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Blair, who stepped down as prime minister last year after 10 years in power, was to lecture on faith and globalization as the Howland Distinguished Fellow, and would start in the next academic year, the university said.

His work at the university would relate to the work of his Tony Blair Faith Foundation, which he is due to launch later this year. Blair is known as an observant Christian and converted to Roman Catholicism last year.

“The appointment of Mr. Blair provides a tremendous opportunity for our students and our community,” Yale President Richard Levin said in a statement.

“As the world continues to become increasingly interdependent, it is essential that we explore how religious values can be channeled toward reconciliation rather than polarization.

“Mr. Blair has demonstrated outstanding leadership in these areas and is especially qualified to bring his perspective to bear. We are honored that he is planning to join the Yale community,” he added.

Blair’s eldest son Euan is currently studying international relations at the university, which counts President George W. Bush, one of Blair’s closest allies during his time in power, among its alumni.

According to British media reports, Blair would continue in his role as special envoy to the Mideast Quartet working towards Palestinian statehood, an unpaid role that reportedly takes up around 10 days of every month.

There has also been speculation that Blair could be made the future EU president, a role enshrined in the European Union’s reforming Lisbon Treaty that the 27 member states hope to ratify by the end of the year.

However, some members are known to oppose his candidacy partly due to his role in supporting the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Besides his work with the Quartet, Blair has also been busy since leaving office advising Zurich Financial Services on issues including climate change and working as a part-time senior advisor to Wall Street bank JPMorgan Chase.

Last month he said he wanted to help Rwanda’s development, following a two-day visit to the tiny central African country.

Yale’s Howland fellowship is open to citizens of any country “in recognition of some achievement of marked distinction in the field of literature or fine arts or the science of government,” according to the university.

The margin calls against Carlyle portend an ominous development one day after the fund was served with default notices, convulsing already skittish markets.

Shares in the fund, a listed mortgage-bond fund managed by private equity firm the Carlyle Group, were suspended Friday. The stock closed down Thursday almost 60 percent at $5.00 on Euronext Amsterdam.

Carlyle Capital said it received additional margin calls and default notices Thursday from banks that help finance its portfolio of residential mortgage-backed securities. It said it may not be able to meet the increased requirements.

The fund said it was unable to meet margin calls from four banks Thursday, raising fears that its entire portfolio could be unwound. Securities have dropped sharply in recent weeks as banks pull back on their lending, forcing investment vehicles and funds like Carlyle to dump assets.

In Friday’s statement, Carlyle Capital said it had received “substantial additional margin calls and additional default notices from its lenders.” It also said that lenders were selling off securities held as collateral.

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Carlyle Capital leverages its $670 million equity 32 times to finance a $21.7 billion portfolio of residential mortgage-backed securities issued by U.S. housing agencies Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae.

To do this, it enters into repurchase agreements with banks, which involve posting the mortgage securities as collateral in exchange for cash.

If the value of the security held as collateral falls, the lender will ask for more collateral — a “margin call” — in order to secure the loan. If the borrower does not meet the margin call by putting up more collateral, the lender may sell the security.

The Labor Department’s report, released Friday, also showed that the nation’s unemployment rate dipped to 4.8 percent as hundreds of thousands of people — perhaps discouraged by their prospects — left the civilian labor force. The jobless rate was 4.9 percent in January.

Job losses were widespread, with hefty cuts coming from construction, manufacturing, retailing, financial services and a variety of professional and business services. Those losses swamped gains elsewhere including education and health care, leisure and hospitality, and the government.

The latest snapshot of the nation’s employment climate underscored the heavy toll of the housing and credit crises on companies, jobseekers and the overall economy.

To provide relief to persistent credit problems, the Federal Reserve announced Friday additional steps to inject cash into the nation’s financial system to keep banks lending to customers.

The central bank will increase the amount of loans it will auction to banks on March 10 and March 24 to $50 billion each, up from the $30 billion apiece originally planned.

The Fed also said that starting Friday it will enlarge another series of transactions, called repurchase agreements, so that they will pump a net total of $100 billion into the financial system at any one time.

