The storm system is moving north-eastwards and areas of France bordering Belgium and Germany are on alert for heavy rain and high winds. Worst affected have been the Vendee and Charente-Maritime regions on the western coast of France. Huge waves and strong gusts battered many coastal towns, spreading floods inland and destroying buildings.

Residents took to their roofs in the Vendee region and police helicopters were in action attempting to locate and rescue them. At least a dozen people are said to be missing in France and 59 others injured. President Nicolas Sarkozy expressed his condolences to relatives of victims, and said that he would visit the stricken area on Monday. The French Prime Minister Francois Fillon said France would formally declare the storm a natural disaster, freeing up funds to help communities rebuild.

More than a million homes in France have lost electricity, from the Brittany peninsula in the west to the highlands of the Massif Central in the centre of the country. According to the AFP news agency, the French national power company EDF said half a million customers were still without power at nightfall on Sunday, and Mr Fillon said it would take several days to restore power everywhere.

Even though in the Ghanaian context, "morbid" is hardly the word to use for funerals. We love funerals here and they are a veritable spectacle better experienced than described. The attitude towards the dead and funerals would seem to indicate that a dead Ghanaian is worth far more than a live one.

For example, a man is admitted to hospital and he recovers from his ailment. He is discharged but is forced to remain in the hospital because he has no family to pay his hospital bills. After two weeks the doctor sends a message out the man has died. The very next day a group of mourners arrive at the hospital, suitably clad in the obligatory black and red clothes, they are the family, they are ready to pay all the bills and arrange for the body to be put in the morgue until burial. There is no question about there being no money to pay the hospital bills once the man has died.

The fact that someone went to bed hungry in the last year of his life does not stop the family from organising a huge feast for mourners when that someone dies. You might not have many clothes in your life but that does not stop the family getting the most exquisite lace for your shroud. The textile companies do a roaring trade in specially designed funeral cloths for families. A mother would find money to buy a funeral cloth whilst keeping a child out of school for lack of money. Keeping a child in school does not earn you as much status as organising a mega funeral.

"The Arabs and President Obama know that the Temple will be built on the Temple Mount," said Rabbi Shalom Dov Volpo, the group's founder, "instead of the temporary buildings that are there today." According to the Jerusalem Post, 200 buses now carry posters picturing the Third Temple sitting atop the mount alone - with no Muslim buildings in sight - along with the words, "May the Bais Hamikdosh [Holy Temple] be rebuilt speedily and within our days."

Adding fuel to the fire, the campaign's organizers told the Post they've targeted buses with routes through predominately Arab neighborhoods in east Jerusalem. "We're representing the truth, in front of everyone, and saying out loud what every Jew believes," said Our Land of Israel activist Baruch Marzel, "that the Third Temple needs to be built immediately on the Temple Mount and that the mosque should not be there."

The 5,782,894 pounds price tag comes on a family led by an abused single mother - herself brought up in care - who has three children. The case study assumes that neither the mother nor the three children ever work, and the children, like the mother, spend long periods living in state care.

It puts the cost of providing for the mother - who they called Lizzie - at 805,000 pounds up to the age of 18. Lizzie then costs almost 100,000 pounds for the following two years, during which there are attempts to help her find a job. She has three children, each of whom spends nine years of their childhood either in council-run homes or with foster parents. The cost of supporting a workless Lizzie from the age of 20 to her retirement at 65, plus the three children, is calculated at just under 4.9 million pounds. The total comes to roughly 5.8 million pounds.

Mike Freer, former Tory leader of the borough, said: 'There are 300 families in Barnet who cost 16 million pounds a year in services, more than 53,000 pounds a year for each family. That figure includes social care and housing, but it does not count Benefits Agency payments, or health and education, or police spending. This is the cost when things go wrong. We need to steer these families back into health and back into jobs, and early intervention is the cheapest and most effective way.'

An editorial in Handelsblatt looks at Germany's demands for tough economic governance and argues "The iron Chancellor may have obtained a victory, but she has destroyed a lot of porcelain." Writing in the FT, four German professors, who took the German government to the German constitutional court in 1998 over Germany's entry into the euro, argue that Greece has "no way out" but to leave the euro, and suggest that if eurozone members assist Greece in a manner that contravenes the no-bailout clause they will lodge a new complaint with the German Constitutional Court.

In the Times, Bronwen Maddox argues that Angela Merkel's "sermon about the virtue of thrift is no answer to that debate about how fast to cut deficits, one of the most important of the recovery. Nor does she admit that Germany's success rests on eurozone imbalances and is unsustainable. Out of self interest, as well as solidarity, Germany needs to lead eurozone reform. Yesterday's deal is only a start."

Gordon Brown intervened last night to change the wording from "economic government" to "economic governance", backed by Ireland, Sweden, the Netherlands, Poland, and the European Commission, telling the summit dinner that the term was contentious.

