The IBEX index of stocks in Madrid fell 2.6 per cent, the lowest since the dotcom bust in 2003. Chaos over the €23.5 billion rescue of crippled lender Bankia has led to the abrupt resignation of central bank governor Miguel Ángel Fernández Ordóñez, who testified to the senate that he had been muzzled to avoid inflaming events as confidence in the country drains away.

Markets are on tenterhooks as Spanish yields test levels that forced the European Central Bank to respond last November with its €1 trillion liquidity blitz. “Nobody is short Spanish debt right now because they are expecting ECB intervention,” said Andrew Roberts, credit chief at RBS. “If it doesn’t come - if we take out 6.8 per cent - we’re going to see a hyberbolic sell-off,” he said.

Italy felt the full brunt of contagion from Spain on Wednesday, with 10-year yields back near 6 per cent. The euro fell to a 2-year low of $1.239 against the dollar. Crude oil and metal prices plummeted and save-haven flight pushed rates on 2-year German debt to zero. Gilt yields fell to 1.64 per cent, the lowest in history.

Mr Roberts said the collapse in Spanish tax revenues is replicating the pattern in Greece. Fiscal revenues have fallen 4.8 per cent over the last year, and VAT returns have slumped 14.6 per cent. Debt service costs have risen by 18 per cent. The country is caught in a classic deflationary vice: a rising debt burden on a shrinking economic base. “Once you get into such a negative feedback loop, YOU CAN MOVE BEYOND THE POINT OF NO RETURN QUICKLY,” HE SAID.

A minister named Philip Caminiti was sentenced to 2 years in prison for simply teaching that parents should spank their children when they misbehave. Please note that Caminiti was not accused of spanking anyone or of physically hurting anyone. He was put in prison simply for his speech. He was put in prison simply for what he was teaching others to do.

Whether you agree with spanking or not, this should be incredibly sobering for all of us. Increasingly, speech is being penalized in the United States. Much of the time, the focus of the attacks by the forces of political correctness is on religious speech. If this trend continues, many of you that are reading this article might be put in jail for the things that you say in the coming years.

Instead of going after the parents who were doing the spanking, prosecutors chose to go after the pastor instead. They claimed that Caminiti was “the spoke in the wheel of this conspiracy”. Even after Caminiti leaves prison, he will be forbidden from having any contact with his old church. Caminiti will be on extended supervision for six years after his release from prison. Despite objections on constitutional grounds by Caminiti’s lawyers the judge ordered that he not have any contact with the Aleitheia Bible Church and have no leadership role in any church.

What in the world is happening to this country? Criminal predators are literally eating the faces off of people, and yet authorities want to go after pastors that are encouraging their congregations to follow the teachings of the Bible? Have we stepped into a really bizarre episode of The Twilight Zone? Sadly, this is not the only example of how our free speech is under attack these days.

Police tell Alex Jones and crew to leave the hotel. Surveying the scene at the hotel today, radio host Alex Jones described a chaotic picture, with Bilderberg security, including a particularly vocal Swedish woman, stomping around the building announcing that “machine gun nests” were being set up in anticipation of a deluge of protesters arriving over the next few days.

Given the fact that a record number of demonstrators are expected to attend, Bilderberg has been more stringent than ever before in its efforts to get people out of the way, telling customers who had made room reservations for two days before the start of the conference that their bookings would not be honored. Undercover Fairfax police, secret service, hotel security, as well as diplomatic service personnel are all now rushing to finalize preparations for the arrival of Bilderberg members tomorrow morning.

According to London Guardian journalist Charlie Skelton, conference organizers were also using iPhones to film guests who had arrived for brunch. Regular guests as well as journalists are also having background checks run against their names. Alex Jones also heard discussions between members of Bilderberg security about how sophisticated surveillance equipment using satellites was being used to tap phones of prominent activists and media personalities set to cover the event.

