To express his enduring respect for Judaism and Christianity, Ayatollah Khomeini used to say, "Moses is my right eye and Jesus is my left." But in a meeting with Islamic ambassadors in Tehran, he also aired the view that today, given how diluted those faiths have become, there are no authentic Jews or Christians left.

Iran's ultimate aim is to establish global Islamic rule, a new Islamic empire, but this time under Shi'ite leadership. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad himself endorses the Shi'ite belief that once the Mahdi ("the Guided One") makes his prophesied return, the whole world will convert to Shi'ism. This belief, strange as it may sound to Western ears, lies at the heart of Iran's foreign policy.

The current version of the program is widely seen as providing meager protection against attack, but a new version being built will be more robust - largely because it's rooted in NSA technology. The program is designed to look for indicators of cyber attacks by digging into all Internet communications, including the contents of emails, according to the declassified summary.

Homeland Security will then strip out identifying information and pass along data on new threats to NSA. It will also use threat information from NSA to better identify emerging cyber attacks.

NSA's role is a careful balance because of the political battles that ensued over the agency's role in domestic surveillance in the George W Bush administration. Declassifying details of the NSA's role, in a program initially developed during the Bush administration and continued in the Obama administration, will likely ignite new debates over privacy.

"Yes. We're prepared to take responsibility," Stupak said on ABC's "Good Morning America" when asked if he and his 11 Democratic allies were willing to accept the consequences for bringing down healthcare reform over abortion. "Let's face it. I want to see healthcare. But we're not going to bypass the principles of belief that we feel strongly about," he said.

The Michigan Democrat held up House legislation last year until he was satisfied that its language prevented federal tax dollars from being used to fund abortions.

The White House had urged against the vote. The government of Turkey, a key American ally and fellow Nato member, had lobbied hard for the US Congress not to vote on the issue. The BBC's Jane O'Brien in Washington says Turkey must be hoping that, as with a similar resolution two years ago, the issue will not come to the floor of the House for a full vote. In 2007, it passed the committee stage, but was shelved after pressure from the George W Bush administration.

Turkish President Abdullah Gul responded angrily to the committee's vote, saying it was "an injustice to history" to take such a decision with "political concerns in mind. Turkey will not be responsible for the negative results that this event may lead to," he said. Turkey accepts that atrocities were committed but argues they were part of the war and that there was no systematic attempt to destroy the Christian Armenian people. The Armenian government welcomed the vote, calling it "an important step towards the prevention of crimes against humanity".

Armenia wants Turkey to recognise the killings as an act of genocide, but successive Turkish governments have refused to do so. Hundreds of thousands of Armenians died in 1915, when they were deported en masse from eastern Anatolia by the Ottoman Empire. They were killed by troops or died from starvation and disease. Armenians have campaigned for the killings to be recognised internationally as genocide - and more than 20 countries have done so.

A quake with a magnitude of 6.4 has also struck southern Taiwan. This rash of tectonic movements around the Pacific "Rim of Fire" is heightening concern that Japan - the most earthquake-prone country in the world - is next in line for a major earthquake. Those concerns have been stoked by the unexplained appearance of a fish that is known traditionally as the 'Messenger from the Sea-god's Palace'.

The giant oarfish can grow up to five metres in length and is usually to be found at depths of 1,000 metres and very rarely above 200 metres from the surface. Long and slender with a dorsal fin the length of its body, the oarfish resembles a snake. In recent weeks, 10 specimens have been found either washed ashore or in fishing nets off Ishikawa Prefecture, half-a-dozen have been caught in nets off Toyama Prefecture and others have been reported in Kyoto, Shimane and Nagasaki prefectures, all on the northern coast.

According to traditional Japanese lore, the fish rise to the surface and beach themselves to warn of an impending earthquake - and there are scientific theories that bottom-dwelling fish may very well be susceptible to movements in seismic fault lines and act in uncharacteristic ways in advance of an earthquake - but experts here are placing more faith in their constant high-tech monitoring of the tectonic plates beneath the surface.

Mr Wilders was visibly buoyed by the results, but was also combative in his reaction, and called the results the first step in the upcoming campaign for parliamentary elections. "The national campaign begins today. Today, in Almere and The Hague, tomorrow in all of the Netherlands... On 9 June, we'll conquer the Netherlands," he said.

The question remains whether the party will be able to join local government in those two cities. Dutch politics features a plethora of parties, and compromise is necessary to form coalitions. Geert Wilders has said his party is ready to find the middle ground, but now he will be tested. Other Dutch parties are loath to work together with the PVV because of its outspoken standpoints.

Since releasing the anti-Islam film Fitna two years ago, and being refused entry into the UK last year, Mr Wilders has been riding high in the opinion polls. His party has consistently polled as one of the biggest in the country. The fact that he has been charged with fomenting hatred and discrimination has, if anything, only served to increase his popularity, at home and abroad. The trial is currently on hold after two preliminary hearings, but will resume in the summer, and ultimately Wilders could face two years in prison if convicted. But this, too, seems to have worked in the politician's favour, with many seeing him as a champion of the right to free speech.

"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.