Armed westerners have been filmed on the front line with rebels near Misrata in the first apparent confirmation that foreign special forces are playing an active role in the Libyan conflict.
Eight generals from embattled Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi's army have defected to Italy, the Italian Foreign Ministry told CNN Monday.
Is NATO preparing to hit Moammar Gadhafi harder than ever?
Most people do not realize it, but Yemen is coming apart at the seams right now.
An Israeli Cabinet minister says the civilized world must take joint action to avert the Iranian nuclear threat, including a pre-emptive strike if necessary.
The Muslim Brotherhood claims that it wants a diverse parliament after elections in September and is not seeking to impose Islamic law on Egypt, the head of the group's newly formed political party said in an interview.
On Saturday, before Songda degraded into a tropical storm, TEPCO said some reactor buildings were uncovered and radiation would spread due to the storm. “We have made utmost efforts, but we have not completed covering the damaged reactor buildings,” said an official at that time.
Within a 20 km radius around the stricken plant at Fukushima, a Chernobyl-style dead zone is developing, with levels of 1.48 million becquerels a square meter measured within that area.
Gasoline costs a dollar more per gallon than it did last Memorial Day.
The average Memorial Day cookout is going to cost 29 percent more this year than it did last year.
The Japanese earthquake and tsunami in March appears to have damaged the U.S. economy much more than expected.
High input prices, supply chain disruptions from the tsunami disaster in Japan and slowing demand from China have combined to brake manufacturing momentum in Europe, the United States and Asia in recent months.
Even the United Nations is now warning that the U.S. dollar could collapse.
Reports that Greece has not met any of the fiscal targets set by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the European Union (EU) as part of its 110 billion euros ($157 billion) bailout knocked down the euro Monday, as other countries in the euro zone are threatened with being dragged into the Greek morass.
The European Union is racing to draft a second bailout package for Greece to release vital loans next month and avert the risk of the euro zone country defaulting, EU officials said on Monday.
It is being reported that if a new Greek bailout package is approved, outside authorities will take over various functions related to tax collection (a big time problem in Athens) and privatizations.
The ECB owns 50 billion EUR worth of Greek bonds, and has loaned 90 billion EUR to Greek banks. A Greek default would compromise the balance sheet of the ECB.
Greek citizens are pulling billions out of their banks as the country descends into chaos.
Tens of thousands of Greeks vented their anger at the nation’s political classes in Athens on Sunday, staging the biggest in a week of protests as the government seeks backing for yet more austerity.
If Greece defaults, it is going to be a complete and total financial disaster.
Ireland may have to ask for another loan from the European Union and International Monetary Fund because it will struggle to return to debt markets to raise funds next year, a government minister said on Sunday.
The Bank of England's chief economist has admitted that the UK faces two "bleak" years as it grapples with inflation and economic adjustments.
China is stepping up buying in Japanese government bonds, particularly notes with less than one year to maturity, market players say, in what looks like a fresh drive to diversify its ballooning foreign reserves.
In a move that is certain to be detrimental to the American economy, President Barack Obama is personally pushing for Russia’s entry into the World Trade Organization, even working behind the scenes to resolve some of the outstanding issues.
Saudi Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal said Sunday that he wants oil prices to drop so that the United States and Europe don't accelerate efforts to wean themselves off his country's supply.
A weak dollar, mounting inflationary fears and skyrocketing gold and silver prices are prompting some states to convert precious metals into legal currencies.
China now consumes 53% of the world's cement.
The cost of airline travel has increased exponentially, mostly due to surcharges and fees which can add $500 or more to the price of round-trip airfare.
Is the U.S. Postal Service on the verge of collapse?
Sometimes controversial trends analyzer Gerald Celente is forecasting that a return to the gold standard will not be enough to save the U.S. economy from collapsing.
Sarah Palin told CNN on Monday that she plans to take her "One Nation" bus tour to Iowa, the state that votes first in the race for the Republican presidential nomination.
Texas Rep. Ron Paul performed well in the latest CNN poll of potential Republican primary voters.
Barack Obama is sending even more troops over to Iraq.
Iraqi cleric and militia leader Moqtada al-Sadr has threatened to take up arms against U.S. troops unless they leave the country by the end of the year.
