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Across the globe, citizens are making their anger with their governments felt.

America is slipping from the top spots on more than one global list.

GOP senators who have been willing to work openly with Democrats say that the process for healthcare reform could end the prospects for bipartisanship elsewhere. Possibly at stake in the Senate: comprehensive immigration reform and financial regulation.

AP - President Barack Obama says he wants projects helping specific states yanked from the health care bill Congress is writing. Democratic senators, being senators, beg to differ.

AP - A suicide attacker set off a bomb at a security checkpoint in northwest Pakistan on Saturday, killing at least 10 people and injuring 52, officials and a doctor said, underscoring the relentless security threat to this Islamic nation.

AP - Thousands of red-shirted anti-government demonstrators converged on the Thai capital from the north and northeast Saturday, vowing to oust the government in a mass do-or-die display of muscle.

AP - A U.N. meeting to assess progress in advancing the fight for women's equality that ended Friday had a dramatically different slant than a similar session held five years ago: This time, the United States was not trying to make an anti-abortion declaration a crucial theme.

Exclusive: Germany plays pivotal role in potential eurozone rescue package for Greek debts

The eurozone has agreed a multibillion-euro bailout for Greece as part of a package to shore up the single currency after weeks of crisis, the Guardian has learnt.

Senior sources in Brussels said that Berlin had bowed to the bailout agreement despite huge resistance in Germany and that the finance ministers of the "eurozone" – the 16 member states including Greece who use the euro – are to finalise the rescue package on Monday. The single currency's rulebook will also be rewritten to enforce greater fiscal discipline among members.

The member states have agreed on "co-ordinated bilateral contributions" in the form of loans or loan guarantees to Greece if Athens finds itself unable to refinance its soaring debt and requests help from the EU, a senior European commission official said.

Other sources said the aid could rise to €25bn (£22.6bn), although it is estimated in European capitals that Greece could need up to €55bn by the end of the year.

Germany, the EU's traditional paymaster, but the most reluctant to come to the rescue of a fiscal delinquent in the current crisis, has played the pivotal role in organising the rescue package, the sources added.

"There have been quite intensive preparations under the eurogroup. We have the ways and means to do it," said the senior official, asking not to be named because of the subject's sensitivity.

"It will be a co-ordinated approach of bilateral contributions [between EU governments] … A bilateral contribution can be a loan or a loan guarantee. The guarantees will facilitate the kind of funds potentially needed in this context."

The rules governing the operation of the single currency proscribe a bailout for a country on the brink of insolvency. Berlin, in particular, has been worried that any bailout of Greece could be challenged in its constitutional court.

The senior official said the agreement – which will not involve any contribution from the UK taxpayer – had been tailored to respect the bailout ban and avoid a supreme court challenge in Germany.

Alongside the financial relief package for Greece, the European commission is rushing through tougher rules for the eurozone, using powers conferred by the recently enacted Lisbon treaty to try to establish a system of rigorous "budgetary surveillance" of all 16 participating countries. The aim is a new regime of "reinforced economic policy co-ordination" in the EU.

"This is the essential lesson that has to be learned from the Greek case," Olli Rehn of Finland, the new commissioner for economic and monetary affairs, told the Guardian (and four other European papers).

"The Greek case is a potential turning point for the eurozone," said Rehn in the interview. "If Greece fails and we fail, this will do serious and maybe permanent damage to the credibility of the European Union. The euro is not only a monetary arrangement, but a core political project of the European Union … In that sense, we are at a crossroads."

While ready to bail out the Greeks if only on terms of "rigorous conditionality", European leaders are hoping that the rescue will not be needed, that the draconian package of austerity measures announced by Prime Minister George Papandreou will be enough to calm the markets and stabilise the euro.

EU leaders are to rule next week on whether Papandreou is doing enough to slash the 12.7% budget deficit by four percentage points this year, part of his ambition to cut the deficit by 10 points over three years.

Rehn said he would unveil new proposals next month, enshrining a new single currency regime of "rigorous surveillance of national budgets" and that Eurostat, the EU's statistical agency, would need to be given formidable new auditing powers over the books of eurozone member states, a demand that may be resisted by EU governments.

