Organizers say they hope the coordinated events will mark a spring resurgence of the movement after a quiet winter. Calls for a general strike with no work, no school, no banking and no shopping have sprung up on websites in Toronto, Barcelona, London, Kuala Lumpur and Sydney, among hundreds of cities in North America, Europe and Asia.

In New York, Occupy Wall Street will join scores of labor organizations observing May 1, traditionally recognized as International Workers’ Day. They plan marches from Union Square to Lower Manhattan and a “pop-up occupation” of Bryant Park on Sixth Avenue, across the street from Bank of America’s Corp’s 55-storey tower.

“We call upon people to refrain from shopping, walk out of class, take the day off of work and other creative forms of resistance disrupting the status quo,” organizers said in an April 26 email. Occupy groups across the US have protested economic disparity, decrying high foreclosure and unemployment rates that hurt average Americans while bankers and financial executives received bonuses and taxpayer-funded bailouts. In the past six months, similar groups, using social media and other tools, have sprung up in Europe, Asia and Latin America.

It's one that could see Europe's most extreme far right deputies take up seats in Greece's Parliament in crucial May 6 elections. Black-clad Golden Dawn members have been storming across the campaign trail across Greece, stopping to chat at cafes and shops, handing out fliers promising security in crime-ridden neighborhoods - and vowing to kick out immigrants.

Greece's borders, they say, must be sealed with land mines to stop illegal crossing into a country that became the entry point for 90 percent of the European Union's illegal migrants. Authorities estimate there are about 1 million migrants living in this country of 11 million. Appealing to populist sentiment, Golden Dawn has been gathering donations of food and clothing to deliver to the needy while pledging to make politicians accountable for the crisis. Ordinary Greeks are struggling under tough conditions demanded for rescue loan deals that have pushed the country into a fifth year of recession.

"Golden Dawn stands against this corrupt system of power. All those who are responsible for the waste of public money must go to jail. That is our priority," said Ilias Kasidiaris, a 31-year-old party member who served in the Greek army's special forces. Golden Dawn seem confident of taking up parliamentary seats after May 6 - even if it is on a protest vote. "That is why the whole system is fighting us, because they are afraid that when we get into Parliament, the Greek people will understand that we are neither a gang, nor Nazis, nor children of Hitler... We are just Greek patriots, we love our country. We are prepared even to sacrifice ourselves for our beliefs, for the country, for its people."

The United States and its European allies can no longer drive the global political and economic agenda. The scramble to produce a coordinated and effective multinational response to the 2008 financial crisis made that clear, but the growing leverage of emerging states like China, India, Brazil, Russia and others was apparent years before US financial institutions began melting down and the Eurozone descended into crisis.

Yes, America remains the most powerful and influential country on Earth – and will for the foreseeable future. Its economy is still the world’s largest. No single nation can compete with its cultural influence, and only America can project military power in every region. But in coming years mounting federal debt and the domestic political attention now focused on this issue will force the architects of US foreign policy to become more sensitive to costs and risks when making potentially expensive strategic choices.

At home, it will be harder for presidents to persuade taxpayers and lawmakers that bolstering the stability of countries like Iraq or Afghanistan is worth a bloody, costly fight. That means decoupling support for a “strong military,” an always popular position, from security guarantees for countries that no longer meet a narrowing definition of vital US interests. Abroad, questions will arise about America’s commitment to the security of particular regions, encouraging local players to test US resolve and to exploit any weakness they think they’ve found. Few want a global policeman, but some will have second thoughts when they realize they lack protection against a neighborhood bully.

Yet, other countries aren’t exactly lining up to fill this vacuum. But the G-Zero cannot last indefinitely, because tomorrow’s most important powers, whoever they turn out to be, won’t be able to allow it to continue.

One team of IT specialists taking part in Locked Shields, were detailed to attack nine other teams, located all over Europe. At their terminals in the Nato Co-operative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence, they cooked up viruses, worms, Trojan Horses and other internet attacks, to hijack and extract data from the computers of their pretend enemies. The idea was to learn valuable lessons in how to forestall such attacks on military and commercial networks. The cyber threat is one that the Western alliance is taking seriously.

