Pro-Western and radical Arab leaders have also been angered by the opening of a restored 17th century synagogue near the Al-Aqsa mosque compound - home to Islam's third holiest site. They see such acts as a clear intention by Israel to "Judaise" Jerusalem and undermine chances for a peace agreement with the Palestinians who consider east Jerusalem the capital of their future state.

Jordan's King Abdullah II, who was among the first Arab leaders to arrive in Kadhafi's Mediterranean hometown of Sirte for the summit, warned this week that Israel was "playing with fire" and trying to alter the identity of Jerusalem. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad ahead of the summit described tensions with Israel as a "state of no-war, no-peace," and said his country stood ready if "war is imposed" by Israel.

Arab leaders are expected to ratify an agreement drafted by their foreign ministers to raise 500 million dollars in aid to improve living conditions for Palestinians in Jerusalem as part of a "rescue" plan for the Holy City. A senior Palestinian official said the money would go towards improving infrastructure, building hospitals, schools, water wells and providing financial support to those whose houses have been demolished by Israeli authorities.

Meanwhile suggestions that Ireland's Catholic leader will be forced to quit have been rejected by his spokesman. Cardinal Sean Brady has apologised for his role in the handling of sex abuse cases, saying he wants to work towards a just resolution of a case being taken against him by a man who alleges he was abused by a priest.

There have been calls for the cardinal's resignation since it emerged he was present at two meetings in the 1970s when victims of Father Brendan Smyth were sworn to silence about their ordeal. Information provided by the victims was not passed on to police and Smyth went on to abuse many more children before finally being convicted, in both Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic, of nearly 150 sex attacks on children. In his interview for daily Corriere della Sera, Cardinal Kasper said Pope Benedict had been the "first to feel the need for new and stricter rules".

As head of the Vatican watchdog, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), the then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger took action which led to a flood of cases of alleged sexual abuse by priests being processed. "We need a culture of alertness and bravery, to do the housework," Cardinal Kasper said. "There is no turning back on the path we are now on and that is good." The Italian interview with the cardinal appeared on Saturday morning, hours after three deaf men, who say they were repeatedly sexually abused by priests as children in northern Italy, confronted a Church spokesman on prime-time TV.

The Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano has denied there was a cover-up and denounced what it described as "an ignoble attempt to strike at Pope Benedict and his closest aides at any cost".

They highlight the case of an NHS nurse who was moved from front-line duties after refusing to remove her cross.

Signatories of the letter include the former Archbishop of Canterbury, Lord Carey, and the Bishops of Winchester and Blackburn. They accuse nurse Shirley Chaplin's employers of treating her beliefs with disrespect, while happily allowing symbols of other religions to be worn.

The church leaders said it was unacceptable in a civilised society to dismiss Christians from their jobs over matters of conscience. The letter reads: "We are deeply concerned at the apparent discrimination shown against Christians and we call on the government to remedy this serious development. In a number of cases, Christian beliefs on marriage, conscience and worship are simply not being upheld. There have been numerous dismissals of practising Christians from employment for reasons that are unacceptable in a civilised country."

This could see Britain forfeiting the 2 billion pounds of annual 'structural funds' paid out to some of the nation's poorer areas by Brussels. Critics said the Prime Minister was the victim of 'another Franco-German stitch-up' that would lead to unprecedented interference in Britain's economic affairs. British sources yesterday insisted any new powers would apply only to the 16 countries that use the euro. But Brussels insiders said the possibility of applying sanctions to all EU states remained open.

The idea of creating a single economic policy for the EU has long been a French dream. Mrs Merkel has warmed to the idea - bringing her politically closer to French president Nicolas Sarkozy - in the wake of Greece's economic meltdown. She believes her plan would prevent a repeat of the Greek crisis by imposing sanctions on nations that manage their economies badly. Any move along these lines could ultimately affect the UK, which has a budget deficit of 13 per cent, according to EU figures - higher even than Greece's 12.5 per cent.