"That's the hard core of our proposal. [The surveillance] should be automatic," said Rehn. "We have an immediate corrective instrument for the Greek case, plus another framework to prevent new Greek crises."

Inside the commission, officials are confident that Wolfgang Schäuble, the German finance minister, supports the tough new regime being plotted. Schäuble, who uses a wheelchair and is currently in hospital, and will not attend key meetings in Brussels on Monday and Tuesday.

Schäuble enjoys a longstanding reputation as a European integrationist and is said to have played a central role in shaping the Greek bailout plans despite widespread hostility to any such moves in Germany.

Over the past week, he has sparked a major debate by calling for a European Monetary Fund to underpin the currency, and yesterday stoked more controversy by proposing that serial sinners in the eurozone could be expelled from the single currency club.

The EMF concept is for the long-term and a new rule enabling expulsion from the euro club would require the Lisbon treaty to be re-opened, a nightmare for most after labouring over it for almost nine years.

While senior figures in Brussels believe that Chancellor Angela Merkel and Schäuble are intensely serious about establishing an EMF, they also suspect they are using the idea to assuage hostile public opinion in Germany and "prepare a short-term fire brigade operation for Greece".

Supermarket suppliers under fire as one-fifth of workers interviewed for inquiry report being pushed or hit

Thousands of workers in Britain's lucrative food industry are being subjected to widespread mistreatment and exploitation, including physical and verbal abuse and degrading working conditions, according to an inquiry published today.

The Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) said it has uncovered significant evidence of abuse among producers supplying Britain's big supermarkets. The inquiry includes reports from meat factory workers who say they have had frozen burgers thrown at them by line managers, and accounts of pregnant women being forced to stand for long periods or perform heavy lifting under threat of the sack.

It also contained reports from women with heavy periods and people with bladder problems on production lines being denied toilet breaks and forced to endure the humiliation of bleeding and urinating on themselves.

One-fifth of workers interviewed, from across England and Wales, reported being pushed, kicked or having things thrown at them, while a third had experienced or witnessed verbal abuse.

The EHRC said some examples, such as forcing workers to do double shifts when ill or tired, were in breach of the law and licensing standards, while others were a "clear affront to respect and dignity".

Migrant workers are the most affected because one-third of permanent workers and two-thirds of agency workers in the industry are migrants, but British and other agency employees face similar ill-treatment, the report found. More than eight in 10 of the 260 workers who gave evidence to the commission said agency workers were treated worse than directly employed staff. The report found that 80% of processed meat goes to Britain's supermarkets, and that the main reason agency staff are used is to meet the big stores' demand.

Yesterday, Jack Dromey, the deputy general secretary of Unite union, which has campaigned for better rights for supermarket supply chain workers for four years, said: "Britain's supermarkets should hang their heads in shame."

Neil Kinghan, the EHRC director general, said: "We have heard stories of workers subjected to bullying, violence and being humiliated and degraded by being denied toilet breaks. Some workers feel they have little choice but to put up with these conditions out of economic necessity. Others lack the language skills to understand and assert their rights.

"While most supermarkets are carrying out audits of their suppliers, our evidence shows that these audits are not safeguarding workers and they clearly need to take steps to improve them. The processing firms themselves and the agencies supplying their workers also need to pay more than lip-service to ensuring that workers are not subjected to unlawful and unethical treatment."

Half of agencies and a third of processing firms said it was difficult to recruit British workers and that they thought they were deterred by the pay and conditions. A few British workers spoke of their difficulty registering for work with some agencies who supply almost exclusively Eastern European workers, which would be unlawful under the Race Relations Act.

Ian Livesay, the chief executive of the food picking and processing regulator, the Gangmasters Licencing Authority (GLA), said exploitation of workers was unacceptable and welcomed the report's recognition that the GLA has helped to improve standards in agencies and labour suppliers. He said: "We fully agree with the report's recommendation that supermarkets have a key role to play and, as the report recognises, we have signed an agreement with all the major retailers and their key suppliers to share information with us on serious breaches of our standards in their supply chain."

The government had recently increased its funding by £500,000 this year to cover enforcement and it now has 90 staff dedicated to stamping out abuse, he said.