An internal bulletin from the Kenyan National Security Intelligence Service, or NSIS, states that the Kenyan government in 2009 commissioned a cultural museum in the Obama home village of Kogelo to honor the "birthplace of President Barack Obama" and rededicate the tomb of his father, Barack Obama Sr.
African swine fever (ASF), a viral disease harmless to people but lethal to pigs, is likely to spread beyond Russia and the Caucasus region into Europe, the United Nations’ food agency said on Thursday.
The Church of Scotland is preparing for dozens of ministers to come out as homosexuals following a historic vote to allow practicing gay clergy.
Northern Europe is facing the worst drought it has seen in 35 years.
One U.S. Congressman is saying that we need to move our families out of the cities.
A study scheduled for publication in the Pace Environmental Law Review closely examined public information on 1,300 cases in which the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program compensated families. Significant brain injuries were found in compensated patients as a direct result of vaccinations. Eighty-three cases specifically resulted in autism and are being called, “the tip of the iceberg.”
Some authorities want to add lithium to our drinking water to "improve" our mental health.
It turns out that dancing at the Jefferson Memorial in Washington D.C. is illegal.
Chilling technology straight out of Minority Report that would subject Americans to pre-crime interrogations and physiological scans to detect “malintent” at sports stadiums, malls, airports and other public places has moved closer to being implemented after Homeland Security’s FAST program passed its first round of testing.
Lastly, starting next year all new cellphones will be required to contain a chip that will allow the president to broadcast "emergency alerts" to the cellphones whenever the president wants.
As day broke Thursday, people throughout the South began to survey the wreckage left behind after dozens of tornadoes ripped through six states killing hundreds of people.
The vast majority of fatalities from the tornadoes occurred in Alabama, where well over 100 people perished, said Yasamie August, Alabama Emergency Management Agency spokeswoman.
UK newspapers are reporting that British troops could be deployed to the Libyan border to guard refugees fleeing the Gaddafi regime.
World Bank President Robert Zoellick Thursday says that he hopes the institution will have a role in rebuilding Libya as it emerges from current unrest.
Syrian security forces have killed at least 500 civilians in a crackdown on a "peaceful democratic uprising", Syrian human rights organization Sawasiah said on Thursday.
Radiation readings at Japan’s Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear station have risen to the highest level since an earthquake and tsunami knocked out cooling systems.
In the first quarter of 2011, U.S. gross domestic product (GDP) only increased by 1.8 percent, significantly down from the 3.1 percent of growth in the last quarter of 2010.
The Labor Department says that new claims for unemployment benefits jumped 25,000 to a seasonally adjusted 429,000 for the week ending April 23. That's the highest total since late January.
After sifting through about one million applications, McDonald’s hired more than 60,000 workers nationwide in conjunction with its National Hiring Day earlier this month.
It turns out that it is now easier to get into Harvard than it is to get a job at McDonald's.
Wal-Mart says that their customers are running out of money.
Rampant inflation is starting to show up in a lot of different areas of the economy.
As gas prices approach record highs, gas-related thievery is on the rise.
Declining total gasoline stocks in the critical central U.S. Atlantic Coast region may be putting some in the U.S. Atlantic Coast gasoline market on edge as the country moves toward the high-demand summer gasoline season.
Gold settled at a fresh record high above $1,531 on Thursday, while silver soared to an all-time high, as a falling dollar and signs that the Federal Reserve would maintain a loose monetary policy boosted precious metals' appeal as a hedge against inflation and economic uncertainty.
Is the decline of the U.S. dollar about to accelerate?
House prices are falling again—and the decline is accelerating.
The battle over debit card fees is turning ugly.
If the U.S. economy get rid of all debt there would literally be no money.
If you break down the U.S. national debt, it comes to more than $45,000 per citizen, or almost $127,000 per taxpaying American.
State budget cuts will force Philadelphia's schools to lay off 3,820 employees - including 12% of the district's teachers - to close a gaping budget shortfall next year.
55% of Americans believe that the U.S. economy is either in a depression or a recession.
More Americans than ever are stockpiling food and emergency supplies.
In many areas, sales of guns and rifles are setting new records.
