorth was ordained in 1954 and became an official exorcist in 1986. In the past he has suggested that Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin were possessed by the Devil. He was among Vatican officials who warned that JK Rowling's Harry Potter novels made a "false distinction between black and white magic". He approves, however, of the 1973 film The Exorcist, which although "exaggerated" offered a "substantially exact" picture of possession.

The cardinal noted how for many Anglicans, "Anglicanorum Coetibus" is something of a logical development in the work that has been carried out in ecumenical dialogue between Anglicans and Catholics since the Second Vatican Council. "As a result of the work of ARCIC I, hopes ran high in ecumenical circles," the cardinal said. "Many Anglicans and Catholics saw in the agreed statements a path leading to the recognition of a common expression of their own faith."

However, further obstacles lay in store for Anglicans, as the Communion began to go forward with the ordination of women and later, with the approval of homosexual activity. The crux of these two issues, Cardinal Levada observed, really is in the question of authority, particularly in two points: Does the revelation of God in Jesus Christ and in Scripture intend to let us know God's will in a way that requires our obedience? And secondly, has God, in Christ, left his Church, an authority by which it can assure that it can know the correct meaning of revelation, amid sometimes varying human interpretations?

In the cardinal's extensive explanation of ecumenism, he used the symbol of an orchestra.

"Visible union with the Catholic Church can be compared to an orchestral ensemble," he said. "Some instruments can play all the notes, like a piano. There is no note that a piano has that a violin or a harp or a flute or a tuba does not have. But when all these instruments play the notes that the piano has, the notes are enriched and enhanced. The result is symphonic, full communion. One can perhaps say that the ecumenical movement wishes to move from cacophony to symphony, with all playing the same notes of doctrinal clarity, the same euphonic chords of sanctifying activity, observing the rhythm of Christian conduct in charity, and filling the world with the beautiful and inviting sound of the Word of God."

"While the other instruments may tune themselves according to the piano, when playing in concert there is no mistaking them for the piano. It is God's will that those to whom the Word of God is addressed, the world, that is, should hear one pleasing melody made splendid by the contributions of many different instruments."

Brian Coulton, head of global economics at ratings agency Fitch, condemned Labour's pledge to halve the deficit in four years as 'too slow'. The head of Marks & Spencer also added his voice to demands for a clear plan to cut the deficit. Sir Stuart Rose said people were 'not stupid', adding: 'They know effectively we are over-borrowed and there is medicine to be taken.'

The Office for National Statistics yesterday reported a 6.9 per cent fall in sales of British goods abroad in January, the largest monthly drop for more than three years. The slide came despite a steep plunge in sterling, which was trading as low as $1.4936 yesterday but rallied later in the day.

In theory, this fall should make British goods more competitive abroad.

But the Liberal Democrat Treasury spokesman Vince Cable said: 'These are deeply alarming figures which suggest that British exporters simply haven't been able to take advantage of the big devaluation.'

EADS, the owner of Airbus, and its American partner Northrop Grumman said on Monday night that they were pulling out of the race to build air refuelling tankers for the US Air Force. It is understood that the Business Secretary has written to the White House to articulate his concerns. Whitehall insiders told The Times last night that the handling of the tanker contract had sent the wrong signal.

One said: "It is inevitable that there will be pressure on European governments to retaliate, but that really can't be the way forward. The last thing we want is a tit-for-tat fight across the Atlantic." Lord Mandelson is also understood to be angry that EADS has been forced to throw in the towel as the UK would have been a big beneficiary had it won the contract. The deal could have been worth 4.6 billion pounds in export orders and helped to secure 5,000 jobs at the Airbus factory in Broughton, North Wales, which would have built the tanker's wings.

When the tanker contract was first opened for bidding in 2007, EADS-Northrop offered the Airbus A330 while Boeing offered the smaller 767. The European aircraft won but Boeing protested and, after intense lobbying by the American company's supporters in Congress, the deal was overturned on technicalities. When the Pentagon reissued the terms of the contract it had been changed to favour a smaller plane and EADS-Northrop felt that they could not compete.

The Pentagon's first attempt to buy new tankers ten years ago ended in scandal when its deal with Boeing was revealed to be corrupt. The company had hired Darleen Druyan, the Pentagon official in charge of the procurement project, after she inflated the price of the planes. She pleaded guilty to corruption and Boeing was fined $615 million.

In telephone calls and meetings, senior diplomats and specialists were forced to restate Britain's position on sovereignty over the islands and seek clarification of the US position after a State Department spokesman in February answered a question about the Falklands by saying: "Or the Malvinas, depending on how you see it."

British anger over the Obama Administration's apparent indifference to the issue mounted when Hillary Clinton endorsed President Fernandez de Kirchner's call for talks on sovereignty while she was in Buenos Aires last week, State Department sources said.

The new details of British complaints emerged as influential conservatives in Washington described the Administration's handling of the dispute as offensive, ignorant and a reflection of a lack of enthusiasm for the idea of a special relationship between the two countries.

For now, Greece may have managed to assuage doubts about its ability to remain solvent by passing yet another painful package of austerity measures last week. But the European Union remains concerned, and has launched an intensive search for mechanisms to ensure that such a risk to the European common currency is avoided in the future.