Mark Boleat, chairman of the Association of Labour Providers, questioned the commission's methodology and suggested it had sought out workers who were experiencing abuse. He said: "How many workers did they interview? There are thousands in the meat industry. The workers are not a representative sample. I've never heard anything like that."

He said that some of the recommendations, such as paying workers for travelling time and engaging workers on contracts of employment rather than contracts for services, were impossible "unless there is a commitment from retailers and labour users to meet such costs, and past experience suggests that this is unlikely". If they were forced to offer contracts, many of its members would go bust, he said.

While it revealed many abuses, the EHRC report also highlighted examples of good practice, particularly when some firms did not differentiate between agency staff and directly employed workers.

The commission recommendations include: supermarkets improving their auditing of suppliers; processing firms and agencies improving recruitment practices, working environments and the ability of workers to raise issues of concern; and for the government to provide sufficient resources for the GLA to help safeguard the welfare and interests of workers.

Dromey said: "Supermarkets have driven down costs along their supply chain with tens of thousands of workers paying the price, suffering discrimination and unfair treatment.

"A two-tier labour market has been created, exploiting migrant agency workers on poorer conditions of employment and undercutting directly employed workers on better conditions of employment. That divides workforces and damages social cohesion in local communities. We welcome the call from the EHRC for workers doing the same job to be paid the same."

Catholic church investigates 170 allegations in Germany; justice minister cites Vatican 'wall of silence' set up by Benedict

Pope Benedict XVI has for the first time been drawn into the Catholic sex abuse scandal in his home country of Germany.

His former archdiocese of Munich has acknowledged that, while he was in charge, it dealt with a suspected paedophile priest by transferring him to a different parish where he went on to commit sex offences against children. The revelation has drawn attention to Benedict's handling of abuse claims, both when archbishop and later as a prefect of the Vatican office dealing with such crimes, a position he held until becoming pope in 2005.

Yesterday, the head of the German Catholic bishop's conference, Archbishop Robert Zollitsch, revealed he was investigating more than 170 allegations of abuse in the church's institutions. The scandal broke in January when it was alleged that, over a period of 30 years, priests found to be abusing children had been redeployed to other parishes rather than dismissed.

Zollitsch reported that Benedict had expressed "great dismay and deep shock" when briefed, but had encouraged the bishops to continue searching for the truth. Hours later however, the Munich archdiocese admitted it had allowed a priest suspected of having abused a child to return to pastoral work in the 1980s, while Benedict, then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, was archbishop.

The archdiocese said the chaplain, identified only as H, was given therapy for suspected "sexual relations with boys" but then moved to nearby Grafing. He was suspended in 1985 following fresh accusations, and convicted of sexually abusing minors the following year.

Last night, a Vatican spokesman stated that it was the Munich vicar-general who had approved the transfer and he took "full responsibility", while the Munich archdiocese said Benedict did not know about the transfer. However, an American charity expressed disbelief. "We find it extraordinarily hard to believe that Ratzinger didn't reassign the predator, or know about the reassignment," said Barbara Blaine, of Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests.

The pope has also faced criticism for a letter he sent from the Vatican in 2001 advising all bishops that all cases of abuse were subject to pontifical secret and must be forwarded to his office. Germany's justice minister cited the document as evidence of a Vatican "wall of silence" around abuse cases.

Neighbours were oblivious that recluse who froze to death in her home was first black woman on South Carolina legislature

The neighbours knew Juanita Goggins only as an elderly recluse with no friends and a family that was rarely seen.

Goggins was so private that she instructed a neighbour who delivered groceries to leave them at the door, ring the bell and go away before she emerged. She spurned offers of home help from the local authorities even though she was evidently finding it increasingly difficult to look after herself.

So the residents of her South Carolina community were saddened, if not entirely shocked, to hear that the 75-year-old woman had frozen to death in her own home and that her body went undiscovered for nearly a fortnight.

But in the days before her funeral today, they were surprised to learn that at one time Goggins had been a trailblazing politician and civil rights activist who shook up South Carolina's exclusive politics as the first black woman elected to the southern state's legislature.

