The most important news for Thursday, July 28th, 2010....

A federal judge blocked enforcement of key provisions of Arizona's new immigration law on Wednesday.

A city in eastern Nebraska has suspended a voter-approved ban on hiring and renting property to illegal immigrants, less than two days before it was set to take effect.

According to a new poll, 54% of U.S. voters say the Justice Department should take legal action against cities that provide sanctuary for illegal immigrants.

The Russian Foreign Ministry said on Tuesday that new EU sanctions against Iran show scorn for the United Nations and the so-called "sextet" working to resolve disputes over Iran's nuclear program.

A secret 36-page memo based on Obama administration statements indicates that Barack Obama warned Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas to start direct talks with Israel or risk losing American support for the recognition of the PA as a country.

Hamid Gul, a former Pakistan general accused of helping the Taliban, says that the United States orchestrated the mass leak of war files to scapegoat him for its imminent withdrawal from Afghanistan.

India is using the WikiLeaks scandal to repeat a long-standing demand: that Pakistan stop allowing terrorists and terror operations to use it as a base.

North Korea sold missiles to the Taliban in Afghanistan in November 2005 even as the North was taking part in six-party nuclear disarmament talks, a U.S. intelligence report claims.

According to a new report, Russia continued to violate provisions of the 1991 START nuclear-arms treaty up until the agreement expired in December.

An explosion, possibly caused by an attack, damaged a Japanese oil tanker on Wednesday near the mouth of the Persian Gulf, Japanese shipping company Mitsui O.S.K. Lines has reported.

One hundred days after an oil well operated by BP ruptured in the Gulf of Mexico, and 13 days after crews finished capping the well to contain the gushing crude, the man who is overseeing the federal response is optimistic that steps planned for the coming days will permanently seal the well.

Millions of small dead fish are washing ashore along beaches in Gulfport, Mississippi.

Michigan's governor on Wednesday sharply criticized attempts to contain a large oil spill making its way down the Kalamazoo River after the company responsible for the spill said it had redoubled its efforts to clean up the mess.

The U.S. Coast Guard dispatched emergency teams Tuesday after a boat crashed into an oil well off the coast of New Orleans, reportedly sending crude spewing some 20 feet into the air.

Why is there such an epidemic of oil spills all over the world all of a sudden?

Under a little-noticed provision of the recently passed financial-reform legislation, the Securities and Exchange Commission no longer has to comply with virtually all requests for information releases from the public, including those filed under the Freedom of Information Act.

Another little-noticed section of the new Wall Street reform law grants the federal government broad new powers to compel financial firms to hire more women and minorities.

About 18.9 million homes in the U.S. stood empty during the second quarter of 2010 as surging foreclosures helped push ownership to the lowest level in a decade.

Today, 19 percent of Americans receive some form of Social Security benefits.  In 1970, only 12 percent of all Americans received some form of Social Security.

A record 4.39 percent of the work force - or 46.2 percent of the unemployed - have been out of work for 27 weeks or more.

Princeton University economist Alan S. Blinder estimates that 22% to 29% of all current U.S. jobs will be offshorable within two decades.

Authorities in one California town decided on a drastic approach to their budget deficit – they sacked every single municipal worker.

India has raised interest rates and issued a stark warning on inflation dangers, joining China, Brazil, and other "tiger economies" in concerted moves to tighten monetary policy.

It turns out that "doomsday shelters" are making a big comeback.

RFID technology is becoming integrated into virtually all aspects of American life.

A small team of Australian scientists has secured a $57 million contract to supply "Terminator-style" robots to the U.S. Marine Corps.

Seven people around the globe have been entrusted with "the keys" of the Internet.

The People's Liberation Army has unveiled its first department dedicated to tackling cyber war threats and protecting information security, Chinese media have reported.

Leaders of the Democrat Party have announced a plan to demonize the Tea Party via a national campaign to associate the GOP and the Tea Party as one and the same.

Massachusetts Congressman Barney Frank caused a scene when he wouldn't give up on demanding a $1 senior discount on his ferry fare to Fire Island's popular gay haunt, The Pines, last Friday.

Republican Ron Ramsey has come under fire for likening Islam to a cult and casting doubt about whether it is even a religion.

The Massachusetts Legislature has approved a new law intended to bypass the Electoral College system and ensure that the winner of the presidential election is determined by the national popular vote.

It looks like H1N1 is trying to make a comeback in India.

The sun is moving toward the next solar maximum, expected in 2013, and experts say that we should be preparing for the worst.

Scientists are mulling over why part of the Earth's atmosphere recently suffered its biggest collapse since records began, and is only now starting to rebound.

Supply concerns are pushing wheat prices around the world much higher.

Farmers in Australia are bracing for the worst locust plague on record.

Amazon has completely sold out of its least expensive Kindle, providing further evidence of the e-reader's surging popularity.

A mysterious cardsharp who fancies himself to be a modern day "Robin Hood" uses his skills as a professional gambler to win money from Las Vegas casinos and then gives his winnings to hard-up families.

Lebanon’s ruling party on Monday issued a formal call to save the Christian communities of the Middle East.

A number of hospitals in the U.K. are banning Bibles from the bedside lockers of patients.

Lastly, a judge in Spain has been suspended for ten years and ordered to return his salary of about $127,000 to the government because he delayed a decision to allow a lesbian to adopt her partner’s child.

The most important news for Wednesday, July 28th, 2010....

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad says that he has "precise information" that the United States plans to attack at least two countries in the region within the next three months.

Ahmadinejad also says the United States and Israel plan to launch a "psychological war" on Iran.

Russia has angrily slammed Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's criticism of Moscow in the nuclear crisis as unacceptable and irresponsible, as tensions spiral with its traditional ally.

The U.S. House of Representatives on Tuesday sent Barack Obama a major war-funding increase of $33 billion to pay for his troop surge in Afghanistan.

According to a newly released audit, the Defense Department is unable to properly account for $8.7 billion out of $9.1 billion in Iraqi oil revenue entrusted to it between 2004 and 2007.

The U.S. government has once again reaffirmed that it has no intention of engaging in military action against Venezuela.

The discovery of large natural gas reserves under the waters of the eastern Mediterranean could potentially mean a huge economic windfall for Israel and Lebanon.

BP has posted a massive quarterly loss of $17.2 billion due to costs stemming from the Gulf of Mexico oil disaster.

An increasing number of Americans are living in their homes with the electricity and water turned off.

A majority of small businesses will face significantly higher taxes under Barack Obama's tax plan.

A congressional subcommittee has been asked to investigate the growing backlog in and foreign procurement of U.S. bullion and collectors' precious metals coin blanks manufactured by the U.S. Mint.

A member of a German quintet of professors that is currently challenging the legality of Europe's recently-devised support measures has said they threaten to create enormous tensions between EU citizens if allowed to stand.

Could economic conflict between the U.S. and China reappear at any time?

According to a recent Washington Post investigation, 1,271 government organizations and 1,931 private companies work on programs related to counterterrorism, homeland security and intelligence in about 10,000 locations across the United States.

It is being reported that the White House was "very pleased" with how the New York Times dealt with its semi-exclusive access to the documents.

Pentagon officials looking into the leak of thousands of classified documents to an online whistle-blower already have at least one potential suspect in mind - an Army intelligence analyst under suspicion in an earlier leak to the same website.

Los Angeles County, in response to rural non-compliance of environmental ordinances, has formed what they call the "Nuisance Abatement Team".

Thousands of illegal immigrants are fleeing Arizona ahead of the coming crackdown there.

In a move that complicates Republican efforts to take back the Colorado governor's office, former GOP congressman Tom Tancredo said Monday that he plans to change parties and run on the American Constitution Party ticket.

A Kentucky Democrat running for U.S. Senate says former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush is tarnishing his family legacy by appearing at a fundraiser on behalf of Republican Rand Paul.

Barack Obama's new health care law has created 183 new agencies, commissions, panels and other bodies.

Two people were killed and one was seriously injured when a rare tornado struck a family ranch in northeastern Montana on Monday.

It is becoming increasingly difficult to live a healthy lifestyle: 7 Secret Ways We Are Being Poisoned.

A 7 year old boy that was being treated with three different psychotropic medications recently committed suicide by hanging himself.

Some feedlots are losing cattle by the hundreds, as hot weather and high humidity bears down across Kansas.

A blistering summer heat wave in Japan has sent 15,000 people to the hospital with heat stroke and caused at least 66 deaths in the past two months.

Wreathed in smoke from underground fires, Moscow recorded its hottest day ever on Monday as large parts of Russia endured severe drought.

In Russia, seven self-confessed members of a Satanist sect were sentenced Monday by the Yaroslavl Regional Court to prison terms for killing four teenagers and desecrating their bodies in a 2008 initiation ritual.

The Board of Pensions of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) is considering a recommendation to extend spousal and dependent benefits to same-gender domestic partners.

A dairy cow has defied the odds to give birth to triplets of different breeds.

Lastly, archaeological research in East Timor has unearthed the bones of the biggest rat that ever lived, with a body weight around six kilograms.

The most important news for Tuesday, July 27th, 2010....

The Obama administration has accused online whistleblower WikiLeaks of endangering the lives of American, British and other coalition troops after it posted around 90,000 leaked U.S. military documents online.

The founder of Wikileaks says that the leaked United States military reports from Afghanistan appear to contain "evidence of war crimes".

The WikiLeaks documents released on Sunday also shine a spotlight on Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence and their connections with terrorist organizations.

The Afghan government said on Monday that it was "shocked" as it sifted through the tens of thousands of leaked U.S. military and diplomatic reports that were released by Wikileaks.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad says that Iran will react swiftly if its commercial shipping or aviation are subjected to inspection.

The United States and Israel would not dare attempt a military strike of Iran's nuclear sites, Iranian military officials said over the weekend, adding that they were confident that Tehran would easily repel such an attempt.

Iranian Defense Minister Brigadier General Ahmad Vahidi on Monday warned Israel that "any injudicious action" will lead to the annihilation of the Israeli nation.

There are reports circulating in the media that Mossad chief Meir Dagan visited Saudi Arabia recently to talk about Iran.

The IDF will attack Lebanese government institutions if Israel is again subjected to rocket attacks, Defense Minister Ehud Barak said in an interview with The Washington Post published on Sunday.

Israel and the United States have signed an agreement to make the Arrow II ballistic shield capable of shooting down missiles at a higher altitude, the Israeli Defense Ministry said on Sunday.

The United States insists that allowing the Palestinian Authority to fly its flag in Washington does not represent an upgrade in its diplomatic status.

Israel has told the UN Security Council's North Korea sanctions panel that ballistic missile proliferation by Pyongyang is destabilizing the Middle East and urged countries to step up efforts to stop it.

The nation of Burma is now working on a nuclear weapons program, experts have concluded, after its existence was exposed by leaked photographs.

President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela has threatened to halt oil exports to the U.S. if his country is attacked by Colombia.

In a move that may well anger Washington, Russia is insisting on French agreement to a full technology transfer before signing a contract for two French-designed warships.

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin says that he met with the Russian spies deported from the United States following the Russia-U.S. spy scandal and that he sang patriotic songs with them.

It is being reported that beleaguered BP chief executive Tony Hayward will soon leave his post with a pension package worth over 10 million British pounds.

One member of the U.S. Congress says that BP has turned the Gulf of Mexico region into a "toxic bowl" that will haunt that region for years to come.

Fishery experts say the more than 1.8 million gallons of dispersants applied since the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded April 20th could cause an almost unbelievable amount of harm to many species that swim in and out of the area.

The federal budget deficit, which hit a record $1.4 trillion last year, will exceed that figure this year and again in 2011, the White House predicted on Friday.

Goldman Sachs sent $4.3 billion in federal tax money to 32 entities, including many overseas banks, hedge funds and pensions, according to information made public Friday night.

The SEC's own internal watchdog has widened his investigation of the civil fraud lawsuit brought against Goldman Sachs to include a focus on the timing of last week's $550m settlement.

Desperate cities across the U.S. are giving away land for nominal fees or for nothing in the hope that it will boost the tax rolls and cut the lawn-mowing bills.

Other cities are so desperate for cash that they are examining whether or not their communities’ nonprofit organizations really deserve to be tax-free.

An increasing number of U.S. states are becoming addicted to gambling as a source for revenue.

The 22 statistics detailed here prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that the middle class is being systematically wiped out of existence in America.

It is being reported that the LBMA has decided to block access to statistics relating to the trading activities of its member banks.

Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero is warning that his government will adopt more unpopular austerity measures if needed to revive Spain's economy and reduce the public deficit.

The stress test in which only seven of 91 European Union banks failed is just a public relations exercise and wasn't tough enough, famous investor Jim Rogers told CNBC.com on Monday.

European bureaucrats have set up a secretive fund of £400 million to pay for projects that include promoting a "smelly-foot" dance and producing postcards about the causes of "social exclusion".

A new bill being considered by Congress would require all persons in the United States between the ages of 18 and 42 to perform national service, either as a member of the uniformed services or in civilian service in furtherance of the national defense and homeland security.

Federal authorities are stepping up their military-style raids on organic farmers and raw food stores.

In many U.S. states, it is now illegal to collect rainwater that falls on your own property.

Officials in the U.K. are preparing to hand sweeping Big Brother powers to EU states so they can spy on British citizens.

Guards and officials at a prison in northern Mexico allegedly let inmates out, lent them guns and sent them off in official vehicles to carry out drug-related killings, including the massacre of 17 people last week, federal prosecutors said yesterday.

The former Justice Department attorney who quit his job and blew the whistle on the DOJ's dealings with the New Black Panther Party claims the group is extremely anti-Semitic and pro-Islamic.

Republican former House of Representatives Speaker Newt Gingrich said on Sunday that he will decide after November's congressional elections whether he will make a run for the White House in 2012.

A sailboat largely constructed from 12,500 recycled plastic bottles docked in Sydney harbor on Monday, after four difficult months crossing the Pacific Ocean in a bid to raise awareness about the perils of plastic waste.

Almost a quarter of China's surface water remains so polluted that it is unfit even for industrial use, while less than half of total supplies are drinkable, data from China's Ministry of Environmental Protection showed on Monday.

The global wheat crop is encountering problems of biblical proportions, driving wheat prices to 13-month highs.

Since the start of the flood season in April, more than 230 rivers in China have seen water levels pass the danger mark.

It could take until Thursday or Friday to restore power to hundreds of thousands of people in the D.C. area after a violent storm downed power lines and trees and left three people dead Sunday.

According to the U.S. Geological Survey, two significant earthquakes struck the San Diego area on Sunday.

It's not your imagination - the number of earthquakes is actually increasing.

Egypt has announced the 110th discovered bird flu case in the country, saying the patient's condition is "critical".

California is experiencing what could be the largest whooping cough outbreak in more than 50 years.

In the U.K., NHS bosses have drawn up secret plans for sweeping cuts to services, with restrictions even on the most basic treatments for the sick and injured.

According to a new study released Monday by the Barna Group, only 12 percent of American adults say that faith is a top priority in their life.

One of Britain's most famous journalists and outspoken atheists, Peter Hitchens, has become a Christian.

The most important news for Monday, July 26th, 2010....

It is being reported that the European Union plans to target Iran with its "toughest ever" package of economic sanctions directed at officials, banks and the country's oil industry.

Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives have introduced a measure that would green-light a possible Israeli bombing campaign against Iran.

The foreign ministers of Turkey and Brazil, speaking Sunday ahead of a trilateral meeting with their Iranian counterpart, said they still believe in the nuclear swap deal signed between the three countries in May.

Iran has announced that it plans to build an experimental nuclear fusion reactor.

One former CIA director recently stated that military action against Iran now seems more likely because no matter what the U.S. does diplomatically, Tehran keeps pushing ahead with its suspected nuclear program.

North Korea says that it is ready to launch a "retaliatory sacred war" at any time in response to joint U.S.-South Korean military exercises this weekend.

It is being reported that Turkey is considering whether or not it should move rapidly to develop nuclear weapons while so much attention is being paid to nuclear programs in other nations. 

BBC is reporting that BP's chief executive Tony Hayward has been negotiating the terms of his exit, with a formal announcement likely within 24 hours.

It turns out that BP has been using cheap or free prison labor to clean up the oil spill even as so many people along the Gulf coast are absolutely desperate for work.

Florida researchers have announced that they had for the first time conclusively linked vast plumes of microscopic oil droplets drifting in the Gulf of Mexico to the Deepwater Horizon disaster.

U.S. bank failures reached 103 so far in 2010 on Friday when federal regulators seized seven small banks.  In 2009, it was not until October that a hundred banks had been shut down.

As "contactless payment technology" continues to develop, will it ultimately mean that cash will become extinct?

Wal-Mart is putting electronic identification tags on men's clothing like jeans starting on August 1st as the world's largest retailer tries to gain more control of its inventory.

