"If there is one country that has benefited from the huge amounts Greece spends on defence it is Germany," said Dimitris Papadimoulis, an MP with the Coalition of the Radical Left party. "As a proportion of GDP, Greece spends twice as much as any other EU member on defence," said Papadimoulis, who is also a former MEP. "Well after the economic crisis had begun, Germany and France were trying to seal lucrative weapons deals even as they were pushing us to make deep cuts in areas like health."

Under the latest EU-IMF-sponsored rescue programme – which is propping up the near-bankrupt Greek economy with an extra €130 billion in emergency loans until 2015 – Athens has agreed to cut defence expenditure by €400 million. Even so, its military budget accounts for nearly 4% of national economic output, compared with the eurozone average of around 2%. The country has cited perceived security risks from Turkey and, in addition to state-of-the-art submarines, has bought hundreds of Leopard tanks, howitzers, Mirage fighter planes and F-16 jets from Germany, France and the US since the late 1990s.

Speculation is rife that international aid was dependent on Greece following through on agreements to buy military hardware from Germany and France. Given Greece's financial predicament – illustrated last week by IMF managing director Christine Lagarde's refusal to rule out a default – growing numbers have begun to question the probity of the nation's defence expenditure. Deputy prime minister Theodore Pangalos publicly rued the fact that Athens was spending so much money on arms, exclaiming during a visit by the Turkish prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, that Greece was being "forced to buy weapons we do not need".

The evidence is nowhere near conclusive. But if those suspicions prove correct, it could mean that the environmental damage to the Gulf from the BP disaster is still unfolding and the picture isn't as rosy as it might have seemed just a year ago. And the damage may extend well beyond fish. In the past year, research has emerged showing deep-water coral, seaweed beds, dolphins, mangroves and other species of plants and animals are suffering.

'There is lots of circumstantial evidence that something is still awry,' said Christopher D'Elia, dean of Louisiana State University's School of the Coast and Environment. 'On the whole, it is not as much environmental damage as originally projected. Doesn't mean there is none.' Reports of strange things with fish began emerging when fishermen returned to the Gulf weeks after BP's gushing oil well was capped during the summer of 2010. They started catching grouper and red snapper with large open sores and strange black streaks, lesions they said they had never seen. They promptly blamed the spill.

The illnesses are not believed to pose any health threat to humans. But the problems could be devastating to some prized types of fish and to the people who make their living catching them. There's no saying for sure what's causing the diseases in what is still a relatively small percentage of the fish. The Gulf is assaulted with all kinds of contaminants every day. Moreover, scientists have no baseline data on sick fish in the Gulf from before the spill. The first comprehensive research may be years from publication.

"The military council does not have the serious intention to transfer power," Khairat al-Shater, a millionaire businessman and top Brotherhood official, said after he was pushed out of the race by the election committee because of a criminal conviction during Mubarak's rule when the group was banned. In his place, the Brotherhood will field Mohamed Mursi, head of its political party who had filed the official paperwork to run just in case Shater was disqualified.

The electoral commission confirmed on Tuesday that 10 candidates have been barred, rejecting challenges by Shater, another Islamist and the old regime's spy chief. The commission had held a day-long meeting Tuesday to hear appeals from disqualified candidates, including former intelligence chief Omar Suleiman and popular Salafist politician Hazem Abu Ismail.

Among the candidates still able to run are former Arab League chief Amr Moussa and Abdel Moneim Abul Fotouh, a one-time member of the powerful Brotherhood. "It's a very important decision because it eliminates the most controversial candidates," said Mustafa Kamel al-Sayyed, professor of political science at Cairo University. The election is scheduled for May 23 and 24, raising fears among many of having to elect a president whose powers have not been defined.

Holdings of Spanish government debt by lenders based in the country jumped 26 percent in two months, to 220 billion euros ($289 billion) at the end of January, data from Spain’s treasury show. Italian banks increased ownership of their nation’s sovereign bonds by 31 percent to 267 billion euros in the three months ended in February, according to Bank of Italy data.

German and French banks, meanwhile, have cut holdings of those countries’ bonds, as well as Irish and Greek debt, by as much as 50 percent since 2010 in some cases. That leaves domestic firms on the hook for a restructuring such as Greece’s last month and their main financier, the European Central Bank, facing losses. Like Greece, governments would have to rescue their lenders with funds borrowed from the European Union.

“The more banks stop cross-border lending, the more the ECB steps in to do the financing,” said Guntram Wolff, deputy director of Bruegel, a Brussels-based research institute. “So the exposure of the core countries to the periphery is shifting from the private to the public sector.” The jump in sovereign-debt holdings by Spanish and Italian banks has been fueled by the ECB’s 1 trillion-euro long-term refinancing operation, or LTRO, initiated in December, to provide liquidity to the region’s lenders. Encouraged by their governments to take the money and buy bonds, banks borrowed 489 billion euros on December 21 and 530 billion euros on February 29.