That same legislature last year honoured Goggins, who was also the first black woman to serve on the government's civil rights commission and who was twice invited to the White House by President Jimmy Carter, by naming a highway after her. But that didn't catch the eye of the people who lived around her. It was Goggins's neighbour of 16 years, Erskine Hunter, who dropped off the groceries and left before she answered the door.

He also tended her lawn but was invited in only once, to fix a water heater. He knew nothing of her past. "I miss her," he told the Associated Press. "I don't know why I didn't go over there and hammer on the door."

The first that Linda Marshall knew about the woman whose rent she collected each month was reading an obituary. "She needed someone to assist her, but anyone who tried to get close, she'd block them off," she said. "She was very fragile. This was something I always dreaded."

Goggins was the youngest of 10 children and the only one to make it to college and earn a degree at what was then the all-black South Carolina state college. She went on to become a teacher in the segregated school system.

She had experienced discrimination but working in the education system she saw how even after segregation was formally abolished it lived on through bureaucratic practice, funding priorities and racial attitudes. She was determined to change that, so she entered politics and in 1972 became the first black woman to represent South Carolina at the Democratic party's national convention. Shortly after, she was the first black woman appointed to the US government's civil rights commission.

Then in 1974, Goggins beat a white man to win a seat in the South Carolina legislature in Columbia.

"I am going to Columbia to be a legislator, not just a black spot in the House chambers," she said at the time.

Goggins said that voters "were weary of poor representation". "They were ready to accept a person who was sincere and concerned about things. Those feelings go beyond colour," she said.

She made her way on to the powerful committee drawing up budgets, and used her position to win funding for sickle-cell anaemia, a blood disorder that disproportionately affects the African American community. She pushed through important reforms to education affecting school funding and class sizes.

"She was truly a mover and a shaker, so well-liked and so well-loved by so many," said John King, who now holds Goggins' former seat.

Goggins' last surviving sibling, Ilese Dixon, 88, wasn't surprised that her sister achieved so much as a politician.

"She was not bashful or anything. She liked to talk. I used to say she could sell an Eskimo ice. She was just lively and smart. She thought she could fix the world," she told the Associated Press.

After Goggins retired from politics, she worked for the state's health and environment department. But she became increasingly withdrawn after moving to a quiet neighbourhood in Columbia in the early nineties.

Goggins had distanced herself from her family, who suspected she was suffering from dementia. Her former husband, Horace, said that she "divorced herself from family and friends".

"I tried to communicate with her and went down there to Columbia many times," he told South Carolina's Herald newspaper. "She wouldn't accept contact from anybody."

Goggins became even further withdrawn after she was mugged near her home. She put new locks on the doors and rarely left the house.

She died of hypothermia after snow hit South Carolina last month. It was nearly two weeks later, when one of her neighbours noticed that he had not seen her lights go on for some time, that concerns were raised and the landlord called the police. They found Goggins wrapped up in several layers of clothes. The electricity had been cut off after she failed to pay the bill but the police found hundreds of dollars in cash in the house.

Goggins' only son, also called Horace, said that despite the sad circumstances of his mother's death, it is an opportunity to remind people of the trailblazer she once was. "I want her to be remembered as a positive role model, not only for African-American girls, but also any young girl who has a want and a desire to make a change and do something positive," he said.

Life of Juanita Goggins

1972 First black woman to represent South Carolina at the Democratic party's national convention.

1974 First black woman appointed to the US civil rights commission.

1974 First black woman elected to South Carolina legislature. Served three terms.

1976-80 Twice invited to the White House by President Jimmy Carter.

1977 Instrumental in passing a law that remains the basis for education funding in South Carolina, helping to reduce class sizes.

1980s Leaves legislature to become a social worker. Increasingly reclusive and estranged from her family who fear she is suffering from mental illness.

2009 Part of Highway 5 in Rock Hill, South Carolina, named after Goggins.

More than half a million travellers to be hit by successive weekend walkouts, with the first beginning on 20 March

More than half a million British Airways passengers face strike disruption this month after the Unite trade union announced walkouts over two consecutive weekends, prompting BA to withdraw a last-ditch peace offer.