The erratic blaze grew overnight to more than 170,000 acres, surpassing a blaze last year that burned 156,593 acres in Los Conchas and threatened the Los Alamos National Laboratory, the nation's premier nuclear facility. The Gila forest fire is also the largest currently burning in the country. It formed last week when two lightning-sparked blazes merged in an isolated mountainous area in southwestern New Mexico, where it has destroyed about a dozen homes and prompted evacuations of nearby towns and health alerts for some of the state's largest cities.

Fire information officer Jerry Perry said about 1,200 firefighters from around the state were battling the growing blaze, but that they continue to face low humidity and shifting winds in their efforts. "We are still facing adverse weather conditions that are posing a challenge," Perry said. "We're doing a lot of burnout operations and yesterday we had to deal with a lot of spot fires." The fire has not been contained, and officials worry that shifting winds and dryness related to the state's record drought may cause the blaze to grow even more.

The full genome sequence of a tomato breed known as Heinz 1706, and a draft sequence for its closest wild relative Solanum pimpinellifolium, were published in the journal Nature on Wednesday. Researchers who carried out the work said that together the sequences provide the most detailed look yet at the functional parts of the tomato genome and show order, orientation, types and relative positions of all of its 35,000 genes.

"Tomatoes are one of the most important fruit crops in the world, both in terms of the volume that we eat and the vitamins, minerals and other phytochemicals that both fresh and processed tomato products provide to our diets," said Graham Seymour, a professor of biotechnology at Nottingham University, one of 300 scientists involved in the Tomato Genome Consortium (TGC). Tomatoes represent a $2 billion market in the United States alone, while in Britain the market for tomatoes is worth around £625 million ($980 million) a year.

The research also offers some insight into how the tomato and its relatives diversified and adapted to new environments over the years. The scientists said the findings show the tomato genome expanded abruptly about 60 million years ago. Some of the genes generated during that expansion were involved in the development and control of ripening, making them particularly interesting to tomato breeders.

Giovanni said the work has implications for other plant species. Strawberries, apples, melons, bananas and other fleshy fruits share some characteristics with tomatoes, he explained, so knowledge about the genes involved in fruit ripening could potentially be applied to them, helping breeders and growers to improve food quality and cut costs. "Now we can start asking a lot more interesting questions about fruit biology, disease resistance, root development and nutritional qualities," he said in a statement.

Researchers reporting in Plos One have sampled the rock at the supervolcano site of Long Valley in California. Their findings suggest that the magma pool beneath it erupted within as little as hundreds of years of forming. That eruption is estimated to have happened about 760,000 years ago, and would have covered half of North America in its ash. Such super-eruptions can release thousands of cubic kilometres of debris - hundreds of times larger than any eruption seen in the history of humanity.

Eruptions on this scale could release enough ash to influence the global weather for years, and one theory holds that the Lake Toba eruption in Indonesia about 70,000 years ago had long-term effects that nearly wiped out humans altogether.

“If eurozone integration proceeds without Britain, and so deeply that the single market starts to fragment into inner and outer cores, the strongest argument for British membership will be undermined.” He writes that Open Europe enjoys a “central role” the shaping the debate about the UK’s role in Europe and “cannot be ignored.”

The waves of energy from the quake and tsunami that were so destructive on the ground reached into the ionosphere, a part of the upper atmosphere that stretches from about 50 to 500 miles above Earth's surface. The ionosphere is the last, thinnest part of the atmosphere, where solar ultraviolet radiation breaks up molecules and leaves a haze of electrons and ions.

In images released on Friday, NASA showed how the earthly disturbances from the March 11, 2011, quake and tsunami were echoed in the movement of electrons far aloft. This movement was monitored by tracking the GPS signals between satellites and ground receivers. Scientists have seen this phenomenon before, for tsunamis in Samoa in 2009 and Chile in 2010. The Japanese event, however, occurred in a region more closely monitored by a dense network of GPS receivers, NASA said in a statement.