Today, the fear is that Web War II - if and when it comes - could inflict physical damage, leading to massive disruption and even death. "Sophisticated cyber attackers could do things like derail trains across the country," says Richard A Clarke, an adviser on counter-terrorism and cyber-security to presidents Clinton and Bush. "They could cause power blackouts - not just by shutting off the power but by permanently damaging generators that would take months to replace. They could do things like cause [oil or gas] pipelines to explode. They could ground aircraft."

"The US military ran headlong into the cyber age," he says. "And we became very dependent on cyber devices without thinking it through. Without thinking that if someone got control of our software, what would we be able to do? Do we have backup systems? Can we go back to the old days?" The answer it seems is no. A new form of weapon appears to be emerging. And the world may have to learn to adapt.

Flood warnings are in place with up to 20mm to 30mm of rain forecast for southern England on Monday night. A 52-year-old man has died after his car became submerged at a ford south of Newbury following heavy rain. The man and his dog died when a Toyota Yaris was trapped in "5ft of fast-flowing water" as it drove across the ford on Thornford Road, Compton Wood.

The Badminton Horse Trials, in Gloucestershire, have been cancelled for the second time in their history because of a waterlogged course. The Met Office has issued an amber warning with severe weather expected in parts of Devon, Dorst and Somerset. It says further flooding is possible and driving conditions may be difficult.

Despite the heavy rain, swathes of England are still in drought, with warnings that the downpours were not enough to counteract the effects of two unusually dry winters. A spokesman for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) said: "While we welcome the rain we have received recently, we cannot be complacent and still need everyone to save water where they can."

With support for the Conservatives at its lowest ebb since 2004, just days before crucial London mayoral and local council elections, Mr Cameron promised to 'strain every sinew' to prompt economic growth. But he warned that the eurozone's failure to contend with its problems risks dragging the UK down for years to come. His remarks will infuriate EU leaders, who face crunch elections in France and Greece. In both countries, voters are likely to return governments which will unpick a treaty on 'fiscal union' which Mr Cameron refused to sign up to.

'I don't think we are anywhere near halfway through it because what's happening in the eurozone is a massive tension between the single currency that countries are finding very difficult to adapt to,' Mr Cameron told the BBC's Andrew Marr programme. 'It's going to be a very long and painful process in the eurozone as they work out do they want a single currency with a single economic policy and all the things that go with it, or are they going to have something quite different?'

He also dismissed the idea that the US is seeing stronger economic growth and lower employment because it has delayed spending cuts and tax rises. 'First of all, the United States' plans are for tougher austerity measures than we have here in the UK. The second point – they don't have the eurozone on their doorstep,' he said.

The Government has stumbled from crisis to crisis following the Budget, which prompted rows over a 'granny tax' on pensioners and a 'pasty tax' on hot takeaway food. The anti-EU UK Independence Party has seen its support rise to 10 per cent, not far behind the LibDems.

Tewkesbury in Gloucestershire, which was devastated by flooding in July 2007, is on alert and the EA has set up an incident room there along with two others in the Midlands and another in the Wessex area. Forecasters warned that more rain is expected to fall in the coming week with southern and western areas likely to see the worst of the wet weather. After a brief respite today, more heavy showers are expected this evening and through Tuesday. The damp conditions then look set to continue right through the week.

An Environment Agency spokeswoman said: "We are continuing to closely monitor the forecast and rainfall particularly in areas along the rivers Severn, Teme and Avon, including Worcestershire, Shropshire, Herefordshire and Gloucestershire. Environment Agency teams are out on the ground continuing a close watch on river levels as well as checking defences and clearing any potential blockages to reduce the risk of flooding."

South West England and Wales were battered by gusts of up to 71mph yesterday, while other parts of the country also suffered from strong winds and further downpours. Trees and debris bringing lines down led to around 10,000 homes being left without power in south Wales and the West Midlands, as well as 2,000 in the South West, Western Power said.

Many areas at risk of floods are currently in a state of drought, which is gripping the south east, East Anglia, the Midlands, the south west and south and east Yorkshire after two unusually dry winters in a row. Despite one of the wettest Aprils on record, the water is not penetrating deep enough into the ground to raise groundwater levels which remain too low, the Environment Agency said.

The goal is to construct homes across the country that can withstand the worst Mother Nature has to offer, which lately has been quite a lot - not to mention tough if not impossible for insurers to predict. "One thing we as a society don't really do anymore is build for where we live. We build for how we want to live," said Julie Rochman, chief executive of the Institute for Building and Home Safety, the industry-sponsored group behind the wind tunnel initiative. "There's a wonderful ability to be living in denial and where disaster happened a long time ago we get disaster amnesia."