Software that can predict when and where future violent crimes will be committed is being tested in the U.K. for the first time.

An influential Pentagon defense advisory panel says that the United States is now woefully unprepared for any kind of nuclear attack.

The Obama administration is trying to reach an understanding with Senate Republicans to approve its new arms control treaty with Russia by committing to modernizing the nuclear arsenal and making additional guarantees about missile defense.

U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, seeking to console liberal activists who were disappointed by the final version of the national health care law, assured them that there would eventually be a public option.

CNN analyst Warren Ballentine recently declared that the ideology of the entire Tea Party movement is "racism".

It is being reported that Democrat leaders in the U.S. Senate have decided to shelve global warming legislation - at least for now. 

WikiLeaks has published what it says are more than 90,000 United States military and diplomatic reports about Afghanistan filed between 2004 and January of this year.

According to a new study, dramatic increases in infant mortality, cancer and leukaemia in the Iraqi city of Fallujah, which was bombarded by U.S. Marines in 2004, exceed those reported by survivors of the atomic bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.

Is the area of the U.S/Mexican border near Laredo, Texas turning into a war zone?

A mass grave containing more than 50 bodies has been discovered by authorities in northern Mexico.

Anti-illegal immigration anger has spilled out onto Arizona's streets.

The most important news for Friday, July 23rd, 2010....

An Israeli oil prospecting and production firm has announced the discovery of a "commercially sized" oil field in central Israel.

Debka is reporting that Iran is furious over the Obama administration's decision to retain a large number of U.S. troops in Iraq, possibly as UN peacekeepers, after the pullout pledged by Barack Obama to start on September 1st.

Russia's state oil company Zarubezhneft is in deep negotiations with Iran regarding a potential joint exploration project in the Caspian Sea.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is warning North Korea that more sanctions are on the way if they do not end their nuclear program.

Tropical Storm Bonnie is moving over the southern Bahamas and there are reports that it now has sustained winds of 40 miles an hour as it heads toward the southern tip of Florida and the Gulf of Mexico.

National Incident Commander Thad Allen is telling the media that BP's damaged well will remain capped if ships evacuate the Gulf of Mexico due to a tropical storm that is moving toward the well site.

BP has ordered staff to stop manipulating photographs of its Gulf of Mexico oil spill response, as the controversy over its public relations campaign intensifies.

As the crisis in the Gulf continues to grow, many are now openly wondering if the massive amounts of methane that are being released is the biggest danger from this oil leak.

A confidential survey of people who worked on the Deepwater Horizon in the weeks before the oil rig exploded reveals that many of them were very concerned about safety practices but feared retaliation if they reported problems.

A federal judge has stopped companies from developing oil and gas wells on billions of dollars in leases off Alaska's northwest coast, saying the federal government failed to follow environmental law before it sold the drilling rights.

Hours after the U.S. House of Representatives voted to push back the deadline to file for extended unemployment benefits until the end of November, Barack Obama signed the measure into law.

New home construction in the U.S. declined last month to the lowest level since October.

Microsoft has announced that its net income rose 48% during the second quarter of this year.

Widespread chaos is being predicted in the bond markets after the world's three largest ratings agencies announced that their ratings could not be used in any marketing material.

It turns out that a "tsunami" of new taxes are scheduled to go into effect in 2011 unless the U.S. Congress takes action.

For now, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke is "ruling out" further stimulus injections from the Federal Reserve.

A new report to the U.S. Congress indicates that the Obama administration’s program to help homeowners avoid foreclosure has fallen far short of its goals.

It turns out that the "financial reform" bill that Barack Obama recently signed into law may end the era of free checking accounts.

It is being reported that the governor of New Jersey is planning for a state takeover of the Atlantic City district that encompasses its casinos, beaches, marina, and Boardwalk.

According to one shocking new survey, six of out of 10 non-retirees in the U.S. believe that Social Security will not be able to pay them benefits when they stop working.

Gallup's 2010 Confidence in Institutions poll found Congress ranking dead last out of the 16 institutions rated this year.

U.S. Representative Charles Rangel, the New York Democrat who stepped down as chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee earlier this year, has been formally charged with violating congressional ethics rules.

Two more massage therapists are now accusing former Vice President Al Gore of sexual assault.

It has now come out that a large group of mainstream media journalists openly discussed by email ways to deflect attention away from the Rev. Jeremiah Wright scandal back in 2008.

Americans are becoming increasingly horrified as they learn the specific details contained in the "health care reform law" that was passed earlier this year.

The Obama administration is backing new legislation that includes regulations that would require U.S. businesses to provide to the government data about employee pay as it relates to the sex, race and national origin of employees.

Republican lawmakers are accusing the White House of "unconscionable" and "illegal" acts for its role in Kenya's referendum on a new constitution, which would legalize abortion in the country for the first time.

Leaked G20 documents reveal that carbon taxes are still very high on the agenda of the globalists.

Environmental activists are welcoming UN plans to amend the way changes to the Kyoto protocol are made as the UN stages an extensive effort to salvage negotiations on a new international deal on climate change.

The United Nations has created what may become a billion dollar agency for radical feminism.

The Tea Party just got an official voice in Washington, thanks to Michelle Bachmann who recently filed the necessary paperwork to create a Tea Party Caucus.

State sponsored population control programs in Uzbekistan are being made possible by funding from the UN, the U.S. and the World Bank.

The US, UK, China and Russia are among 15 nations that have agreed to work together under the globalist umbrella of the United Nations to determine "norms of accepted behavior in cyberspace".

The NSA has gotten so big that it now has 112 acres of parking spaces around it.

American Cancer Society researchers have found that women who spend over six hours a day sitting during leisure time are 40 percent more likely to die sooner than women who spend less than three hours sitting.

Is H1N1 making a big comeback in American pigs?

Researchers at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville say that they have discovered that water on the moon is much more widespread than previously believed.

Flooding in China looks to get even worse as the country is hit by a second typhoon.

A magnitude-6.2 earthquake shook the Pacific nation of Vanuatu on Thursday but there was no immediate tsunami warning.

Is human activity causing a steady, measurable decline in the oxygen content of the world's air?

An ancient wooden version of Stonehenge has been unearthed by a team of researchers in the UK.

Is the Vatican trying to prepare humanity for open contact with extraterrestrials?

Bowls of human fingers, a partly burned baby, and gem-studded teeth were among the artifacts found in a recently discovered Mayan king's tomb.

An environmental group is urging the Israeli government to close down a baptism site at the lower Jordan River until water quality standards for tourists and pilgrims bathing at the holy site are met.

Christians in Bhutan were disheartened this month when the government proposed the kind of "anti-conversion law" that other nations have used as a pretext for persecuting Christians.

A proposed ordinance in Memphis, Tennessee that would ban discrimination against gays is causing outrage among some local critics who say the ordinance would discriminate against people who oppose homosexuality because of their religious beliefs.

Pastor Ronnie Wallace faces an August 23rd court date after his arrest in Charlotte, North Carolina, for preaching the gospel in front of an abortion clinic.

A Texas bus driver has filed a lawsuit against his former employer, claiming he was fired for his religious beliefs after refusing to transport a client to a Planned Parenthood office.

An Augusta State University student filed suit on Wednesday after she was told to change her Christian beliefs or otherwise be expelled from the school's graduate counseling program.

Lastly, one of the world's largest and most controversial Pentecostal churches has been given permission to build a $200 million replica of Solomon's Temple in Sao Paulo, Brazil.

The most important news for Thursday, July 22nd, 2010....

U.S. Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen says that five confirmed leaks in and around BP's damaged well in the Gulf of Mexico are more like "drips" and aren't yet reason to worry.

The U.S. government granted BP another day to continue tests on a cap plugging the massive Gulf of Mexico oil leak on Tuesday as forecasters warned that a line of Caribbean storms could head into the Gulf after the weekend.

It is being reported that a BP plan to hire large numbers of Gulf scientists could mean that there will be very few experts available to testify against them when oil spill cases go to trial.

One congressman is warning that the massive cleanup in the Gulf of Mexico may be doing more long-term damage than the oil spill itself.

One team of scientists has found very high methane readings near the oil disaster site.

Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal says that 67 million gallons of oil remain in the waters of the Gulf of Mexico.

According to one new report, the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico could end up destroying over 100,000 jobs.

BP defended its embattled chief executive on Wednesday and denied a report that he would soon leave the company.

China's largest reported oil spill emptied beaches along the Yellow Sea as its size doubled on Wednesday, while cleanup efforts included straw mats and frazzled workers with little more than rubber gloves.

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke warned Congress on Wednesday that the economic outlook remains "unusually uncertain".

Barack Obama officially signed the Wall Street reform bill into law on Wednesday, promising that the measure will put an end to taxpayer-funded bailouts of failed banks.

Obama administration housing rescue programs have been extremely ineffective at preventing a rise in home foreclosures even as the government's support for the mortgage market grew by nearly $700 billion in the past year, U.S. bailout watchdogs said on Wednesday.

Approximately half of all American workers have less than $2000 saved for retirement.

Goldman Sachs is reporting that profits fell 82 percent in the second quarter as the UK bonus tax cost it $600 million and it paid $550 million to settle a major court case.

Starting January 1, 2012, Form 1099s will become a means of reporting to the Internal Revenue Service the purchases of all goods and services by small businesses and self-employed people that exceed $600 during a calendar year. Precious metals such as coins and bullion fall into this category and coin dealers have been among those most upset by the change.

Hundreds of residents of one of the poorest municipalities in Los Angeles County shouted in protest at a recent meeting as tensions rose over a report that the city’s manager earns an annual salary of almost $800,000.

An increasing number of U.S. towns are ripping up their asphalt roads and are replacing them with cheaper gravel.

One-third of U.S. counties are facing a high risk that future water demand will outstrip supplies, spelling potential disaster for central and southern states and the crops grown there, a new study says.

Russian farmers are being urged to harvest their crops at night due to the worst heat wave in a decade.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has told his Fatah movement he wants a more specific U.S. commitment on the borders of a future Palestinian state before agreeing to direct talks with Israel.

A Senate panel voted on Tuesday to send the Supreme Court nomination of Elena Kagan to the full Senate for confirmation.

The "Journolist" scandal has deepened with new revelations that participants in the now-defunct email list for ideologically approved journalists--no conservatives allowed--engaged in efforts to suppress news damaging to then-candidate Barack Obama.

Fox News is reporting on a "presidential assassination program" where "American citizens are targeted for killings far away from any battlefield, based exclusively on unchecked accusations by the executive branch that they're involved in terrorism."

Will people who are skeptical of climate change soon be facing criminal charges in the European Court of Justice?

Brussels plan to hold an EU summit with atheists and freemasons in the autumn, inviting them to a political dialogue parallel to the annual summit the bloc holds with Europe's religious leaders.

In the U.K., trash service is now used as an instrument for enforcing the green agenda.

The upper house of Russia's parliament has passed a bill giving vastly expanded powers to the country's main security agency, a move that critics say echoes the era of the Soviet KGB.

The unveiling of a larger-than-life bronze statue of North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il has provoked renewed speculation that "The Dear Leader" may be close to death.

The U.S. has intensified sanctions against North Korea in a move designed to punish Pyongyang for sinking a South Korean ship and pursuing nuclear weapons.

The United States has spent more than $1 trillion on wars since the September 11, 2001, terror attacks, a recently released Congressional report says.

U.S. Admiral Mike Mullen has once again reiterated his concerns about China's massive military buildup.

A classified State Department report to Congress says that potential Russian cheating on the new START nuclear-arms pact would not be significant because of the size of U.S. nuclear forces.

Hillary Clinton says that she believes Osama bin Laden is still hidden inside Pakistan.

Seven other Latin American countries want to join Mexico in supporting the Obama administration's lawsuit challenging Arizona's new immigration enforcement law.

One team of scientists says that it has discovered the most massive star ever found.

Genetically modified Russian dairy goats with a human genome in their DNA can produce milk containing human protein.  

Hundreds of penguins that apparently starved to death are washing up on the beaches of Brazil.

More than 1,000 people have died in severe flooding in China so far this year, and the heaviest rains are still to come, a senior official warned on Wednesday.

The behavior of gay activists at rallies by a touring pro-marriage event has ranged from "silly" to "crazy" and "disgraceful", one event leader reports.

Two brothers were shot dead outside a courtroom in the Pakistani's Punjab province where they faced blasphemy charges after allegedly distributing Christian pamphlets.

Lastly, burglars are increasingly using Twitter and Facebook to find out if potential victims have left their homes empty.

The most important news for Wednesday, July 21st, 2010....

WorldNetDaily is reporting that Palestinian Authority officials are saying that the Obama administration has been negotiating the borders of a future Palestinian state that would see Israel eventually withdraw from most of the West Bank and some areas of eastern Jerusalem with the exception of what are known as the three main settlement blocks – Gush Etzion, Maale Adumim and Ariel.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's bureau on Tuesday firmly denied reports that the Israeli leader had presented Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak with a map delineating the borders of a future Palestinian state during their meeting in Cairo earlier this week.

A report in a Jordanian newspaper suggesting the Palestinians want to see an international force deployed along the borders of any future Palestinian state sent ripples around the diplomatic world over the weekend.

Debka is reporting that the U.S. and Israel are concerned that Iran may be capable of a nuclear test this year.

The Israeli Defense Ministry has reported that tests of the Iron Dome air defense system have been completed and that interceptor missiles will soon be deployed.

Observant and secular Israelis alike crowded places of worship Monday night to mark Tisha Be’av, the day of fasting and mournful contemplation commemorating the destruction of both Temples and Jerusalem, and the ensuing exile of Jews from the Holy Land.

Obama administration officials pushed back on Monday against a lengthy Washington Post report critical of the bloated and sometimes inefficient U.S. intelligence network.

Taiwan tested its readiness to repel a Chinese invasion with a computerized war game on Monday, less than three weeks after signing a historic trade agreement with the communist-run mainland.

The damaged BP well in the Gulf of Mexico can remain closed until at least Wednesday when a decision will likely be made about pouring mud into the top of the well to begin plugging it, a senior U.S. official said on Tuesday.

The federal government's oil spill chief said on Tuesday that seepage detected two miles from BP's oil cap is coming from another well.

British Prime Minister David Cameron said on Tuesday that he "completely understands "the anger that "exists ... across America" regarding the oil well operated by BP that exploded in the Gulf of Mexico three months ago.

A new report from the Center for Economic and Policy Research says that it could take an entire decade for the national unemployment rate to come down to pre-recession levels.

A number of big U.S. retailers are trying to get consumers to spend money by offering "Christmas in July" sales.

British Prime Minister David Cameron has announced that his vision for a "big society" bank will be funded through a £60m raid on the money lying dormant in English bank and building society accounts.

Goldman Sachs has angrily defended itself against a public campaign that claims the bank is exacerbating global food crises through its commodity trading operations.

New types of money are popping up across Mid-Michigan and supporters say, it's not counterfeit, but rather a competing currency.

The poorest 20 percent of the world population receive just 1.4 percent of total world income.

10,000 people make 30% of the income in the United States of America today.

Unless Congress acts now to stop a tax hike, the maximum tax rate on dividend income is set to skyrocket at the end of the year — leaping by 164% for some investors.

A recent Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey has found that just 23% of American voters nationwide believe the federal government today has the consent of the governed.

The state legislature of Massachusetts is poised to give final approval this week to a new law intended to bypass the Electoral College system and ensure that the winner of the presidential election is determined by the national popular vote.

A religion adviser to Barack Obama has close ties to the imam who wants to build a 13-story Islamic cultural center near Ground Zero.

The White House has been dragged into the controversy over a U.S. Agriculture Department employee fired for comments about a white farmer.

A management consultant on Monday stood by remarks over the weekend in which he compared black Tea Party activists to Jewish guards in Nazi concentration camps.

A Baltimore family is furious that their 12-year-old daughter was pulled out of an airport security line in Tampa and subjected to what they say was an embarrassing and unhealthy full body scan.

Back in December, one Canadian woman had already missed one flight and lost her luggage when she says she found herself in a room at the Vancouver airport, naked and squatting, while two crude border agents strip-searched her.

Across the United States right now, a growing number of Americans are being prosecuted simply for vidoetaping the police.

A Chicago cop who has served in Afghanistan and Iraq is warning that gang members who are serving in the U.S. military overseas are coming home with military training.

Of the approximately 200 villagers in the Indian town of Gaudiyan, around 135 of them have bone deformities. A private doctor who conducts social work in the area termed it as a case of skeletal fluorosis - the result of excess fluoride content in drinking water.

Some drugs firms in the U.K. are being accused of profiteering after it was discovered that they have been raising prices on some products by one thousand percent.