However, the Economist's Charlemagne blog notes that the Council conclusions in the French version still say "gouvernement economique", or 'economic government'. When asked about it in a press conference, EU President Herman Van Rompuy said, "There is no fundamental difference of view, but rather a sensitivity to certain words which has led to an asymmetrical translation."

The draft conclusions say that President Van Rompuy will head a 'task force' looking at 'all options' to achieve the legal framework for economic government - which could mean EU Treaty changes. German Chancellor Angela Merkel has called for the Lisbon Treaty to be amended in order to prevent any repetition of the current crisis in exchange for German agreement for a Greek rescue package.

The warning will heighten fears that Monday's rush-hour suicide attack on the Moscow metro by two women may just be the start of a large-scale terror campaign. Investigators have said they were trying to confirm whether the two women were part of what was originally a 30-strong female "martyrs' brigade".

The terrorist who trained the brigade, an Islamist convert calling himself Said Buryatsky, was killed in a special forces operation earlier this month in Ingushetia, a strife-torn region bordering Chechnya. He was known as the Islamist rebel movement's ideologue-in-chief in southern Russia and the media had dubbed him "the Russian Bin Laden." Investigators said the late terrorist, whose real name was Alexander Tikhomirov, had recruited 30 potential female suicide bombers in Chechnya and Ingushetia and dispatched them to Turkey to be taught the precepts of radical Islam in an unnamed Madrasah.

On their return to Russia, he had personally continued their "education." The women are known as "black widows" because they have usually lost husbands or close relatives in clashes with Russian forces and are motivated by a desire for revenge.

Nine of the original thirty brigade members are known to have already blown themselves up in the lawless North Caucasus region along Russia's southern flank where suicide attacks started up again last year after a long pause, and two more are thought to have blown themselves up in the Moscow metro on Monday.

But that, say investigators, leaves 19 "black widows" at large.

Connecticut Governor M Jodi Rell said in a statement the weather had created "extremely dangerous situations" in the eastern part of the state. In Rhode Island, where officials warned of "historic flooding," Governor Donald Carcieri urged residents to leave work early and head home, said a spokeswoman, Amy Kempe.

"In some cases there has been two months of rain in the matter of a few days," Tom Kines, a senior meteorologist for AccuWeather Inc, said in a telephone interview. "When you get that much rain over a few-day period, that spells trouble."

Rainfall from the three separate storms within the last three weeks is "unprecedented in our recent 100-year weather history," said the National Weather Service office in Taunton, Massachusetts.

The nation's financial and transportation systems collapse, hospitals and the Internet go dark, water and electrical grids freeze and runaway Toyotas with electronic throttles are finally brought to a stop. "The EMP resulting from the blast would cause widespread damage, devastating the economy and resulting in the deaths of millions of Americans," the hawkish Heritage Foundation warned last week, launching a call on Congress to establish an EMP Recognition Day.

"Despite repeated warnings, Congress has taken virtually no action to prepare or protect against an EMP attack," write the Heritage Foundation's Jena Baker McNeill and James Jay Carafano. "In order to facilitate a national discussion regarding the EMP threat, Congress should establish March 23 as EMP Recognition Day" - not coincidentally, that's the date of Reagan's famous 1983 speech launching his missile-defense initiative.

Leaving aside the contradiction of urging Congress to concentrate attention and resources on a threat that most in Washington consider an infinitesimal probability, the whole notion seems rooted in some visceral need for foes with diabolical destructive abilities. There's something almost pathetic about cowering in the shadow of such a threat, instead of shrugging it off with the resilience that was typical on the American frontier.

Like taxes and health care, the debate over the EMP threat is polarizing. "More fearmongering to garner more $$$ for The Big War Machine," opines one poster on Wired's Danger Room blog. Another skeptic asks: "Do they have a flying carpet that could go that high?" But EMP-threat true believers won't be deterred. "Detonating a nuke on the ground would leave cities in shambles and radioactive for years to come," one points out. "If they had any plot to reuse the invaded land, they would most likely go for an EMP approach."

No group immediately took responsibility for the blasts but suspicion is likely to fall on groups from Russia's North Caucasus, where Moscow is fighting a growing Islamist insurgency. The first blast tore through the second carriage of a train as it stood at the Lubyanka metro station, close to the headquarters of Russia's main domestic security service (FSB), at 0756 (11.56 pm ET), killing 22 people.

Another blast wrecked the second carriage of a train waiting at the Park Kultury metro station at 0837 (12.37 am ET), killing 12 more people, an Emergencies Ministry spokeswoman said. "The blast hit the second carriage of a metro train that stopped at Lubyanka, at 0756 (0356 GMT)," ministry spokeswoman Irina Andrianova told Reuters. She said there were killed both inside the carriage and on the platform. The stations were packed with rush hour commuters.

At the Palm Sunday service, Pope Benedict, 82, did not directly mention the wider scandal - involving the abuse of children by priests in several countries. But he told the tens of thousands of people gathered to hear him that God helped lead "towards the courage of not allowing oneself to be intimidated by the petty gossip of dominant opinion". He also said man sometimes fell to the "lowest, vulgar levels" and sunk "into the swamp of sin and dishonesty".