It emerged yesterday that Britain could have to pay 650 million pounds towards a Greek bailout if the International Monetary Fund steps in to stop the euro collapsing. Diplomatic sources said the possible 20 billion pounds bailout of Greece would involve a 'substantial' contribution from the IMF of up to 13 billion pounds, with the rest coming from countries in the eurozone. Britain is not a member of the eurozone but the IMF's 13 billion pounds would include around 650 million pounds from the UK.

Tory MP Bill Cash said Mr Brown had been out-manoeuvred, adding: 'We have fallen victim to another Franco-German stitch-up. We have to fight this drive for political union, which is what this idea of economic government is all about.'

The Saudi vessel was forced to surrender, and its sailors were delivered into custody in Abu Dhabi for several days, before being released and handed over to the Saudi embassy earlier this week. The incident has shocked diplomats who hope the countries, both key American allies, will help implement the West's strategy to constrain Iran's nuclear and military ambitions.

The clash happened in disputed waters between the coasts of Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi and the peninsula on which the gas-rich state of Qatar sits. The seabed is rich with oil deposits, while the Dolphin pipeline project to carry natural gas direct from Qatar to Abu Dhabi has provoked irritation in the Saudi authorities. Nevertheless, direct conflict between the two countries' armed forces is highly unusual.

The Gulf is one of the most heavily armed regions in the world. The Saudi government has been building up its army and air force for years in response to what it sees as a regional threat from Iran. But now the UAE, despite its small size, is the fourth largest purchaser of weaponry on the international market in the world. Western governments are exasperated that the two countries are unable to co-operate because of a series of long-running border disputes, largely influenced by oil reserves.

The Gulf is the shipping route for 40 per cent of the world's oil trade. The lack of agreed naval boundaries leads to repeated arrests of civilian vessels, including a British yacht by the Iranian navy last November, but more serious is the threat of Iranian retaliation for any attack by Israel or American forces on its nuclear installations. The Iranian government has threatened to mine the Straits of Hormuz at the tip of the Gulf, or target the western navies moored in Gulf Arab ports.

What could be more European than a castle? The Continent is dotted with them, often menacingly perched on forested hilltops overlooking rivers or ancient trading routes - important bastions necessary for the defense of what developed into Europe's long and rich cultural tradition.

These days, of course, European castles tend to be little more than bucolic tourist attractions. But it is perhaps no accident that a small palace in western Germany's former industrial heart has been chosen to host a convention ostensibly aimed at defending European culture. The castle in question is the centuries-old Horst Palace, a Renaissance structure in the Ruhr Valley city of Gelsenkirchen. The gathering is called, pointedly, the Anti-Minaret Conference.

This Saturday, politicians representing right-wing conservative parties from across Europe will descend on the Horst Palace to discuss the dangers of Islam. Delegates from the Belgian nationalists Vlaams Belang will be there as will politicians from Geert Wilders's Dutch Party for Freedom, Pia Kjaersgaard's Danish People's Party and the Front National of Jean-Marie Le Pen. Others from Sweden, Austria and Eastern Europe are also on the invite list.

The hosts are a relatively new group of German right-wing conservatives called Pro-NRW (an abbreviation of the German state North Rhine-Westphalia) and the goal of the conference is clear: to follow in Switzerland's footsteps and ban minarets across Europe. And they want to use a provision of the European Union's new Lisbon Treaty to do it.

"I don't think that minarets are part of our heritage," conference attendee Filip Dewinter, floor leader for Vlaams Belang in the Flemish parliament, told Spiegel Online. "They are symbols of radical Islam. The question is whether Islam is a religion like Protestantism and Catholicism and for me it is not. It is a political system, it is a way of life and it is one that is not compatible with ours."

After failing to extract a written promise of concessions on settlements, Mr Obama walked out of his meeting with Mr Netanyahu but invited him to stay at the White House, consult with advisers and "let me know if there is anything new", a US congressman, who spoke to the Prime Minister, said.

"It was awful," the congressman said. One Israeli newspaper called the meeting "a hazing in stages", poisoned by such mistrust that the Israeli delegation eventually left rather than risk being eavesdropped on a White House telephone line. Another said that the Prime Minister had received "the treatment reserved for the President of Equatorial Guinea".

