Opening the unusual presidential call to reporters by saying that there was "just one thing I was thinking about as I was getting on the 'copter," he said it wasn't he who started the federal government's intervention into the nation's financial system.

"I did think it might be useful to point out that it wasn't under me that we started buying a bunch of shares of banks. It wasn't on my watch. And it wasn't on my watch that we passed a massive new entitlement – the prescription drug plan - without a source of funding. And so I think it's important just to note when you start hearing folks throw these words around that we've actually been operating in a way that has been entirely consistent with free-market principles and that some of the same folks who are throwing the word 'socialist' around can't say the same." The phone call came after the president was asked aboard his plane: "Are you a socialist as some people have suggested?"

"Let's just take a look at what we've done," Obama said, ticking off efforts his administration has made to stabilize the economy. But he acknowledged that, as he told Joe the Plumber, HE PLANS TO TRY TO SPREAD THE WEALTH AROUND.

Ever since oil began its 69 percent plunge from a record $147.27 a barrel in July, traders have been looking for a bottom. Now that the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries reduced supplies 13 percent since September, inventories are falling 1.4 million barrels a day, according to PVM Oil Associates Ltd, the world's biggest broker of energy trades between banks. OPEC will limit exports again when the group meets March 15, according to a survey by Bloomberg News.

OPEC states have more of an incentive than ever to restrict output because the combination of declining prices and the global recession will reduce earnings 59 percent this year to $402 billion, according to the US Energy Department. Crude demand will drop for a second year, the first back-to-back decline since 1983, the International Energy Agency said.

OPEC ministers from Venezuela, Algeria and Qatar said stricter limits may be needed at the March 15 summit in Vienna. While Saudi Arabia, the world's largest exporter, has yet to express a view, King Abdullah and Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi said last year that $75 IS A FAIR PRICE FOR PRODUCERS AND CONSUMERS.

"Close them down, get them out of business," Shelby, the senior Republican on the Senate Banking Committee, said on the ABC television program 'This Week With George Stephanopoulos.' "If they're dead, they ought to be buried." While the Alabama senator did not say which banks should shut down, he suggested that Citigroup might be on that list, saying the bank has "always been a problem child."

McCain, appearing on 'Fox News Sunday,' echoed that sentiment without identifying banks. McCain, who lost the US presidential election in November, accused the Treasury Department of avoiding the "hard decision" to let "these banks fail."

Obama made clear in an interview published Sunday in The New York Times that he did not want big banks to fail, saying his administration "would take more significant action to deal with those institutions."

That painful time during Ronald Reagan's presidency is a grim marker of how bad things can get. Yet the current recession could slice deeper into the US economy. If it lasts into April - as it almost surely will - this one will go on record as the longest in the post war era. The 1981-82 and 1973-75 recessions each lasted 16 months. Unemployment hasn't reached 1982 levels and the gross domestic product hasn't fallen quite as far. But the hurt from this recession is spread more widely and uncertainty about the country's economic health is worse today than it was in 1982.

Back then, if someone asked if the nation was about to experience something as bad as the Great Depression, the answer was, "Quite clearly, 'No,'" said Murray Weidenbaum, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers in the Reagan White House. "You don't have that certainty today," he said. "It's not only that the downturn is sharp and widespread, but a lot of people worry that it's going to be a long-lasting, substantial downturn."

CONSUMER CONFIDENCE IS IN FREE FALL. BANKS ARE IN PERIL. The overall economy, as measured by the GDP, shrank at a 6.2 percent annual rate in the final three months of last year, the worst drop since the first quarter of 1982. The unemployment rate, at 8.1 percent in February, hasn't reached the 10.8 percent reported in November 1982, but the recession is not over. It's not only blue-collar workers who are feeling the greatest anguish. Americans who are trapped in houses worth less than their mortgages are suffering. So, too, are people whose personal wealth is tied to the stock market. PERSONAL WEALTH IS DWINDLING IN THE US and the effects of the financial meltdown have been felt around the world.

The bank did not provide a specific estimate, but bank officials said its economists would be publishing one in the next several weeks. Until now, even extremely pessimistic forecasters have predicted that the global economy would eke out a tiny expansion but had warned that even a growth rate of 5 percent in China would be a disastrous slowdown, given the enormous pressure there to create jobs for the country's rural population.

