A spokesman for Soros Fund Management said the legendary investor did not attend the dinner on February 8, but did not deny that his firm was represented. At the dinner, the speculators are said to have argued that the euro is likely to plunge in value to parity with the dollar. The single currency has been under enormous pressure because of Greece's debt crisis, plus financial worries in Portugal, Italy, Spain and Ireland.

But, it has also struggled because hedge funds have been placing huge bets on the currency's decline, which could make the speculators hundreds of millions of pounds. The euro traded at $1.51 in December, but has since fallen to $1.34. Details of the secretive dinner emerged days after Mr Soros, chairman of Soros Fund Management, warned in a newspaper article that the euro could 'fall apart' even if the European Union can agree a deal to shore up support for stricken Greece.

Mr Soros, who made more than $1billion by currency speculation when the pound was ejected from the Exchange Rate Mechanism on Black Wednesday in 1992, believes the structure of the euro is 'patently flawed'. He said: 'Makeshift assistance should be enough for Greece, but that leaves Spain, Italy, Portugal and Ireland. Together they constitute too large a portion of euroland to be helped in this way.' He believes that unless the European Commission is given sweeping powers over taxation and spending, the single currency will always be vulnerable to financial turbulence in individual states.

"That day has not yet come, but I think it is intellectually healthy to explore these kinds of ideas now," he said in a speech on the future mandate of the 186-nation Washington-based lending organization. Strauss-Kahn said such an asset could be similar to but distinctly different from the IMF's special drawing rights, or SDRs, the accounting unit that countries use to hold funds within the IMF. It is based on a basket of major currencies.

He said having other alternatives to the dollar "would limit the extent to which the international monetary system as a whole depends on the policies and conditions of a single, albeit dominant, country. The challenge ahead is to find ways to limit the tension arising from the high demand for precautionary reserves on the one hand and the narrow supply of reserves on the other," he said.

Several countries, including China and Russia, have called for an alternative to the dollar as a reserve currency and have suggested using the IMF's internal accounting unit.

He was then threatened with arrest after refusing to hand over his mobile phone containing the picture after a row with a policeman. Mr Geraghty-Shewan said: 'Ben saw a children's ride which had a train on it and wanted to have a go because he's obsessed with trains.' Moments later, he was apprehended by the security guard.

The father-of-one, who was in the North East visiting family, said: 'He said "you can't take pictures in here". I asked why and he told me it was because for all he knew I could be a paedophile. I told him Ben was my son. But he said I couldn't prove it. I couldn't believe it. I walked away and then I thought about making a complaint.' A few minutes later a police officer arrived at the Bridges Shopping Centre in Sunderland and threatened to delete the photograph. 'They took my details and said they had the right to remove the picture from my phone. I got annoyed and things got heated, then he threatened me with arrest for breach of the peace.'

A spokesman for the Bridges Shopping Centre said: 'We take the safety at all our shopping centres very seriously. We do ask our security guards across the estate to be diligent in implementing our security measures, which includes monitoring photography in our centres. Unfortunately on this occasion what should have been a simple polite conversation led to a misunderstanding and we apologise for any offence caused. It is always our aim to implement our security procedures with the minimum of fuss and disruption to our shoppers.'

President Michelle Bachelet confirmed 47 deaths and said more were possible. Telephone and power lines were down, making damage assessments difficult in the early morning darkness. "Never in my life have I experienced a quake like this, it's like the end of the world," one man told local television from the city of Temuco, where the quake damaged buildings and forced staff to evacuate the regional hospital.

Chilean television and radio stations said several buildings collapsed in the city of Curico and that there was damage to buildings in the historic center of the capital Santiago, about 200 miles north of the epicenter. The capital's international airport was forced to close, a highway bridge collapsed and chunks of buildings fell into the street.

Bachelet urged people to stay calm. "With a quake of this size we undoubtedly can't rule out more deaths and probably injuries," she said. An earthquake of magnitude 8 or over can cause "tremendous damage," the USGS says. The quake that devastated Haiti's capital Port-au-Prince on January 12 was rated magnitude 7.0.

According to a 2002 census, Concepcion is one of the largest cities in Chile with a population of around 670,000. Chile's main copper producing region and some of the world's largest copper mines are in the far north of the country near its border with Peru, but there are also major copper deposits near Santiago. Officials said roads to the important Los Bronces mine near the capital were blocked. Chile produces about 34 percent of the world supply of copper, which is used in electronics, cars and refrigerators.

Saturday's quake shook buildings as far away as Argentina's Andean provinces of Mendoza and San Juan. A series of strong aftershocks rocked Chile's coastal region from Valdivia in southern to Valparaiso, about 500 miles to the north.

The tsunami warning center said there was a possibility the US state of Hawaii could be elevated to watch or warning status.

