Dubbed "Cyber ShockWave" and organized by the Bipartisan Policy Center (BPC), the event was held at a Washington hotel room transformed for the day into the White House Situation Room, where the president and his advisers typically meet to address national emergencies. In the simulation, former top US officials debated how to respond as the power grid in the eastern United States was virtually shut down by a stealth cyberattack and a pair of bombings, cutting electricity to tens of millions of homes.

Three large television screens behind the participants displayed multi-color maps of the United States with a series of alarming updates and a fictional television network, "GNN," broadcast news reports on the cascading crisis. "You're going to see planes being grounded now. You're going to see trains not moving," said Fran Townsend, former president George W Bush's one-time Homeland Security advisor, who was promoted to Homeland Security secretary for the simulation.

The "cabinet members" debated how to respond to the situation and what advice to give the president, with suggestions ranging from calling out the National Guard, nationalizing the power companies and retaliating once the attackers' identities were known. "If this is an attack on the United States the president, as commander-in-chief, has the authority to use the full powers at his disposal," said former deputy attorney general Jamie Gorelick, playing the role of the US attorney general.

"We're in good shape from a command and control standpoint," said "Secretary of Defense" Charles Wald, a retired general and the former deputy commander of US European Command. "We can take action offensively if we know where to go," Wald said. "Problematically, we don't know where that is."

Economists predict cutbacks, tax increases that 'aren't even imaginable'. "It keeps me awake at night, looking at all that red ink," said President Obama in Nashua, New Hampshire, on February 2. "Most of it is structural and we inherited it. The only way that we are going to fix it is if both parties come together and start making some tough decisions about our long-term priorities."

Obama will sign an executive order tomorrow that establishes a bipartisan National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform to make recommendations on how to reduce the country's debt. Over the past year alone, the amount the US government owes its lenders has grown to more than half the country's entire economic output, or gross domestic product.

Even more alarming, experts say, is that those figures will climb to an unprecedented 200 percent of GDP by 2038 without a dramatic shift in course.

In an interview, Pitts told Hotsheet that he believes that "if the federal government continues to spend money at the rate it's spending money, and if it continues to print money at the rate it's printing money, our economic system is going to collapse. The Germans felt their system wouldn't collapse, but it took a wheelbarrow of money to buy a loaf of bread in the 1930s," he said. "The Soviet Union didn't think their system would collapse, but it did. Ours is capable of collapsing also."

The lawmaker believes that a shift to an economy based on gold and silver coins would give the state a "base of currency" should that collapse come. As one expert told the Scoop, however, his bill would likely be ruled unconstitutional because it "violates a perfectly legal and Constitutional federal law, enacted pursuant to the Commerce Clause of the US Constitution, that federal reserve notes are legal tender for all debts public and private."

In addition, since gold and silver regularly fluctuate in value, they could not easily function as stable currency. But Pitts maintains that his state is better off with something he can hold in his hand and barter with as opposed to federal currency, which he described to the Scoop as "paper with ink on it." He says he resents what he considers the federal government's intrusions on states' rights. Though he did not offer a timeframe, Pitts told Hotsheet that he anticipates a nationwide economic collapse "if our federal government continues the course it's been traveling under the previous administration and this administration."

The cold, snowy winds aren't merely inconvenient. They come just as some businesses and municipalities were beginning to dig themselves out from the recession. Sure some businesses like ski resorts, sellers of snow blowers and shovels, or companies that have mastered the art of telecommuting are doing a victory dance.

But in places like Maryland, which has spent much of its $60 million budget for snow removal (or Pennsylvania, which has spent $131.9 million of its $245 million budget for the entire winter; or New York City, where there was a debate about whether one inch of snow equals a $1 million drain on the city's budget), the economic tab piles up. And the winter follies are far from over.

The costs hit in many ways. The increase in demand for warmth means consumers will pay more for heating oil and gasoline. Unseasonably cold weather in Florida is already bringing higher produce prices to supermarkets. Retailers that managed to have a decent holiday season have seen shopping slow as people huddle in their homes. With consumer spending a huge part of GDP, less shopping could no doubt shape the economic story for the first quarter of 2010.

Everyone aged 65 and over and younger people with certain health conditions are eligible for a free jab on the NHS, costing 115 million pounds. Every year more than 15 million people in England alone receive a free flu jab, with around three out of four aged 65 or over getting vaccinated.

Controversy has grown over the benefits of vaccinating those over 65, with at least two major studies in the past two years claiming they have been 'greatly exaggerated', and there are no figures to back up claims that lives are being saved. In a similar study in 2008, Dr Jefferson said there was little evidence to show the flu jab had any impact on the length of hospital stays, time off work and death rates in healthy adults.

The flu jab's co-inventor, biochemist Graeme Laver, told the Daily Mail in 2007 that the jab did not guarantee protection. Dr Laver, who died in 2008, said: 'I have never been very impressed with its efficacy. It is better than nothing and I wouldn't want to advise people not to take it, but you can't rely on it doing any good.'

