The blaze maintained its rapid growth Friday through what New Mexico Governor Susana Martinez termed "impossible" terrain, as forecasters predicted thunderstorms and dry lightning that could spark even more fires.

Fire authorities said the blaze in the Gila National Forest - the largest on record in New Mexico as well as the country's biggest current blaze - had burned through 340 square miles, or 218,000 acres, of terrain. The extended forecast called for more hot, dry weather. The wildfire near the Arizona border is fueling experts' predictions that this is a preview of things to come across the West as several states contend with a dangerous mix of wind, low humidity and tinder-dry fuels.

Looking at a blanket of smoke stretching for miles, Martinez used words like "daunting" and "enormous," fitting since fire managers said the blaze could smolder until the region gets significant rainfall. "It's going to keep going up," she said of the acreage burned. "Be prepared for that."

The "Vatileaks" scandal, in which the pope's private papers are alleged to have been pilfered by his own butler, pales in comparison to the scandals of centuries past when popes were accused of violence, nepotism and sexual excesses. Pope Benedict has angrily charged that "totally gratuitous" accounts in the media "offer an image of the Holy See which does not correspond to reality."

Archbishop Angelo Becciu, the third-ranking official in the world's smallest state, bemoaned the "distorted image" presented of the Vatican and said the internal debates revealed by the documents were perfectly normal in any organization. "We are not mummies," he said with the kind of historical allusion that seems to come naturally in the corridors of the world's oldest continually operating institution. But the allegations have caused a sensation round the world and defied Vatican attempts to play down their importance.

Italian newspapers have devoted pages and pages to the crisis, often with graphics showing the exact layout of the pope's apartment or a bird's-eye view of Vatican City, although written reports have often been highly speculative in the face of the Holy See's deep secrecy. Intrigue seems encouraged by the Vatican's organizational model, which borrowed from Renaissance royal courts and shields its inner workings from outside scrutiny. A remnant of the time when the popes were also temporal rulers over Rome and parts of Italy, the tiny city-state is headquarters for the 1.2-billion-strong Roman Catholic Church, the world's largest. As the Catholic saying goes, "the Church is not a democracy."

Opinion polls had suggested a "Yes" camp win. A "No" vote would not have blocked the pact, but it would have barred Ireland from emergency EU funding when its bailout package expires in 2013. In late 2010 Ireland received an EU-IMF bailout worth €85 billion (£68 billion; $105 billion) after debts overwhelmed its banks. The treaty must be approved by 12 of 17 Eurozone countries, but Ireland was the only one putting the issue to a public vote.

Speaking after the results came in, Mr Kenny said Ireland had to now work with the EU to boost growth across the eurozone. "The developing situation in Europe's banking sectors needs a comprehensive solution and Ireland's banking debt must form part of that solution," Mr Kenny told a news conference. He said the move would not solve all of the country's problems, but that it was "one of the many foundation stones" needed to ensure the future stability of Ireland's economic position. It would enable investment and create jobs, he said, as well as allow Ireland access to funds from the European Stability Mechanism should it require it.

Returning officer Riona Ni Flanghaile said the "Yes" campaign won by a margin of just over 300,000 votes, with a total of 955,091 casting ballots in favour, compared with 629,088 against the agreement. Fewer than half of the 3.1 million registered voters turned out on Thursday. Speaking earlier, "No" voter Gerard Cunningham told the Associated Press: "Banks in Germany and Britain and elsewhere were just as responsible for the mess we're in. We're sick to the back teeth of being told it's all our own fault."

The insight comes from Barton Biggs, hedge fund manager running Traxis Partners, who spoke with a Saudi Arabian businessman close to the country’s royal circles. Biggs met the man for a business lunch and asked for an overview of the Middle-Eastern country’s policies in the medium and long terms, reports Business Insider citing Biggs’ note published by Itaú BBA. "You have to understand our geopolitical equation and vulnerability,” the Saudi businessman is cited as saying.