Standard and Poor's, one of the top credit rating agencies, is warning that the cost of rebuilding Japan could hit 50 trillion yen, and it has downgraded the outlook for Japan's debt rating from "stable" to "negative".
Are you against raising the debt ceiling? If so, according to former Bush Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill you are actually part of al-Qaeda.
In an effort to enhance online security and privacy, the Obama administration has proposed Americans obtain a single ID for all Internet sales and banking activity. But a new Rasmussen Reports poll finds most Americans want nothing to do with such an ID if the government is the one to issue it and hold the information.
Navigation device maker TomTom has apologized after getting busted for selling user data to local police in Europe.
It turns out that there are all kinds of problems with the "birth certificate" that Barack Obama has released.
Now Donald Trump wants Barack Obama to release his college records.
Fox News host Glenn Beck says that some of the so-called “birthers” are actually supporters of Barack Obama.
California’s AB 354 was passed in September of last year, making proof of whooping cough vaccinations mandatory for both public and private school students starting in the 2011-12 school year. However, health representatives told Mercury News that the law makes most students ineligible for attendance.
Superman renounces his U.S. citizenship in a new issue of Action Comics.
Belief in a god, or a supreme being, and some sort of afterlife is strong in many countries around the globe, according to a new Ipsos/Reuters poll.
A Methodist church in Ohio is publicly declaring that being gay is a gift from God.
Last week a group of pro-abortion activists vandalized and desecrated a Christian pro-life display students at Clarion University put up at their Pennsylvania campus.
Charlie Veitch, who many of you will know as the leader of the Love Police activist group, has been arrested by British police in a pre-crime raid on charges of “conspiracy to cause a public nuisance” at tomorrow’s Royal Wedding.
Lastly, Rev. David Wilkerson, founding pastor of Times Square Church in New York City and author of the well-known book The Cross and the Switchblade, was killed Wednesday in a head-on collision in Texas. He was 79.
The latest headlines from around the world - this is The Most Important News....
Rebel forces on Monday fought their way to the doorstep of Moammar Gadhafi's hometown of Sirte, a key government stronghold guarding the road to the capital Tripoli, their rapid advance built on powerful international airstrikes that have battered Gadhafi's air force, armor and troops.
Libya rebel official says rebels in "active discussions" to have sanctions lifted on purchases of crude from rebel-held east Libya.
The Libyan rebels in Benghazi said they have created a new national oil company to replace the corporation controlled by leader Muammar Qaddafi whose assets were frozen by the United Nations Security Council and have formed a central bank.
Libyan rebels say they have signed an oil contract with Qatar to export oil from rebel-held territory.
Russia said on Monday attacks on forces loyal to Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi amounted to intervention in a civil war and were not backed by the U.N. resolution authorizing no-fly zones.
In the first 24 hours of the Libyan attack, US B-2s dropped forty-five 2,000-pound bombs. These massive bombs, along with the Cruise missiles launched from British and French planes and ships, all contained depleted uranium (DU) warheads.
Syrian security forces flooded the restive cities of Daraa and Latakia on Monday, patrolling the streets, protecting government buildings and in at least one case clashing with protesters, according to witnesses.
On Sunday, Lieberman said that he would support military intervention in Syria if its president, Bashar al-Assad, resorts to the kind of violent tactics used in Libya.
The containment structure surrounding one of the reactors at a quake-battered nuclear power plant is damaged and may be leaking radioactive material, the Japanese government's point man on the crisis said Monday.
Japan on Sunday faced an increasing challenge of removing highly radioactive water found inside buildings near some troubled nuclear reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi plant, with the radiation level of the surface of the pool in the basement of the No. 2 reactor's turbine building found to be more than 1,000 millisieverts per hour.
Workers discovered new pools of radioactive water leaking from Japan's crippled nuclear complex, officials said Monday, as emergency crews struggled to pump out hundreds of tons of contaminated water and bring the plant back under control.
Plutonium has been discovered in the soil outside the Fukushima nuclear power plant.
The discovery of plutonium at five places within Japan's damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear complex will not cause work there to be suspended, plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co said on Tuesday.
For some stunning footage of the ruined reactors at Fukushima just check out this video.