The European Union has shown its righteous wrath by stripping Greece of its vote at a crucial meeting next month, the worst humiliation ever suffered by an EU member state. While the symbolic move to suspend Greece of its voting rights at one meeting makes no practical difference, it marks a constitutional watershed and represents a crushing loss of sovereignty.

"We certainly won't let them off the hook," said Austria's finance minister, Josef Proll, echoing views shared by colleagues in Northern Europe. Some German officials have called for Greece to be denied a vote in all EU matters until it emerges from "receivership". Jean-Claude Juncker, head of the Eurogroup, hinted that ministers have already agreed on a support mechanism, should it be necessary. It will most likely involve bilateral aid by eurozone states. He said proposals for an IMF bailout - backed by Britain - were "absurd" and would shatter the credibility of monetary union.

Many Germans disagree, including Otmar Issing, once the backbone of the European Central Bank. He said an EU rescue for Greece would be fatal, arguing that unflinching rigour is the only way to hold monetary union together without political union.

Commanders issued immediate apologies and renewed promises to try their utmost to avoid casualties among the population. However, Major General Nick Carter has now confirmed that the destroyed house was being used by the Taliban to launch attacks. "We know now that the missile arrived at the target that it was supposed to arrive at," he said via video link from Lashkar Gah, in the southern Afghan province of Helmand.

During a briefing on the progress of Operation Moshtarak, the largest offensive against the Taliban in the conflict so far, he added: "It wasn't a rogue missile. There was no technical fault in it." Use of the High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) has been reinstated.

Major General Carter said there had been "conflicting" reports in the first 24 hours, which he blamed on "the fog of war", but said investigations had revealed procedures governing the use of the HIMARS were "as they should be". He added that "we are being very careful, though, with any aerial delivered munitions" to avoid similar incidents.

The sudden pullout of three corporate giants from a leading alliance of businesses and environmental groups could be the death knell for climate change legislation languishing on Capitol Hill. ConocoPhillips, BP America and Caterpillar's announced Tuesday they will pull out of the US Climate Action Partnership, citing complaints that the bills now in Congress are unfair to American industry.

BP spokesman Ronnie Chappell said Tuesday's announcements are not a statement on the likelihood that climate change legislation will fail. "I would never speculate as to what would happen with a pending piece of legislation," Chappell said. But he said the bills on the table no longer "conform" with what USCAP envisioned for a climate change bill. He said the legislation - including one bill that passed the House but is stalled in the Senate - does not provide adequate protections to US refineries.

If any bills are passed, they will result in more oil imports, the closure of US refineries and the loss of US jobs. Plus he said it's too hard on the transportation sector. "We do not believe that the bills now pending in Congress conform to the USCAP blueprint, in that a disproportionate share of the emissions reductions and disproportionate share of the cost fall on the transportation sector and on transportation consumers and motorists," he said. Both BP America and Caterpillar were founding members of the group.

The embattled ex-head of the research center at the heart of the Climate-gate scandal dropped a bombshell over the weekend, admitting in an interview with the BBC that there has been no global warming over the past 15 years.

Fears of an anti-gay backlash across Africa are intensifying after the prosecution of the first gay couple to seek marriage in Malawi, and thousands of Ugandans demonstrated this week in support of a bill proposing the death penalty for some offences involving homosexual acts. Last week five men were arrested at an alleged gay wedding in Kenya.

Dave Chingwalu, a spokesman for police in Malawi, said a 60-year-old man was arrested yesterday and charged with sodomy. Chingwalu said he received a complaint from a young man that he had been asked to undress by the older man and was then sodomised. Police investigations had uncovered a network of high-profile people involved in homosexual acts, investigations were under way "and we will arrest them all", Chingwalu said.

The Ugandan parliament is considering a bill that would impose life imprisonment as the minimum punishment for anyone convicted of having gay sex. If the accused person is HIV positive or a serial offender, or a "person of authority" over the other partner, or if the "victim" is under 18, a conviction will result in the death penalty. Members of the public are obliged to report any homosexual activity to police within 24 hours or risk up to three years in jail. "It is an offence, an unnatural offence, and also their behaviour is repugnant to the morality of the people," District Officer George Matandura said.

Argentina claims sovereignty over the British Overseas Territory, and it invaded the islands in 1982. The UK sent a taskforce which seized back control over the Falklands. Although that conflict was 28 years ago, tensions remain over the islands - which Argentina calls the Islas Malvinas.

Earlier this month, Argentina protested to the UK about the start of the oil drilling work, which is expected to begin in the first half of this year. The announcement on the tougher rules on ship movements was made by the Argentine government's Cabinet Chief Anibal Fernandez.

The Argentine decree seeks to achieve "not only a defence of Argentine sovereignty but also of all the resources" in the area, Mr Fernandez said.