The US issued an initial tsunami warning for Chile, Peru and Ecuador. That was later extended to Colombia, Antarctica, Panama and Costa Rica. There is no information yet on any casualties. The US Geological Survey (USGS) said the earthquake struck at a depth of about 35km. Telephone lines and internet connections appear to have been damaged. The USGS said: "An earthquake of this size has the potential to generate a destructive tsunami that can strike coastlines near the epicentre within minutes and more distant coastlines within hours."

The Star Bulletin in Honolulu reports:- 'Hawaii under tsunami advisory '

Hawaii is under a tsunami advisory and a warning has been issued for two South American countries after a massive earthquake off the coast of Chile. Officials at the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center in Ewa Beach are monitoring water level gauges. If a tsunami was generated, it would take 14 and a half hours to get to Hawaii.

Vindell Hsu, a geophysict at the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center, said it's still too early to tell if a tsunami is coming to Hawaii. "This is a big one," he added. "At this magnitude it's very likely a tsunami will be generated, but we are waiting for the water level data."

An earthquake off Chile in 1960 generated a tsunami in Hilo that killed 61 people. The earthquake, the largest ever recorded at a magnitude 9.6, sent waves of up to 30 feet to Hilo about 15 hours after the temblor, according to an online account by Pacific Tsunami Warning Center scientist Gerard Fryer. The tsunami caused about 2,000 deaths in Chile. The waves also flooded the coastline of Japan where 10-foot waves caused 200 deaths. Tsunami damage was also reported in the Marquesas, Samoa, and New Zealand.

The new trade war came as Angela Merkel admitted the euro is in 'a difficult situation' for the first time. She spoke as German magazine Focus ran a cover image of the armless Venus de Milo somehow raising her middle finger under the headline 'Cheats in the euro family' to suggest that Greece deliberately misled EU peers to swindle its way into the euro.

The cover sparked outrage in Greece, prompting the demands for a boycott. A Greek newspaper has also hit back, running an image showing the statue of the goddess Victoria atop the Siegessaeule in Berlin holding a swastika. European leaders have offered verbal support to Greece but agreed no concrete steps. Germany, Europe's biggest economy and traditionally a rock of stability in the euro zone, is a crucial player.

Mrs Merkel has been reluctant to offer aid to Athens, well aware that public opinion and her Free Democrat (FDP) coalition partners are hostile to anything that would look as if German taxpayers were bailing out Greece.

In a robust and at times testy video interview for the Financial Times's View from DC series, Mr Gregg also complimented China for showing rising alarm about the US's mounting levels of public debt.

"We have had China say that they are looking for other places to put their reserves and that is probably a smart decision on their part," said Mr Gregg, who will not seek re-election in November. "So the warning signs are pretty clear and the path is unsustainable and, at this point, unless we take different actions, unavoidable."

Executives tried desperately to defuse the row about the enormous sums handed out by the bank, which is 84 per cent owned by taxpayers. They insisted only a tiny minority of its 160,000 global workforce enjoy bumper bonuses and salaries.

And chairman Philip Hampton said the 'majority' of its 90,000 UK workers earn 'less than a bus driver'.

Official figures by the Office for National Statistics show the average bus driver earns 21,083 pounds raising doubts about the statement. For many taxpayers whose funds helped prop up the ailing bank, such generous bonuses are an outrage.

The bank handed out 1.3 billion pounds to its 16,800 investment bankers last year, equal to around 77,400 pounds each. In reality, some took away nothing, but others received 1 million pounds or more.

It comes as the bank revealed losses of 3.6 billion pounds last year - a huge figure but far less than the record-breaking 24.3 billion pounds plunge into the red in 2008. Shadow Chancellor George Osborne yesterday said the bonuses were something 'people will find very difficult to understand'. He said: 'It is totally disproportionate to what doctors are paid, people working in industry are paid, teachers are paid and the like.'

The beleaguered euro initially fell in the wake of her comments and fresh speculation that Greece's international credit rating may be downgraded. On a dramatic day which also saw money markets around the world fall:

- The head of Germany's leading debt management agency warned the euro would collapse if any member defaulted on its debt.

- US regulators said they would investigate whether investment bank Goldman Sachs helped Athens disguise its budget deficit.

- EU inspectors visiting Athens told authorities they see a deeper than expected recession.

The developments came as Greece was recovering from a day of rioting which accompanied a second national strike over plans to curb the country's huge budget deficit. The violent clashes between antigovernment protesters and riot police in Athens on Wednesday followed a strike by more than two million workers in protest at plans to freeze public sector pay, raise the pension age and hike taxes on fuel, tobacco, alcohol and property.