Nervy top officials are reluctant to speak on the record for fear of slipping up. Policymakers contradict one another. Plans keep changing. Financial markets reel amid the uncertainty. The gloom in ministry corridors is palpable. The latest gaffe: after weeks of insisting that one of the country's biggest banks, Bankia, did not need fresh funds, ministers dropped the bombshell last Friday that there was a €23 billion hole in the accounts. They have yet to explain clearly how they will find the money when they are already struggling to finance a spiraling national debt.

The effect of the Bankia news on fragile financial markets was devastating. Spanish shares dived to 9-year lows, the euro sank and investors fled Spanish government debt, pushing the yield towards the 7 per cent level at which fellow eurozone members Ireland and Portugal were forced to seek national bailouts from Brussels.

To hear the government tell it, outsiders have got it all wrong: Spain has lived beyond its means for too long and is now going through a painful but necessary period of adjustment to shrink its state sector, cut spending and boost competitiveness. All the right things are being done. Rajoy's government is serious, committed and enjoys a comfortable parliamentary majority. Now, ministers say, Madrid just needs time and some help and support from its European partners to get through the most acute phase of the crisis and give the reforms time to work. Unfortunately, time is running out.

He also said that a Greek exit “could be used as an excuse not to implement structural reforms.” Thanasis Gavos, the London Correspondent of SkAI TV and Radio, said that, in the short term, eurozone countries may breathe “a sigh of relief” following Greece’s euro exit, but warned of the consequences in the longer term, noting that if Greece were to leave, “the irreversibility of euro membership would be declared void.”

He also said that he expected the result of the 17 June elections to be “inconclusive”, potentially leaving Greece with either a weak government or no government at all, and forcing the country to hold a referendum on its euro membership.

In the Irish Examiner, Colette Browne argues that “What we have tomorrow is the illusion of democracy” noting that Ireland is losing control over its “economic destiny”. A leader in the Irish Times urges voters to vote Yes “Not just out of an incurable and uncritical Europhilia, but also a pragmatic assessment of Ireland’s vital interests at the time.” Ireland’s Newstalk radio reports that latest polls indicate 47% in favour of a ‘Yes’ vote compared with 35% in favour of a ‘No’ vote, while 18% still remain undecided.

Specifically, they have pointed the finger at the highly secretive National Security Agency. UN computer security chief Marco Obiso moved to highlight the gravity of the situation after it emerged the bug had been used to hack into computers in Iran. The sophisticated spyware – said to be about 100 times the size of most malicious software – also hacked other machines in the Middle East, including Sudan, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon and Egypt.

Mr Obiso said the warning will underline the danger the virus represents to the critical infrastructure of member nations. The conclusion by Moscow-based internet security firm Kaspersky Lab ZAO that it was crafted at the behest of a national government fuelled claims that Flame was part of an Israeli-backed campaign of electronic sabotage aimed at archrival Iran.

While Israel has done little to dispute the claims, some believe they do not have the capacity to launch such an attack. Earlier this week, Iran's National Computer Emergency Response Team posted a security alert saying it believed Flame was responsible for 'recent incidents of mass data loss.' It also claimed an antidote had been found. The discovery of the Flame virus came just days after talks between Iran and six world powers in Baghdad failed to persuade Tehran to freeze uranium enrichment.

That these monitoring features are available on cell phones was a known fact, as FBI surveillance networks already have the ability to turn on any cell phone microphone or camera remotely without tipping off the user. It’s believed that this surveillance technique can work even when the cell phone user has shut down their phone, with the only surefire way to prevent such surveillance being removal of the unit’s battery.

Computers, however, were believed to be secure from these kinds of backdoors, and the majority of computer users believe their PC’s are protected from such intrusive technologies once they install virus and malware protection software. However, a new virus identified by leading digital security firm Kaspersky Lab, is reportedly capable of not only embedding itself onto computer systems without being identified by traditional anti-virus applications, but able to execute total surveillance and monitoring that includes turning on your camera and microphone, copying your data, and recording emails and chat conversations.