The Labor report also showed that the job losses suffered in January were worse than the government first reported. Employers cut 22,000 jobs, versus 17,000.

“Every California child deserves a quality education, and parents should have the right to decide what’s best for their children,” Schwarzenegger said in response to the ruling, which said children educated at home must be taught by a credentialed teacher.

“Parents should not be penalized for acting in the best interests of their children’s education,” Schwarzenegger said. “This outrageous ruling must be overturned by the courts, and if the courts don’t protect parents’ rights then, as elected officials, we will.”

State Education Secretary David Long, a Schwarzenegger appointee, said that meant the governor supported allowing parents without teaching credentials to educate their children.

“Parents do not have a constitutional right to home school their children,” Justice H. Walter Croskey wrote in a Feb. 28 opinion for the 2nd District Court of Appeals.

Noncompliance could lead to a criminal complaint against the parents, Croskey said.

An estimated 166,000 students in California are home schooled.

California has allowed home schooling if parents either file paperwork to establish themselves as small, private schools; hire a credentialed tutor; or enroll their child in an independent study program run by an established school while teaching the child at home.

Bush asserted the new authority Dec. 20 after signing legislation that overhauls some postal regulations. He then issued a “signing statement” that declared his right to open mail under emergency conditions, contrary to existing law and contradicting the bill he had just signed, according to experts who have reviewed it.

A White House spokeswoman disputed claims that the move gives Bush any new powers, saying the Constitution allows such searches.

Still, the move, one year after The New York Times’ disclosure of a secret program that allowed warrantless monitoring of Americans’ phone calls and e-mail, caught Capitol Hill by surprise.

“Despite the president’s statement that he may be able to circumvent a basic privacy protection, the new postal law continues to prohibit the government from snooping into people’s mail without a warrant,” said Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., the incoming House Government Reform Committee chairman, who co-sponsored the bill.

Experts said the new powers could be easily abused and used to vacuum up large amounts of mail.

“The [Bush] signing statement claims authority to open domestic mail without a warrant, and that would be new and quite alarming,” said Kate Martin, director of the Center for National Security Studies in Washington.

Three decades ago, Congress imposed limits on domestic intelligence activity after revelations that the FBI, Army, local police and others had misused their authority for years to build troves of personal dossiers and monitor political activists and other law-abiding Americans.

Since those reforms, police and federal authorities have observed a wall between law enforcement information-gathering, relating to crimes and prosecutions, and more open-ended intelligence that relates to national security and counterterrorism. That wall is fast eroding following the passage of laws expanding surveillance authorities, the push for information-sharing networks, and the expectation that local and state police will play larger roles as national security sentinels.

The Mortgage Bankers Association, in a quarterly snapshot of the mortgage market released Thursday, said the proportion of all mortgages nationwide that fell into foreclosure shot up to a record high of 0.83 percent in the October-to-December quarter. That surpassed the previous high of 0.78 percent set in the prior quarter.

“Clearly it’s the worst it’s been,” chief association economist Doug Duncan said in an interview with The Associated Press.

More homeowners — at the same time — fell behind on their monthly payments.

The delinquency rate for all mortgages climbed to 5.82 percent in the fourth quarter. That was up from the 5.59 percent in the third quarter and was the highest since 1985. Payments are considered delinquent if they are 30 or more days past due.

Homeowners with tarnished credit who have subprime adjustable-rate loans were the hardest hit. Foreclosures and late payments for these borrowers also swelled to all-time highs in the fourth quarter.

The percentage of subprime adjustable-rate mortgages that entered the foreclosure process soared to a record of 5.29 percent in the fourth quarter. That was up from 4.72 percent in the prior quarter, which had marked the previous high. Late payments skyrocketed to a record high of 20.02 percent in the fourth quarter, up from 18.81 percent — the previous high — in the third quarter.

The association’s survey covers almost 46 million home loans nationwide.

The worsening foreclosure and late payment figures come as fears grow that the country is teetering on the edge of a recession or in one already.