A recent study by Finland's National Institute for Health and Welfare, found that over a 30-year time period, individuals with higher concentrations of vitamin D had significantly lower chances of developing Parkinson's disease.

There is a new craze sweeping the Internet called "i-Dosing" in which teenagers used so-called "digital drugs" to change their brains in the same way as real-life narcotics.

Christians in Britain are being unfairly targeted by laws intended to prevent religious hate crimes, a new report from Civitas warns.

A school district in Mississippi has agreed to pay $35,000 to a lesbian teen who was originally told by school officials that she and her girlfriend would be ejected if they attended the school-sponsored prom.

Lastly, some of the world's wealthiest and most prominent leaders have begun arriving for the annual meetings at the Bohemian Grove.

The most important news for Tuesday, July 20th, 2010....

The Jerusalem Post is reporting that Israel has managed to convince the Obama administration to put the option of a military strike against Iran's nuclear facilities back on the table.

Iran says its homemade missiles are capable of targeting enemy positions across the Middle East regardless of their number or nature.

The CIA is investigating whether Shahram Amiri, the Iranian nuclear scientist who defected to the U.S. but last week flew back to Tehran, was a double agent.

Top Secret America - the two-year Washington Post investigation that has the U.S. intelligence community in a state of panic.

The Obama administration is warning that the Washington Post article could blow the cover of contract companies doing top-secret work for the government.

The United States is sending the aircraft carrier USS George Washington to South Korea this week in a display of "the strength of our alliance and our constant readiness to defend the Republic of Korea," the ship's commander said on Monday.

China will have 2,000 missiles aimed at its rival Taiwan by the end of the year, several hundred more than the current number.

Cuban revolutionary leader Fidel Castro took his warning of impending nuclear war to Cuba's Foreign Ministry on Friday, where he explained the reasons for his dire prediction in his fifth public appearance in 10 days.

Tests on the ruptured BP well in the Gulf of Mexico will go on for another 24 hours as federal and company officials try to explain "anomalous" pressure readings and possible leaks.

The federal government's oil spill response director says testing has revealed that there is a "detected seep a distance from the well" and has ordered BP to quickly notify the government if other leaks are found.

It is being reported that BP is claiming that any new leak discovered near the damaged well might be natural seep.

Louisiana Republican Senator David Vitter is accusing Barack Obama of trying to move the BP oil disaster off the front page.

More than 2,000 firefighters have finally extinguished a fire that raged for more than 15 hours after two oil pipeline exploded at a Chinese port.

According to an audit by the special inspector general for the Troubled Asset Relief Program, the Treasury Department's push to have General Motors and Chrysler quickly shrink their dealership networks failed to properly consider economic issues such as lost jobs and lost auto sales and was based on false assumptions of cost savings.

Faced with a $118 million budget deficit, the city of San Jose, California recently decided it could no longer afford its own janitors. So the city's budget called for dropping its custodial staff and hiring outside contractors to clean its city hall and airport, saving about $4 million.

Moody's has downgraded Irish government bonds, blaming banking liabilities, weak growth prospects and a substantial increase in the debt to GDP ratio.

European equity and credit markets are bracing for volatile trading after the International Monetary Fund and the European Union dramatically withdrew a multibillion financing deal for Hungary over the weekend.

The Securities and Exchange Commission will need to hire about 800 new people to carry out the Wall Street reform legislation, the head of the regulatory agency plans to tell lawmakers.

Are we approaching the end of a debt supercycle?

Shocked by past deals with Italy and Greece, European governments are now excluding Goldman Sachs from sovereign bond sales.

Prominent economists in China are calling for their government to sell off U.S. Treasuries in favor of tangible assets such as gold.

Is the world credit bubble getting ready to pop?

Now major newspapers around the globe are offering "deflation strategies" to investors.

U.S. regulators on Friday shut down three banks in Florida, two in South Carolina and one in Michigan, bringing to 96 the number of U.S. banks to succumb this year to the recession and mounting loan defaults.

China has passed the U.S. to become the world's biggest energy consumer, according to new data from the International Energy Agency.

When you break down the national debt of Japan, the government of Japan owes approximately $80,000 for each of the 126 million people living in that nation.

Will the waves of Baby Boomers now retiring end up overloading the Social Security system?

According to a new poll, six of 10 non-retirees believe that Social Security won't be able to pay them benefits when they stop working.

Halliburton's second-quarter net income climbed 83% on an uptick in its North American land-drilling business and overseas growth.

Vice President Joe Biden says that next summer's planned military U.S. troop drawdown in Afghanistan may not be so big after all.

Are the Democrats starting to panic as the reality of the midterm elections begins to set in?

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey found that just 23% of voters nationwide believe the federal government today has the consent of the governed.

It turns out that Obamacare has imbued the IRS with massive new powers.

The American Spectator has a really good article on "America's ruling class".

The battle over the new Arizona immigration law is rapidly turning bitter.

To cries of "Kill them all!" gunmen opened fire at a weekend birthday party Sunday, mowing down at least 17 people in an attack that laid bare the brutality of Mexico's long-running drug war.

At a time when the prospects for immigration overhaul seem most dim, supporters have unleashed a secret weapon: a group of influential evangelical Christian leaders.

In the U.K., blind passengers are being ordered off buses or refused taxi rides because Muslim drivers or passengers object to their "unclean" guide dogs.

A senior U.S. law enforcement official has told CNN that U.S. intelligence believes the principal author of the new online al-Qaeda magazine is an American citizen who left for Yemen in October 2009.

Is radical Islam spreading faster than ever across the United States?

Rioters in the French city of Grenoble shot at police and torched cars over the weekend as the authorities struggled to restore order.

Dengue Fever is reaching epidemic stages across the Caribbean, with dozens of deaths reported and health authorities concerned it could get much worse as the rainy season advances.

A massive sinkhole caused an apartment building and a parking garage to collapse on Friday.

Ramps to a major highway in Kansas City are shut down because of a growing sinkhole in the pavement.

One horse recently fell 30 feet into a giant sinkhole that had recently opened up.

A strong 6.8-magnitude earthquake struck Papua New Guinea on Sunday, the U.S. Geological Survey said, around 30 minutes after a similar quake shook the same area.

A magnitude-5.3 earthquake struck off the coast of Northeast Taiwan’s Ilan County on Sunday.

A huge 10,000 foot volcano on the ocean floor has been erupting for days near Tonga.  Out of the water smoke, steam, and ash have been blasting hundreds of feet into the sky.
 
A nearly 2,000-year-old gold coin discovered by a West Virginia University student at an archaeological site in the upper Galilee has proven to be the find of the season.

Maryland will join Pennsylvania as the second state to use federal tax dollars to pay for abortions under the new health care law signed by Barack Obama in March, according to information released by Maryland’s State Health Insurance Plan.

Lastly, it is being reported that the Oakland City Council on Tuesday will look at licensing four production plants where marijuana would be grown, packaged and processed into items ranging from baked goods to body oil.

The most important news for Monday, July 19th, 2010....

The Federal Reserve is now saying that the U.S. economy may not recover for another five or six years.

Consumer sentiment weakened in early July to its lowest in 11 months on a resurgence in fears about the economy.

According to one shocking new survey, 28% of U.S. households have at least one member that is looking for a full-time job.

Banks repossessed a record number of U.S. homes in the second quarter of 2010.

China's holdings of U.S. Treasuries fell $32.5 billion to $867.7 billion in May.

Is the U.S. on the edge of a growing deflationary sinkhole?

Economist Nouriel Roubini says that the second half of the "global double dip" has arrived.

Wheat prices soared last week as traders questioned how much of the global crop has been damaged by poor weather.

On Sunday, at least 46 people were killed and 47 others were injured in two separate bomb explosions in the Iraqi capital Baghdad.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak met in Cairo on Sunday to discuss the progress of peace talks with the Palestinians.

According to a new poll, 49 percent of Israelis want the Temple to be rebuilt, but the poll also found that most Israelis do not want the Israeli government to actually take active steps towards the reconstruction of the Temple.

Syrian President Bashar Assad said on Saturday that Turkey must remain that mediator between his nation and Israel and that it is the country most qualified to serve in that position.

BP chief operating officer Doug Suttles told reporters during a morning technical briefing on Sunday that the cap that is now on the damaged well in the Gulf of Mexico could stay in place until mud and cement are used to plug the well for good in August.

A sample of polluted water from the Dolphin Island Marina actually exploded when mixed with an organic solvent intended to separate the oil and water.

It is being reported that for the last few weeks, BP has been offering signing bonuses and lucrative pay to prominent scientists from public universities around the Gulf Coast to aid its defense against spill litigation.

The National Tea Party Federation, an organization that represents the Tea Party political movement around the country, has expelled conservative commentator Mark Williams and his Tea Party Express because of an inflammatory blog post he wrote.

A very large free blogging platform has been taken down by its hosting provider on orders from U.S. authorities on grounds of "a history of abuse". More than 73,000 blogs are out of action as a result.  Could this be the start of a wider crackdown on the Internet?

Governments around the globe are increasingly implementing the strict population control measures promoted by the United Nations.

Uzbek women are accusing the state of mass sterilizations.

Is the new term "freedom of worship" being used by Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton meant as a replacement for the term "freedom of religion"?

Washington's intelligence establishment appears to be in panic mode over an upcoming Washington Post series about runaway growth in defense and intelligence spending.

Congresswoman Michele Bachmann recently said that Obama is turning the United States into a "nation of slaves".

Thirty-two U.S. soldiers took their own lives last month, the most Army suicides in a single month since the Vietnam era.

The Russian parliament has passed a controversial bill expanding what rights groups say are already formidable powers of the successor to the Soviet-era KGB security service.

In the U.K., it is being reported that children are being snatched by social workers from loving families, on what appears to be the flimsiest and most questionable of pretenses.

An upper layer of Earth's atmosphere recently shrank so much that researchers are at a loss to adequately explain it.

The largest earthquake ever recorded near the capital rattled Washington, D.C. early on Friday, waking many residents but causing no reported damage.

The U.S. Geological Survey says that a 6.7-magnitude earthquake struck near Alaska at 9:56 p.m. Saturday and was centered in the Bering Sea about 110 miles northeast of Dutch Harbor or 930 miles west of Anchorage.

Two earthquakes with magnitudes of 6.9 and 7.3, respectively, struck in the New Britain Region of Papua New Guinea in the southwestern Pacific ocean on Sunday.

Waters were receding Sunday as rescue crews conducted searches in the aftermath of flash flooding in eastern Kentucky that killed at least two people.

An unidentified flying object forced Xiaoshan Airport in Hangzhou, China to cease operations on July 7th, and now the Chinese government is investigating the matter.

Are the "Twilight" films secretly introducing occultic philosophies to our young people in the form of entertainment?

Evangelical churches across the nation, including several megachurches, will join in a national day of prayer for the Gulf Coast community on Sunday.

Lastly, a Christian-inspired media group is being targeted with a fine of about $125,000 for its broadcast of television ads in Spain that promote the traditional family by using video footage of homosexual "pride" events and asking "Proud … of what?"

The most important news for Friday, July 16th, 2010....

UAE's ambassador to the United States recently made the following stunning statement: "A military attack on Iran by whomever would be a disaster, but Iran with a nuclear weapon would be a bigger disaster."

Did the U.S. government pay an Iranian scientist 5 million dollars for information about Iran's nuclear program?

Countering the new U.S. embargo on Iran, Russian Energy Minister Sergei Shmatko and Iranian Oil Minister Masud Mir-Kazemi have signed a series of far reaching energy-related agreements, including a deal to sell Tehran Russian petroleum products and petrochemicals.

It is being reported that an Israeli company is using nanotechnology to develop paint that makes planes disappear off radar.

The U.S. State Department is examining the possibility of adding the Turkish charitable organization IHH, which organized the Gaza-bound flotilla on which nine activists were killed, to its list of terrorist organizations.

The U.S. government is apparently debating how to stage joint exercises with South Korea not only this month but all year round as a response to North Korea's torpedo attack on the South Korean Navy corvette Cheonan in March.

According to a new poll, the majority of Russians (60 percent) are against further nuclear disarmament.

BP says that oil stopped flowing into the Gulf of Mexico for the first time in nearly three months, as BP resumed a critical and repeatedly delayed integrity test on Thursday of its damaged oil well.

The U.S. Senate has passed the "financial reform" bill and has sent it to Barack Obama for his signature.  But is this bill completely and totally worthless?

Goldman Sachs has agreed to pay $550 million to settle civil fraud charges that alleged that the Wall Street giant defrauded buyers of mortgage-related investments.

U.S. banking giant JPMorgan Chase has announced a net profit of 4.8 billion dollars in the second quarter, up nearly 80 percent from the same period last year.

The Federal Reserve says that the U.S. economy's recovery will be slower over the rest of the year than originally forecast.

Deflation poses a risk to the U.S. economy as unemployment remains high, White House economic adviser Christina Romer said on Wednesday.

Now even CNN is running articles that say that the world should start turning away from the U.S. dollar.

According to data released by RealtyTrac, bank repossessions of U.S. homes increased 38% in the second quarter from the same period a year earlier to a record total of 269,952.

In addition, RealtyTrac says that a total of 1.65 million U.S. properties received foreclosure filings during the first half of 2010.

The number of Americans collecting unemployment benefits will fall from 10.5 million to 7 million at the end of July if Congress doesn't extend the payments.

The number of Americans with incomes below the official poverty line rose by about 15% between 2000 and 2006, and by 2008 over 30 million U.S. workers were earning less than $10 per hour.

Fearing unstable international financial markets and the possibility of high inflation, the University of Texas has bought more than $500 million in gold.

Is the U.S. economy on the verge of a "Road Warrior-style" collapse?

The global economy is at risk of folding in on itself unless policy makers face up to the threat of inflation and exchange rate inflexibility, according to Arun Motianey, director of fixed income strategy at Roubini Global Economics.

Digital advertising billboards being tested in Japan are fitted with cameras that read the gender and age group of people looking at them to tailor their commercial messages.

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Wednesday released more than 1,100 pages of previously classified Vietnam-era transcripts that show senators of the time sharply questioning whether they had been deceived by the White House and the Pentagon over the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin incident.

House Democrats are lashing out at the White House, venting long-suppressed anger over what they see as Barack Obama's lukewarm efforts to help them win re-election in the fall.

Is Europe falling out of love with Barack Obama?

European Council President Herman Van Rompuy will in the future be able to address the United Nations no differently from U.S. President Barack Obama or Iranian leader Mahmoud Ahmedinejad under draft reforms agreed to by member states.

The leaders of Russia and Germany met Thursday for talks and oversaw the signing of nearly a dozen deals between companies from the two countries worth billions of dollars.

Tea Party leaders are lashing back at the NAACP over charges of racism.

A burglary victim is being charged with attempted murder for shooting at illegal aliens who were ripping him off.

Now that the Obama administration is suing Arizona over its tough immigration law, some critics are asking why so-called sanctuary cities are getting a pass for ignoring federal immigration law.

The most important news for Thursday, July 15th, 2010....

Hezbollah says that it has an extensive list of Israeli facilities to target in the event of a new conflict.

The U.S. government gave BP the green light on Wednesday, after a 24-hour delay, to begin testing the Gulf well's pressure to see if a new container cap will be able to contain the leaking oil.

Scientists are warning that the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico might permanently alter the food chain in that region.

There is a very serious economic threat that has not garnered much notice as of yet: the trillions of dollars in short-term borrowing that institutions around the world must repay or roll over in the next two years.

Federal Reserve policymakers are discussing what steps they might take to further spur economic activity "if the outlook were to worsen appreciably".

An increasing number of Americans are becoming very frustrated that there are so few jobs out there.

There are 9.2 million Americans that are unemployed but are not receiving an unemployment insurance check.

The Mortgage Bankers Association said on Wednesday that demand for loans to purchase U.S. homes sunk to a 13-year low last week, and refinancing demand also slid despite near record-low mortgage rates.

According to a recent poll conducted by Bloomberg, 71% of Americans say that it still feels like the economy is in a recession.

Is the euro crisis simply the prelude to the coming dollar crisis?

A third of Spain's city councils are in dire straits and may be forced to suspend payments by the end of the year.

Is Japan the next nation that will be facing a Greek-style debt crisis?

The National Inflation Association has issued a warning to all Americans that empty store shelves will likely be coming to America as a result of government price controls during the upcoming hyperinflationary crisis.

U.S. airlines are making billions of dollars in fees for check-on luggage, refreshments and other services formerly included in ticket prices.

A former senior advisor to President Bill Clinton says that the only thing which can rescue Barack Obama’s increasingly tenuous grip on power as his approval figures continue to plunge is a terror attack on the scale of Oklahoma City or 9/11.

A newly revealed U.S. government document shows that the Obama administration is planning to cut the U.S. nuclear stockpile by up to 40% more by 2021.