In all existing life forms, the four "letters" of the genetic code, called nucleotides, are read in triplets, so that every three nucleotides encode a single amino acid. Not any more. Jason Chin at the University of Cambridge and his colleagues have now redesigned the cell's machinery so that it reads the genetic code in quadruplets.

In the genetic code that life has used up to now, there are 64 possible triplet combinations of the four nucleotide letters; these genetic "words" are called codons. Each codon either codes for an amino acid or tells the cell to stop making a protein chain. Now Chin's team have created 256 blank four-letter codons that can be assigned to amino acids that don't even exist yet.

"It's a very impressive advance that opens up new theoretical horizons in synthetic biology," says genomics pioneer Craig Venter, who heads his own institute in Rockville, Maryland, and is currently trying to create a synthetic organism from scratch.

Participants discussed a book published last October, "Harvesting the Fruits: Basic Aspects of Christian Faith in Ecumenical Dialogue." The book is a compilation of the results of forty years of bilateral dialogues between the Roman Catholic Church and the World Lutheran Federation, the World Alliance of Reformed Churches, the Anglican Communion and the World Methodist Council. The council noted that it also "raises important questions for the future direction and content of ecumenical discussion."

The symposium aimed not only "to take account of the many elements of agreement produced by forty years of official dialogue, but to consider ways of communicating this remarkable achievement to the members of all the various Christian communities," the council stated. The theologians made a "detailed examination of the question of reception of joint statements and agreements, the need for the common witness of Christians at every level, and the changed context in which Christianity must undertake its mission."

They also discussed how ecumenical dialogue should take place in the future, and what steps should be made toward the goal of "full and visible communion. The many positive suggestions that it produced will be taken forward to the plenary of the Pontifical Council in November 2010," the communique noted. It added that the participants "affirmed that the ability to call together meetings of this nature is a particular potential of Rome, indicating the wider service that the Petrine ministry can offer to ecumenism."

The so-called 'swap' deal, while permitted under EU rules, helped Greece meet eurozone limits on government borrowing. Greece's vast deficits caused it to fail the criteria for joining the single European currency in 1999, but it succeeded in 2001. Member nations had to reduce their budget deficit to less than 3 per cent of gross domestic product and trim national debt to less than 60 per cent of GDP. The Greek deficit stands at nearly 13 per cent of GDP and public debt is almost twice the official ceiling at 113 per cent of GDP.

Under the deal between Goldman and Greece, the country's government effectively obtained a 640 million pounds loan without adding to its public debt burden. This was achieved because the arrangement was treated as a 'currency trade'. The allegations prompted uproar in Europe, where ministers are meeting to discuss a possible Greek bailout. EU authorities demanded that Athens come clean over its financial engineering.

Yesterday he tabled a Parliamentary question asking the Chancellor whether Britain was party to similar dealings with investment banks. A Treasury spokesman said: 'The UK does not use swaps of any type for debt management purposes and has not done so under the current arrangements for debt management.' However, Britain is known to have moved billions of pounds of liabilities off the government books through mechanisms such as the public finance initiative.

Today Barclays is expected to announce record profits of 11 billion pounds and a bonus pot of 4.5 billion pounds. Other banks are set to follow with results over the next fortnight, and it is predicted that 10,000 City workers will walk away with pay and bonuses topping 1 million pounds each. Today's survey by the Institute of Directors makes a mockery of boasts by Gordon Brown and Chancellor Alistair Darling that the Government ordered the banks to start lending again as payback for pumping 850 billion pounds into the economy.

IoD director general Miles Templeman said: 'The fact that more than half of all businesses seeking finance last year were turned away by their banks is totally incompatible with the banking sector's position on the state of lending in the UK. What is even more concerning is that having been rejected, 83 per cent of businesses are not receiving information about alternatives available to them, including the Government's Enterprise Finance Guarantee. It seems that more businesses are turning to forms of unsecured finance, such as credit cards, to get them through their short-term spending needs.'

The IoD survey of 1,000 businesses is particularly significant because the Institute represents company directors who employ an average of 20 to 30 people - the very entrepreneurs whose desire to expand will be critical to creating jobs and dragging Britain out of recession.

The currency's surge is throwing a monkey wrench into the plans of corporations and investors who were betting on a weak dollar. The euro extended recent declines Monday, slipping to $1.36 from $1.3618. That came on the heels of last week's fifth-straight weekly gain by the US currency. The dollar is up more than 5% against the euro this year.

Sentiment has flipped on the world's two major currencies. Greece's woes amid a soaring deficit have exposed the fragility of the 16-nation euro zone's government finances and the Continent's recovery, overshadowing any nervousness about the American economy and the massive US budget deficit.

The European Central Bank is now seen as having to delay interest-rate increases in order to prop up growth, while the Federal Reserve appears on track to begin tightening credit sooner rather than later. Higher rates tend to draw investment into a currency, all things being equal, thus boosting the dollar's prospects over the euro's. Suddenly, the US, with its 5.7% economic growth rate in the fourth quarter, is shaping up as a safe haven once again.