Evidence suggest that the virus, dubbed Flame, may have been built on behalf of the same nation or nations that commissioned the Stuxnet worm that attacked Iran’s nuclear program in 2010, according to Kaspersky Lab, the Russian cyber security software maker that took credit for discovering the infections.

Flame can gather data files, remotely change settings on computers, turn on PC microphones to record conversations, take screen shots and log instant messaging chats. “The scary thing for me is: if this is what they were capable of five years ago, I can only think what they are developing now,” Mohan Koo, managing director of British-based Dtex Systems cyber security company.

Article - http://www.shtfplan.com/headline-news/big-brother-cyber-weapon-can-take-screen-shots-turn-on-microphones-copy-data-record-communications_05292012

Paris joined other Western nations in expelling Syrian envoys in response to last week's killing of 108 people in the town of Houla, many of whom were women and children. Australia, Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the United States acted in concert to step up the pressure on Damascus. Bulgaria, the Netherlands and Switzerland also dismissed Syrian diplomatic missions.

"It is not possible to allow Bashar al-Assad's regime to massacre its own people," Reuters quoted Hollande as saying.

RIA Novosti points out that in his speech, Francois Hollande also referred to French intellectual, philosopher and journalist Bernard-Henri Lévy, who, in March 2011, persuaded the then-French President Nicolas Sarkozy to recognize the leaders of the emerging Libyan opposition and to initiate a military campaign against the Gaddafi regime. Now, he is openly pushing for the same scenario in Syria.

"I want what happened in Libya to be perceived as proof that foreign intervention is possible in Syria. Homs today is Benghazi yesterday," he said. The weekend massacre in Houla seems to have become a turning point for Russia’s rhetoric on the Syrian crisis.

International media note that Moscow has taken an unusually hard line against President Assad's government.

“The government bears the main responsibility for what is going on,'' Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said in Moscow on Monday, following a meeting with British Foreign Secretary William Hague. “Any government in any country bears responsibility for the security of its citizens.” Some suggest that Russian government is sending a warning message to Assad – that he needs to change course, otherwise he will lose Moscow’s support. Russia has grown increasingly critical of Damascus in recent months, but Lavrov's latest comments were unusually strong. Losing Russia’s support is not something Assad could afford right now.

It was supposed to be a gesture of solidarity, a major public event: Russian President Vladimir Putin and Joachim Gauck, his German counterpart, working on a puzzle together in Moscow's Red Square, right outside the Kremlin's gates. Along with carefully selected guests, the two heads of state were to assemble the 1,023 individual pieces of the puzzle, an oversized copy of the self-portrait of German artist Albrecht Dürer, an iconic painting in European art. But Putin lost interest in putting together puzzles. At first, the Kremlin called off a meeting planned for May that was supposed to kick-off the "German-Russian Year." And now Putin's office has informed Gauck that he doesn't have time for a meeting in June, either.

Putin, the former KGB agent, doesn't want to offer Gauck, an ex-champion of freedom in communist East Germany, a spot in the limelight. The cancellation of the puzzle event aptly reflects the current state of German-Russian relations. On Friday, Putin is expected in Berlin on an official visit. It will be his first trip to a Western country since being inaugurated as president for the third time on May 7 - the message was intended as a positive one. But in fact, relations between Berlin and Moscow are worse than they have been in years.

Ties with Russia have traditionally enjoyed a special status in German foreign policy. Given the history of suffering, German governments see themselves as an important intermediary between Russia and its Western partners. Moscow, in turn, can only exert its influence in Europe via Berlin. Yet despite being more dependent on each other than ever, Germany and Russia are steering toward a new ice age. With plans for the Nabucco pipeline in southern Europe on the verge of collapse, Germany continues to be dependent on Russian natural gas. For his part, Putin needs German investors if he wants to modernize his country's economy.