Microsoft says that the 12th alleged member of a Russian spy ring operating in the U.S. was an employee at the company's Redmond, Washington headquarters.

South Korea has deployed sentry robots capable of detecting and killing intruders along the heavily-fortified border with North Korea.

Scientists now say that plants transmit information about light intensity and quality from leaf to leaf in a very similar way to our own nervous systems.

A majority of federal health experts voted Wednesday to keep the controversial diabetes pill Avandia on the market despite evidence that it increases the risk of heart attack.

A new study has found that rats fed fatty, unhealthy food pass on an increased cancer risk to their children and grandchildren.

According to a report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, an estimated 5 percent of the Key West, Florida population - over 1,000 people - showed evidence of recent exposure to dengue virus in 2009.

Arizona health officials are reporting that six people have tested positive for West Nile virus in just the past week.

The European Commission has published proposals that it said were designed to give countries more freedom and flexibility over the cultivation of genetically modified crops.

The lower House of the French parliament has approved a ban on Islamic veils.

Clothing that can see, hear and even talk is being developed by scientists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Thousands of laptops have been stolen from the Florida office of a private contractor for the U.S. military's Special Operations Command.

A new CBS poll has found that public support for Arizona's controversial new immigration law has increased to 57 percent.

Sarah Palin has reportedly endorsed a candidate who backs pro-gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender rights fully, even those groups who preach to kids as young as 13, and who was a member of the Log Cabin Republicans.

It is being reported that Bristol Palin and the father of her child, Levi Johnston, are engaged again.

According to a new national poll, nearly half of all Americans have an unfavorable view of former Vice President Al Gore.

It turns out that U.S. taxpayers will be directly funding abortions under the new high-risk insurance pools that the new health care law has set up.

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said recently that America would "never go back" to outlawing the murder of the unborn.

In Haiti, hurricane strength winds and heavy rains have destroyed a large tent city for refugees who are still trying to recover from the devastating earthquake which hit that nation.

It is being reported that a magnitude 6.5 earthquake hit near the coast of central Chile on Wednesday.

Russian fishermen are demanding a probe into a creature resembling the Loch Ness monster in a remote Siberian lake.

The University of Illinois has fired an adjunct professor who taught courses on Catholicism after a student accused the instructor of engaging in hate speech by saying that he agrees with the church's teaching that homosexual sex is immoral.

Lastly, an ongoing archaeological excavation in Tel Tzafit continues to unearth the ruins of what was once the city of Gat – described in the Bible as the hometown of Goliath.

The most important news for Wednesday, July 14th, 2010....

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said on Monday that Iran is close to having the potential to build a nuclear weapon.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says that he does not envision a negotiated Middle East peace settlement within the next two years, despite his Palestinian counterpart's declared intentions to set up infrastructure for a state by 2011.

According to a newly released poll, nearly 60 percent of American voters say that they lack faith in Barack Obama.

According to another new poll, 51 percent of Americans support Arizona's new immigration law as it stands, compared with 35 percent who support the U.S. government's case against Arizona.

170 liberal groups have launched "One Nation"- the left's version of the Tea Party movement.

Newly published election spending figures show Sarah Palin ended the last quarter with a war chest of more than $1 million, suggesting gathering momentum for a run at the White House in 2012.

Former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich says that he's considering running for president in 2012 and expects to make a decision by early next year.

BP has announced that "integrity tests" will be conducted to determine whether a new cap can completely seal its well in the Gulf of Mexico that has been spewing oil for 85 days.

Has BP been engaged in night time spraying of a bleaching agent on Louisiana beaches to make it appear that the beaches are being cleaned up?

The "flow team" of the U.S. Geological Survey estimates that 2,900 cubic feet of natural gas, which primarily contains methane, is being released into Gulf of Mexico waters with every barrel of oil.

China's leading credit rating agency has stripped America, Britain, Germany and France of their AAA ratings.

Moody's has slashed Portugal's credit rating by two notches.

It is being reported that six successive quarters of negative economic growth in the U.K. from spring 2008 until autumn 2009 were the toughest for the U.K. economy since the Great Depression of the 1930s.

The federal budget deficit has topped $1 trillion with three months still to go in the current budget year.

The heads of Barack Obama's national debt commission say that the U.S. national debt "is like a cancer".

Could the growing U.S. trade deficit derail any hope for an economic recovery?

The U.S. Senate plans to take up the financial regulation bill on July 15th, and Democrats say that they have secured the 60 votes needed to enact the "biggest rewrite of Wall Street rules since the Great Depression".

Has the U.S. Congress created a huge financial incentive for rich people to die before January 1st, 2011?

Oakland's police chief says that due to severe budget cuts, his officers will no longer respond to grand theft, burglary, car wrecks, identity theft and vandalism.

An increasing number of doctors are refusing to accept Medicaid patients.

Across the United States, people are now routinely being jailed even for small unpaid debts.

83 percent of all U.S. stocks are in the hands of 1 percent of the people.

China, the world’s largest rare earth mineral producer, cut export quotas for the minerals needed to make hybrid cars and televisions by 72 percent for the second half, raising the possibility of a trade dispute with the United States.

Will a day of reckoning soon come for the growing U.S. pension fund crisis?

An obscure book about the collapse of the German economy in the 1920s has become cult reading among leading financiers.

Two Georgia cops have lost their jobs after a video emerged of them macing and tasering a 57 year old woman who simply called to report a prowler outside her house.

In Connecticut, when police shot and killed a family dog in front of the children, they gave the following excuse: "It’s just a dog."

The backlash against the new full body security scanners going into airports all across the United States continues to grow.

Are American vigilantes shooting and killing members of Mexican drug cartels in the Arizona desert?

Are Muslim enclaves in the United States creating "no-go zones" where local governments have little to no authority?

A group of American missionaries was among those injured in the bombings in Uganda Sunday night that left at least 74 dead.

An upsurge in the number of North Korean soldiers defecting into China is fueling fears of food shortages and of an imminent military clash.

Russia has announced plans to test-launch up to 12 ballistic missiles a year over the next decade.

Russia's next generation S-500 air defense system will reportedly be capable of destroying hypersonic and ballistic targets.

Seven U.S. congressmen, led by Senator Benjamin L. Cardin (D-MD), spent their 4th of July weekend  hand-delivering seeds to the Svalbard Global Seed Vault in Norway.

Is new evidence emerging that Barack Obama stole the Democratic Party nomination from Hillary Clinton in 2008?

Many Tea Party groups have decided to stay mute on the issue of gay marriage.

A federal appeals court struck down the Federal Communications Commission's indecency policy on Tuesday, calling the agency's longstanding rules "unconstitutionally vague".

A Vatican exorcist who has dealt with over 70,000 cases of demonic possession claims to know of the existence of "Satanic sects" in the Vatican where participation reaches all the way to the College of Cardinals.

The ban on crucifixes in the classroom has left many Italians feeling quite disgusted with the European Union.

One team of scientists says that they may have discovered why eating broccoli seems to reduce the chance of developing prostate cancer.

Recent research indicates that average male sperm counts have dropped to half of what they were 50 years ago.

Are global warming alarmists getting ready to come after your air conditioning?

Enough fat to fill nine double-decker buses is being removed from sewers under London's Leicester Square.

Russia’s government is trying to prevent cattle breeders from slaughtering livestock as a worsening drought cuts into feed supplies.

A massive sinkhole at a condominium complex in Florida has swallowed a car and it might not be done yet.

Another sinkhole recently swallowed a car in one St. Louis neighborhood.

Seismologists are increasingly concerned that the 7.2 Mexicali temblor on April 4th placed more pressure on faults around the Southland, resulting in increased quake activity over the last three months.

Four Christian missionaries face fines of up to $500 each and up to 93 days in jail for attempting to share the gospel with Muslims on a public sidewalk in Dearborn, Michigan.

Historians claim to have finally located the site of King Arthur’s Round Table – and believe it could have seated 1,000 people.

According to records from the Office of Compliance, taxpayers have paid out nearly $1 million per year in settlements to congressional employees who have been harassed or otherwise treated badly by their political bosses over the past 14 years.

Lastly, the allure of the blockbuster "Twilight" books and movies appears to have spawned a very troubling trend.  Teen couples are biting one another to show affection, sometimes biting so hard that they draw blood.

The most important news for Monday, July 12th, 2010....

According to the Palestinian Authority daily newspaper Al-Hayat al-Jadida, Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas recently told Arab leaders that the PA is ready to wage war on Israel if the rest of the Arab world does: "If you want war, and if all of you will fight Israel, we are in favor.  But the Palestinians will not fight alone because they don't have the ability to do it."

A former Revolutionary Guard member who relayed its secret operations to the CIA for 10 years says that Iran will commit the "most horrendous suicide bombing in human history" if it is not stopped from developing nuclear weapons.

It is being reported that both Egypt and Jordan are growingly increasingly concerned with Iran's nuclear program.

Debka is reporting that 20,000 Hezbollah troops have advanced and are dug into 160 new positions in South Lebanon.

Israel is "preparing something" for Lebanon and Hezbollah is on high alert to prevent it, unnamed sources in the group were quoted by London-based newspaper Al-Sharq Al-Awsat as saying over the weekend.

Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman says that Israel should prepare a new diplomatic plan for negotiations with Palestinians which will abandon the approach of "land for peace" and base the plan on "land and population swaps".

BP says that it is "pleased" with how the operation to place a new cap on its ruptured undersea well is proceeding.

In an under-the-radar release of new test results for its Gulf of Mexico oil spill workers, BP is reporting potentially hazardous exposures to a now-discontinued dispersant chemical - a substance blamed for contributing to chronic health problems after the Exxon Valdez cleanup - among more than 20 percent of offshore responders.

Toxicologists tell us that Corexit ruptures red blood cells, causes internal bleeding, and leads to liver and kidney damage - and now many of those working in the Gulf of Mexico are experiencing symptoms consistent with high levels of exposure to Corexit.

The U.S. Congress is still debating whether or not they are going to extend unemployment benefits for an estimated 2.1 million unemployed Americans that have stopped getting unemployment checks.

The U.K.'s biggest banks are warning that up to 1 trillion pounds could be drained from the financial system under proposed new regulations.

The International Monetary Fund has called on the European Central Bank to prepare fresh emergency action to stabilize debt markets, throwing its weight behind calls for renewed monetary stimulus to offset budget cuts.

Is a "legal noose" tightening around the neck of Europe's monetary union?

Even major mainstream media magazines are questioning whether the European Union is going to make it or not.

CNN is reporting that central banks around the globe have begun to abandon the U.S. dollar.

The U.S. economy has declined so far so fast that sometimes the statistics seem very hard to believe.

Retail sales in the U.S. fell in June for a second month in a row.

China's trade surplus climbed 140 percent in June from a year earlier.

The horrific conditions in sweatshops throughout India are almost indescribable.

Have all of the Wall Street bailouts enabled the biggest U.S. banks and financial institutions to make hundreds of billions of dollars at the expense of U.S. taxpayers?

In a world where terrorism is perceived to be the greatest threat, governments around the globe are increasingly feeling the need to watch, track, trace and control everyone and everything.

Even the mainstream media is now reporting on the increasing number of Americans that are preparing for social unrest.

China has given Google approval to keep operating its Chinese search page, resolving a months-long censorship dispute that had threatened its future in the world's top Internet market.

A senior U.S. general who was once criticized for saying it was "fun to shoot some people" has been picked to take over U.S. Central Command, and will now be leading the military command running the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

According to U.S. General George Casey, the United States may still be in Afghanistan and Iraq for another ten years.

Can eating more cauliflower significantly improve your health?

Tiger numbers are at their lowest level since records began, with conservationists warning that the world has 12 years to save the species.

Even more evidence has emerged that indicates that cellphones are hazardous to our health.

The world's earliest illustrated Christian book has been saved by a British charity which located it at a remote Ethiopian monastery.

One prominent website recently ran an article with this shocking headline: "How Twilight Offers Fans the Magic Missing from Organized Religion".

A North Carolina pastor is demanding an apology from lawmakers in his state after he was dismissed from his chaplain duties for praying in Jesus’ name.

A public school system in Montana is considering a comprehensive sex education plan that includes teaching first graders that people can be attracted to the same gender. In second grade students are instructed to avoid gay slurs and by the time students turn 10 years old they are taught about various types of intercourse.

Lastly, a federal judge in Boston has ruled that the Defense of Marriage Act is unconstitutional because it interferes with the right of a state to define the institution and therefore denies married gay couples some federal benefits.

The most important news for Friday, July 9th, 2010....

A couple of "independent journalists" were able to obtain water samples from the Gulf of Mexico and send them out to a scientific laboratory for testing.  The results of those tests were quite alarming.

Federal officials are actively blocking local authorities from implementing homegrown plans to clean up the oil spill along the Gulf of Mexico coast.

Hundreds of fishermen from Lake Charles to Moss Point, Mississippi were supposed to get checks from BP on Wednesday but didn't.

Scientists are predicting that shifting weather and sea conditions will soon create a dangerous situation in which sea birds, simply following their instinctual behavior patterns, will fly right into the deadly oil spill mess.

The Obama administration's contested moratorium on deepwater drilling will take a larger portion out of U.S. oil production next year than previously thought, the government's energy forecasting agency said on Wednesday.

EU energy commissioner Gunther Oettinger says that member states should stop giving out fresh permits for deep-water oil drilling in the light of the BP oil catastrophe.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says that he believes that direct talks with the Palestinians will begin very soon and he predicted that they will be "very, very tough."

During a recent appearance on "Good Morning America", Benjamin Netanyahu repeated numerous times that Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas must agree to face-to-face talks with Israel.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad says that the United States is "a global dictator".

Iran has deployed a top Revolutionary Guard Corps officer in Lebanon to oversee Hizbullah operations on behalf of the Islamic Republic, a senior IDF officer revealed on Wednesday.

Israel's military is offering evidence of what it says is a growing threat from Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, using aerial images to highlight the militants group's activities in towns and villages close to the Israeli border.

It is being reported that Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak’s health has taken a serious turn for the worse, with fears that the 83-year-old is suffering from cancer.

Three people have been arrested in Norway on suspicion of preparing terrorist attacks.

A former Michigan congressman and U.S. ambassador to the United Nations pleaded guilty the other day to charges related to work he did for an Islamic charity linked to terrorist groups including al-Qaida and the Taliban.

Federal officials have announced that ten Russian spy suspects in New York will be expelled from the United States in short order in exchange for the release of four Russian prisoners accused of spying for the United States.

According to the commander of the U.S. Northern Command, Russia is continuing to fly strategic nuclear bombers close to U.S. and Canadian airspace because the Russian military is seeking to maintain "the illusion of power".

The Chinese military may be surprised to find out that as many as 462 new Tomahawk missiles have been deployed by the U.S. military in its own backyard.

China has asked the South Korean government through a diplomatic channel to refrain from participating in a join military exercise with the U.S. in the West Sea this month.

One major Dutch bank is warning that a full-fledged disintegration of the eurozone would trigger the worst economic crisis in modern history, devastate every country in Europe including Germany, and inflict a deflationary shock on the United States.

A very notable exchange occurred the other day on CNBC when guest Damon Vickers of Nine Points Capital said that "unless the plunge protection team comes in over the next couple of days, the markets are looking very dicey here."

It turns out that immediately prior to his nomination as White House Science Czar, John P. Holdren called for a global carbon tax in order to "redistribute" wealth to the Southern Hemisphere.

Barack Obama bypassed the Senate on Wednesday and appointed Dr. Donald Berwick, a Harvard professor and patient care specialist, to run Medicare and Medicaid.  It turns out that Berwick is outspokenly in favor of government health-care rationing, redistribution of wealth and destroying the U.S. system of medical care in favor of a single-payer government-controlled program.

A surveillance system currently used in several Dutch cities records public conversations as far as 100 yards away and monitors movements to detect signs of anti-social behavior and fighting.

A former police officer who is white was found guilty of involuntary manslaughter Thursday in the killing of an unarmed black man in Oakland, California.

Johnson & Johnson has announced that it is expanding a recall of over-the-counter medicines including Tylenol, Motrin and Benadryl.

The pharmaceutical lobby is absolutely showering money on Senate majority leader Harry Reid.

One team of scientists at the University at Buffalo has discovered that nanoparticles can be used to remotely control behavior.

Researchers claim that they are one step closer to creating human skin in the laboratory by developing cells that mimic the growth of our own skin cells.

The damaged brains of stroke patients can be "rewired" by singing, restoring the ability to speak to patients who have lost it, according to a study conducted by researchers from Harvard Medical School.

According to one new study, taking fish oil regularly can slash the risk of developing breast cancer by about one-third.

It has been revealed that the Nixon administration had developed plans for a nuclear strike against North Korea in 1969 following the shooting down of a U.S. spy plane.