For lenders in so-called peripheral countries - Spain, Portugal, Ireland, Greece and Italy - profit also was an inducement: They could borrow at 1 percent to buy government bonds yielding between 6 percent and 13 percent.

While ‘Stop Cyber Spying Week’ is focused on US initiatives, Canadians should be concerned as well as the adoption of a privacy-invasive US cybersecurity strategy is likely to have serious implications for Canadian civil liberties. For this reason, OpenMedia.ca, CIPPIC and other Canadian groups have joined the protest. In general, Canadians would do well to remain vigilant.

Using the guise of ‘cybersecurity’, CISPA aims to mobilize Internet intermediaries to institute a sweeping, privacy-invasive, voluntary information-sharing regime with few safeguards. The US cybersecurity strategy, embodied in CISPA and other legislative proposals, also seeks to empower Internet companies to deploy ill-defined ‘countermeasures’ in order to combat these threats. Use of these powers is purportedly limited to situations addressing ‘cybersecurity’ threats, yet this term is so loosely defined that it can encompass almost anything – even, potentially, to investigate potential breaches of intellectual property rights!

"Syria is selling its gold at rock bottom prices," he said after a meeting with about 60 nations aimed at coordinating measures against President Bashar al-Assad's government. On February 27, the European Union agreed more sanctions including prohibiting trade in gold and other precious metals with Syrian state institutions, including the central bank.

According to reports Syrian officials have been offering to sell gold at a 15 percent discount in discrete amounts of 20-30 kilograms, which are easier to move in private sales and online auctions. Syria had an estimated 25.8 metric tons of gold as of February 2012. At Wednesday's spot prices, Syria's total gold reserves are worth around $1.36 billion.

This is slightly more than the £70.10 spent by an average household with two children on food and non-alcoholic drinks per week. For a family with two cars, it is now £22 more expensive to top up with petrol than it was at the beginning of the year. Petrol prices have been high since the threat of a strike by tanker drivers began last month.

Petrol prices have remained stubbornly high, despite the lack of a strike and falling oil prices on the financial markets. The AA blamed “stock market speculators” for manipulating prices. The group called on the Government to “address the destructive tendencies in the oil and road fuel markets”.

Officials from the tanker drivers' union Unite turned down the deal which was thrashed out during six days of talks between the union and representatives of six fuel distribution companies. Motorists were urged not to panic buy fuel as Unite said it wanted a negotiated settlement and stressed that it had not yet decided whether to name dates for action.

After the row flared last month, the Government advised motorists to top up their cars with petrol and to store fuel in jerry cans, leading to panic buying and shortages of supplies. Downing Street said that members of the public should check the Department for Energy and Climate Change’s website for advice. Energy and Climate Change Secretary Ed Davey said that “any strike action would be wrong and unnecessary”. There were chaotic scenes at garages as long queues built up, leading to criticism of the Government for the way they had handled the dispute.

Peter Harwood, Acas chief conciliator, said: “Naturally, we are disappointed at today’s outcome, following the parties' intensive talks at Acas over the last two weeks. We are contacting the parties and the challenge now is to see if we can find a way forward.” The union will have to name strike dates, or other forms of industrial action, by Friday afternoon unless employers agree to extend the deadline.

Although the text of legislation states that such data would remain the property of the owner of the vehicle, the government would have the power to access it in a number of circumstances, including by court order, if the owner consents to make it available, and pursuant to an investigation or inspection conducted by the Secretary of Transportation.

Given the innumerable examples of both government and industry illegally using supposedly privacy-protected information to spy on individuals, this represents the slippery slope to total Big Brother surveillance of every American’s transport habits and location data. The legislation, which has been given the Orwellian title ‘Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century Act’, sailed through the Senate after being heavily promoted by Democrats Harry Reid and Barbara Boxer and is also expected to pass the Republican-controlled House.

The ultimate Big Brother scenario would be a system whereby every driver had to get de facto permission from the state to drive each time they get behind the wheel, once it had been determined from an iris scan that they were good citizens who have paid all their taxes and not misbehaved.

A scientist at the launch site said the launch was successful, minutes after television images showed the rocket with a range of more than 5,000 km (3,100 miles) blasting through clouds from an island off India's east coast. "It has met all the mission objectives," S P Dash, director of the test range, told Reuters. "It hit the target with very good accuracy." The Indian-made Agni V is the crowning achievement of a now-mothballed missile program developed primarily with a possible threat from neighboring China in mind.

Only the UN Security Council permanent members - China, France, Russia the United States and Britain - along with Israel, are believed to have such long-range weapons. Fast emerging as a world economic power, India is keen to play a larger role on the global stage and has long angled for a permanent seat on the Security Council. In recent years it has emerged as the world's top arms importer as it rushes to upgrade equipment for a large but outdated military.