“Our two most dangerous enemies are Iraq and Iran. Both are Shia, and both are trying to destabilize the Arab world and our Sunni kingdom by funding terrorism. Our only weapons against them are our wealth and our oil. Their current vulnerability is their financial fragility. Their financial reserves are a fraction of ours, and they desperately need money to prop up their economies,” he said. The Saudi ruling council’s plan is to ramp up oil production over the next two years and seize the moment to strike at Iran and Iraq, the businessman, who is described as “very rich and presumably well-connected”, explained.

“Iraq and Iran need to produce and sell their oil at well over $100 a barrel. In the next 24 months, we will gradually increase our production with the objective of breaking the price of crude down to sixty dollars a barrel,” he said. The businessman, who is not part of the Saudi extended royal family, added that the plan has the backing of other Persian Gulf monarchies.

It found that 61 per cent of Britons and Italians, 63 per cent of the French and 70 per cent of Greeks were opposed to further integration. Across the EU, support for Brussels had fallen in every country apart from Germany.

Researchers from the Pew Research Centre in Washington found that 54 per cent of Spaniards were doubtful about their country’s membership of the EU. The only country where enthusiasm for the EU was growing was Germany, which many critics claim is profiting from the debt crisis. Sixty-five per cent of Germans were keen on membership of the EU, up two per cent since 2009.

But despite the negative attitudes towards Brussels, there was still little enthusiasm for scrapping the euro in eurozone countries. Only 23 per cent of Greeks wanted a return to the drachma. In the UK, 73 per cent of voters said being outside the euro was a good thing for the country. Bruce Stokes, director of Pew’s global economic attitudes project, said: “The irony here is that people who have the euro still want to keep it.”

The erratic Gila National Forest blaze grew overnight to more than 190,000 acres, or nearly 300 square miles, as it raced across the area's steep, ponderosa pine-covered hills and through its rugged canyons. More than 1,200 firefighters are at the massive blaze near the Arizona border, which has destroyed 13 cabins and about a dozen outbuildings, fire information officer Iris Estes said.

Experts say persistent drought, climate change and shifts in land use and firefighting strategies mean other western states likely will see similar giant fires this season. "We've been in a long drought cycle for the last 20 years, and conditions now are great for these type of fires," said Steve Pyne, author of "Tending Fire. Coping with America's Wildland Fires" and a life science professor at Arizona State University. "Everything is in line."

This type of alliance has already been forged with Mongolia and Kazakhstan. Berlin's plans for a supplementary accord with Chile, which holds the world's greatest copper deposits, are furthest advanced. German enterprises are also receiving a large portion of their supplies from Chile. Against strong popular protests, the rightwing Chilean Sebastián Piñera government is carrying out a privatization policy, which is very advantageous for German access to the country's resources.

This frantic search has been caused by the heightened global market competition and therefore the dramatic rise in prices of raw materials over the past few years. The focus is not only on energy resources, such as oil and gas, but also on mineral resources, which are indispensible to the industry, such as iron ore or copper. The German economy had progressively retreated from the actual production of raw materials, because raw materials generally remained at a relatively low price for decades, and the necessary resources could be bought rather inexpensively on the world market.

Therefore, today, it finds itself at a disadvantage - due to the rapid rise in the price of resources - in relationship to other countries, which had not taken this course, for example Great Britain, Australia, China and Brazil with their leading multi-national steel and mining companies. In a recently published interview, Volker Steinbach, department director at the Federal Agency for Geological Studies and Natural Resources (BGR), evoked dramatic scenarios.

According to Steinbach, 30 percent of the global iron production is currently in the hands of three companies - Rio Tinto (Great Britain/Australia), Vale (Brazil) and BHP-Billiton (Australia/Great Britain). In reference to shipped iron ore, these companies are even in control of 70 percent of the global iron ore trade. This has placed them in a position to dictate prices. For Germany, this is "fatal."

