Caseloads have almost doubled just since 2001, with 1.1 million residents now collecting benefits, according to the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services. Low wages, unemployment and the rising cost of groceries, gasoline and other necessities are to blame for financial hardships facing many Ohio families. Caseloads have been rising steadily in the past seven years, said Brian Harter, spokesman for the state agency which oversees the food-stamp program.

"Look at unemployment during this time," he said. Ohio's jobless rate is 5.3 percent, up from 4.4 percent in 2001. "The economy and loss of manufacturing jobs are at the root of what's going on. But lately (it's) the rising cost of transportation and food - people who were barely getting by, are not getting by," said Jack Frech, director of the Athens County Department of Job and Family Services.

"It has pressed folks to the edge to have to rely on food stamps." Advocates estimate another 500,000 Ohioans are eligible but not enrolled in the food-stamp program.

A one-year investigation and analysis of 235 countries and dependent territories has put the UK joint seventh in the premier league of nations. The top ten comprise also the Vatican, Sweden, Luxembourg, Monaco, Gibraltar, San Marino, Liechtenstein, the Netherlands and the Irish Republic. The US lies 22nd and Switzerland, normally associated with wealth and untouchable stability, is rated 17th, losing points in the assessment of its social achievements.

The bottom ten, surprisingly, do not include Iraq. They are listed as Gaza and the West Bank, Somalia, Sudan, Afghanistan, Ivory Coast, Haiti, Zimbabwe, Chad, the Democratic Republic of Congo and the Central African Republic.

It was acknowledged that it was a little unfair to put the Vatican at the top because it did not face the sort of threats and economic pressures of other countries. But under the rating system, which took into account each nation's political structures, social and economic trends, military and security risks and external relations, the Vatican state scored an average of 99 out of 100. Sweden and Luxembourg were also rated 99, with the UK not far off, with an average of 97, but scoring 100 for its politics, economics and external relations.

The binge has produced some supposedly healthy economic growth and provided everyone with lots of nice stuff. BUT NOW DEBT COLLECTORS FROM AROUND THE WORLD ARE KNOCKING. That's why today's turmoil in U.S. financial markets will end in a massive transfer of wealth from America to the rest of the globe. The housing bust, the subprime catastrophe, the Bear Stearns evaporation, and the tanking markets have already dented household wealth. BUT THIS IS JUST THE BEGINNING. These events are only the trigger to a larger problem that affects America's standing in the global economy.

THAT PROBLEM IS AMERICA'S VAST, UNSUSTAINABLE TRADE DEFICIT WITH THE REST OF THE WORLD. The deficit has created stuffed storehouses of dollars and dollar-based securities at many of America's most important trading partners. The dollar reserves are especially large in Asia, where export-oriented countries like China and Japan have run large trade surpluses with the U.S. Since China ended its currency peg in mid-2005, the yuan has risen 17% against the dollar and hit an all-time high last week. But the trade deficit with China hasn't budged.

THE REAL CAUSE OF THE TRADE DEFICIT IS THAT AMERICANS SPEND TOO MUCH AND SAVE TOO LITTLE. THAT'S TRUE FOR BOTH THE GOVERNMENT, WITH ITS MAMMOTH BUDGET DEFICITS, AND THE AVERAGE CONSUMER.

So the outcome is inevitable. As the financial crisis in the U.S. persists, the combination of decreasing asset prices and a weakening dollar will make the U.S. cheaper and cheaper to foreign investors. IRRESISTIBLY CHEAP. The U.S. is, after all, still a highly desirable place to own property, companies and securities. Foreign investors will see the crisis as a golden opportunity to buy prime pieces of Americana at bargain-basement prices. SO ALL THOSE DOLLARS IN BANKS AROUND THE WORLD WILL FLOOD BACK INTO THE U.S. TO BUY STOCKS, BONDS AND PROPERTY.

DEBT-BURDENED AMERICANS, DESPERATE FOR FRESH CASH, WILL BE ONLY TOO HAPPY TO SELL - OR BE FORCED TO SELL. The U.S. will become one giant garage sale, where the buyers are Japanese banks, Chinese state-run investment funds and oil-rich Arab sheikdoms

There is, simply put, no way out of this situation for America. If you don't believe me, perhaps you'll believe Warren Buffett. The Sage of Omaha predicted this very scenario in 2003 in an article in Fortune. He tells the story of two fictional islands, Thriftville and Squanderville. In Squanderville, the residents live beyond their means by importing from Thriftville in return for IOUs. Eventually, Thriftville converts this debt into Squanderville assets until Thriftville owns all of Squanderville. America, Buffett warned, was facing the same fate. "Our trade deficit has greatly worsened, to the point that our country's 'net worth,' so to speak, is now being transferred abroad at an alarming rate," Buffett wrote.