Left to talk among themselves Mr Netanyahu and his aides retreated to the Roosevelt Room. He spent a further half-hour with Mr Obama and extended his stay for a day of emergency talks to try to restart peace negotiations. However, he left last night with no official statement from either side. He returned to Israel yesterday isolated after what Israeli media have called a White House ambush for which he is largely to blame.

The case has been confirmed by the Vatican. The Pope's spokesman, however, defended the pontiff's silence on the grounds that the Vatican department responsible for disciplining errant priests, formerly headed by the then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, had not been informed until 1996 - 20 years after the priest's victims first informed the police.

Hardly a day goes by without new cases of sexual abuse of children by Catholic priests somewhere in the world being reported in the media. A crisis has broken out for the Catholic Church which for decades swore bishops and Vatican officials who dealt with cases of priestly paedophilia to secrecy.

Fr Lombardi, the official Vatican spokesman who is also director of Vatican Radio and Vatican TV, has been working overtime on what has developed into a major damage-control mission organised by the secretariat of state - the small group of top Vatican officials who advise the Pope on policy matters.

In practically every country paedophilia is punished as a serious crime. The Catholic Church teaches that it is also a particularly grave sin, in theory subject to extreme sanctions, but the evidence is that priests accused of molesting children were usually moved to another parish rather than being punished or removed from office.

It said the amount of rubbish was 77% higher than in 1994 - its first annual survey - and the proportion of plastic volunteers found had never been higher. The MCS said plastic was unsightly and harmed marine animals. A spokeswoman said the figures showed plastic makes up an increasing proportion of beach litter - now nearly two-thirds of the total.

The survey involved more than 4,600 volunteers, each of whom went to their favourite beach over one weekend. Altogether, they collected 2,742 rubbish bags of waste. The haul included 7,393 plastic bags, 16,243 plastic drinks bottles, 17,712 fishing nets and 70,546 small plastic pieces.

Among the rubbish were a laboratory incubator, syringes, nappies, half a boomerang, a message in a bottle from "Sly Sally"; a joke severed finger and a set of fake vampire's teeth. The biggest source of waste was public littering, followed by both commercial and recreational fishing. Environment minister Huw Irranca-Davies said: "Britain's coastlines, beaches, and seas deserve better than to be treated as a dustbin."

When is it time for a pope to resign? Margaret Kassmann, the former head of the Protestant Church in Germany, stepped down in February upon deciding that she no longer had the necessary moral authority for her office after being caught driving drunk. But how much authority does Pope Benedict XVI still enjoy?

These days, what is left is disappearing almost daily. Each new detail about the role he played in his church's handling of instances of sexual abuse erodes it further. But a pope doesn't just resign. He is not the CEO of a company, not the head of a political party - he is the direct spiritual descendent of the Apostle Peter.

It is, in theory, possible according to church law. Canon 332, Paragraph Two, provides for a papal resignation, allowing the pope to step down whenever he wishes and without asking anyone for permission. But in the long history of the Catholic Church, it is extremely uncommon. Pope Celestine V was the most recent church leader to resign - 700 years ago.

Evil has been perpetrated inside one of the highest moral authorities, one whose men have preached from the pulpit in the finest detail about what is right and what is wrong. But the question begs asking: What moral authority remains upon which priests and bishops in Germany can draw to continue executing their offices and provide people with answers to life's difficult questions?

A study by the Boulder, Colorado-based National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) said the strong air circulation patterns linked to Asia's monsoon rainy season serves as a pathway for black carbon, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides and other pollutants to rise into the stratosphere. The stratosphere is the layer of the atmosphere located some 32 to 40 kilometers (20 to 25 miles) above the Earth's surface.

"The monsoon is one of the most powerful atmospheric circulation systems on the planet, and it happens to form right over a heavily polluted region," said NCAR scientist William Randel, the study's lead author. "As a result, the monsoon provides a pathway for transporting pollutants up to the stratosphere."

Using satellite data and computer models, the scientists found that once the pollutants are in the stratosphere they circulate around the globe for several years. "Some eventually descend back into the lower atmosphere, while others break apart," read a statement on the study. Researchers fear that the impact of Asian pollutants on the stratosphere may increase in the next decades due to fierce industrial growth in countries like China and India.

