Gun sales shot up almost immediately after Barack Obama won the US presidential elections on November 4 and firearm enthusiasts rushed to stores, fearing he would tighten gun controls despite campaign pledges to the contrary. After the November spike, gun dealers say, a second motive has helped drive sales: FEAR OF SOCIAL UNREST as the ailing economy pushes the newly destitute deeper into misery. Many of the newly poor come from the relentlessly rising ranks of the unemployed. In February alone, an average of 23,000 people a day lost their jobs.

Tent cities for the homeless have expanded outside a string of American cities, from Sacramento and Phoenix to Atlanta and Seattle, for people who are living the American dream in reverse. First they lose their jobs, then their health insurance, then their homes, then their hopes. The encampments are reminiscent of Third World refugee camps. Often former members of the middle class, tent dwellers' accounts of their plight to television cameras have a common theme: "I never thought this could happen to me." Unlike the victims of Katrina, the 2005 hurricane that destroyed much of New Orleans, many of the newly-poor are white.

As columnist David Ignatius put it in the Washington Post, "THERE'S AN UGLY MOOD DEVELOPING AS PEOPLE START LOOKING FOR VILLAINS TO BLAME FOR THE ECONOMIC MESS." In November, an analysis published by the US Army War College's Strategic Studies Institute listed "UNFORESEEN ECONOMIC COLLAPSE" as one of the possible causes of future "WIDESPREAD CIVIL VIOLENCE."

"My administration is now committed to diplomacy that addresses the full range of issues before us, and to pursuing constructive ties," Obama said in a message released to select Middle East broadcast outlets timed for an Iranian holiday celebration. Obama went further than he has since taking office on January 20 in extending an olive branch to Tehran, which has been locked in bitter disputes with Washington over Iranian nuclear ambitions and support for militant Islamic groups.

The Obama administration - in a major shift from former President George W. Bush's isolation policy toward Iran, which he once branded part of an "axis of evil" - has expressed an openness to face-to-face diplomatic contacts with Tehran. Reaching out directly to Iranian leaders and their people, Obama said: "This process will not be advanced by threats. We seek instead engagement that is honest and grounded in mutual respect."

He said the United States wanted Iran to take its "rightful place in the community of nations," but also insisted that Tehran do its part to achieve reconciliation. "You have that right - but it comes with real responsibilities, and that place cannot be reached through terror or arms, but rather through peaceful actions that demonstrate the true greatness of the Iranian people and civilization," Obama said. "THE MEASURE OF THAT GREATNESS IS NOT THE CAPACITY TO DESTROY, IT IS YOUR DEMONSTRATED ABILITY TO BUILD AND CREATE," he added, alluding to Iran's contested nuclear program and its missile development efforts.

In some cases the bonuses might be taxed 100 percent leaving the recipients with nothing. It was only this past weekend that the bailed-out insurance giant paid bonuses totalling $165 million to employees, including traders in the Financial Products unit that nearly brought about AIG's collapse. AIG has received $182.5 billion in federal bailout money and is now 80 percent government owned.

Disclosure of the bonuses touched off a national firestorm that both the Obama administration and Congress have scurried to contain. The House vote was 328-93. Similar legislation has been introduced in the Senate and President Barack Obama quickly signalled general support for the concept. "I look forward to receiving a final product that will serve as a strong signal to the executives who run these firms that such compensation will not be tolerated," the president said in a statement.

"We want our money back now for the taxpayers," said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. "It isn't that complicated." Representative Charles Rangel, a New York Democrat, chairman of the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee, said he expected local and state governments to take the remaining 10 percent of the bonuses, nullifying the pay-outs.

All leave for police officers in the capital has been called off and businesses are being advised to cancel unnecessary meetings because PROTESTERS HAVE VOWED TO TARGET THE FINANCIAL DISTRICT as the world leaders gather to discuss the financial crisis. Previous world economic summit meetings and conferences have been targeted by anarchists, anti-globalization protesters and other groups. The police say they fear that the gathering April 2 in London, set against anger at the economic downturn, could provoke more violence.