It's a tough time to be in the $500 billion US property insurance business. Storms are happening in places they never happened before, at intensities they have never reached before and at times of year when they didn't used to happen. Those bizarre weather patterns damage not just homes but also insurance companies' financials. If seas rise and houses flood, insurers pay. If winds shift and buildings blow down, they also pay. If temperatures rise and crops fail, same thing. The industry hasn't reached a consensus on what's causing weird weather.

What no one disputes is that the storms the industry expects aren't happening and the ones they don't expect are hitting them hard. The implications are profound for consumers as well as insurers. If hundred-year storms are now at risk of happening every 40 years or every three, it is difficult to know how much property insurance should cost.

The volcanic activity has disrupted airline flights and blanketed nearby vegetable farms with ash, but there have been no reports of serious injury or deaths. The Japan Meteorological Agency expected rainfall of more than 4 mm (0.16 inch) per hour to last until Thursday night, an amount that the local government said could cause mudslides.

The official, in the city of Miyakonojo, said 63 people had moved to evacuation centers by midday. The town of Takaharu, located at the foot of 1,421 meter (4,662 ft) mountain on the southern island of Kyushu, also advised about 250 residents and a business to prepare for evacuation in case it was necessary.

Ohio's Department of Natural Resources on Sunday suspended operations at five deep well sites in Youngstown, Ohio, where the injection of water was taking place, while they evaluate seismological data from a rare quake in the area. The wells are about 9,000 feet deep and are used to dispose of water from oil and gas wells. The process is related to fracking, the controversial injection of chemical-laced water and sand into rock to release oil and gas. Critics say that the high pressure injection of the liquid causes seismic activity.

Won-Young Kim, a research professor of Seismology Geology and Tectonophysics at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University, told Reuters in an interview on Tuesday that circumstantial evidence suggests a link between the earthquake and the high-pressure well activity. "We know the depth (of the quake on Saturday) is two miles and that is different from a natural earthquake," said Kim, who is advising the state of Ohio. Data collected from four seismographs set up in November in the area confirm a connection between the quakes and water pressure at the well, Kim said.

Conservative President Nicolas Sarkozy set out with great energy in 2007 to shake things up but ran out of steam after loosening the 35-hour work week and raising the minimum retirement age to 62 from 60 in the face of massive resistance. His most recent move has been to reduce labor costs by cutting social insurance charges on payrolls and raising value-added tax on goods and services instead.

Socialist challenger, Francois Hollande, hot favorite to sweep Sarkozy from office in Sunday's decisive runoff, says he will reverse that switch and sounds disinclined to even try the structural economic reforms advocated by many economists and the European Union. "Does anyone really believe that liberalism, privatization, deregulation which led us to where we are today in the financial crisis will help us get out of this crisis?" Hollande said last week when asked whether he would emulate measures being taken in Spain and Italy. "I believe that today the way we can create growth is through new technologies, through higher education and new energy sources," he said.

The inconvenient truth is that most of the French are too comfortably off, despite 10 percent unemployment, a flat-lining economy and a national debt approaching 90 percent of economic output, to countenance radical changes to their way of life. The French, it seems, would rather live with nearly 25 percent youth unemployment than see the minimum wage or rigid job protection for incumbent workers eroded. And many are unwilling to see any connection between the two.

Weak banks, especially in Spain, have bought more of the debt of their weak sovereigns, while foreigners have sold down their holdings. Markets, seeing banks holding the dubious debt of the sovereigns that stand behind them, grow ever nervous. Again, Europe and the global economy approach the brink. The architects of current policy and their allies argue that there is insufficient determination to carry on with the existing strategy. Others argue that failure suggests the need for a change in course. The latter view seems to be taking hold among the European electorate. This is appropriate. Much of what is being urged on and in Europe is likely to be not just ineffective but counterproductive to maintaining the monetary union, restoring normal financial conditions and government access to markets, and re-establishing economic growth.

The premise of European policymaking is that countries are overindebted, and so unable to access markets on reasonable terms, and that the high interest rates associated with excessive debt hurt the financial system and inhibit growth. The strategy is to provide financing while insisting on austerity, in hopes that countries can rein in their excessive spending enough to restore credibility, bring down interest rates and restart economic growth. Models include successful International Monetary Fund programs in emerging markets and Germany’s adjustment after the expense and trauma of reintegrating East Germany.