The plan was worked out at a two-day summit in Brussels. A draft of the plan, seen by the BBC, says the Greek government "has not requested any financial support", so "no decision has been taken to activate" the mechanism yet.

The French presidency said there would be "very precise conditions" under which the 16 eurozone countries "could be led to intervene" to help Greece. News of the deal broke as leaders of the 27 EU member states gathered in Brussels. So far the eurozone has avoided seeking an IMF loan for Greece, preferring a European solution and anxious to maintain global confidence in the euro.

Earlier on Thursday Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel said the German government "will press for emergency aid combining IMF and joint bilateral aid from the eurozone but... only as a last resort". She has signalled reluctance to offer Greece anything resembling a bail-out, which is not allowed under the single currency rules.

Mr Brown and the Treasury have repeatedly refused to disclose information about the gold sale amid allegations that warnings were ignored. Following a series of freedom of information requests from The Daily Telegraph over the past four years, the Information Commissioner has ordered the Treasury to release some details. The Treasury must publish the information demanded within 35 calendar days by the end of April.

Between 1999 and 2002, Mr Brown ordered the sale of almost 400 tons of the gold reserves when the price was at a 20-year low. Since then, the price has more than quadrupled, meaning the decision cost taxpayers an estimated 7 billion pounds, twice the amount lost when Britain left the Exchange Rate Mechanism in 1992, according to Mike Warburton of the accountants Grant Thornton.

Such mega regions will stretch hundreds of miles across countries and each will be home to more than 100 million people. Last year it was confirmed for the first time that over half the world's population lives in cities. The State Of The World Cities report claims that urbanisation is 'unstoppable'.

A mega region, which is often two or more cities becoming connected as increasing numbers of towns and ghettos spring up between them, has already been established in the Hong Kong-Shenhzen-Guangzhou region of China where 120 million people live. Eduardo Lopez Moreno, the report's author, said: 'The top 25 cities in the world account for more than half of the world's wealth, and the five largest cities in India and China now account for 50 per cent of those countries' wealth.'

However, he claims an explosion of mega regions will not necessarily be a bad thing despite warning of 'further patterns of social and economic exclusion'. 'They, rather than countries, are now driving wealth,' Mr Moreno added.

"Research shows that the world's largest 40 mega regions cover only a tiny fraction of the habitable surface of our planet and are home to fewer than 18 per cent of the world's population yet account for 66 per cent of all economic activity and about 85 per cent of technological and scientific innovation.' Anna Tibaijuka, director of UN-Habitat, said: 'Just over half the world now lives in cities but by 2050, over 70 per cent of the world will be urban dwellers.

The Israeli Prime Minister was due to fly home from Washington after three days marked by Israeli defiance on the issue of settlements and an extraordinary silence maintained by both sides after his three-and-a-half-hour visit to the White House. The meeting was overshadowed by Israeli approval for 20 homes built for Jews in Arab east Jerusalem - a move denounced by one senior US official as "exactly what we expect Prime Minister Netanyahu to get control of".

White House staff denied Mr Netanyahu the usual photo opportunities afforded to a visiting leader, issued only the vaguest summary of their talks - let alone a joint statement - and reversed a decision to release an official photo of their meetings.

It was speculated that the talks may have moved beyond the quarrel over Israeli construction in east Jerusalem to final status issues such as the borders of a Palestinian state, as well as Iran and its nuclear programme. However, Robert Gibbs, the White House press secretary, would say only that Mr Obama had asked Mr Netanyahu for confidence-building gestures and clarification of his position on settlements. He described the talks as "honest and straightforward".

Mr Obama also held telephone talks yesterday with Gordon Brown, Angela Merkel and President Sarkozy on Iran, the Middle East peace process and global economic issues, Mr Gibbs said. White House sources said that observers were right to infer from the news blackout that relations between the two sides were not good but later hinted that some Israeli proposals had been favourably received. Direct talks between Israel and the Palestinians have been shelved since 2008.