Americans, meet Squanderville.

There is no shortage of ways to see just how short of water Lake Mead is. You can count the white bathtub rings of mineral deposits on the bedrock walls of the sprawling, 250 sq mile (647 sq km) reservoir, indicating the old high-water mark - NOW LEFT NAKEDLY EXPOSED 100 FT UP. You can look at the docks that have been moved repeatedly, chasing the receding lake. Or you can simply read a line graph at the reservoir's visitor center, which tracks the water elevation of Lake Mead since it was created by the construction of the Hoover Dam in 1935. After years of relative stability, starting in 2000 the graph resembles the record of a stock-market crash. The visitor center's chart stops at 2006, but as a park ranger tells me, "It just keeps going down from there."

THE WORRYING QUESTION IS WHETHER IT WILL EVER STOP. A major, prolonged drought, combined with rapid population growth in nearby urban areas like Las Vegas, has stressed Lake Mead and the rest of the Colorado River Basin, which provides water to farmers and cities from Colorado to Southern California.

Scientists at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, Calif, last month estimated that there is a 50% chance that Lake Mead could be effectively dry by 2021 if the climate changes as forecast and water use is not curtailed. "I THINK WE'RE AT OR BEYOND THE LEVEL OF WATER IN THE SOUTHWEST AT WHICH CIVILIZATION CAN BE SUSTAINED," says Tim Barnett, a research marine physicist at Scripps who co-authored the study.

This winter, 27 nations of the European Union (EU) signed the Treaty of Lisbon. You may think, "innocuous enough," as Portuguese-inspired visions of the Tagus River and chicken piri-piri swirl before your eyes. But for England (Britain, actually) the Treaty of Lisbon isn't that appetizing. That's because, if ratified, it will become the decisive act in this creation of a federal European superstate with its capital in Brussels. Britain would become a province and its "Mother of Parliaments," a regional assembly. And that's no small humiliation for a country that gave the world English and saved Western civilization in the Battle of Britain in 1940.

The Eurocrat elite in Brussels might not admit it, but the Treaty of Lisbon is essentially a constitution for a "country" called Europe. More bluntly, it's a cynical repackaging of the EU Constitution rejected by French and Dutch voters in 2005.

Former Prime Minister Tony Blair promised to put the EU Constitution to the British people in a referendum. But his successor, Gordon Brown, has reneged on that promise. He insists that the Treaty of Lisbon is shorn of all constitutional content and that it preserves key aspects of British sovereignty. On March 11, the bill to ratify the treaty cleared the House of Commons. And now the Brown government is poised to win passage in the House of Lords, too.

But British resistance is stirring. In a recent series of mini-referendums, almost 90 percent of voters gave the Lisbon Treaty an emphatic thumbs down and demanded a nationwide referendum. If all 27 nations ratify the treaty this year, it will begin to come into effect on Jan. 1, 2009. The British will then be expected to transfer loyalty and affection to the EU and devote themselves increasingly to its wellbeing. With its flag, anthem, currency, institutions, regulations, and directives, the EU has long been indistinguishable from a nation-state-in-waiting.

Now the Lisbon Treaty gives it those requisites of nationhood it's always lacked: a president, a foreign minister (and diplomatic corps), a powerful new interior department, a public prosecutor and full treaty-making powers. Add to those its common system of criminal justice, an embryonic federal police force, and the faintly sinister-sounding European Gendarmerie Force, and what this union becomes is a monolithic state with great power pretensions.

Most alarmingly, though, is that the Lisbon Treaty can be extended indefinitely without recourse to further treaties or referendums. That 27 European nations are on the verge of being reconstituted as a federal European superstate is substantially the achievement of the fanatical French integrationist Jean Monnet, for whom the nation state was anathema.

At airports, this electronic ID bracelet will replace the need for a ticket and contain all necessary information about the person, and as a bonus, it can allow the passenger to be tracked through the terminal. Crew members would be empowered with radio frequency transmitters to subdue "hijackers."

The technology, made by Lamperd Firearm Training Systems, will override a person's central nervous system and zap them down quicker than you can say "Homeland Security." The company assures us that being dragged through the bracelet process is a "small inconvenience in order to assure your safe arrival." In fact, its studies show that most people would "happily opt" for wearing the bracelet to "ensure their own security."

Lamperd even posts a series of letters on its website showing interest in the product for use "outside of airport security," which, of course, is the real reason for the product. It can also be used for border control to subdue illegal aliens or by local law enforcement agencies to control the "criminal element!"