The World Bank also warned that global trade would contract for the first time since 1982, and that the decline would be the biggest since the 1930s. In a report prepared for a meeting next week of finance ministers from the 20 industrialized and large developing countries, the World Bank said the economic crisis that started with junk mortgages in the United States was causing havoc for poorer countries around the world, not only stifling their growth but also choking off their access to credit as well.

Central European countries like Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic are hurting from diminished exports to Western Europe as well as a severe credit crunch among major European banks, which have suffered huge losses on U.S. mortgages and mortgage-backed securities. East Asian countries are reeling from plunging global trade. Demand for inexpensive manufactured goods has plunged in the United States. That slump has hit many Asian countries directly and indirectly, through falling demand by China for raw materials and component products.

David Wilkerson, author of 'The Cross and the Switchblade,' a book about his ministry to troubled New York street kids that was later made into a movie starring Pat Boone, tells readers of his blog this weekend that he is "compelled by the Holy Spirit to send out an urgent message" about his prediction. "AN EARTH-SHATTERING CALAMITY IS ABOUT TO HAPPEN," he writes. "It is going to be so frightening, we are all going to tremble – even the godliest among us." Wilkerson's vision is of fires raging through New York City.

"It will engulf the whole megaplex, including areas of New Jersey and Connecticut. Major cities all across America will experience riots and blazing fires – such as we saw in Watts, Los Angeles, years ago," he explains. "There will be riots and fires in cities worldwide. There will be looting – including Times Square, New York City. What we are experiencing now is not a recession, not even a depression. WE ARE UNDER GOD'S WRATH. In Psalm 11 it is written, 'If the foundations are destroyed, what can the righteous do?'"

"God is judging the raging sins of America and the nations," claims Wilkerson. "He is destroying the secular foundations." Wilkerson urges everyone to stockpile a 30-day supply of food and other necessities to deal with the catastrophe he foresees. "I do not know when these things will come to pass, but I know it is not far off," Wilkerson concluded in his message. "I have unburdened my soul to you. Do with the message as you choose."

"We will retaliate (over) any act of intercepting our satellite for peaceful purposes with prompt counterstrikes by the most powerful military means," the official Korean Central News Agency quoted a spokesman of the General Staff of the Korean People's Army as saying.

If countries such as the United States, Japan or South Korea try to intercept the launch, the North Korean military will carry out "a just retaliatory strike operation not only against all the interceptor means involved but against the strongholds of those countries," it said. "Shooting our satellite for peaceful purposes will precisely mean a war," it added. North Korea earlier announced it is preparing to put a communications satellite into space, but outside observers suspect it may in fact be a test-firing of a long-range ballistic missile.

The United States, Japan and South Korea have said that even if Pyongyang calls the launch a missile test, it would violate existing UN Security Council resolutions. North Korea has demanded a stop to this month's US-South Korean exercises, and said earlier it cannot guarantee the security of South Korean civilian airplanes flying through its territorial airspace while they are under way.

Ex-President George W Bush blocked the use of any government money to fund research on human embryonic stem cell lines created after 9 August 2001. Scientists say stem cell research will lead to medical breakthroughs, but many religious groups oppose the research. Correspondents say the policy change is part of President Obama's pledge to make clear that his administration wants scientific research to be free from political interference.

It's expected that his announcement about federal money will be accompanied by a promise that what he calls "sound science" will be respected by his administration. It is also thought that the announcement is timed to allow an adequate period for health officials to draw up research guidelines before a deadline for government stimulus money runs out.

Stem cells are cells with the capacity to turn into any other type of human cell, be it bone, muscle or nerve cell. One embryo can provide a limitless supply because the cell lines can be grown indefinitely. But the use of human embryonic stem cells in research is controversial with some campaigners saying it is unethical.

But a recent study commissioned for the Mayor of London estimated the number of illegal or "irregular" immigrants and their dependents to be 725,000 in 2007. The government said it would not comment on estimates, but said the UK border is one of the world's toughest. The study into the economic impact of an amnesty for illegal immigrants was carried out by the London School of Economics (LSE).

London is home to an estimated two thirds of illegal immigrants in the UK. The mayor, Boris Johnson, raised the idea of an illegal immigrant amnesty - which would offer some of them the right to work officially and eventually gain full citizenship - during the 2008 mayoral election.

Speaking to Panorama, Mr Johnson said the government should be doing more to prevent illegal immigrants getting in, but that trying to return the hundreds of thousands already here is impractical and another solution is needed: "If it does look as though they could make a contribution to society, we should regularise their status or offer them the chance of regularising their status," he said.