However, he told Arutz Sheva, they were careful not to violate orders against praying, or even appearing to pray, at the site. “They told us we couldn’t pray, or move our lips, and we didn’t,” he said. But that was not enough. “Toward the end of the tour I got a bit emotional and said a silent prayer in my heart,” he recalled. “A Wakf man yelled to a policeman to arrest me, because I was praying. The policeman seemed conflicted,” Hertzlich reported. “But in the end he took me to the police station and told me I was detained. I said I didn’t do anything, but it didn’t help.”

Police simply accepted the Wakf man’s complaint without investigating themselves, he accused. There is a sense that officers are quick to crack down on visiting Jews, he added. Hertzlich was ultimately released without being charged, but not before police tried to persuade him to sign a form confirming the complaint. “The captain at the station told me he understood that [the complaint] was not correct, and that I hadn’t violated any orders, but that the procedure is to fill out forms,” he said.

Police have not yet responded to Arutz Sheva’s request for clarification.

The yuan-yen trade - part of a wider deal reached last year between Beijing and Tokyo to forge closer ties -- will be allowed to move in a wider range than the narrow band at which the dollar and yuan change hands. China will set a daily rate based on dealer quotes, with trade allowed to move within a 3.0 percent band above or below that rate, compared with a 1.0 percent band fixed to the yuan-dollar.

The trading-band rule applies only in Shanghai while free exchanges are guaranteed in Tokyo. Rates in the two markets could be different briefly but are likely to converge very quickly, traders said. It is impossible to make money through price gaps between the two markets, said Akira Hoshino, head of foreign exchange trading at Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ Bank.

The ruling on the 1996 law, the Defense of Marriage Act, marked a victory for gay rights groups and US President Barack Obama, whose administration announced last year it considered the law unconstitutional and would no longer defend it. In its 3-0 ruling, a panel of the US Court of Appeals for the 1st Circuit concluded that the law discriminates against gay couples. Eight of the 50 US states permit gay marriage, including Massachusetts, which became the first in 2004, and Maryland, which became the most recent in March.

"Congress' denial of federal benefits to same-sex couples lawfully married in Massachusetts has not been adequately supported by any permissible federal interest," Judge Michael Boudin wrote for the three-judge panel. The issue of gay marriage is an emotional and divisive one in the United States. Polls show US public support of gay marriage rising.

[Mr] Obama on May 9 said he believes same-sex couples should be allowed to marry, marking the first time a US president publicly expressed support for gay marriage. Republican activists and conservative Christian leaders condemned [Mr] Obama's stance.

Popocatepetl sits roughly halfway between Mexico City and the city of Puebla, meaning some 25 MILLION PEOPLE LIVE WITHIN A 90-KM (60-MILE) RADIUS OF THE VOLCANO. Over a month ago, the volcanic eruptions started growing larger.

Spain is the next country in the firing line of the euro zone's debt crisis, with spendthrift regions and shaky banks threatening to blow a hole in state finances and pushing funding costs towards levels that signal the need for a bailout. The European Commission gave new help on Wednesday, offering direct aid from a euro zone rescue fund to recapitalize Spanish banks and more time for Madrid to reduce its budget deficit.

That helped lower the risk premium investors demand to hold Spanish 10-year debt rather than the German benchmark on Thursday, but it remained close to the euro-era record, at 520 basis points. Bank of Spain data showed a net €66.2 billion ($82.0 billion) was sent abroad last month, the most since records began in 1990. The figure compares to a €5.4 billion net entry of funds during the same month one year ago.

Spaniards are worried about the health of their banks, hit by their exposure to a 2008 property crash, and have been sending money to deposit accounts in the stronger economies of northern Europe.