A recent sample of rainwater in Boston showed very low concentrations of radiation, most likely from the damaged Japanese nuclear power power.
In Japan, radioactive cesium-137 is being released at 60% of the level that it was being released at during the Chernobyl disaster. Cesium-137 has a half-life of approximately 30 years. That means that all of this cesium is going to be with us for a very, very long time.
Is the nuclear disaster in Japan now worse than the Chernobyl disaster?
Some nuclear experts are now warning that a "worst case scenario" is going to eventually play out in Japan.
Goldman Sachs is ordering all of their employees to stay in Tokyo.
American companies are finding new overseas tax havens to legally protect some of their profits from the U.S. tax rate of 35 percent, among the highest in the world.
It is being alleged that General Electric is not paying any U.S. taxes.
Right now the New York Times and GE are engaged in a war of words over taxes.
There were 167,564 empty houses in Nevada last year, according to newly released U.S. Census data, more than double the number in 2000.
A recent job fair in Massachusetts was shut down because of a lack of jobs.
Despite the overall job gains posted last year, companies continued to eliminate management positions, with about 550,000 being lost.
With nearly 14 million unemployed workers in America, many have gotten so desperate that they're willing to work for free.
Employee loyalty is at a three-year low, but many employers are precariously unaware of the morale meltdown, according to a study out today.
In 2009, the richest 5 percent claimed 63.5 percent of the nation’s wealth. The overwhelming majority, the bottom 80 percent, collectively held just 12.8 percent.
Consumer spending rose in February at the fastest pace in four months, but a big part of the increase went to higher gasoline prices.
The FDIC has announced the following: "From December 31, 2010 through December 31, 2012, all noninterest-bearing transaction accounts are fully insured, regardless of the balance of the account and the ownership capacity of the funds. This coverage is available to all depositors, including consumers, businesses, and government entities. The unlimited coverage is separate from, and in addition to, the insurance coverage provided for a depositor’s other accounts held at an FDIC-insured bank."
According to a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey released Monday, 46 percent of Americans say they prefer President Barack Obama's approach on budget negotiations, with 45 percent saying they prefer congressional Republicans' approach to the tough choices involved in both cutting programs to reduce the deficit and at the same time maintain needed federal programs.
As if fuel taxes and rising gas prices weren't causing enough pain at the pump, Democrats seeking to raise new revenues to support federal spending on highway maintenance are considering taxing motorists for the number of miles they drive.
Deutsche Bank's Chief Economist Charles Mayer says that given the recent election results in Germany, where German Chancellor Angela Merkel's party was trounced, it will be difficult for Germany to approve another debt bailout. Mayer says it may come down to an IMF "bridge loan" for Portugal to make its bond payments.
By restricting exports, Chinese officials have allowed the price of rare earth metals to rise exponentially, putting pressure on companies across the globe that rely on their input for their manufactured products.
Chinese police have arrested prominent blogger Ran Yunfei for challenging the ruling Communist Party, people close to the blogger said on Monday, the latest in a string of arrests in a deepening crackdown on dissent.
CNBC says that according to the basic laws of supply and demand, especially given that the two metals are quite similar, the price gap between gold and silver should be much smaller.
The central bank in Afghanistan has been up to a lot of mischief lately.
Mega-millionaire Donald Trump today said during an interview with FoxNewsInsider that Barack Obama is having trouble with, and spending millions to fight, the ongoing questions about his birth, his birth certificate and his eligibility to hold office.
According to one new study, 34% of senior males are in the work force while just 15% of teenage boys have an employer.
There have been over 800 earthquakes in and around Japan since March 11th.
Severe drought conditions across eastern Colorado and the western half of Kansas and Oklahoma are worsening the outlook for more wild fires in the region climatologists say.
More than 17,000 students have enrolled at Oaksterdam University, "America's first cannabis college", since it first opened in late 2007.
New evidence has emerged that the Iranian government sees the current unrest in the Middle East as a signal that the Mahdi--or Islamic messiah--is about to appear.
Lastly, a clay tablet that has baffled scientists for more than a century has been identified as a witness's account of an asteroid that destroyed the Biblical cities of Sodom and Gomorrah 5,000 years ago.