On Tuesday, one day after proposals for a European Monetary Fund (similar to the International Monetary Fund) grabbed headlines on the Continent, a German-French plan has emerged that would significantly limit speculation and the trading of so-called Credit Default Swaps. According to the business daily Handelsblatt, German Chancellor Angela Merkel plans to discuss measures to limit speculation with Luxembourg Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker - who also chairs the round of euro zone finance ministers - on Tuesday.

According to the Suddeutsche Zeitung newspaper, Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy intend to write a letter to European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso encouraging him to take action against damaging financial speculation. The paper also wrote that, should the EU not take action, Merkel, Sarkozy, Juncker and Greek Prime Minister Georgios Papandreou would be prepared to take unilateral action against such speculation.

Berlin and Paris are particularly concerned with Credit Default Swaps (CDS), which allow investors to insure investments in, for example, Greek bonds. As demand for such swaps have risen, so too have their prices. But as such prices increase, bond investors become concerned about the viability of Greek debt, leading them to avoid Greek bonds. That, in turn, makes it harder - and much more expensive - for Athens to borrow and adds to the anxiety - which starts the cycle anew. Betting against Greece, in short, can be immensely profitable.

That, though, is something that the euro zone would like to avoid. Just last week, in reference to speculators, Juncker said "we have the instruments of torture in the basement."

That's a disappointment, but not really a surprise for fishing industry insiders who have negotiated for months with officials at the Council on Environmental Quality and bureaucrats on the task force. These angling advocates have come to suspect that public input into the process was a charade from the beginning.

"When the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) completed their successful campaign to convince the Ontario government to end one of the best scientifically managed big game hunts in North America (spring bear), the results of their agenda had severe economic impacts on small family businesses and the tourism economy of communities across northern and central Ontario," said Phil Morlock, director of environmental affairs for Shimano.

"Now we see NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) and the administration planning the future of recreational fishing access in America based on a similar agenda of these same groups and other Big Green anti-use organizations, through an Executive Order by the President. The current US direction with fishing is a direct parallel to what happened in Canada with hunting: The negative economic impacts on hard working American families and small businesses are being ignored.

About 21 percent of women were infected with genital herpes, compared to only 11.5 percent of men, while 39 percent of blacks were infected compared to about 12 percent for whites, the CDC said. There is no cure for genital herpes, or herpes simplex virus type 2 (HSV-2), which can cause recurrent and painful genital sores and also increases the likelihood of acquiring and transmitting the AIDS virus. It is related to herpes simplex virus 1, or oral herpes, which causes cold sores.

"The message is herpes is quite common. The symptoms can be often very innocuous," Dr John Douglas of the CDC said in a teleconference. Douglas said the increased rate of infection in blacks is not do to with increased risk behavior but likely due to biological factors that make women more susceptible as well as the higher rate of infection within black communities.

The CDC estimates that there are 19 million new sexually transmitted disease infections every year in the United States, costing the health care system about $16 billion annually.

Operating on a scale never before attempted in this country, the city would demolish houses in some of the most desolate sections of Detroit and move residents into stronger neighborhoods. Roughly a quarter of the 139-square-mile city could go from urban to semi-rural. Near downtown, fruit trees and vegetable farms would replace neighborhoods that are an eerie landscape of empty buildings and vacant lots. Suburban commuters heading into the city center might pass through what looks like the countryside to get there. Surviving neighborhoods in the birthplace of the auto industry would become pockets in expanses of green.

Detroit officials first raised the idea in the 1990s, when blight was spreading. Now, with the recession plunging the city deeper into ruin, a decision on how to move forward is approaching. Mayor Dave Bing, who took office last year, is expected to unveil some details in his state-of-the-city address this month.

"Things that were unthinkable are now becoming thinkable," said James W Hughes, dean of the School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers University, who is among the urban experts watching the experiment with interest. "There is now a realization that past glories are never going to be recaptured. Some people probably don't accept that, but that is the reality."

Several other declining industrial cities, such as Youngstown, Ohio, have also accepted downsizing. Since 2005, Youngstown has been tearing down a few hundred houses a year. But Detroit's plans dwarf that effort. The approximately 40 square miles of vacant property in Detroit is larger than the entire city of Youngstown.

The organisation, which has millions of followers worldwide, insists that it is a peaceful, apolitical revivalist movement that promotes Islamic consciousness among individual Muslims. However, intelligence agencies have cautioned that the group's ability to fire young men with a zeal for Islam acts as a staging post, for some, along a path that leads to jihadist terrorism.

Kafeel Ahmed, the Indian doctor who died from burns last month after trying to set off a car bomb at Glasgow Airport, is the latest in a line of terrorists for whose initial radicalisation Tablighi Jamaat has been blamed. The group (literally, the preaching party) belongs to the ultra-conservative Deobandi school of thought within Sunni Islam, whose adherents run more than 600 of Britain's 1,350 mosques.