Environmentalists, antiwar campaigners and protesters have already indicated that they would demonstrate April 1 as politicians and officials begin arriving in London. A movement called "Storm the Banks" is circulating on the Internet indicating that anti-capitalist protesters are planning TO FOCUS THEIR ATTENTION ON THE BANK OF ENGLAND during what some protesters have dubbed "Financial Fools Day."

During a Group of Eight meeting in Scotland in July 2005, four British Islamists carried out suicide bombings on trains and a bus in London that killed 52 people. "There will be concern from business over the two days of protest, but the vast majority of firms will have robust security arrangements in place," said Helen Hill, policy director at the London Chamber of Commerce and Industry. "Cancelling unnecessary meetings may have to be considered, but people shouldn't feel as though they can't travel in London to conduct important business."

Achim Steiner said spending should focus on five environmental sectors including improved energy efficiency for buildings and solar or wind power to create jobs, curb poverty and fight climate change. "The opportunity must not be lost," Steiner, head of the UN Environment Program (UNEP), told Reuters of a UNEP study that will be put to world leaders meeting in London on April 2 to work out how to spur the ailing economy.

The UNEP report said investments of one percent of global gross domestic product, or about $750 billion, could bankroll a "Global Green New Deal" inspired by the "New Deal" of US President Franklin D. Roosevelt that helped end the depression of the 1930s. Investments should be split between more energy efficient buildings, renewable energies, better transport, improved agriculture and measures to safeguard nature - such as fresh water, forests or coral reefs, it said.

Steiner also said that the world urgently needed funds to jump start a UN deal to fight global warming, due to be agreed in Copenhagen in December to succeed the UN's Kyoto Protocol beyond 2012.

The Holy See is struggling to contain international anger over the Pope's claim on his first official visit to Africa that Aids "cannot be overcome through the distribution of condoms, which even aggravates the problems". The Pope's remarks about condoms, and a recent furore over his lifting of the 20-year excommunication of a British bishop who has questioned the Holocaust, has left him looking isolated and out of touch, prompting calls for a radical shake-up of the way the Holy See delivers its message.

The Pope is isolated and fails to adequately consult his advisers, said a Vatican source with 20 years' knowledge of the Holy See. Another Vatican insider described Pope Benedict's four-year-old papacy as "a disaster", recalling the pontiff's previous inflammatory remarks on Islam and homosexuality.

"He's out of touch with the real world," the Italian insider said. "On the condom issue, for example, there are priests and bishops in Africa who accept that condoms are a key part of the fight against Aids, and yet the Pope adheres to this very conservative line that they encourage promiscuity. The Vatican is far removed from the reality on the ground." The Vatican's traditional culture of secrecy has made it ill-equipped to communicate its message in the internet age. The Vatican's press office works to a timetable from a gentler era, closing each day at 3pm, and familiarity with the internet appears barely to have penetrated the Vatican's cloistered confines.

In a report prepared for a meeting of Group of 20 nations last week, the IMF said it was still forecasting a modest economic recovery in 2010, but said restoring confidence was key and meant policymakers needed to urgently deal with distressed assets on banks' balance sheets.

The forecasts are substantially lower than the IMF projected in January when it saw world economic growth of 0.5 percent in 2009. "The prolonged financial crisis has battered global economic activity beyond what was previously anticipated," said the report published on Thursday.

It said advanced economies were in a severe recession that will shrink their economies by a range of 3.0 percent to 3.5 percent in 2009, improving to around zero growth in 2010. It said the United States economy would likely contract by 2.6 percent this year, while the euro area economy would decline by 3.2 percent in 2009.

The right-extremist National Democratic Party is almost broke. That, at least, has been the message delivered recently by both media reports and the party itself. Even the NPD chairman Udo Voigt admitted that his party was in an "existential crisis." The NPD, which Germany's domestic intelligence agency describes as a "racist, anti-Semitic, revisionist" party BENT ON REMOVING DEMOCRACY AND FORMING A FOURTH REICH, is on the brink of insolvency because it faces heavy fines for accounting irregularities in recent years.