And it warned that a euro meltdown could be even more devastating for the world economy than the 2008 credit crunch. The admission in the World Economic Outlook from the IMF came amid renewed fears that Spain could soon follow Greece, Portugal and Ireland in accepting a multi-billion pound international bail-out. The report warned: “The potential consequences of a disorderly default and exit by a euro area member are unpredictable and thus not possible to map into a specific scenario.”

“If such an event occurs, it is possible that other euro area economies perceived to have similar risk characteristics would come under severe pressure as well, with a full-blown panic in financial markets and depositor flight from several banking systems.” It added: “Under these circumstances, a break-up of the euro area could not be ruled out. The financial and real spillovers to other regions, especially emerging Europe, would likely be very large.” It compared a eurozone break-up to the collapse of the Lehman Brothers bank four years ago that helped spark a global economic crisis.

Salam Fayyad, the prime minister of the Palestinian National Authority has allegedly pulled out of talks because of possible public opposition to the meeting. Instead, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had to meet with two lower-level Palestinian officials, chief negotiator Saeb Erekat and a top security official, Majed Faraj, so the lack of any tangible result was predictable. The brief summation of the results of the meeting said traditional words of “seeking peace”.

“Israel and the Palestinian Authority are committed to reaching peace,” the statement read. The Palestinian side submitted a letter with a list of demands they consider necessary for the resumption of talks. The Associated Press obtained the text of the letter which says that Israel must freeze all settlement construction and accept its pre-1967 war boundaries as a precondition for talks. Israel has repeatedly stressed that it will only go to the negotiation table if there are no preconditions.

But the next series of major cities and counties in danger of defaulting on their debt can hardly point to one single decision for their malaise. Whether it be Detroit, Miami or Providence, Rhode Island, their problems have a lot more to do with financial policies that put them on course to live well beyond their means. Municipal defaults have shot up since 2007 and are on pace for another high year in 2012, according to Richard Lehmann, publisher of the Distressed Securities Newsletter.

Many failures will be due to local politicians' willingness to give unionized local government workers lucrative pensions and health care benefits when times were good. For others, the housing bust was enough to destroy their real estate tax base. They almost all share the failure to prepare for a rainy day. Now, belt tightening by state and federal governments is adding to the pain - as contributions to governments at city and county levels get squeezed. Many of the places in the worst condition are in the Northeast, Midwest, California and Florida.

The new tide of defaults may worry some investors in the $3.7 trillion municipal bond market who have so far shrugged off the fiscal crises of local governments and yield cuts in local government services. "This is a lagging process," said Richard Ciccarone, managing director at McDonnell Investment Management. "Capitulation may not come for years. In the crash of 1929, the defaults did not come until 1934 or 1935."

The average number of earthquakes of magnitude 3 or greater in the US midcontinent - an area that includes Arkansas, Colorado, Oklahoma, New Mexico and Texas - increased to six times the 20th century average last year, scientists at the US Geological Survey said in an abstract of their research.

The abstract does not explicitly link rising earthquake activity to fracking - known formally as hydraulic fracturing - that involves pumping water and chemicals into underground rock formations to extract natural gas and oil. But the wastewater generated by fracking and other extraction processes may play a role in causing geologic faults to slip, causing earthquakes, the report suggests.

"A remarkable increase in the rate of (magnitude 3) and greater earthquakes is currently in progress," the authors wrote in a brief work summary to be discussed Wednesday at a San Diego meeting of the Seismological Society of America. From 1970 through 2000, the rate of magnitude 3 or greater quakes was 21 plus or minus 7.6 each year, according to USGS figures. Between 2001 and 2008, that increased to 29 plus or minus 3.5. But the next three years saw the numbers increase "much more spectacularly," said Arthur McGarr, of the geologic survey's Earthquake Science Center in California: 2009 had 50, 2010 had 87 and 2011 had 134 such events.

In addressing whites, Farrakhan issued his typically-offensive rhetoric. “They know you, but you don’t know them or yourself, so you’re always at a disadvantage when you sit down with white people to negotiate,” he told his predominately black audience. “We don’t ever come in their presence like we are some little weak things.”

He continued, going on to address Caucasians directly.“I know myself. I know you. And some of you white people – I know you better than you know yourself because God has revealed you fully,” he explained, going on to seemingly claim that he has a special, God-ordained ability to see what others cannot.

This, of course, was followed up with a cryptic warning to white Americans about their need to “change.” “It ain’t about hating you. We ain’t got no time for that. But we know who we’re dealing with. We know what we’re dealing with,” he said. “We know your origin in the world and we know how long you were set to live and unless you change, your end has come.”