In recent days The Times has exposed the virulently anti-Western creed of some British Deobandis who preach that non-Muslims are an evil and corrupting influence. Their defensive, isolationist approach to life in Britain is shared by many British supporters of Tablighi Jamaat. "The mega-mosque complex would become a flagship for Tablighi Jamaat's mission to indoctrinate Muslims with a hatred of the West and the kuffar [non-Mulims]." Tabligh Jamaat is expected to submit a formal planning application for the West Ham mosque before the end of the year.

Austrian leaders and the press already fear for the country's image abroad. Under the 1947 Verbotsgesetz law, anyone who seeks to set up a Nazi organisation, propagates Nazi ideology or denies Nazi crimes can be jailed for up to 20 years. But Rosenkranz, a mother of 10 and the wife of an outspoken figure in Austria's far-Right scene, insists the law constitutes "an unnecessary restriction" and that, on the contrary, people should be allowed freedom of opinion.

In 2003, the European Court of Human Rights already allowed a journalist's description of her as a "closet-Nazi", noting that her attitude towards Nazism was ambiguous. Such comments from a woman running for the country's highest office prompted scorching criticism from politicians of all colours, civil groups and the Catholic church. "Somebody like this is not eligible for election," said Vienna's Archbishop Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn, while the Jewish community described her as "an embarrassment for Austria".

Commentators already fear the "horror scenario" of a far-Right presidential win - especially if turnout remains low as expected - while anti-Semitic comments have already appeared in her support in online forums. "Is that a foretaste of the elections campaign?" asked the Austrian weekly News.

Gary Locke, US commerce secretary, and Michael Froman, deputy national security adviser for international economic affairs, are due to arrive in Brazil on Tuesday. The cotton dispute is expected to be raised in meetings with government officials. Under the Brazilian plan, duties would rise most steeply on cotton products. Many that are currently taxed at between 6 per cent and 35 per cent would be taxed at 100 per cent. The tariffs on beauty products would double, from 18 per cent to 36 per cent. Duties on household goods such as cookers, refrigerators, TVs and video cameras would also double, from 20 per cent to 40 per cent. Duties on cars would rise from 35 per cent to 50 per cent.

Brazil is allowed to impose the tariff increases - worth $560m - after winning a case at the WTO last year. Brazil challenged the legality of direct subsidies to US cotton farmers to protect them against fluctuations in global prices and a loan guarantee programme for international buyers of US cotton. Brazil could also impose further penalties - known as "cross-retaliation" - on US intellectual property rights, potentially breaking patents in the pharmaceuticals, technology and media industries.

"Brazil's latest actions are imposing unwarranted harm on Brazilian and American interests in times of economic hardship for all," the National Cotton Council said. "Historically, dispute settlement is frequently made more difficult, not easier by the application of retaliatory trade measures."

The government said some 200,000 people living in the west, near the Ruwenzori mountains, would be among those who should be relocated. A minister said the deadly mudslides were a "wake-up call. The total population at risk of landslides and floods is estimated to be 500,000," said Musa Ecweru, minister for disaster preparedness. He said he was convinced that much of the area in the east of the country, on the slopes of Mount Elgon about 275km (170 miles) north-east of the capital Kampala, was too dangerous to live in.

So far, a total of 83 bodies have been recovered from last week's mudslide in the Bududa district, though it is feared as many as 300 may have died when their homes, schools and villages were swallowed by fast-moving walls of mud. Uganda has one of the highest population growth rates in the world but, as more people settle on the mountains, the trees have been felled to make way for agriculture - making mudslides and flooding more common.

The descent of Barack Obama's regime, characterised now by factionalism in the Democratic Party and talk of his being set to emulate Jimmy Carter as a one-term president, has been swift and precipitate. It was just 16 months ago that weeping men and women celebrated his victory over John McCain in the American presidential election. If they weep now, a year and six weeks into his rule, it is for different reasons.

Despite the efforts of some sections of opinion to talk the place up, America is mired in unhappiness, all the worse for the height from which Obamania has fallen. The economy remains troublesome. There is growth - a good last quarter suggested an annual rate of as high as six per cent, but that figure is probably not reliable - and the latest unemployment figures, last Friday, showed a levelling off. Yet 15 million Americans, or 9.7 per cent of the workforce, have no job. Many millions more are reduced to working part-time. Whole areas of the country, notably in the north and on the eastern seaboard, are industrial wastelands.

The once mighty motor city of Detroit appears slowly to be being abandoned, becoming a Jurassic Park of the mid-20th century; unemployment among black people in Mr Obama's own city of Chicago is estimated at between 20 and 25 per cent. One senior black politician - a Democrat and a supporter of the President - told me of the wrath in his community that a black president appeared to be unable to solve the economic problem among his own people. Cities in the east such as Newark and Baltimore now have drug-dealing as their principal commercial activity: The Wire is only just fictional.

There are lessons from the stumbling of Mr Obama for our own country as we approach a general election. Vacuous promises of change are hostages to fortune if they cannot be delivered upon to improve the living conditions of a people. The slickness of campaigning that comes from a combination of heavy funding and public relations expertise does not inevitably translate into an ability to govern. There is no point a nation's having the audacity of hope unless it also has the sophistication and the will to turn it into action. As things stand, Barack Obama and America under his leadership do not.