Costa Rica has granted the U.S. military a six-month window to bring 7,000 Marines, five planes and 46 warships into its territory to help stem the flow of drugs northward.

According to a draft copy obtained by Military Times, a confidential survey of 400,000 active-duty and reserve troops on their attitudes toward service by openly gay people in the military appears to lean heavily on questions about teamwork, performance, mission completion and morale.

The General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) is considering whether the church should redefine marriage to include same-sex couples and whether to allow the ministers to perform same-sex weddings.

Myanmar's health ministry has circulated a warning about the hordes of plague-infested rats that are rampaging across the country.

Extreme weather patterns across Asia are raising concerns about a new global food crisis.

A magnitude-5.4 earthquake jolted Southern California on Wednesday, rattling buildings in downtown Los Angeles, toppling wine bottles at desert resorts and briefly halting rides at Disneyland.

Australian scientists say that they have unearthed the remains of a bizarre, prehistoric, sabre-tooth "cat" in an ancient former rainforest.

Two Christians were arrested recently for sharing the gospel and singing hymns on a public sidewalk outside an Islamic mosque in Philadelphia.

It is being reported that a Muslim mob in Jhelum, Pakistan murdered the wife and four children of a Christian last month, but local authorities are too afraid of the local Muslim leader to file charges.

Lastly, a law under consideration by San Francisco’s Commission of Animal Control and Welfare would be the country’s first ban on the sale of all pets except fish.

The most important news for Thursday, July 8th, 2010....

Iran announced on Wednesday that the Bushehr nuclear power plant, a joint project with Russia, would be ready for operation in two months.

The United Arab Emirates ambassador to the United States said on Tuesday that it would be difficult to co-exist with a nuclear Iran and that it would support any actions the U.S. took to prevent such a possibility.

Israeli Ambassador to the United States Michael Oren warned this week that Iran might unleash a wave of terrorist violence in the Middle East in retaliation for the tough new sanctions passed by the U.S. Congress last week.

The EU has banned most of Iran Air's jets from flying to Europe because of safety concerns, but officials are emphasizing that the move was not related to UN sanctions against Iran over its nuclear program.

Turkey is looking to find a new partner for joint defense projects as relations with Israel, which had for a long time been one of Turkey’s major allies in the defense industry, have become seriously strained.

Barack Obama says that direct Israel-Palestinian talks may get started within the next three months.

On Wednesday, Hamas rejected direct Israeli/Palestinian negotiations and accused both the U.S. and Israel of wanting to prolong Israel’s blockade of the Gaza Strip.

A poll of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, released on Wednesday, showed that most Palestinians do not want a renewal of violence.

It has come out that millions of U.S. taxpayer dollars are going directly into the pockets of corrupt government officials in Afghanistan.

A worker who helped clean up the Exxon Valdez oil spill in 1989 told CNN that he was "slowly poisoned" during the Alaska cleanup effort - and he says some of those now working to clean up the BP spill off Louisiana and neighboring states are risking the same fate.

It is being reported that BP is "ahead of schedule" drilling the relief well which many hope will put an end to the massive oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico.

Russia is rapidly becoming one of the top suppliers of oil to the United States.

U.S. Treasury yields have dropped to stunning new lows, and many economists are warning that this is a clear sign that economic trouble is ahead.

The M3 money supply plunged at a 9.6 percent annual rate during the first quarter of 2010.

Many economists are warning that the "China investment bubble" is about to pop.

One prominent economist that specializes in China says that property prices in major Chinese cities are likely to soon experience a drop of up to 30 percent.

Vacancies and lease rates at U.S. shopping centers continued to get worse during the second quarter of 2010.

One Goldman Sachs economist says that there is a 1.6% chance that the U.S. economy will be in recession six months from now.

It is being reported that some central banks are selling off gold at a staggering pace.

In Concord, Massachusetts the local government is taking down hundreds of street lights mostly in residential neighborhoods to save money on electricity.

Barack Obama's choice to be the administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services once made this shocking statement: "Any health care funding plan that is just equitable civilized and humane must, must redistribute wealth from the richer among us to the poorer and the less fortunate. Excellent health care is by definition redistributional."

Starting next Tuesday, adults applying for their first U.S. passport will have to pay $135 - a 35 percent increase from the current $100 fee.

The New York National Guard is now going to be used in the war on drugs.

Temperatures in many areas along the east coast of the United States exceeded 100 degrees for the second consecutive day.

Some areas of the U.K. are experiencing their worst drought in 71 years.

One Roman Catholic priest has been arrested and charged with stealing $1.3 million in church money over seven years to use for male escorts, expensive clothing and luxury hotels and restaurants.

A strong 6.4-magnitude earthquake shook Mexico’s southern states early Wednesday causing people to evacuate buildings hundreds of miles north in Mexico City.

One team of researchers says that schools in the U.K. are being turned into "prisons" as children are subjected to increasingly sophisticated surveillance and security measures.

Mind control?  One team of scientists has published a paper which claims that clusters of heated, magnetic nanoparticles targeted to cell membranes can remotely control ion channels, neurons and even animal behavior.

Lastly, scientists now say that protons are much smaller than previously believed, and that this unexpected discovery may alter some of the most trusted laws of physics.

The most important news for Wednesday, July 7th, 2010....

The Obama administration filed its long-anticipated legal challenge to the controversial new Arizona immigration law on Tuesday.

According to one new study, illegal immigration is costing the United States a staggering $113 billion a year.

The U.S. Border Patrol says two groups of seafaring illegal immigrants have been caught coming ashore along Southern California's coast — including 18 people who landed at the Marine Corps' Camp Pendleton.

Police in Ecuador have seized a 100-foot submarine being built by suspected drug traffickers capable of carrying a crew of six and 10 tons of cocaine on underwater voyages lasting up to 10 days.

Stressing the unbreakable ties between their nations, on Tuesday Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu both called for direct talks between Israel and the Palestinians while agreeing that efforts to isolate Iran over its nuclear ambitions are necessary.

The "European Campaign to Break the Gaza Siege" - an organization based in Brussels - has announced that an "aid flotilla for Gaza" is being prepared to embark within the next two weeks, and that it will include 7 boats and 9,000 participants.

Turkey is once again demanding an apology from Israel, but Israel says that it is not going to happen.

Syrian President Bashar Assad says that "the prospect of war" in the Middle East is growing.

Are millions of U.S. taxpayer dollars being used to buy well-connected Afghans posh villas in Dubai?

According to one new report, Israel's coastal gas facilities are a very tempting target for terrorist groups like Hezbollah.

Oil from the massive BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is now absolutely drenching beaches all along the coasts of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida.

CBS News is reporting that the oil spill in the Gulf is hurting businesses "from coast to coast".

It turns out that the "relief wells" that BP is drilling are not an automatic "slam dunk" solution to the oil spill crisis either.

A marine biologist working with a group of environmentalists to save sea turtles claims that the U.S. Coast Guard is involved in spraying a toxic chemical dispersant over the Gulf of Mexico - and he says it has already traveled inland.

Is some form of "acid rain" now falling in the state of Texas?

One prominent trader says that the Dow Jones Industrial Average is repeating a pattern that appeared just before financial markets fell during the Great Depression.

The U.S. Postal Service has proposed a 2 cent increase in the price of a first-class stamp, bringing the cost to 46 cents. The change, if approved, will go into effect on January 2nd.

It is being reported that the U.K. is drafting contingency plans should beleaguered energy giant BP collapse.

Could the collapse of BP bring about absolute chaos on world financial markets?

Economist Nouriel Roubini recently told CNBC that European governments face the quandary of being unable to afford to bail out banks that are still considered too big to fail.

As the U.S. economy implodes, global corporations are investing massive amounts of money to expand operations in communist China.

Kenneth Rogoff, Harvard University professor and former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund, says that China’s property market is beginning a "collapse" that will seriously impact the nation’s banking system.

A study released this year by SpiderLabs, a part of the data-security consulting company Trustwave, found that 38 percent of the credit card hacking cases last year involved the hotel industry.

Are the CIA and the government of Pakistan engaged in "aggressive spy battles"?

Are "the lights going out" for free speech on the Internet?

A revolt among big donors on Wall Street is hurting fundraising for the Democrats' two congressional campaign committees, with contributions from the world's financial capital down 65 percent from two years ago.

Are we witnessing the rise of a "global scientific dictatorship"?

Poland's cooperative BPS bank says it's the first in Europe to install a biometric ATM - allowing customers to withdraw cash simply with the touch of a fingertip.

Could we be headed for another H1N1 pandemic?

Blistering heat is causing huge problems in cities across the east coast of the United States.

Muslim organizations in Indonesia have declared their intention to establish paramilitary units in local mosques to oppose "ongoing attempts to convert people to Christianity".

What some Christians endure to get the gospel into North Korea is absolutely amazing.

This week's General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) will consider redefining marriage to include same-sex couples and allowing ministers to perform same-sex weddings.

It is being reported that the Church of England may be on the verge of promoting a gay priest to bishop.

Jerusalem District Police have backpedaled and have now granted authorization to a gay pride parade, to be held in the city at the end of the month, which will conclude at the Knesset building as per the request of its organizers.

Lastly, NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said in a recent interview that his "foremost" mission as the head of America's space exploration agency is to improve relations with the Muslim world.

The most important news for Tuesday, July 6th, 2010....

Under threat of a federal felony, National Incident Commander Thad Allen has banned all media access to oil clean up sites in or around the Gulf of Mexico.  This order effectively bans all media - print, television, radio and Internet bloggers from talking to to any clean-up worker or to even come close to take pictures or videos of booms, clean-up workers, oil soaked birds, dead dolphins, dead marine life, burned and dead endangered sea turtles.

According to PBS, BP's chief of Gulf Coast restoration Bob Dudley says that the company and the U.S. government are exploring "at least two options to divert the flow" of oil in the event that relief wells being drilled become the latest failures to kill the blown-out Gulf well.

BP's costs for the massive Gulf of Mexico oil spill climbed nearly half a billion dollars in the past week, to $3.12 billion, for cleanup, containment, relief well drilling and damage claims.

Many are now asking if it will take a nuclear explosion to fix the oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico.

Oil is starting to wash up on beaches near Galveston, Texas.

If unemployment continues to remain high, will the Federal Reserve keep interest rates near zero indefinitely?

Commodity professionals have been caught off guard by a U.S. Department of Agriculture report showing 1 million fewer acres of corn were planted this year than earlier projected.

China's new generation of workers is not quite as eager to accept slave labor conditions.

According to one new study, the private sector in the U.S. has lost 10.5 million jobs since 2007.

The state of Illinois is not paying its bills and yet the flood of red ink continues to get even worse.

USA Today is giving us instructions for how to respond when an economic depression hits.

Democrats have introduced a bill that would rewrite the ground rules for Internet and mail order sales by eliminating the option for many Americans to shop over the Internet without paying state sales taxes.

Nouriel Roubini is warning that Europe's economy could stop growing as soon as this year.

According to a confidential report by Merrill Lynch, Spain's debt crisis may force the country to tap the EU-IMF rescue fund over the next two to three months and set off a political storm.

Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak said on Monday that Israel must present Barack Obama with a clear peace initiative that includes a proposed border between Israel and a future Palestinian state.

The London-based Arabic newspaper, Al Hayat, reported this weekend that Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas had proposed the creation of a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders, with a possible land swap of 2.3 percent of the West Bank to ensure a fair solution for Israeli settlement blocs. Al Hayat reported that the Palestinians agreed to leave settlement blocs including Gush Etzion, Pisgat Ze'ev and Modi'in Ilit, along with a swath of land overlooking Ben-Gurion International Airport, in Israeli hands.

Turkey is warning that it will sever diplomatic ties with Israel unless it apologizes for what happened during the "Gaza aid flotilla" incident.

There are new reports that the Obama administration is pushing Israel to formally declare its nuclear weapons program by signing the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.

The Transportation Security Administration has announced plans to block all websites that contain "controversial opinions" from its federal computers.

A report from the RAC Foundation says that it is "inevitable" that U.K. motorists will be charged for every mile they travel in order to avoid gridlock on the roads.

Many British families are being torn apart by social workers who remove children over very minor domestic issues.

Thailand is fighting to reduce the massive flow of child sex tourists that are regularly visiting that nation.

It is being reported that the Obama administration has not ruled out turning sick people away from an insurance program created by the new healthcare law to provide coverage for the uninsured.

The evidence that putting fluoride into our water is very harmful to our health is really starting to pile up.

One new study says that all pregnant women should be given vitamin D supplements to safeguard the health of their babies.

Most people do not realize the horrific conditions that many "mega-farm" animals are forced to endure.

Huge power outages hit several parts of Toronto on Monday afternoon during the hottest day of the year so far.

Publishers of Christian material have begun producing iPhone applications that can cough up quick comebacks and rhetorical strategies for believers who want to fight back against what they view as a new strain of strident atheism.

Are America's teens being taught about sex by vampire movies?

Yet another indication of how far America has fallen is the fact that there is a new free phone app which lets gay men instantly pinpoint each other using GPS technology.

A 4th of July fireworks show disturbed a hive and angry bees swarmed a crowd of spectators at the Alameda County Fair on Friday night. About 100 people were stung by the bees.

Hundreds of thousands of hectares of new crops have been devoured across South Australia, Victoria and Western Australia in the worst mouse plague since 1993.

An earthquake with a magnitude of 6.3 jolted northern Japan early on Monday.

Russian scientists say that two active volcanoes on Russia's Kamchatka Peninsula are currently spewing plumes of ash at a height of up to 5 miles.

The European Space Agency is drawing up plans for a "Doomsday ark" on the moon.

Lastly, as you celebrate America's Independence Day, you might want to read the following article which reflects on just how much America has changed: "50 Random Facts That Make You Wonder What In The World Has Happened To America".

The most important news for Monday, July 5th, 2010....

According to one new poll, 26 percent of Americans do not know who the United States won independence from.

The Library of Congress has determined that Thomas Jefferson changed the word "subjects" to "citizens" in an early version of the Declaration of Independence.

As we celebrate the 4th of July, we should remember the sacrifices that many of the founding fathers of this nation made so that we could have such freedom.

Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit says that the Arab League will turn to the United Nations Security Council to declare an independent Palestinian state if peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians do not bear fruit by September.

Saudi Arabia is denying reports that King Abdullah had said in private that there are "two states in the region do not deserve to exist: Israel and Iran".

Rockets were fired at the U.S. embassy in Baghdad while Joe Biden was making a visit in the country.

A majority of all combat-related U.S. casualties in the nine-year-long war in Afghanistan have occurred since Barack Obama was inaugurated a little more than 17 months ago.

BP has admitted that it did not use an industry standard process to asses risk ahead of the Deepwater Horizon disaster.

A photographer taking pictures for ProPublica was recently detained by authorities for shooting pictures of a refinery in Texas City, Texas.

It turns out that the Department of Homeland Security has been working with BP officials to intimidate reporters who are trying to report on the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

The environmental toll of the oil spill continues to get worse - a baby Dolphin was recently found dead around Ballast Point Park in south Tampa.

Is the Gulf of Mexico oil spill crisis about to get a whole lot worse?

Ron Paul’s attempt to audit the Federal Reserve, which was previously co-sponsored by 320 members of the House of Representatives, failed by a vote of 229-198.

Nancy Pelosi says that printing unemployment checks is the fastest way to create jobs.

It looks like the massively overcrowded emergency rooms across the United States are about to get a lot more crowded thanks to Obamacare.

The Schwarzenegger administration has won an appellate court ruling saying it has the authority to impose the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour on more than 200,000 state workers as California wrestles with its latest budget crisis.

What does it say about our financial system when Goldman Sachs and other very powerful international banks can use "food speculation" to make millions of dollars, while millions of people around the world starve as a result of the speculation in food prices.

Analysts are warning that the Standard & Poor's 500 50-day moving average is about to cross beneath the 200-day moving average, and they say that could be an indication that a new recession is about to begin.

It is being reported that the government of Hungary is planning to ask the International Monetary fund and the European Union for a "precautionary" two-year bailout package.

Cabinet ministers in the U.K. have been ordered to plan for massive cuts to their day-to-day departmental budgets of up to 40 percent.

Even British newspapers are running editorials about the stunning amount of debt that the U.S. government is accumulating under the Obama administration.

A French civil servant who lifted the lid on the wastefulness of the country's state sector in a book describing a "five-hours-a-week" culture where people competed to take the longest coffee breaks has been suspended.

Thieves are using high-tech skimmers to steal account information at automatic teller machines - and most victims don't even realize that they have a problem until they see their statements.

A week of bloodshed in the run-up to important Mexican regional elections culminated in a savage gunfight between rival drug gangs in which at least 21 people were killed a few miles from the U.S. border.

Barack Obama says that being an American is "not a matter of blood or birth".