The White House has moved to ease some travel and trade restrictions as a cautious first step towards better ties with Havana, raising hopes of an eventual lifting of the four-decade-old economic embargo. Several Bush-era controls are expected to be relaxed in the run-up to next month's Summit of the Americas in Trinidad and Tobago to gild the president's regional debut and signal a new era of "Yankee" cooperation.

The administration has moved to ease draconian travel controls and lift limits on cash remittances that Cuban-Americans can send to the island, a lifeline for hundreds of thousands of families.

"The effect on ordinary Cubans will be fairly significant. It will improve things and be very welcome," said a western diplomat in Havana. The provisions are contained in a $410bn (£290bn) spending bill due to be voted on this week. The legislation would allow Americans with immediate family in Cuba to visit annually, instead of once every three years, and broaden the definition of immediate family. It would also drop a requirement that Havana pay cash in advance for US food imports.

Legislation may also allow Christians to bring an action against a hotel if it displayed something they deemed offensive - such as a poster for the 1979 Monty Python film The Life Of Brian. There are already laws banning harassment in the workplace, but the new Brussels regulations are designed to offer people protection from providers of goods and services.

However, they are so broad that critics say they could lead to a spate of civil cases by anyone claiming their dignity has been violated by the 'hostile environment' of an organisation. The Church of England says hospices or charities for the homeless could face legal action if people using their services felt degraded by their religious practices or symbols, such as the cross. The Archbishops' Council even fears that charities could be challenged by atheists if grace is said before meals.

If approved, it will become the latest in a swathe of EUROPEAN-INSPIRED EQUALITY LAWS WHICH CRITICS SAY STIFLE FREEDOM OF SPEECH AND MARGINALISE RELIGION.

"The appearance of sporadic cases of the disease does not indicate new risks for the health of the public," it said in a statement. The last death in Spain which was confirmed to have been due to the brain-wasting disease took place in August 2008 in the northwestern region of Castilla and Leon. Spain recorded its first human death from mad cow disease in June 2005 when a 26-year-old woman succumbed to it in Madrid.

More than 200 people around the world are suspected to have died, most of them in Britain, from the human variant of the disease, which was first described in 1996. Scientists believe THE DISEASE WAS CAUSED BY USING INFECTED PARTS OF CATTLE TO MAKE FEED FOR OTHER CATTLE. Authorities believe eating meat from infected animals can trigger the human variant of the fatal brain-wasting disease.

The 27-member EU, of which Spain is part, has banned high-risk materials such as spinal cord from use in feed and stricter labelling was also introduced.

The job opened last Saturday, and district officials say the stack of applications continues to expand daily. So much so, the deadline to apply for the position was moved from yesterday to 3:30 p.m. Monday to give potential hires more time.

Many of those who have applied say they lost their previous job due to budget cutbacks by their former employer. "A lot of people have their stories when they come in. It's heart-wrenching," said Superintendent John Richard.

The US government has bailed out AIG three times since September 16 and committed about $180 billion to keep the insurer alive and doing business. "One of the reasons we had to rescue AIG was the fact that it was going to bring down Europe," Pennsylvania Representative Paul Kanjorski told reporters after his subcommittee held a hearing on systemic risk.

Later, in an interview with Reuters, Kanjorski said he was told that a large number of AIG's counterparties were European. "That's why we could not allow AIG to fail as we allowed Lehman (Brothers) to fail, because that would have PRECIPITATED THE FAILURE OF THE EUROPEAN BANKING SYSTEM," he said.

Last December, the Austrian branch of US vaccine company Baxter sent a batch of ordinary human H3N2 flu, altered so it couldn't replicate, to Avir Green Hills Biotechnology, also in Austria. In February, a lab in the Czech Republic working for Avir alerted Baxter that, unexpectedly, ferrets inoculated with the sample had died. It turned out the sample contained live H5N1, which Baxter uses to make vaccine. The two seem to have been mixed in error.

Markus Reinhard of Baxter says no one was infected because the H3N2 was handled at a high level of containment. But Ab Osterhaus of Erasmus University in the Netherlands says: "WE NEED TO GO TO GREAT LENGTHS TO MAKE SURE THIS KIND OF THING DOESN'T HAPPEN."

Accidental release of a mixture of live H5N1 and H3N2 viruses could have resulted in dire consequences. While H5N1 doesn't easily infect people, H3N2 viruses do. If someone exposed to a mixture of the two had been simultaneously infected with both strains, he or she could have served as an incubator for a hybrid virus able to transmit easily to and among people.