Unite has called a series of strikes by up to 12,000 flight attendants, beginning with a three-day walkout on 20 March and then a four-day stoppage from 27 March. Further strike action will take place after 14 April if there is no deal by then, the union added.

Gordon Brown intervened in the dispute this afternoon, calling on both sides to reach agreement. "I hope they will do so [resume talks] but I remind them of the danger and risk to the British economy of disruptive strikes going ahead," he said.

Brief hopes of a reprieve for the 525,000 passengers affected by the strike action were extinguished this afternoon when the BA chief executive, Willie Walsh, withdrew a compromise offer after hearing that Unite had set dates for the airline's first cabin crew strike in 13 years.

BA said the offer, which included a partial repeal of staffing cuts, was conditional on Unite not setting strike dates.

Walsh told the BBC that the two sides were "not close at all" to reaching an agreement and described Unite's counter-offer of a 2.6% pay cut for staff as "morally wrong". He said passengers already booked on to flights from 19 March to 31 March could apply for a refund or reschedule their journeys.

A BA spokesperson said: "Our offer to Unite was conditional on the union not naming strike dates. Because strike dates have been announced, Unite has invalidated the offer. It is no longer on the table."

BA's move means strikes are certain to go ahead next Friday unless the tentative lines of communication between both sides, described as "slender" by one source close to the talks, yield a new compromise.

This morning Unite said it would put the BA proposal out to a consultative ballot with the result due next Wednesday. However, the simultaneous announcement of strike dates angered BA, which said it had offered Unite an extension to its strike mandate.

Speaking before BA's move, Len McCluskey, Unite's chief negotiator and assistant general secretary, said he was willing to keep talking. "There are no negotiations [planned] but of course we remain open to meeting with BA anytime, anywhere." McCluskey later added that the withdrawal of the BA offer "beggars belief".

The two sides are haggling over a £62.5m target for cost savings in the annual cabin crew budget, which BA has achieved by unilaterally cutting staffing levels on flights by at least one person. This followed a voluntary redundancy programme that saw 1,100 flight attendants leave the company. Unite wants the majority of those positions reinstated and has offered a 2.6% pay cut this year to help fund the move.

The industrial action has been timed to cause maximum disruption to BA, with the airline facing a struggle to reinstate a normal timetable between strikes.

BA normally carries about 75,000 passengers a day on 650 services. Walsh has said he hopes to operate a substantial proportion of the airline's Heathrow airport long-haul operations and a good number of short-haul flights during the strikes. The airline has admitted that there will be cancellations and hopes to announce a revised flight schedule on Monday.

The airline has pledged to break the strike with 1,000 volunteer flight attendants drawn from the ranks of its non-cabin-crew workforce, and is preparing to hire 23 aeroplanes complete with their own trained crew. BA said today that it will only be able to offer hot meals to first-class passengers on affected flights, with no specialist meals such as kosher and halal dishes, while the remaining passengers will have cold meals.

BA has said it will operate its entire schedule from London City airport during the industrial action and has claimed more than two-thirds of its Gatwick-based crews will work normally.

Informal channels of communication are still open between BA and Unite, via the general secretary of the Trades Union Congress, Brendan Barber.

According to BA's withdrawn offer, the airline was willing partially to repeal the staffing cuts at the heart of the dispute and would consider putting around 184 cabin crew positions back on its 239-plane fleet. However, Unite wants 700 positions returned to BA aircraft and has proposed about £60m worth of cost savings to fund the proposal. BA says the figures are significantly short of its cost-cutting target.

Unite is also threatening to hold a consultative ballot over proposed changes to baggage handlers' contracts. If union members vote against BA's proposals an industrial action ballot will be held, although that move is several weeks away.

Unite argues it has been bypassed by BA despite holding talks about the baggage handler contracts. Steve Turner, the Unite national officer for civil aviation, said: "It is hugely concerning that BA feel that management by imposition is their preferred approach. Very soon no worker at the airline will feel that either their job or their terms and conditions are safe. This instability cannot be healthy for the airline."

A BA spokesman said: "We are consulting with our ground-handling staff at Heathrow about potential changes to improve the way in which we work. Any talk of a ballot for industrial action is speculative and premature."