It looks like the U.S. public is pretty much evenly divided on Barack Obama.

"Bin police" in the U.K. are punishing hundreds of households guilty of trash violations with bigger fines than those given by police to shoplifters.

Scientists say that a genetic test has been developed that can accurately predict whether someone is likely to live an extremely long life.

It turns out that chicken nuggets sold in U.S. branches of McDonald's contain a chemical used in Silly Putty.

Google has begun paying extra to its gay employees in the U.S. to compensate them for additional taxes on their benefits.

A Canadian man has replaced his own false eye with a camera-eye of his own invention - and will let the world see what he sees via a live video link.

A five meter wide chasm has mysteriously opened in a busy road in Malaysia.

The most important news for Friday, July 2nd, 2010....

Iran has provided Syria with an advanced radar system that could give it early warning of an Israeli strike on its nuclear facilities.

Shabtai Shavit, former chief of the Israeli spy agency Mossad, says that Israel should launch a pre-emptive strike on Iran.

IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi said Thursday that Israel's skies "were clouded by threats, both near far".

Haaretz is reporting that a senior Israeli official's secret meeting with the Turkish foreign minister in Switzerland was apparently held due to pressure from the Obama administration.

Local authorities in Dubai have admitted that shipments of illegal nuclear and weapons-building material have been intercepted in Dubai and other ports in the United Arab Emirates.

Three explosions erupted Thursday in Lahore in and around one of Pakistan's holiest shrines, killing 41 people and wounding 175.

According to two independent scientists, methane at 100,000 times normal levels have been creating oxygen-depleted areas devoid of life near BP's Deepwater Horizon spill.

A new report released by the United Nations is publicly calling for the establishment of a world currency.

It turns out that shell-shocked American consumers still aren't buying anything.

All signs seem to continue to point to the fact that the U.S. economy is going to continue to struggle for the rest of 2010.

In early 2009, U.S. net national savings as a percentage of GDP went negative for the first time since 1952, and it has continued its downward trend since then.

Forbes has published an article with this stunning headline: "Why The Greater Depression Still Lies Ahead".

The National Association of Realtors said on Thursday that its seasonally adjusted index of sales agreements for previously occupied homes dropped 30 percent in May.

One employee used a Federal Emergency Management Agency credit card to buy $4,318 in "Happy Birthday" gift cards. Two other FEMA officials charged the cost of 360 golf umbrellas ($9,000) to the taxpayers.

This Spring, North American financial markets tumbled to their worst quarter since the fall of Lehman Brothers.

According to prepared testimony by Goldman Sachs Chief Operating Officer Gary Cohn, Goldman Sachs shorted roughly $615 million of the collateralized debt obligations and residential mortgage-backed securities the firm underwrote since late 2006.

Moody's announced on Wednesday that it may cut Spain's AAA local and foreign currency government bond ratings by as much as two levels after a three-month review.

Federal prosecutors said on Thursday that one of the suspects in an alleged spy ring has confessed to federal agents that he worked for Russia's intelligence service.

U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano has launched a nationwide "see something, say something" campaign in an attempt to get Americans to squeal on their neighbors.

Amnesty International is calling for a public inquiry into police abuses during the recent G20 protests in Toronto, Canada.

Barack Obama is calling for a "civilian expeditionary force" to be sent to Afghanistan and Iraq to help overburdened military troops build infrastructure.

A film about Barack Obama's childhood days in Indonesia made its debut in Jakarta on Wednesday.

Former President Bill Clinton has broken with Barack Obama by endorsing a Senate candidate in Colorado who is challenging the incumbent White House favorite.

According to a new poll, three out of every 10 Americans now describe themselves as Tea Party supporters.

Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott is demanding that Barck Obama send more troops to the Texas-Mexico border and used the shots that hit El Paso City Hall as an example of increased violence on the border.

Gas and power prices have risen sharply in New Zealand after the government introduced a controversial emissions trading scheme.

The United States and China are playing a game of "chicken" in the Yellow Sea.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on Wednesday invalidated the air quality permits of 122 plants across Texas.

About a quarter of the swine flu vaccine produced for the U.S. public has expired - meaning that a whopping 40 million doses worth about $260 million is being written off as trash.

One entire county in West Virginia has been designated as a chronic wasting disease containment area.

Police in Portland, Oregon have decided to reopen the investigation into a 54-year-old masseuse's allegations that former Vice President Al Gore sexually assaulted her in his hotel room in 2006.

The religious think-tank Ekklesia says that more Christians are identifying as "gay-supporting" than in previous decades.

Thailand and Vietnam, the world's two largest rice exporters, face severe drought conditions that threaten to severely undermine this year's crops and global supplies.

A planet outside of our solar system, said to be the first ever directly photographed by telescopes on Earth, has been officially confirmed to be orbiting a sun-like star.

A team of European researchers has "virtually" teleported real objects through cyberspace, touched things in virtual reality and even felt the movements of a virtual dance partner.

Researchers have discovered the fossilised remains of a gigantic ancient whale with huge, fearsome teeth that some scientists have dubbed "leviathan".

The San Diego Zoo and The Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California have hatched a truly bizarre plan to revitalize endangered species by taking frozen cells from a dead animal, reprogram them to become sperm and eggs, then use these to bring endangered species back from the brink.

Lastly, Finland has made access to broadband connections to the Internet a legal right for every one of its citizens in the first legislation of its kind anywhere in the world.

The most important news for Thursday, July 1st, 2010....

Hurricane Alex's rough seas have pushed more oil from the massive BP oil spill onto Gulf Coast beaches and sidelined dozens of cleanup vessels.

Geologists and petroleum engineers are now debating a "worst case scenario": that the BP well’s casings beneath the ocean floor have been irreversibly damaged, possibly to such an extent that it may be impossible to cap the well.

Could the Gulf of Mexico oil spill actually cause a major earthquake along the New Madrid fault line?

There have been an alarming number of earthquakes reported in the New Madrid seismic zone in recent days.

It is being reported that the surface rupture of the roads and highways near the New Madrid fault "is out of control".

BP and their subcontractors have been caught hiring illegal immigrants to work in the clean up process while locals are left begging for work.

Admiral Thad Allen has announced his retirement from the Coast Guard. He will continue as the National Incident Commander of the BP oil spill.

Is there a "media blackout" on public health threats from this oil spill?

BP is strictly controlling access to medical care for oil spill cleanup workers.

A Pensacola city councilman is alleging that BP is actually bringing in white sand to cover up the oil that is covering the beaches.

Venezuela's legislature has voted to nationalize 11 oil rigs owned by the U.S. firm Helmerich & Payne.

Barack Obama and Saudi King Abdullah met this week to discuss the Middle East peace process and "the importance of securing a Palestinian homeland".

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, in a visit to Israel and the Palestinian Authority, announced in Ramallah on Tuesday that 50 Russian troop carriers would soon be delivered to the Palestinian Authority.

One million Italians marched through cities and towns yesterday in a general strike protesting an austerity budget they say bleeds workers but spares the rich.

Striking workers have brought Greece to a standstill and militant Greek seamen are stopping vacationers from boarding island ferries.

A sweeping Wall Street "reform" bill championed by Barack Obama won approval in the House of Representatives on Wednesday after Democrats agreed to jettison a $19 billion tax they proposed for large banks.

Analysts are warning that global bond markets are flashing warning signals of a sharp slowdown in growth across the world and a possible slide toward a double-dip recession and outright deflation.

In fact, it is being reported that bond traders all over the world are getting "deflation jitters".

Fears that government austerity packages will hinder global growth have combined with fresh anxiety about the health of European banks to hammer investor confidence in Europe.

A new United Nations report released on Tuesday calls for abandoning the U.S. dollar as the main global reserve currency.

According to a new poll, more than half of all Germans want to go back to the deutschmark.

RealtyTrac has announced that foreclosure homes accounted for 31 percent of all residential sales in the first quarter of 2010, with the average sales price of properties that sold while in some stage of foreclosure nearly 27 percent below homes that were not in the process.

Fannie Mae has announced a massive nationwide crackdown on strategic defaults.

U.S. private employers added just 13,000 jobs in the month of June.

Sam Zell, chairman of Equity Group Investments, told CNBC on Tuesday that the U.S. public sector is so big that the economy cannot support it and that it needs to be cut back.

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard is wondering if it is time to shut down the U.S. Federal Reserve.

The United Nations is predicting a global rise in food prices.

It is being alleged that some major U.S. banks have had a habit of helping move money for Mexican drug smugglers.

During her nomination hearings, Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan told Congress that the U.S. Constitution is mean to be "interpreted over time".

It has come out that the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists allowed its position on partial birth abortion to be written by none other than Elena Kagan.

While serving as Dean of Harvard Law School, Elena Kagan demanded sex change operations and bathroom access as "equal rights" for cross-dressing Harvard students.

The Federal Election Commission has announced that they are investigating Campaign for Liberty.

Testimony in the trial of former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich has indicated that Barack Obama may have been more connected to the haggling over his Senate seat than he has previously acknowledged.

A Missouri VA hospital is under fire because it may have exposed more than 1,800 veterans to life-threatening diseases such as hepatitis and HIV.

Among the bizarre allegations against the 10 accused Russian "secret agents" pretending to be Americans in New York, New Jersey and the Virginia suburbs outside Washington D.C. was that they lived as married couples, even though most weren't, in fact, ever married.

Russia's parliament is considering a new law that would extend the powers of  the country's secret security agency, the FSB. If the bill is passed, it would restore practices once associated with the infamous KGB.

A new report by the ACLU chronicles government spying and the detention of groups and individuals "for doing little more than peacefully exercising their First Amendment rights".

A magnitude-6.2 earthquake rattled southern Mexico on Wednesday, sending people fleeing into the streets in Pacific coast towns and in the nation's capital.

Millions of locusts are turning the sky black above one town in Australia.

Are the "Twilight" films making it easier for our young people to adopt occult philosophy and practices?

A new study claims that scientists can now detect "brain abnormalities associated with schizophrenia risk"  in infants just a few weeks old.

One group of physicists is now convinced that DNA is held together by quantum entanglement.

Archaeologists in the U.K. have begun a major dig to unearth the hidden mysteries of a buried ancient stone circle site that is ten times bigger than Stonehenge.

Two Islam watchdogs have terminated their relationships with PayPal after it tried to intimidate them for telling the truth about Islam.

Lastly, school officials in one town in Massachusetts will not allow students to recite the Pledge of Allegiance.

The most important news for Wednesday, June 30th, 2010....

Elena Kagan is trying to say as little as possible during her Supreme Court nomination hearings.

Debka is reporting that the U.S. has posted a third carrier opposite Iran's shores. It is reportedly supported by amphibious assault ships and up to 4,000 Navy and Marine Corps personnel, bringing the total U.S. strength in these waters to three carriers and 10,000 combat personnel.

The CIA, in what appears to significantly revise recent assessments, has determined that Iran has accumulated a sufficient amount of uranium for two nuclear weapons.

U.S. Admiral Mike Mullen said on Monday that he believes that Iran will continue to pursue nuclear weapons, even if sanctions against the country are increased.

It is being reported that Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah will press Barack Obama in Washington this week to take a stronger stance with Israel over stalled peace talks with the Palestinians.

The EU has hired a British firm to train a special Palestinian security unit that will be deployed in east Jerusalem.

China is denying media reports that an artillery drill in the East China Sea was in response to a planned military exercise between South Korea and the United States.

Russia is demanding an explanation from the United States over the arrest of 10 alleged Russian secret agents accused of operating a "deep cover" spying mission.

One of the Cold War's most famous defectors said on Tuesday that Russia may have as many as 50 deep-cover couples spying inside the United States.

Tropical Storm Alex approached hurricane strength on Tuesday as it churned off the northwestern coast of Mexico's Yucatan peninsula in the Bay of Campeche.

George Washington University emergency physicians have identified a pattern of symptoms including nausea, vertigo, headaches, respiratory problems and flu like symptoms among oil spill cleanup workers that they have been helping to treat.

Public outrage over the BP oil spill fouling the Gulf of Mexico has focused on water pollution. But according to one team of researchers the air pollution health threat may be even more serious.

Scientists tell us that there is an "astonishing" amount of oil and gas under the floor of the Gulf of Mexico.

John P. Hussman of Hussman Funds has issued a full-fledged recession warning.

French bank Societe Generale is forecasting that gold could reach $1,430 an ounce in the third quarter of this year due to fears of a double-dip recession.

Economist Nouriel Roubini says that Greece needs an orderly restructuring of its public debt to head off an "inevitable default".

The Bank for International Settlements is warning that Europe's banks have yet to come clean over bad loans and may struggle to refinance short-term debt unless the region's bond crisis subsides soon.

The Bank for International Settlements is also warning authorities across the developed world that they cannot rely on ultra-low interest rates to cushion the blow of austerity measures.

Some experts are warning that the cost of bailing out Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac could reach as high as $1 trillion.

On Tuesday, the Dow Jones industrial average fell nearly 270 points to close below 10,000 for the first time since June 10.

Fannie Mae is sifting through borrower data to determine who is strategically defaulting and who is not after announcing new efforts to crack down on those who walk away from their homes.

The protests against the austerity measures being imposed on Greece continue to turn violent.

One journalist says that women arrested by Toronto police during the G20 protests were threatened with rape, that numerous women were strip-searched by male officers and that one severely traumatized woman was sexually molested by police.

New York state senators will soon vote on a bill that would make it illegal for any homeowner or renter to sublet for less than a month.

U.S. officials say that more than three billion dollars in cash (much of it aid money paid for by U.S. taxpayers) has been stolen by corrupt officials and flown out of Kabul International Airport in recent years.

Italian police have conducted a massive crackdown on the Chinese organized crime networks that have been operating throughout the country.

A new "lizard-like robot" can swim through sand.

Is the new science of trangenics actually opening the door to a very ancient evil?

With so many toxins in our food, our beverages and our medicines, is it any wonder that society has become so dumbed down?

Researchers at the University of Hong Kong say that H1N1 has genetically mutated and is spreading among pigs in China.

According to a study publicly released this week by the University of Illinois, the New Madrid seismic zone is capable of producing a massive earthquake that could absolutely destroy portions of the central United States.

In fact, it is projected that a 7.7-magnitude earthquake along the New Madrid fault could leave 3,500 people dead, more than 80,000 injured and more than 7 million homeless.

A retired Texaco geologist-geophysicist says that the Gulf was and is tectonically active - and it is the likely origin for New Madrid seismic activity.

According to a lawsuit filed by the Federal Trade Commission in March, a gang of unknown thieves has stolen nearly $10 million using micro charges made to more than a million credit and debit cards in an elaborate multiyear scam.

The most important news for Tuesday, June 29th, 2010....

Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi says that the G8 nations "absolutely believe" Israel will attack Iran.

Arabic newspapers are circulating the rumor that Israel is massing warplanes in the Caucasus for an attack on Iran.

CIA Director Leon Panetta told ABC's This Week that Iran probably has enough low-enriched uranium for two nuclear weapons, but that it would probably take it two years to build the bombs.

Iran's president says his nation will retaliate if its cargo ships come under inspection by Israel and that it will delay resuming nuclear talks to teach the West some manners.

During a speech on Sunday, Sarah Palin accused Barack Obama of selling out Israel and of treating Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu shabbily.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said on Sunday that a CIA warning that Iran has enough uranium to build two atomic bombs was "worrying".

A top Hamas leader has warned Israel to expect more Gaza-bound pro-Palestinian flotillas over the next two months.

Israel’s Ambassador to the United States Michael Oren is reported to have told Israeli diplomats that relations between the U.S. and Israel are experiencing a "tectonic rift".

The key nuclear threat that Iran poses to the world, according to former President Bill Clinton, is the risk that it may sell dangerous materials that could be used in suitcase bombs.

North Korea said on Monday that it must bolster its nuclear capability in a "newly developed way" to cope with what it sees as hostile U.S. policy and military threats amid tensions over the deadly sinking of a South Korean warship.

In a 5 to 4 decision, the Supreme Court ruled on Monday that a state law school can kick a Christian student group off campus that does not allow gay students and other non-Christians to be full members of the group.

A divided U.S. Supreme Court also ruled that the constitutional right to bear arms binds states and cities, as well as the federal government, in a decision that raises questions about gun laws around the country.

A "significant" amount of emulsified oil has washed ashore in Mississippi for the first time since the massive Gulf of Mexico oil spill began 10 weeks ago, state officials said on Sunday.

The most important news for Monday, June 28th, 2010....

Leaders at the G20 summit in Toronto, Canada agreed to ambitious targets for getting deficits under control, pledging to cut them in half by 2013.

Hundreds were arrested and police fired tear gas at demonstrators outside of the G20 meetings on Sunday.