The latest headlines from The Most Important News....
The Obama administration is strongly defending its handling of the Libyan crisis, drawing a clear line between military and political objectives while dismissing criticism that it has failed to adequately consult with members of Congress.
Representatives of Moammar Gadhafi's government and the Libyan opposition will be among those attending an African Union meeting in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, on Friday, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said Thursday.
NATO has reached an agreement to take over the no-fly zone in Libya from the United States "in a couple of days" NATO's secretary general said Thursday.
Sixty percent of Americans support the U.S. and allied military action in Libya to impose a no-fly zone to protect civilians from forces loyal to Muammar Gaddafi, a Reuters/Ipsos poll released on Thursday found.
A Gallup poll conducted Monday finds more Americans approving than disapproving of the military action against Libya by the United States and other countries.
Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh and the country's top general are hashing out a political settlement in which both men would resign from their positions within days in favor of a civilian-led transitional government, according to three people familiar with the situation.
Human rights activists said at least 15 people were killed on Wednesday in the volatile Syrian city of Daraa, hub of a week of anti-regime protests, as anger reportedly spread to neighboring towns.
Radioactive yellow rain that fell in Tokyo and surrounding areas last night caused panic amongst Japanese citizens and prompted a flood of phone calls to Japan’s Meteorological Agency this morning, with people concerned that they were being fed the same lies as victims of Chernobyl, who were told that yellow rain which fell over Russia and surrounding countries after the 1986 disaster was merely pollen, the same explanation now being offered by Japanese authorities.
Tokyo government officials have announced that radiation levels in Tokyo tap water are now so high that it is unsafe for infants to drink.
The scope of radiation-contaminated tap water expanded Thursday, with radioactive iodine detected in tap water in Chiba and Saitama prefectures, while the Tokyo Metropolitan Government, which said the day before its drinking water was contaminated, scurried to distribute 240,000 bottles of water to households with babies.
Reactors 5 and 6 at the Fukushima nuclear complex are reportedly now also leaking radiation.
The radiation released by the stricken Fukushima nuclear plant already rivals and in one sense exceeds the Chernobyl catastrophe according to Austria’s Central Institute for Meteorology and Geodynamics, even as media spin downplays the severity of the crisis despite the fact that the problems at the plant show no signs of abating.
Bottled water was virtually impossible to find in Tokyo on Thursday.
Tokyo Electric Power Co. said Wednesday it has observed a neutron beam, a kind of radioactive ray, 13 times on the premises of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant after it was crippled by the massive March 11 quake-tsunami disaster.
Radiation from the ongoing disaster in Japan is spreading throughout the United States, and while the EPA says the levels are not dangerous, it also admits that some of its radiation-tracking air monitors may not even be working.
An estimated 66,000 metric tons of spent fuel rods are stored at 77 sites around the United States - that's more than 145 million pounds.
The Japanese tsunami was more than 77 feet high at its peak.
Was the damage done to Japan's economy worse than originally thought?
Have the disasters in Japan broken the global supply chain?
Palestinian rockets struck two cities deep in Israel on Wednesday, wounding a resident and prompting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to threaten lengthy “exchanges of blows” with the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip.
The IAF bombed terrorists that were attempting to shoot rockets into Israel on Thursday morning.
Oil traded as high as $106.69 a barrel Thursday in a nervous and uncertain energy market.
Will the price of gasoline reach $5.00 a gallon before the end of this year?
Portuguese Prime Minister Jose Socrates has resigned after parliament rejected an austerity budget.
A bailout for Portugal may total as much as 70 billion euros ($99 billion), two European officials with direct knowledge of the matter said as a credit-rating cut threatened to deepen Portugal’s debt woes.
Warren Buffett told CNBC Thursday that the collapse of the euro zone's single currency is far from "unthinkable".
The US ranks near the bottom of developed global economies in terms of financial stability and will stay there unless it addresses its burgeoning debt problems, a new study has found.
Ten former chairmen of the White House Council of Economic Advisers say that a plan crafted by fiscal commission appointed by President Barack Obama should be "the starting point" for addressing what they labeled a "severe threat" to the nation's economy.