"Consumers are getting the worst of both worlds," says David C. Vladeck, a Georgetown Law School professor. "They don't get the protection the FDA promises because the agency is incapable these days of truly providing a safeguard for the drugs we get. And at the same time, the FDA is claiming that if we're injured by a product falling through this quite penetrable safety net, all our rights to compensation are cut off by virtue of the FDA's regulations - inadequate though they may be."

Last month, in a 8-1 decision, the Supreme Court ruled that most people using medical devices do not have the right to sue manufacturers. In October, the court is expected to take up a more far-reaching case, Levine V. Wyeth, that could stop most lawsuits involving drugs. The court will examine the legality of a lawsuit preemption quietly written into an innocuous FDA labeling law in 2006. The author was Daniel Troy, then the FDA counsel, now an industry lobbyist. With major cuts in food and drug safety inspections, the take-home message, increasingly, is caveat emptor. Watch out for yourself, because the government won't.

Each night, scores of London's homeless men and women take advantage of modern travel delays by posing as stranded passengers in order to sleep in a warm and safe place. They play a cat-and-mouse game with police, often donning floral shirts, fanny packs and other travel accessories to blend in. And their increasing creativity - and ability to disappear in Heathrow's swelling crowds of delayed passengers - has prompted the airport to try a new approach.

Last month, Heathrow commissioned a local homeless outreach organization, Broadway, to visit the airport once a week and survey its homeless population, while also trying try to coax them into temporary accommodation. They were not prepared for the scale of the problem they discovered: In the first four weeks alone, they conducted 100 interviews with homeless "passengers"

When TIME joined the outreach worker and police officers this week, the homeless people contacted included a man sleeping under his coat, another conspicuously hiding behind an open newspaper, and a woman clutching a duty free bag who insisted she was waiting for a flight, only to whisper when police were out of earshot: "I can't afford electricity; it's warm here; please, let me stay."

"When I came from Africa, I couldn't believe people could be homeless in Britain," says Broadway's Nigerian-born outreach worker Jeff Motunde. "But I discovered that homelessness is a way of life. It can be very difficult to convince people to receive help."

The latest to die were four soldiers whose patrol vehicle was blown up by a bomb in southern Baghdad on Sunday. The deaths bring the total to 4,000, according to the US military and independent monitoring groups.
Insurgent attacks and US military operations left at least 47 people dead across Iraq on Sunday.

According to an Associated Press breakdown of the figure, 97% of deaths occurred after US President George W Bush declared on 1 May 2003 that major combat was over. Roadside bombs accounted for 44% of deaths last year and 55% to date in 2008, the agency adds.

With snowballing home foreclosures, soaring oil prices, growing inflation and an ever-weakening dollar, the US Federal Reserve last week again slashed rates and orchestrated a bail-out of major brokerage house Bear Stearns, a move so unusual that it might have scared - more than reassured - investors. Amid the neon signs of recession, with credit and currency crises mounting, an economic meltdown looms.

After the World Trade Center attacks of September 11, 2001, those searching for a historical comparison seized on Japan's bombing of Pearl Harbor. Now financial sages such as former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan are again referencing WWII. "The current financial crisis in the US is likely to be judged in retrospect as the most wrenching since the end of the Second World War," he said at the beginning of the week. And seeking solace from that era, Americans have been turning to Franklin D. Roosevelt, who led a country out of Depression, fought back the Nazis and restored America's belief in itself.

FDR's famous quote - "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself" - has become a national Greek chorus in recent days, a reference not only to the stewardship and oratory of a longed-for leader, but a reminder that an economic crash hinges on psychology, on a crisis in confidence among lenders and spenders.

But that doesn't mean the international community stands to gain much; a bad US economy is bad for everyone. And that means that whether it wants to or not, the US has to work with overseas partners to weather this crisis. The recent responses of the Federal Reserve have been aimed at global markets as well as local consumers. Americans are once again learning that they have no back to turn when it comes to the wider world. And in case anyone needed a reminder, when disaster hits Wall Street, the reality is that we are all Americans.

Andy Hornby, HBOS's chief executive, paid out £414,000 of his annual bonus to buy 92,812 shares in the bank on Thursday. He was joined in the shares buying-spree by Peter Cummings, head of HBOS's booming corporate lending business, and five other executive directors. Charles Dunstone, chief executive of Carphone Warehouse and one of HBOS's independent directors, spent almost £500,000 of his own money to buy 100,000 shares. Together, executive directors, non-executives and 250 senior managers bought roughly 1.3 million shares at about £4.46 apiece.

After Thursday's acquisition, Mr Hornby owns 721,598 shares in HBOS, worth just over £3.4 million based on the closing price that day of 473p. The speedy recovery in HBOS's share price means that those involved are already looking at a collective profit of £325,000.