There are reports that even mainstream journalists are being beaten, arrested and shot with rubber bullets outside the G20 meetings.

It is being reported that during the G20 meetings the Americans warned the EU of the dangers of a double dip recession if all countries started to rein back spending at once.

According to one major U.K. newspaper, U.S. Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke is waging an epochal battle behind the scenes for control of U.S. monetary policy, struggling to overcome resistance from regional Fed hawks for further possible stimulus to prevent a deflationary spiral.

Barack Obama, fresh from a win on a sweeping overhaul of Wall Street regulations, is urging Congress to take up his proposal for a $90 billion, 10-year tax on banks as the next step in reform.

Could the BP oil catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico result in the destruction of an entire U.S. city?

Palestinian Chief Negotiator Saeb Erekat is warning that the Palestinian Authority was founded to establish the institutions for a Palestinian state, "not to keep Israel as a source of authority forever".

Turkey recently prevented an Israel Defense Forces aircraft making its way to Poland from flying in its airspace.

U.S. Senator Robert Byrd, the longest-serving member of Congress, was admitted to a Washington-area hospital last week and is considered "seriously ill".

North Korea is demanding that the U.S. government pay nearly $65 trillion in compensation for six decades of hostility.

The Obama administration has announced its appointment of 13 White House fellows – and the first person featured on its short list is a Muslim attorney who specializes in transaction that comply with Shariah law.

A police officer in Oklahoma recently tasered an 86-year-old disabled grandma in her bed and stepped on her oxygen hose until she couldn't breathe because they considered her to be a "threat".

An attorney representing a police officer caught on tape almost two years ago viciously assaulting an Iraq war veteran suggested in court recently that his client had, perhaps out of "compassion," used "too little" force against the unarmed man lying on the ground before him in video released online.

There is a report that the Obama administration is set to propose a new system for authenticating people, organizations and infrastructure on the Internet.

It is being reported that a 6-year-old girl from Ohio is on the "no fly" list maintained by U.S. Homeland Security.

In a new YouTube video, Arizona's governor is openly calling Barack Obama out on the issue of border security.

It is being reported that the state of Florida is preparing a bill modeled after Arizona’s new immigration law that would further control the flow of illegal immigrants into the coastal state.

Senate Democrats claim that they have found "a surefire way" to force Republicans to support a sweeping climate and energy bill that directly addresses "greenhouse gas emissions".

Is the little country of Ecuador rapidly becoming dominated by communist China?

Researchers at Harvard’s Wyss Institute have combined microfabrication techniques from the computer industry with modern tissue engineering techniques, human cells and a plain old vacuum pump to create a living, breathing human lung-on-a-chip.

Grasshoppers have descended upon rural Waterford, California in "biblical" proportions, chewing through virtually plant that they can find.

On Saturday, a strong 6.9-magnitude earthquake struck near the Solomon Islands in the western Pacific.

The Food and Drug Administration is seriously considering whether to approve the first genetically engineered animal that people would eat — salmon that can grow at twice the normal rate.

A new study by Brazil's Ministry of Health has revealed that in the 10 most populous cities of Brazil, the rate of HIV infection among homosexuals is over 10%.

Now even Fox News is publishing articles that announce what a great thing it is that the amount of literature available for "gay teens" has exploded. 

An unexplained creature was recently photographed in one East Texas neighborhood.

A small Arizona restaurant found itself at the center of a nationwide backlash that included a bomb threat after it announced plans to offer lion burgers this week as part of a World Cup promotion.

One California couple recently attempted to sell their 6-month-old baby for $25 outside a Wal-mart.

Lastly, many atheist scientists are now admitting that life is so improbable, and the physical characteristics of the universe are so finely tuned to accommodate it, that in some sense the universe "knew we were coming" - and yet they will not admit that God exists.

The most important news for Friday, June 25th, 2010....

Texas A&M University oceanography professor John Kessler says that methane gas levels in some areas of the Gulf of Mexico are "astonishingly high".

There are reports coming out of the Gulf coast region of oil-coated dolphins washing up on shore and of sea turtles being burned alive by BP during oil cleanup operations.

Many parts of Pensacola beach have now turned black as the oil begins to pour in.

Workers cleaning up the BP oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico have reported suffering from flu-like symptoms that may be the consequence of exposure to chemicals in the oil as well as the petroleum-derived solvents being used to disperse the spill.

Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal had harsh words for federal government authorities after sand-dredging operations to protect the state's coastline from the BP oil disaster were halted due to environmental concerns.

Oil spill fears have absolutely devastated housing prices along the Gulf coast.

A federal judge in New Orleans has refused to delay his decision to strike down a six-month moratorium on deepwater drilling.

A tropical storm that has dumped heavy rain on parts of the Caribbean has a chance of forming into a much stronger storm and could head into the oil-tainted Gulf of Mexico by next week.

A survey of the natural gas field off the shore of Haifa has revealed that the gas reserves are so large that they could allow Israel to be self-sufficient in energy for two decades.

Forbes Magazine is declaring that "There Will Be War" in the Middle East.

It is being reported that Israeli preparations for the arrival of the Lebanese and Iranian provocation flotillas are very similar to war preparations.

Iran's nuclear chief has announced that his country has produced 17 kilograms of uranium enriched to 20 percent, defying U.N. demands to halt the controversial program.

Authorities in the United Arab Emirates have closed down 40 companies for selling products to Iran or dealing with the country’s Revolutionary Guards in violation of UN sanctions.

June has now become the deadliest month of the Afghan war for coalition troops.

Did the whole Stanley McChrystal episode truly reveal that Barack Obama's inner circle really does not have a clue when it comes to dealing with the military?

Leaders of the world's major industrial countries, representing 85 percent of the global economy, are arriving in Canada for the G20 summit starting on Friday.

The current lack of sunspots has many scientists wondering if we are seeing the "calm before the storm".

Japanese households are being urged to go to bed one hour earlier than normal in order to help tackle climate change.

Is a new method being used to drill for gas in America causing toxic streams, ruined aquifers, dying livestock, brutal illnesses, and kitchen sinks that burst into flame?

According to a new report, Americans spend twice as much as residents of other developed countries on healthcare, but get lower quality and far less efficiency.

The World Health Organization is pushing hard to impose global consumer taxes to help fund its various programs, including a new proposal that would tax the internet in order to pay for vaccines and other pharmaceutical medicines for third-world countries.

Whooping cough is now an epidemic in California, and is on pace to break a 50-year record for infections for the year.

A 16-year-old girl lost nearly all of her vision after receiving the second course of the HPV vaccine.

A team of researchers has discovered what may be the world's largest dinosaur graveyard, and they say that it looks like they were killed "by a flood".

Scientists are telling us that "quantum computers" have the potential to solve problems that would take a classical computer longer than the age of the universe.

Egypt has announced that an ancient city from 3,500 years ago – at the height of the Jewish People’s enslavement there – has been discovered by radar.

Lastly, it has come out that a Portland massage therapist gave local police a detailed statement last year alleging that former Vice President Al Gore groped her, kissed her and made unwanted sexual advances during a late-night massage session.

The most important news for Thursday, June 24th, 2010....

Barack Obama named General David Petraeus as the top military commander in Afghanistan on Wednesday after he relieved General Stanley McChrystal for disparaging comments that McChrystal and his staff had made about senior administration officials in a magazine article.

A source close to General Stanley McChrystal says that during Wednesday's White House meeting between the general and Obama, McChrystal briefly explained the magazine article at the center of the controversy and took responsibility, then offered his resignation. Obama then reportedly accepted the resignation.

Tens of thousands of gallons more oil gushed into the Gulf of Mexico after a gas problem forced BP to remove a cap that was containing some of the oil.

Scientists said on Tuesday that as much as 1 million times the normal level of methane gas has been found in some regions near the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, enough to potentially deplete oxygen and create a dead zone.

The CDC is warning "everyone, including pregnant women" to avoid areas affected by the oil spill.

More than nine miles of white shoreline and beaches near Pensacola, Florida are now soaked with syrupy oil.

The U.S. federal government has shut down the dredging that was being done to create protective sand berms in the Gulf of Mexico. 

Is it starting to "rain oil" in some areas of Louisiana?

Is the Gulf of Mexico oil spill going to end up being the greatest disaster in U.S. history up to this point?

U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar says that he will issue a new order imposing a moratorium on deepwater drilling after a federal judge struck down the existing one.

Horrific flooding in Brazil has killed at least 42 people and has left at least 115,000 homeless.

A 14,000-acre wildfire continues to rage violently across the state of Arizona.

IDF Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi said on Tuesday that Israel must not allow Gaza to become an Iranian port.

High concentrations of U.S. and Israeli forces on army and air bases in Azerbaijan have Iranian forces on war alert.

According to one new report, Israeli Air force aircraft landed during the past weekend at a military base in Saudi Arabia and unloaded large quantities of military gear.

It has been announced that the Bushehr nuclear plant in Iran will go into operation in mid-September.

An Arabic children's choir has been racking up views all over the world with the new YouTube hit "when we die as martyrs, we will go to heaven".

In May, sales of new homes in the United States dropped to the lowest level on record.

The median price of new homes sold in May was $200,900, down less than 1% from April but a 9.6% drop from May 2009.

In addition, figures for the prior two months were revised down sharply.

Also, existing home sales in May were far below expectations.

The sales of foreclosures and other distressed sales, which tend to push down home prices, slipped to 31 percent last month compared with 33 percent in April.

The Congressional Budget Office is projecting that the final bill for the bailouts of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac could be as high as $389 billion.

The new government is the U.K. has unveiled a spate of severe budget cuts and brutal tax increases.

George Soros says that Germany could end up causing the collapse of the Euro.

Toyota and Honda have announced that they have stopped production at some of their car assembly plants in southern China after parts suppliers were hit by more labor unrest.

Google triumphed in a nasty, three-year war with Viacom on Wednesday as a federal court ruled that Google's YouTube subsidiary is not liable for its users' copyright infringements.

An increasing number of U.S. cities are becoming absolutely overwhelmed by debt.

The state of California is considering a plan that would turn car license plates into ad space.

A proposed New York law would take DNA samples from all criminals.

With her confirmation hearing less than a week away, Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan is facing attacks from Republican critics over newly released documents that show she briefly suspended on-campus military recruitment when she was dean of Harvard Law School in 2005.

It is being reported that U.S. officials recently told a Houston newspaper that a Mexican drug cartel called the Zetas plotted to blow up Falcon dam and kill tens of thousands of Americans.

Even back in 2004, Barack Obama advocated "trading" border security for amnesty for illegal aliens.

The CIA has hired Xe Services, the private security firm formerly known as Blackwater Worldwide, to guard its facilities in Afghanistan and elsewhere.

A team at Harvard's Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering, Harvard Medical School and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute has created nanodevices made of DNA that self-assemble and can be programmed to move and change shape on demand.

The Economist says that every genome on the planet "is now up for grabs" - including those that do not yet exist.

Children in India are being blinded and crippled by high levels of fluoride in the water.

A deadly bat disease that has killed more than 1 million bats with a mortality rate close to 100 percent continues to sweep across the United States.

Parents were outraged after young teenagers were instructed on how to perform graphic sexual acts during a Planned Parenthood sex education class at a local high school in Shenandoah, Iowa.

One elementary school in Massachusetts has adopted a condom distribution policy that begins as early as first grade.

On Wednesday, the U.S. Labor Department announced on Wednesday a new order that would extend federally guaranteed family and medical benefits to gay couples who work for private as well as federal employers.

The earliest known icons of four of Christ's apostles have been found adorning an elaborately decorated chamber in a catacomb beneath the streets of Rome.

Lastly, according to a new poll, more than 40 percent of Americans believe that Jesus Christ will return to Earth by the year 2050.

The most important news for Wednesday, June 22nd, 2010....

Barack Obama said on Tuesday that General Stanley McChrystal, the top military commander in the Afghanistan war, "showed poor judgment" during an interview with Rolling Stone in which McChrystal and his staff made negative comments about the president and his national security team — including a reference to Vice President Biden as "Bite Me."  Obama says that McChrystal's fate will be decided soon.

According to McChrystal, Obama looked "uncomfortable and intimidated" when dealing with a roomful of military brass.

It is being reported that McChrystal is prepared to resign if he believes that Barack Obama has lost confidence in him.

An oil worker who survived the Deepwater Horizon explosion says that weeks before the blast he informed BP and Transocean, the rig’s owner, about a leak on the rig’s blow-out preventer, and he says that it was switched off rather than repaired.

There are increasing concerns that any effort to stop the damaged BP well from leaking oil into the Gulf of Mexico could cause a blowout in the underground portion of the well.

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs says that Barack Obama plans to appeal a federal judge's ruling to strike down a six-month moratorium on deepwater oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico.

The seafood industry in the Gulf of Mexico is literally being destroyed.

BP has responded to claims that the Gulf oil leak could lead to a "methane bubble tsunami".

The Gulf oil spill is playing havoc with real estate prices in the region.

Wildlife workers have rescued more than 500 turtles from the oil spill. Just one in five comes out alive because there is too much oil.

A man says that he found oil inside his oysters while eating at a restaurant located north of Charlotte this weekend.

It turns out that BP CEO Tony Hayward cashed in about a third of his holding in the company one month before a well on the Deepwater Horizon rig burst.

It has been revealed that Goldman Sachs sold 58% of its shares in BP between January and March of this year.

It is now being projected that the 2010 hurricane season will be quite extreme, with 18-21 named storms now in the forecast.

The first storm of the Atlantic hurricane season may enter the Gulf of Mexico as soon as next week.

A former Shell executive is predicting that blackouts and gas lines are on the way.

There is a report that the U.S.-led naval armada in the Persian Gulf has been conducting drills which simulate bombing Iranian targets.

On June 18th, two Christians decided that they would peacefully pass out copies of the gospel of John on a public sidewalk outside a public Arab festival in Dearborn, and within 3 minutes 8 policemen surrounded them and placed them under arrest.

Iranian police have issued warnings to 62,000 women who were "badly veiled" in the Shiite holy province of Qom as part of a clampdown on dress and behavior.

The price of gold reached a new record of $1,266.50 an ounce in New York on Tuesday before slipping slightly.

U.S. existing home sales experienced a dramatic decline during the month of May.

More than a third of the 1.24 million borrowers who have enrolled in Barack Obama's $75 billion mortgage modification program have dropped out.

Reuters is reporting that Chinese state-owned banks have been aggressively buying dollars.

According to a new report, China's manufacturing sector is on the brink of passing the manufacturing sector of the United States.

Is another "flash crash" coming?  Some market pros think so.

Are there indications that the next big Wikileaks revelation will involve the top secret Echelon system?  The Echelon system is the US/UK electronic spying network which eavesdrops on virtually all worldwide communications traffic.

The amount of security for the upcoming G20 summit in Toronto, Canada is absolutely stunning.

It is being reported that several U.S. Senators have learned of a possible plan by the Obama Administration that would provide mass amnesty for all illegal aliens.

Federal agents say that Mexican drug cartels have set up shop on American soil, maintaining lookout bases in strategic locations in the hills of southern Arizona from which their scouts can monitor every move made by law enforcement officials.

Arizona cops are being increasingly threatened by drug cartel snipers along the Mexican border.

Residents of Fremont, Nebraska, on Monday voted in favor of a measure that makes it illegal to harbor, hire, or rent property to an illegal immigrant.

In the middle of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill crisis, Barack Obama has decided to declare war - on the state of Arizona.

The New York Post says that it is time for the U.S. government "to stop importing terrorists".

Senator Kyl claims that Barack Obama told him that he's not securing the U.S. border on purpose.

In order to protect the new national health care law from legal challenges, the Obama administration has been forced to argue that the individual mandate represents a tax, even though Obama himself argued the exact opposite while campaigning to pass the legislation.

Barack Obama is warning U.S. health insurance firms not to use his healthcare overhaul as an opportunity to push through big rate increases and said the federal government would work with states to monitor them.

Australians would be forced to install anti-virus and firewall software on their computers before being allowed to connect to the Internet under a new plan to fight cyber crime.

IBM has revealed the biggest artificial brain of all time, a simulation run by a 147,456-processor supercomputer that requires millions of watts of electricity and over 150,000 gigabytes of memory.

A new study claims that just one hour's listening to an MP3 player can damage hearing.

The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that Monsanto can sell genetically modified seeds before safety tests on them are completed.

Brazilian officials are scrambling to get food and medical aid to two flood-hit Brazilian states where floods have ripped through towns, killing at least 41 people and driving 120,000 from their homes.

Lastly, approximately 20,000 pagan revellers recently descended on Stonehenge to mark the summer solstice.

The most important news for Tuesday, June 22nd, 2010....

CBS News is reporting that the oil well spewing in the Gulf of Mexico could contain as much as 1 billion barrels of oil and could keep flowing for more than a decade.