Yesterday, while Mrs Merkel insisted the single currency would survive the crisis, she acknowledged that soaring debt levels in Greece and other southern European countries had put the euro at risk 'for the first time since its introduction'.

The devil was in the details, and by the end of the full-day session, a significant breakthrough still seemed beyond reach. Republicans appeared just as steadfastly opposed to the Democrats' sweeping vision of remaking the nation's health care system as they were at the beginning. Democrats refused to cede any ground to the Republican argument that they should start from scratch and take an incremental approach to health care reform.

There have been tensions between the nations since 2008, when one of Mr Gaddafi's sons was arrested in Geneva, accused of assaulting two servants. A Swiss foreign ministry spokesman declined to comment on the jihad call. The Libyan leader made his comments while speaking at a meeting to mark the birthday of the Prophet Muhammad.

"Let us wage jihad against Switzerland, Zionism and foreign aggression," he said. "Any Muslim in any part of the world who works with Switzerland is an apostate, is against Muhammad, God and the Koran."

In a referendum last November, 57.5% of Swiss voters approved a constitutional ban on the building of minarets. An appeal against the ban has been submitted to the European Court of Human Rights.

They say a slowdown in the production of this water could result in colder winters in the north Atlantic. The iceberg is currently floating south of Australia. Dr Neal Young, a glaciologist at the Antarctic Climate and Ecosystems Research Centre in Tasmania, told the BBC that any disruption to the production of the super cold water - known as bottom water - in the region would affect ocean currents, and consequently weather patterns, for years to come.

"This area accounts for about 25% of the production of bottom water in Antarctica, and therefore it will reduce the overturning circulation rate," he said. "You won't see it immediately, but it has downstream effects. And it will also have implications for penguins and other wildlife in the region that normally use this area for feeding."

At the height of the big freeze, the entire country was blanketed in snow. But Australian weather expert Professor Neville Nicholls, of Monash University in Melbourne, said yesterday: "January, according to satellite data, was the hottest January we've ever seen."

"Last November was the hottest November we've ever seen. November-January as a whole is the hottest November-January the world has seen." Veteran climatologist Professor Nicholls was speaking at an online climate change briefing, added: "It's not warming the same everywhere but it is really quite challenging to find places that haven't warmed in the past 50 years." His extraordinary claims came after the World Meteorological Organisation revealed 2000 to 2009 was the hottest decade since records began in 1850.

But UK forecaster Jonathan Powell, of Positive Weather Solutions, said: "If it is the case and it is borne out that January was the hottest on record, it is still no marker towards climate change. It's been the coldest for 30 years in Britain but we predicted that and climate change always tends to throw up anomalies. It's all in line with predictions and I won't be sold on climate change at all. The data is either faulty or manufactured to make it look like it shouldn't."

At stake is public belief that greenhouse gas emissions are warming the planet, and political momentum to act as governments struggle to agree a climate treaty which could direct trillions of dollars into renewable energy, away from fossil fuels.

Public conviction of global warming's risks may have been undermined by an error in a UN panel report exaggerating the pace of melt of Himalayan glaciers and by the disclosure of hacked emails revealing scientists sniping at skeptics, who leapt on these as evidence of data fixing. Scientists said they must explain better how a freezing winter this year in parts of the northern hemisphere and a break in a rising trend in global temperatures since 1998 can happen when heat-trapping gases are pouring into the atmosphere.

"There is a lack of consensus," said Kevin Trenberth, head of the Climate Analysis Section at the US National Center for Atmospheric Research, on why global temperatures have not matched a peak set in 1998, or in 2005 according to one US analysis. The proportion of British adults who had no doubt climate change was happening had dropped in January to 31 percent from 44 percent in January 2009, an Ipsos MORI poll showed this week.

ALBANY, NEW YORK, USA - A powerful winter storm dumped a foot or more of snow in the Northeast on Wednesday, knocking out power to thousands and stalling air traffic from Boston to Philadelphia, all ahead of a second system packing strong winds that could blanket the area with another foot of snow.

The storm cut a swath from eastern Pennsylvania into northern New England, slamming typically snowy regions that had been spared the paralyzing storms that hit cities farther south earlier this winter. About 150,000 customers lost power Wednesday, hundreds of schools were closed and at least three traffic deaths were blamed on the storm.

The system was the first of a 1-2 winter punch. The National Weather Service said the storm forecast to hit Thursday is expected to be "significant and long-lasting," packing wind gusts of 40 to 50 mph, which could cause more power outages, and dump a foot or more of snow on some areas by Friday. Meteorologists said some areas of New York's Adirondack and Catskill mountains and Vermont's Green Mountains could get as much as 2 feet by the weekend. Philadelphia, which has had its snowiest winter with more than 70 inches and is still digging out from earlier back-to-back storms, could see as much as a foot of snow.