As head of the Vatican office dealing with sex abuses, the Pope - then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger - allegedly did not respond to letters about the case from an archbishop concerned about the abuse. The Pope's intervention, following a plea by the priest concerned, is also said to have resulted in the halting of a church trial. The Vatican newspaper denied this, calling the claims a "smear" attempt.

Meanwhile on Sunday, members of Westminster Cathedral's congregation clashed with placard-carrying protesters calling for the Pope to resign. The Protest the Pope coalition said he should go because he failed to ensure priests who abused young people were reported to police. Human rights campaigner, Peter Tatchell, alleged the pontiff ordered a cover-up in a 2001 edict to Catholic Bishops worldwide. Mr Tatchell said: "The buck stops with him and he should resign."

The Pope has apologised to victims of abuse before and recently said sorry to them in a pastoral letter to Irish Catholics. He said he acknowledged the sense of betrayal in the Church felt by victims and their families.

However, the MPs did agree that the link between the countries was "profound and valuable". The Foreign Office said the two nations share a "unique" bond. The committee said the phrase "the special relationship" did not reflect the "modern" Anglo-American relationship. It was originally coined more than 60 years ago by Winston Churchill.

The committee said although Britain and the US still had close ties, the UK's influence had "diminished" as its economic and military power had waned. "The use of the phrase 'the special relationship' in its historical sense, to describe the totality of the ever-evolving UK-US relationship, is potentially misleading, and we recommend that its use should be avoided," the committee said.

"The overuse of the phrase by some politicians and many in the media serves simultaneously to de-value its meaning and to raise unrealistic expectations about the benefits the relationship can deliver to the UK. The perception that the British government was a subservient 'poodle' to the US administration leading up to the period of the invasion of Iraq and its aftermath is widespread both among the British public and overseas," it said. "This perception, whatever its relation to reality, is deeply damaging to the reputation and interests of the UK."

'Astronomers always knew they were missing some fraction of the galaxies in Lyman-alpha surveys,' explains Matthew Hayes, the lead author of the paper, published this week in Nature. 'But for the first time we now have a measurement. The number of missed galaxies is substantial.'

Using the new HAWK-I camera attached to a telescope, Mr Hayes and his team surveyed an area of space previously measured in terms of Lyman-alpha light.

The new survey recorded light emitted at a different wavelength also by glowing hydrogen and known as the H-alpha line. 'This is the first time we have observed a patch of the sky so deeply in light coming from hydrogen at these two very specific wavelengths, and this proved crucial,' said team member Goran Ostlin.

The astronomers concluded that traditional surveys carried out using Lyman-alpha only see a tiny part of the total light that is produced, since most of the Lyman-alpha photons are destroyed by interaction with the interstellar clouds of gas and dust. As a result, as much as 90 per cent of galaxies go unseen in these surveys. 'If there are ten galaxies seen, there could be a hundred there,' Mr Hayes said.

From September next year, primary school pupils will learn about puberty, sexual intercourse, marriage and the risk of abuse and domestic violence. Ministers have argued that currently, sex education starts too late and that improved, earlier lessons are needed to counter teenage pregnancy, increasingly explicit storylines in films and television soap operas, as well as exposure to pornography online and through mobile phones.

The Children, Schools and Families Bill, which is at committee stage in the Lords, will introduce compulsory sex education for children from the age of seven. It will also remove the rights of parents to "opt out" and withdraw their children from lessons, once their children have reached the age of 15.

Norman Wells, director of the Family Education Trust, and a lead signatory, said: "There is widespread disquiet among head teachers, school governors and faith leaders about moves to reduce the influence of parents over what is taught in such a sensitive area. The Government frequently repeats its mantra that 'parents bring up children in this country, not the government and not schools'."

"Yet increasingly parents find themselves sidelined and effectively told they must bring up their children by Government diktat. It is time to stand up to the encroachment of an overbearing state and say enough is enough. The Bill is music to the ears of those who have long campaigned for compulsory sex education to advance their agenda to break down traditional moral standards, redefine the family, promote relativism, celebrate homosexuality, and encourage sexual experimentation."

"We are not announcing any (new) strike action at the moment, and we do not have to until after April 8," a Unite spokesman told Reuters. "It very much remains a possibility."

The dispute, like plans by railway staff to hold Britain's first national rail strike in 16 years in April, is embarrassing Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who faces an uphill battle to win a general election expected on May 6. The ruling Labor party receives much of its funding from the unions, and the opposition Conservatives have accused Brown of weakness in his approach to the disputes because of this.

Labor has called for British Airways and Unite to resume talks. "It's very damaging for British Airways, its very damaging to the national economy, and it's very damaging to the very jobs of union members which the union exists to protect," Transport Secretary Andrew Adonis told Sky news. "That's why it is so important that they get back around the negotiating table and seek to resolve this dispute by talking and not by confrontation."