An increasing number of frustrated Gulf coast residents have decided to take it upon themselves to stop the oil that is headed towards their homes and businesses.

There are increasing concerns that oil spill containment efforts are actually putting more stress and more pressure on the damaged well.

Are fissures and cracks appearing on the ocean floor around the damaged wellhead?

Scientists say that the massive amount of methane being released by the oil spill is a serious threat to all sea creatures living in the Gulf.

Many are now openly wondering why Barack Obama turned down offers of help from other nations to help deal with the oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico.

Sarah Palin and the Obama administration are exchanging barbs over the BP oil spill crisis.

MSNBC host Mika Brzezinski recently admitted on air that she was repeating White House talking points she had been advised to include in the channel’s news programming regarding the ongoing BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

Will North America be facing years of toxic rain because of the poisonous chemical dispersants BP is using to control the Gulf of Mexico oil spill?

BP CEO Tony Hayward is set for a massive 10.8 million pound ($16 million) payout if he chooses to step down.

It is being reported that three days after the Deepwater Horizon platform sank to the floor of the Gulf of Mexico the Dutch government called Obama and offered to loan BP ships outfitted with oil-skimming booms, and a plan to quickly build sand barriers to protect the marshlands.

BP has insisted all along that if everything else fails, the "relief well" being drilled with solve the problem.  Well, it turns out that the relief well is not guaranteed to work either.

National Geographic is reporting that the oil leak in the Gulf could end up lasting "for years".

An oil spill off the Egyptian Red Sea coast of Hurghada threatening to damage marine life in the area has prompted environmental agencies to demand tighter regulation of offshore oil platforms.

Representatives from Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran are planning a high level conference to discuss "a possible Israeli strike in Iran or southern Lebanon".

Another blockade-busting ship with a team of all-female activists could be bound for Gaza within a few days after Lebanese authorities granted permission Monday for it to sail first to Cyprus.

U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates is refusing to address the notion of having to contain a nuclear armed Iran, saying that U.S. efforts were aimed at preventing Iran from acquiring atomic weapons.

The U.S. is warning Pakistan that a recently signed gas pipeline deal with Iran could run afoul of new sanctions being finalized in Congress.

China has angered the United States with plans to build two nuclear reactors in Pakistan, despite fears over the country's political stability.

South Korea's Science Ministry said on Monday that abnormal radiation was detected near the inter-Korean border days after North Korea claimed last month to have achieved a nuclear technology breakthrough.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev says that Russia is very concerned over the currency fluctuation rate of the euro and hopes that the European currency will stabilize soon.

It is being reported that Germany and France are examining ways of creating a "two-tier" euro system to separate stronger northern European countries from weaker southern states.

The state government of California is projected to have a budget deficit of at least 19 billion dollars this year, and next year the budget gap is projected to grow to 37 billion dollars.

Many U.S. states are acknowledging this year that they have promised pensions that they cannot afford and are cutting benefits to appease taxpayers and attack budget deficits.

Obama's labor chief says that illegal aliens have a right to fair wages.

According to newly disclosed emails, Rahm Emanuel, then a congressman in Illinois, apparently attempted to trade favors with embattled Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich while he was in office.

It is being reported that Rahm Emanuel, the White House chief of staff, is expected to leave his job later this year after growing tired of the "idealism" of Barack Obama's inner circle.

Arizona Governor Jan Brewer has refused to flinch after Obama administration officials confirmed that they plan to file a lawsuit challenging the state's anti-illegal immigration law.

The Democrats are spending tens of millions of dollars to lure young voters back to the polls for the upcoming mid-term elections.

Police tactical teams have been practicing with plastic bullets and tear gas at a Canadian military base near Toronto in case protesters at the G8 and G20 summits turn violent.

Experts are warning that NATO governments and the public must wake up to the threat of cyberattacks, which could paralyze a nation far more easily than conventional warfare.

It is being reported that up to 77 million Bangladeshis have been exposed to toxic levels of arsenic from contaminated drinking water.

A dangerous fungus that attacks wheat and barley crops has popped up in eastern Idaho.

The first hurricane of the 2010 Pacific season formed in the eastern Pacific Ocean near Mexico on Sunday but was headed away from land.

A tornado plowed through downtown Billings, Montana on Sunday afternoon.

One organization in the U.K. wants to dump thousands of tons of iron into the sea in an attempt to cut global warming by sucking carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

New research has found that just half an hour spent on your cell phone every day could raise your risk of developing brain cancer by as much as 40 percent.

Psychotropic drug abuse in foster care is costing the government billions of dollars.

Russian scientists have developed a brain-computer interface.

Experts including three Nobel laureates and Richard Dawkins, the prominent atheist, are calling on the U.K. government to make teaching of the theory of evolution a compulsory part of the curriculum.

A Miami Beach chihuahua may end up inheriting millions of dollars.

Lastly, a French prisoner recently killed his cellmate then sliced open his chest to remove and eat his heart, but ate his lung instead.

The most important news for Monday, June 21st, 2010....

As oil continued to gush violently into the Gulf of Mexico, Barack Obama hit the golf course on Saturday with Joe Biden.

BP chief executive Tony Hayward has come under fire for spending one recent afternoon watching his yacht take part in a race instead of coordinating the company's response to the Gulf oil spill.

According to an internal BP document released Sunday by U.S. Representative Edward Markey, BP believes that if the blowout preventer and wellhead were removed, the "worst-case scenario" would be 4.2 million gallons of oil per day escaping into the Gulf of Mexico.

According to some geologists, BP's operations in the Gulf of Mexico set into motion a series of events that may be irreversible.

Could the huge quantities of methane that have entered the Gulf of Mexico potentially create "dead zones" where oxygen is so depleted that nothing lives.

More than twelve United States Naval warships and at least one Israeli ship crossed the Suez Canal towards the Red Sea on Friday.  There is speculation that the vessels are headed towards Iran.

U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates says that Iran could shower Europe with "scores or even hundreds" of missiles in a single attack.

Violence in the Iraqi capital of Baghdad in recent days has claimed dozens of lives and injured scores more, the country's security officials say.

A new global poll shows that majorities in many Western and some Muslim countries are willing to consider military action against Iran to prevent the Islamic republic from obtaining nuclear weapons.

Turkey is vowing to fight Kurdish rebels until they are "annihilated".

The cost of bailing out Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac is rapidly escalating.

Is the state of California on the verge of bankruptcy?

The U.S. Senate has voted down a proposed extension of unemployment benefits for workers who have been jobless for nearly two years.

The total number of U.S. bank failures this year has risen to 83.

Barack Obama has welcomed China's announcement that it will allow the exchange rate of its currency, the yuan, to become more flexible.

The U.S. government says that it has "smashed" the world’s biggest drugs and money laundering "super cartel" in Colombia.

U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano says that fighting "home-grown terrorism" by monitoring internet communications is a civil liberties trade-off the U.S. government must make to beef up national security.

U.S. Census workers are finding out that Americans are becoming increasingly angry at the government.

A new law being pushed through the U.S. Congress will give Barack Obama a "kill switch" which will enable him to completely shut down the Internet during times of national emergency.

One out of every three secondary schools in the U.K. is forcing children to swipe their fingerprints just to register in class or take out library books.

Bill Gates, Melinda Gates, and Warren Buffett claim that they are asking the nation's billionaires to pledge to give at least half their net worth to charity.

A gunman attacked his 29-year-old stepdaughter's family as they ate lunch at a California restaurant, killing her husband and 6-year-old son, wounding the woman and another child, and then fatally shooting himself.

It turns out that the federal government awarded a staggering $54 million in "stimulus cash" to Connecticut's politically-connected Mohegan Indian tribe, which runs one of the highest grossing casinos in the country.

Teachers and staff at one elementary school in Kansas City have expressed concerns about the number of cancer cases that have appeared at the school since a cell phone tower was installed nearby.

Professor Frank Fenner, emeritus professor of microbiology at the Australian National University, is predicting that the human race will be extinct within the next 100 years.

Time Magazine has published a new article which discusses the "risks and rewards" of synthetic biology.

Officials estimate that more than 10 million people in nine provinces have been affected by continuing flooding in southern China.

A U.S. federal court panel has decided "to allow" a Sudanese Christian pastor to distribute religious literature and discuss his Christian faith to Muslims attending a large Arab festival while his case is pending on appeal.

Lastly, Turkish inventor Attila Alperen, the founder and chairman of The Alperen Group of Companies, has announced that he is now ready to go to market with an ultra high efficient motor and generator technology his group has developed.

The most important news for Friday, June 18th, 2010....

The judge that BP wants to hear an estimated 200 lawsuits over the Gulf of Mexico oil disaster gets tens of thousands of dollars a year in oil royalties and is paid travel expenses to industry conferences.

The Louisiana Environmental Action Network is reporting that British Petroleum is threatening to fire fishermen hired to help with the oil spill cleanup for using respirators or other safety equipment that wasn't provided by the company.

One prominent health expert says that BP is "running the Gulf region like a prison warden".

BP is admitting that oil is escaping from the leak at such high pressure that if they try to cap it the entire well may blow.

Carl-Henric Svanberg, the BP chairman, has apologized for referring to those affected by the Gulf of Mexico oil spill as "small people".

BP says that the dispersant chemicals that it is using are safe, but the EPA is not so sure.

Some are warning that the dispersants that BP is using, when combined with oil, are going to create an ecological disaster of unprecedented magnitude.

Sea creatures all along the Gulf of Mexico are gathering along shore in an attempt to get away from the massive oil spill spreading through the Gulf.

A dead whale has been found floating in the Gulf of Mexico 77 miles south of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill site.

Twitter and Facebook users were not impressed by Barack Obama’s speech on Tuesday night about the BP oil spill.

It is being reported that oil from the spill is already in the Gulf Stream and could reach North Carolina beaches any day.

A nationwide alert has been issued for 17 members of the Afghan military who have gone AWOL from a Texas Air Force base where foreign military officers who are training to become pilots are taught English.

Turkey has launched a plan to campaign on all fronts for a worldwide boycott of Israel and has decided to introduce sanctions leading to the severance of bilateral relations with Israel.

While the IDF continued Wednesday to track the Iranian ships en route to the Gaza Strip, the Israeli Navy was put on high alert amid fears that another flotilla would be launched from Lebanon.

Syrian President Bashar Assad said Thursday that Israel is being run by a "pyromaniac government", warning that its raid on an aid flotilla bound for the Gaza Strip had increased the risks of war in the region.

The Red Cross says that days of massive violence in Kyrgyzstan have sparked an "immense crisis" in the area.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton says that the Justice Department will sue over Arizona's controversial law cracking down on illegal immigration.

According to a new Washington Post poll, 58 percent of Americans support the new Arizona law.

The Obama administration is reorganizing the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency so that it focuses less on illegal alien deportations and more on criminal investigations and other duties.

An explosion of drug violence in Mexico has killed hundreds of people in the past five days and prompted the country's president to issue a 5,000-word manifesto warning that the fight against organized crime must continue "or we will always live in fear."

The number of people filing new claims for jobless benefits in the U.S. jumped sharply last week.

More than 90 U.S. banks and thrifts missed making their May 17th TARP payments to the U.S. government.

Is the U.S. on the verge of another major housing collapse?

The Obama administration more than doubled U.S. government spending on cycling and walking initiatives to $1.2 billion last year as it seeks to coax Americans out of their cars.

Michael Pento says that the U.S. debt bomb's detonation has been sped up by five years.

Is Spain about to become Europe's biggest financial problem?

Spain has upped the ante in a high-stakes poker game with Germany, pushing for the release of EU stress test results for major banks in a move that risks precipitiating a dramatic escalation of Europe's financial crisis.

A group of 100 Italian economists has written an open letter warning that the EU austerity policies being imposed on Southern Europe may tip the region into a downward spiral.

All across Africa, new tracks are being laid, highways are being built, ports are being deepened and commercial contracts are being signed - not by the United States - but rather by communist China.

Russian police have seized 100,000 copies of a book critical of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin that activists planned to hand out at the Saint Petersburg International Economic Forum.

Has Barack Obama become the most unpopular man in Britain?

The Prince of Wales has come under fire after using a speech on Islam and environmentalism as an opportunity to call for a reduction in the world’s birth rate, especially among Muslims.

Cambridge professor Nicholas Boyle says that only the introduction of global governance can save humanity from an era of poverty and violence.

Scientists have created a genetically modified "monster salmon" which grows three times as fast as normal salmon.

New "Conservative" U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron has pledged his support for gay rights and recently invited a number of gay celebrities to party with him down on Downing Street.

An abortion pill that is "effective" for five days after unprotected sex earned the unanimous endorsement of a Food and Drug Administration advisory panel on Thursday.

According to a newly released report, more than $1 billion in U.S. taxpayer dollars have gone to abortion advocacy organizations over the past eight years.

There has been a rash of really bizarre plagues around the world recently.

 A new "AIDS-like disease" has appeared in China.

Russia's most northern active volcano is churning out ash to a height of 13,000 feet in the country's Far East.

Lastly, a Southwest Airlines employee called police after finding "40 to 60" human heads in a package set to be transported to a Fort Worth medical research company.

The most important news for Thursday, June 17th, 2010....

Barack Obama announced on Wednesday that BP will finance a $20 billion fund to compensate people whose livelihoods have been damaged by the devastating oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

Businessweek is reporting that the oil spill may drive down the Gulf Coast’s shore-area property values by 10 percent for at least three years.

The are an increasing number of reports that seem to indicate that the Gulf of Mexico oil spill is making a lot of people really sick.

Barack Obama is warning that the oil spill "epidemic" in the Gulf of Mexico might last for years.

As oil from the massive Deepwater Horizon slick in the Gulf of Mexico laps at Louisiana’s shores and tar balls wash up on beaches in the Florida Keys, saltwater-dependent power plants on the Gulf Coast are preparing for the worst.

In Florida, Okaloosa County commissioners are defying BP and the federal government and have voted unanimously to give their emergency management team the power to take whatever action it deems necessary to prevent oil from the Deepwater Horizon spill from entering Choctawhatchee Bay through the East Pass.

House Republican Leader John Boehner says that Barack Obama is exploiting the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico by using it to push his cap and trade carbon trading scheme.

Bill Gates is trying to use the BP oil spill to convince Congress to increase annual U.S. spending on clean energy research and development from $5 billion to $16 billion.

North Korea says that a war with South Korea could erupt at any time.

The IDF said on Tuesday that the United Nations will transfer to Gaza tons of aid supplies that were on board the flotilla of aid ships intercepted two weeks ago.

A second Iranian "aid ship" is getting ready to depart for Gaza.

A Turkish pro-Palestinian group said on Wednesday it will send another aid flotilla to Gaza next month.

Deputy Commander of the Israeli Navy Rear-Admiral Rani Ben-Yehuda says that the Israeli navy will operate under the assumption that groups of provocateurs are aboard any future ships that try to break the Israel-imposed sea blockade on the Gaza Strip.

Russia has announced that it will offer advanced S-300 surface-to-air missile systems to Turkey. 

The Russians have rolled out a new super-silet nuclear attack submarine.

Are there indications that the next stage of the housing crisis is about ready to begin?

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are to be delisted from the New York Stock Exchange because of stock prices trading under $1 per share for more than 30 trading days.

George Soros says that a European recession next year is "almost inevitable".

Standard & Poor’s says that a wave of maturing debt may "wash away" some speculative-grade U.S. companies as Europe’s sovereign crisis pushes up borrowing costs and credit markets freeze.

According to figures from the U.S. Commerce Department, housing starts in the United States fell 10 percent in May, the biggest decline since March 2009.  The data also revealed that single-family home starts suffered the biggest drop since 1991.

French workers have erupted in fury over the decision to raise France's retirement age from 60 to 62.

The U.K.'s  new Office for Budget Responsibility has announced that the U.K. economy, more damaged by the banking crisis than previously admitted, will grow more weakly and may never fully recover.

21.5% of working-age residents of the U.K. do not have a job.

The Bank of England is about to get a lot more power.

Spanish banks are borrowing record amounts of money from the European Central Bank as the country's financial institutions struggle to gain funding from the international capital markets.

It turns out that the country with the most debt in Europe is actually Germany.

One sheriff in Arizona is publicly saying that Mexican drug cartels totally control some areas of the state, and he made the following statement during a news conference that is making headlines all over the country: "We are outgunned, we are outmanned and we don't have the resources here locally for us to fight this."

Obama has signed an executive order that appoints members to a new government "behavior modification" committee set up by the Democrats' new health law that will evaluate, make recommendations about and establish rules for everything from how people exercise to whether they smoke to the food they eat and the medicines they use.

Gary Faulkner, the American man arrested in Pakistan while hunting for Osama bin Laden, has been moved to Islamabad by the Pakistani government.