Well, it turns out that JP Morgan did not tell us the whole truth. As you will see later in this article, most analysts are estimating that the losses will eventually be far larger than $2 billion. But no matter how bad things get for JP Morgan, it will not be allowed to fail. JP Morgan is the largest bank in the United States, so it is essentially the “granddaddy” of the too big to fail banks. If JP Morgan gets to the point where it is about to collapse, the US government and the Federal Reserve will rush in to save it.

Because of this “security blanket”, banks such as JP Morgan feel free to take outrageous risks. Today, JP Morgan has more exposure to derivatives than anyone else in the world. If they win, they win big. If they lose, US taxpayers will be on the hook. Not only that, but thanks to Dodd-Frank, US taxpayers are on the hook for bailing out the major derivatives clearinghouses if there is ever a major derivatives crisis. So when the derivatives market crashes (and it will) you and I will be left holding a gigantic bill.

Derivatives almost caused the complete collapse of insurance giant AIG back in 2008. But instead of learning our lessons, the derivatives bubble has gotten even larger since that time. Today, the 9 largest banks in the United States have a total of more than $200 trillion of exposure to derivatives. That is approximately 3 times the size of the entire global economy. The US government is already nearly $16 trillion in debt. How in the world can we afford to keep bailing out the huge messes that Wall Street makes?

Sadly, most Americans have no idea how vulnerable our financial system really is. It is a poorly constructed house of cards that could come crashing down at any time. If you still have faith in our financial system you are being quite foolish and you will soon be bitterly, bitterly disappointed.

Draghi said bailouts for Bankia in Spain show that national regulators are reluctant to admit the extent of troubles at home. That only has the effect of raising the end costs of rescuing the banks and undermining trust and transparency, he said. He explained: "What Bankia shows is that whenever we are confronted with the dramatic need to recapitalize, if you look back, the reaction of the national supervisors... is to underestimate the problem, then come out with a first assessment, a second, a third, fourth."

"That is the worst possible way of doing things, because everybody ends up doing the right thing but at the highest possible cost and price," Draghi said in testimony in the European Parliament in Brussels. Spain said last Friday it would need to put €19 billion ($23.63 billion) into Bankia to rescue it from losses on real estate loans. The company made a successful stock market flotation only last year but has since had to restate earnings and has been taken over by the government. Dexia was bailed out in October by France, Belgium Luxembourg. It was the second time the bank has needed help, as it was bailed out for €6.4 billion in 2008.

Banks have been a key part of the European economic and financial crisis stemming from excessive levels of government debt. Bank bailouts are a further burden on financially shaky governments, and weak government finances in turn hurt the banks that hold those governments' bonds. The ECB made €1 trillion in emergency loans in December and February to shore up the banking system, but Draghi warned that the ECB cannot fill "the vacuum of lack of action by national governments" in reducing deficits and reforming their economies.

He repeated his call for European officials to come up with a long-term vision of what they wanted the Eurozone to be. "What is the vision... What is the euro going to look like a certain number of years from now? The sooner the answer is specified the better it is."

Though past referendums on European Union issues in Ireland have proven to be problematic, this time things are expected to go off without a hitch. When the Irish vote on the EU "fiscal compact" treaty on Thursday, their clear approval is expected. Polls predict that some 60 percent of the voters will tick the Yes box on the controversial treaty, which commits all ratifying members to fiscal responsibility.

But as certain as a majority vote may appear, German Chancellor Angela Merkel will nevertheless be anxiously focused on the activity in Dublin on Thursday. In the past, the Irish have repeatedly proven to be both unpredictable and resistant to being told what to do. Should they reject Merkel's fiscal pact, it would be a further setback for the German chancellor following the election of Socialist François Hollande in France.

Though the fiscal pact can still go into effect without Irish approval - it only requires ratification from 12 of the 17 euro-zone countries - a vote against it would be highly symbolic. After all, the Irish are the only Europeans allowed to vote on the treaty. On top of that, it would once again make investors on the financial markets question whether the euro zone has a future.