"This reinforces very clearly the high level of confidence senior directors have in the business," he said. "There is no suggestion of wrongdoing on the part of any HBOS executives."

Colin Blakemore, a former head of the Medical Research Council (MRC), has invited Catholic church leaders who staged an Easter attack on the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill to an "open-minded discussion" with the research community and patient groups. In a letter to The Times today, Professor Blakemore says that while he does not wish to question the right of Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor and other senior bishops to speak out on ethical issues, their criticisms are based on misconceptions.

"The Bill is not about creating monsters or mocking the sanctity of human life," he writes. "Indeed, it will reduce the number of human eggs and embryos used in the production of stem cells for research." Professor Blakemore says he would also be happy to arrange for scientists to brief MPs who want a better understanding of the issues before they decide how to vote. "Scientists should not challenge the spiritual authority of religious leaders, but they are entitled to question the factual evidence on which moral pronouncements are based."

Alan Johnson, the Health Secretary, said nobody would be forced to support the Bill against their conscience: "There will not be a Cabinet split, but there will be an accommodation for those who have a particular sensitivity around this, including those whose sensitivity relates to the faith." No 10 played down reports that "accommodation" meant that Gordon Brown would allow MPs and even ministers the option of voting against the Bill, saying that no final decisions would be taken until nearer the vote.

Mr Brown is privately encouraging scientists to challenge the Catholic Church's interpretation, and Downing Street insiders say the debate has only just begun. "So far we've only heard from one side," one said.

In a surprise move at the Easter vigil at St Peter's, Pope Benedict XVI baptised Magdi Allam, 55, an outspoken Egyptian-born critic of Islamic extremism and supporter of Israel. He has been under police protection for five years after receiving death threats over his criticism of suicide-bombings.

Religious freedom has been the theme of this year's Easter celebrations. The meditations for the Good Friday Via Crucis procession at the Colosseum were written by Cardinal Joseph Zen, the Archbishop of Hong Kong, who drew attention to the suffering of persecuted Christian "martyrs" around the world. Mr Allam's conversion was kept secret until less than an hour before the service on Saturday evening. He took the middle name "Christian" for his baptism.

In an article for Corriere della Sera, the Italian newspaper of which he is a deputy editor, Mr Allam, who has lived in Italy most of his adult life and has a Catholic wife, said that his soul had been "liberated from the obscurantism of an ideology which legitimises lies and dissimulation, violent death, which induces both murder and suicide, and blind submission to tyranny". Instead he had "seen the light" and joined "the authentic religion of Truth, Life and Liberty".

He added: "I had to do this. Beyond extremists and Islamist terrorism at the global level, the root of evil is inherent in a physiologically violent and historically conflictual Islam."

The Pope called for an end to problems in Tibet, Iraq and the Holy Land in his "urbi et orbi" blessing to the world - broadcast live in 57 countries. Christians around the world are marking Easter, when they remember the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Late on Saturday, the Pope baptised a controversial, Muslim-born journalist. Magdi Allam, 55, is deputy director of the leading newspaper Corriere della Sera and has angered some Muslims with his views.

"How can we fail to remember certain African regions, such as Darfur and Somalia, the tormented Middle East, especially the Holy Land, Iraq, Lebanon and finally Tibet, all of which I encourage to seek solutions that will safeguard peace and the common good," the Pope said. He said he wished that "the light that streams forth from this solemn day [may] shine forth in every part of the world".

Later this year the Pope will be hosting an unprecedented meeting at the Vatican with Muslim religious leaders from around the world to try to find common ground for future interreligious dialogue, he says.

Bankers say the greater authority is a direct consequence of the Fed's extraordinary decisions to extend a $30bn credit line to help JPMorgan Chase's takeover of Bear and to lend emergency funds to securities houses for the first time in more than 70 years. "There is a new sheriff in town," said a senior banker. "The Bear situation changed everything: people saw death before their eyes. THE FED AND TREASURY ARE IN CHARGE NOW AND ARE NOT GOING TO LET GO".

Under a regulatory regime dating back to the 1930s, the Fed oversees commercial banks, but investment banks are primarily regulated by the Securities and Exchange Commission. But as the credit crunch deepened, Ben Bernanke, Fed chairman, Tim Geithner, president of the New York Fed, Hank Paulson, Treasury secretary, and Robert Steel, his number two, have been in unusually close contact with Wall Street executives.

People close to the situation said the Fed and Treasury feared further problems among securities firms could destabilise the financial system and expose US taxpayers to sizeable losses on the new Fed loans. Their stance has triggered talk of new financial services legislation, with bankers and politicians, including Barney Frank, House financial services committee chairman, ASKING WHETHER INVESTMENT BANKS SHOULD BE REGULATED BY THE SEC OR THE FED.