Unfortunately, Europe has misdiagnosed its problems in important respects and set the wrong strategic course. Outside of Greece, which represents only 2 percent of the euro zone, profligacy is not the root cause of problems. Spain and Ireland stood out for their low ratios of debt to gross domestic product five years ago, with ratios well below Germany’s. Italy had a high debt ratio but a very favorable deficit position. Europe’s problem countries are in trouble because the financial crisis under way since 2008 has damaged their financial systems and led to a collapse in growth. High deficits are much more a symptom than a cause of their problems. And treating symptoms rather than underlying causes is usually a good way to make a patient worse.

The cause of Europe’s financial problems is lack of growth. In any financial situation where interest rates far exceed growth rates, debt problems spiral out of control. The right focus for Europe is on growth; in this dimension, increased austerity is a step in the wrong direction.

Gross domestic product shrank 0.3 percent in January-March from the previous quarter according to preliminary National Statistics Institute data, unchanged from October-December and compared to a Reuters poll expecting a 0.4 percent contraction. Madrid is under intense pressure from its European peers to streamline the euro zone's fourth largest economy, reduce a massive public deficit and fix a banking system battered by a four-year economic slump and a burst property bubble.

On an annual basis the economy contracted by 0.4 percent compared with growth of 0.3 percent in the previous quarter, the data showed. Economists polled by Reuters, as well as the Bank of Spain, had forecast a slippage of 0.5 percent. "Spain's still very much in recession and we think that this isn't going to improve soon. It's likely they'll have to create more fiscal tightening in order to catch up if they wish to avoid going in to plan, and that's going to be counterproductive," economist at Citi Guillaume Menuet said.

The trip to Beijing would have been challenging for Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner even without a human rights dispute over Chen Guangcheng, who a US-based group says is hiding in the US Embassy in Beijing. The May 3-4 Strategic & Economic Dialogue is the last of such annual consultations before political seasons heat up in the United States and China, giving leaders in both countries less flexibility over contentious economic and security issues.

The United States goes into full campaign mode for the November presidential election, while China's ruling Communist Party enters a leadership transition in the fall that has been complicated by a scandal that toppled senior leader Bo Xilai. Bob Fu, whose religious and political rights advocacy group ChinaAid is the chief source of information about Chen, said he had confirmed "intensive talks" between the United States and China began right after the activist took shelter in the embassy on Friday.

"I was told the Chinese top leaders have been deliberating a decision to be made very soon," Fu said on Sunday by telephone from Texas. A "Chinese official response (is) expected in the next day or so," he added. The United States has not confirmed reports that Chen, who slipped away from under heavy surveillance around his village home in eastern Shandong province, fled into the US Embassy. China has also declined public comment on Chen's reported escape.

Chen, a self-schooled legal advocate who campaigned against abortions forced under China's "one child" policy, had been held under extra-legal confinement in his village home in Linyi since September 2010 when he was released from jail. Washington and Beijing both confirmed on Saturday that the high-level talks would proceed as scheduled, which analysts said indicated efforts to contain fallout from Chen on the larger relationship.

The ILO said the situation was likely to get worse amid slowing global growth and more people entering the workforce. High unemployment has been a concern in the US and other major economies and has hurt the global economic recovery. "It is unlikely that the world economy will grow at a sufficient pace over the next couple of years to both close the existing jobs deficit and provide employment for the more than 80 million people expected to enter the labour market during this period," the agency said in its latest report.

The ILO report comes at a time when some of the biggest economies in the eurozone are having to cut government spending in the wake of the region's ongoing debt crisis. The agency was critical of the austerity measures taken by Europe's economies, saying not only had they failed to bring down deficits but they had hurt economic growth and as a result impacted the jobs market. Data out last week showed that the unemployment rate in Spain hit a new record high of 24.4% at the end of March.

Unemployment in France also rose for the 11th straight month during March. The ILO warned that unless there was a change in policy direction, the job market would remain subdued until the end of 2016 and economic growth in the region may slow further. The ILO warned that a "new and more problematic phase" was emerging in the global labour market. It said that more than 40% of jobseekers in advanced economies had been without work for over a year, indicating that it was taking much longer for people to find jobs.