To the overwhelming majority of Germans, that will naturally come as good news. But regardless of the NPD's financial problems and the possibility that it may cease to function, the country's far-right scene is becoming more dangerous, experts say.

"THE NEO-NAZI SCENE, BOTH INSIDE AND OUTSIDE THE NPD, IS BECOMING STRONGER, not as a nationwide electoral force but in its influence on racist attitudes and violence," Professor Hajo Funke, a prominent analyst of the far right at Berlin's Free University, told Spiegel Online. "There are places I wouldn't advise anyone who looks foreign to go without protection. THE CRIMES STATISTICS SHOW RIGHT-WING EXTREMISM IS STEADILY EXPANDING," confirmed Funke.

The Red Sea-Dead Sea Water Conveyance project would supply the biggest desalination plant in the world, running on its own hydro-electric power and providing Jordan with enough water for the next 40-50 years. Israel and the Palestinian West Bank would also benefit. A decision on whether to go ahead could come by the end of next year and the likely cost would be in the region of 7 billion dollars.

"The idea of linking the Red Sea and the Dead Sea was first suggested by a British military engineer in the 1880s. That was for hydro-power. But the drivers today are water supply and saving the Dead Sea," said engineer David Meehan, who leads the study team for French consultants Coyne et Bellier.

Some estimates say it (the Dead Sea)could more or less dry up in 50 years if no action is taken. Its level is falling by about one meter (three feet) per year due to a sharp decrease in inflow from the Jordan and other rivers whose waters now irrigate fields and to Dead Sea chemical industry use by Israel and Jordan.

"The level has fallen from 394 meters below sea level in the 1960s to 420 meters below sea level as of mid-2007," said the World Bank. The water surface area is down by a third, from 950 square kilometers to 637 - about the size of Lake Geneva.

"It may have been destructive along coastlines of the region near the earthquake epicentre," the centre said. The quake hit at 0618 local time (1818 GMT) at a depth of 10km (6.2 miles). There were no immediate indications of any damage or casualties on Tonga's main island, Tongan police said in the capital, Nuku'alofa.

US monitors advised that some coastal areas of Hawaii could see a rise in sea level and strong currents lasting up to several hours but said no destructive impact was expected. The epicentre is 480km (300 miles) south-east of Fiji's Ndoi Island and 1,830km (1,140 miles) north-east of Auckland, New Zealand.

An underwater volcano has erupted close to the Tonga coast, in the South Pacific ocean. Scientists sailed to inspect the the volcano, which has been shooting smoke, steam and ash into the air near the low-lying twin volcanic islands of Hunga Tonga and Hunga Ha'apai.

Examples abound. Its sports teams have met hostility and violent protests in Sweden, Spain and Turkey. Mauritania has closed the Israeli Embassy. Relations with Turkey, an important Muslim ally, have suffered severely. A group of top international judges and human rights investigators recently called for an investigation into Israel's actions in Gaza. "Israel Apartheid Week" drew participants in 54 cities around the world this month, twice the number of last year, according to its organizers. And even in the American Jewish community, albeit in its liberal wing, there is a chill.

"PEOPLE HERE FEEL THAT NO MATTER WHAT YOU DO, YOU ARE GOING TO BE BLAMED FOR ALL THE PROBLEMS IN THE MIDDLE EAST," said Eytan Gilboa, a professor of politics and international communication at Bar-Ilan University. "Even suicide bombings by Palestinians are seen as our fault for not establishing a Palestinian state."

Moreover, Mr. Netanyahu is expected to name Avigdor Lieberman, who heads the ultra-nationalist Yisrael Beiteinu party, as foreign minister. This alone has Israelis and their allies in Europe and the United States worried because of his views of Israeli Arabs that some have called racist. Some Israeli officials believe what their country needs is to "rebrand" itself. They say Israel spends far too much time defending actions against its enemies. By doing so, they say, the narrative is always about conflict. Mr. Gilboa, the political scientist, said branding was not enough. "We need to do much more to educate the world about our situation," he said.