The Federal Reserve has "done a bit too much" quantitative easing amid signs "of speculative excess" in the the US, according to a senior official at the central bank.
The U.S. trade deficit grew by 33 percent in 2010 to nearly half a trillion dollars.
According to the Alliance for American Manufacturing, more than 5.5 million manufacturing jobs have been lost in the past 10 years.
The average American family's household net worth declined 23% between 2007 and 2009, the Federal Reserve said Thursday.
More than two-thirds of Americans saw their net worth decline during the recession according to the Fed.
One school district in the Chicago area is laying off 363 teachers.
The Postal Service is offering a $20,000 buyout to thousands of veteran workers as part of its bid to eliminate 7,500 administrative jobs, the agency announced Thursday.
Hammered by the auto industry's slump, Detroit saw its population plummet 25 percent over the past decade, according to census data released on Tuesday that reflects the severity of an economic downturn in the only state whose population declined since 2000.
The Census Bureau says that 403,765 new firms were started in the 12 months ended March 2009, down 17.3% from a year earlier and the fewest on records that begin in 1977.
Is gold replacing the dollar as the world reserve currency?
Silver recently hit $36.78 an ounce, the highest it has been since February 1980.
Some of the top experts in the world now believe that a collapse of the U.S. dollar is inevitable.
Is George Soros attempting to remake the entire world financial order?
CNN is reporting that Rep. Michele Bachmann will form a presidential exploratory committee. The Minnesota Republican plans to file papers for the committee in early June, with an announcement likely around that same time.
Ron Paul says that he is undecided about whether he will run for president or not.
Donald Trump is demanding that Barack Obama prove that he was born in the United States.
In the wake of changes to government employee unions’ power in Wisconsin and elsewhere, The Communist Party USA is working in conjunction with national labor unions and other left wing political groups to organize protests in Madison, Wisconsin and across the nation on April 4th.
The Obama administration has begun examining whether it can make cuts to its nuclear weapons stockpiles that go beyond those outlined in a recent treaty with Russia.
The Russian Defense Ministry will buy 36 strategic ballistic missiles, two strategic missile submarines and 20 strategic cruise missiles this year, Minister Anatoly Serdyukov said on Friday.
Liberal Democratic Party of Russia leader and Vice-Chairman of the State Duma Vladimir Zhirinovsky released a statement today calling for the Nobel Prize Committee to take back the Nobel Peace Prize bestowed on Barack Obama in 2009.
Microsoft just spent $7.5 million to buy a block of 666,624 IPv4 addresses from Nortel in bankruptcy court. That works out to about $11.25 apiece.
A 7.0 earthquake recently struck an area near the Northern Thailand border.
Fonterra, a New Zealand-based cooperative that represents the world’s largest exporter of dairy products, has been pinned by Greenpeace Australia for allegedly selling dairy products contaminated with GMOs, despite the fact that the company is not a GMO brand.
A dangerous drug-resistant bacterium has spread to patients in Southern California, according to a study by Los Angeles County public health officials, and it is killing 40 percent of the people that become infected.
Gender-bending chemicals found in non-stick pans and food packaging are linked to early menopause, some scientists are saying.
U.S. companies selling doomsday bunkers are seeing sales skyrocket anywhere from 20% to 1,000%.
Stink bugs, the smelly scourge of the mid-Atlantic, are hitch-hiking and gliding their way across the country. Officially known as the brown marmorated stink bug, sightings of the pest have been reported in 33 states, an increase of eight states since last fall.
The worst Texas drought in 44 years is damaging the state’s wheat crop and forcing ranchers to reduce cattle herds, as rising demand for U.S. food sends grain and meat prices higher.
Four branches of the military have begun sending training material to 2.2 million active and reserve troops as a prelude to opening the ranks to gays, with instructions on, for example, what to do if an officer sees two male Marines kissing in a shopping mall.
A band of six Democrats in the California state Senate voted today to advance a bill that has been described as "the worst school sexual indoctrination ever" and would require that school children be taught to admire "lesbian, gay, bisexual and transsexual" role models.
Lastly, Border Patrol agents recently arrested 13 illegal immigrants disguised as U.S. Marines and riding in a fake military van, U.S. Customs and Border Protection said Tuesday.