Currency specialist Avinash Persaud, a member of the panel of experts, told a Reuters Funds Summit in Luxembourg that the proposal was to create something like the old Ecu, or European currency unit, that was a hard-traded, weighted basket. Persaud, chairman of consultants Intelligence Capital and a former currency chief at JPMorgan, said the recommendation would be one of a number delivered to the United Nations on March 25 by the UN Commission of Experts on International Financial Reform.

"It is a good moment to move to a shared reserve currency," he said. Central banks hold their reserves in a variety of currencies and gold, but the dollar has dominated as the most convincing store of value - though its rate has wavered in recent years as the United States ran up huge twin budget and external deficits.

Persaud said that the United States was concerned that holding the reserve currency made it impossible to run policy, while the rest of the world was also unhappy with the generally declining dollar. "There is a moment that can be grasped for change," he said. "Today the Americans complain that when the world wants to save, it means a deficit. A shared (reserve) would reduce the possibility of global imbalances."

The US currency also declined against the yen, the Norwegian krone, the Australian dollar and Brazilian real. The Fed's decision to buy debt means it is effectively creating new money, leading to concern from investors about the over-supply of dollars.

The dollar traded at $1.433 against the pound, its lowest since late February. The US currency also had its biggest drop against the euro in over two months, to $1.3506 versus the 16-nation European currency. Against the yen, the dollar bought 95.55.

BBC economics editor Stephanie Flanders said THE DECISION TO BUY TREASURY BILLS CAME AS A "SHOCK" TO INVESTORS. "Why have this new spending spree at all?" she said. "The answer may be that the Fed - and the administration more generally - is concerned that THE APPARENT IMPROVEMENT IN CREDIT CONDITIONS THE PAST FEW MONTHS IS A FALSE DAWN."

Demand for food and energy will jump 50% by 2030 and for fresh water by 30%, as the population tops 8.3 billion, he is due to tell a conference in London. Climate change will exacerbate matters in unpredictable ways, he will add. "It's a perfect storm," Professor Beddington will tell the Sustainable Development UK 09 conference.

"There's not going to be a complete collapse, but things will start getting really worrying if we don't tackle these problems." Professor Beddington says the looming crisis will match the current one in the banking sector. "My main concern is what will happen internationally, there will be food and water shortages," he predicts. "We're relatively fortunate in the UK; there may not be shortages here, but we can expect prices of food and energy to rise."

The United Nations Environment Programme predicts widespread water shortages across Africa, Europe and Asia by 2025. The amount of fresh water available per head of the population is expected to decline sharply in that time. The issue of food and energy security rose high on the political agenda last year during a spike in oil and commodity prices.

At present, 30-40% of all crops are lost due to pest and disease before they are harvested. "GENETICALLY-MODIFIED FOOD COULD ALSO BE PART OF THE SOLUTION. We need plants that are resistant to drought and salinity - a mixture of genetic modification and conventional plant breeding. Better water storage and cleaner energy supplies are also essential, he says.

Demonstrations are planned in about 200 towns and cities. Schools are to close and public transport faces disruption. Organisers hope the protest may be bigger than one in January, when about a million people joined protests. THE UNIONS ARE URGING THE GOVERNMENT TO DO MORE TO PROTECT JOBS AND WAGES.

Three-quarters of French people support the strike, claiming the 2.4bn euros ($3.2bn; £2.3bn) offered by the government earlier this year is not enough. Protesters are also calling on the president to scrap his plans to cut public-sector jobs and to reverse tax cuts. President Sarkozy says he understands the plight of the workers but there is little more his government can do.

Unemployment is likely to shoot up to 10% in the next 12 months with a further 350,000 lay offs expected by the end of this year. Private-sector workers from the beleaguered car industry, oil and retail sectors will also be on the streets. The BBC's Emma Jane Kirby in Paris says many people are angry that BIG COMPANIES LIKE THE OIL GIANT TOTAL IS MAKING STAFF REDUNDANT WHILE SIMULTANEOUSLY ANNOUNCING RECORD PROFITS.