Tensions between China and Vietnam continued to rise over the weekend, ahead of live-fire drills planned by Vietnam's navy on Monday on an islet around 20 miles from the coast of central Vietnam, which Hanoi described as "routine". Stirred by a number of maritime confrontations with China over recent weeks, hundreds of Vietnamese took part in rare anti-China protests on Sunday for the second straight weekend, with the usually draconian police allowing the demonstrations to take place.

"China is running an information campaign to blind people," said Pham Gia Minh, a 55-year-old investment consultant who attended a protest outside the Chinese embassy in Hanoi. "We have to let people understand that we want peace but when the aggressor comes we will stand up to them."

In addition to China and Vietnam, Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines and Taiwan claim some or all of the territory in the contested area of the South China Sea, which is believed to contain vast oil and gas reserves and incorporates key trade routes and abundant fish stocks.

In a declaration outlining its vision for a political solution, the National Coordination Committees said power must be handed to the army and an internationally supervised conference should convene within six months to write a new constitution and "stop Syria from sliding into chaos and guarantee a peaceful transfer of power."

"The regime... has forced the army into a confrontation with its own people, as if Syria did not have land under occupation (to be liberated). It has worked on stirring sectarian fears without any consideration for national cohesion," it said. The conference would include "regime politicians with no blood on their hands," representatives of the opposition and activists on the ground, the statement said.

"Syria is a civic nation, not the ownership of an individual, a family or party. It is not a possession to be bequeathed," it said, referring to 41 years of Assad family rule.

In total 10 people were injured and St John's Ambulance reported that six were taken to hospital. Two people were rescued from a collapsed building, and 54,000 homes lost power. The first quake to strike was measured at a magnitude of 5.2 and caused buildings to be evacuated. An hour and twenty minutes later, the US Geological Survey measured the biggest tremor at 6.0.

It struck at a depth of 5.6 miles and some nine miles from the country's second largest city. Much of the centre of the city is still sealed off because of the precarious state of many damaged buildings from four months earlier. That disaster was technically an aftershock from an earthquake last September, and for nine months its residents have endured thousands of tremors.

The aftershock prompted police to evacuate parts of the damaged central city known as the red zone, while rock falls had closed several bridges and prompted the closure of one police station. Eastern suburbs were badly affected by flooding and liquefaction - mud oozing from below the surface and covering roads. Christchurch's cathedral, which only had one wall left standing following February's quake, has suffered further extensive damage.

These days, the public clamour for quick solutions has over-ridden outmoded concepts such as accuracy and proof. The result is a 134 million pounds compensation tab, to be shared by all members of the European Union, including Britain, after what was denounced as a deadly consignment of Spanish vegetables turned out to be nothing of the sort.

'We have to restore the honour of the cucumber,' said Spanish MEP Francisco Sosa-Wagner, holding one aloft at a meeting of agriculture ministers in Luxembourg. Too late, mate. Already the unwitting dupe of a thousand sight gags, the cucumber is to suffer further indignity this summer, considered untrustworthy and shunned by consumers. Serious health warnings as good as stamp a skull and crossbones on every item, so information released to the public must be correct. Too often, it is not.

Edwina Currie blithely announced that 'most' egg production in Britain was infected with salmonella in 1988. She was wrong and later resigned, but not before four million hens were destroyed, along with 400 million unwanted eggs. We have got out of old habits that used to protect us: washing food at home, for instance. Now, it is washed on site and often packed wet, far likelier to cause contamination. And vegetables grow, regardless. No farmer can press a button to halt production when there is a sudden, unexpected, decline in sales.

Those who insist compensation is unwarranted and insurance policies are the answer haven't thought it through. A calamity that runs into hundreds of millions, that costs jobs and businesses, would be uninsurable; certainly to the small producer, likeliest to suffer from a rash assertion. And insure against what exactly? A minister with a big (mouth) or a scientist enjoying five minutes of fame?

Market concerns were compounded by new figures showing Greece's economy slowed faster than expected in the first three months of 2011. The figures put the annual pace of the downturn at 5.5 per cent rather than 4.8 per cent as previously estimated as public sector cuts and higher indirect taxes hit the economy.

However, Greek exports, including petroleum products, increased by 31.5 per cent during the January-March period, according to the Panhellenic Exporters Association. Experts said the country, struggling under 340 billion euros (301 billion pounds) of debt, was likely to stay in recession in 2011 for the third year in a row. There were further strikes on Thursday as Greece's prime minister George Papandreou sought to get further austerity measures approved by the Cabinet.

Meanwhile, there was gathering support for Germany's stance to force bondholders to extend the terms of their loans in order to avert a default. Moody's warned that if Greece defaults, the risk increases of defaults in Ireland and Portugal. Andrew Bosomworth, head of portfolio management at the Munich office of Pimco, said: "I am in favour of participation by the private sector simply on the grounds of fairness."

"Trying to figure out where they are going to hit is next to impossible," Stevens County Undersheriff Lavonne Webb said Thursday. "Nobody is claiming ownership of any animals involved in the pack." In their most recent attack, the dogs killed a 350-pound llama earlier this week. They've also killed goats and other farm animals.

So far, no humans have been attacked. But authorities are warning residents to take whatever steps are necessary to protect their families and animals because the dogs appear to be killing for fun rather than food. "We have this pack that is out there killing for the sake of killing," Webb said in a telephone interview from Colville. "What is going to happen if they come across a small child?" Officers have tried to track the pack but had little success because the dogs seem to hunker down during the day and move only at night, Webb said.

"We've only had one or two sightings during daytime hours," she said. Webb added she has worked for the sheriff's office since the 1970s and not encountered a similar problem before. "It's become a major issue because of the number of kills," she said. Since the end of March, there have been 15 separate attacks in the county that have killed about 100 animals, Webb said. The dogs killed a number of goats last week and the llama on Tuesday night.

Either way, forests across the West that once had 50 trees per acre (half-hectare) now have hundreds, sometimes thousands, and much of the landscape is choked with tinder-dry brush. The density of the growth has fueled immense conflagrations in recent years like the 525-square-mile blaze now burning in the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest northeast of Phoenix. "I think what is happening proves the debate," said state Senator Sylvia Allen, a Republican from rural Snowflake.

In the past, a 30-square-mile fire was considered huge. "And it used to be the loggers got right on it. Never in the past have you had these huge fires." Today, it's not uncommon for fires to exceed 150 square miles. On Thursday, the huge blaze known as the Wallow Fire was still burning completely out of control and had charred more than 386,000 acres with no containment in sight. After reportedly being sparked by a campfire, it has become the second-largest wildfire in state history and is still growing. An extremely dry late winter and spring contributed to the fire conditions.

More than 525 square miles have been blackened, and thousands of people have been forced to flee from mountain resort communities and two large towns at the forest's edge. Many in Arizona blame the legal battles that have erupted over old-growth logging that threatened endangered species such as the Mexican spotted owl. Since those disputes prevented regular logging that would have thinned the number of trees, the forests became overgrown, they say.

In the drought-affected areas, Anglian Water and Cambridge Water say there is no threat to public water supplies. But Severn Trent Water says there may be restrictions if rainfall stays low. Both the south-east and central-southern regions of England have had their driest spring on record. Across England and Wales as a whole it has been the driest spring since 1990.

Environment Secretary Caroline Spelman is set to hold a second drought summit to review the impacts of the continuing dry weather. She said: "Water companies are confident that supplies are high enough so that widespread restrictions to the public are unlikely. We're doing all we can to reduce the impact on agriculture and wildlife, but everyone can play their part.

"Households know how to use less water and everyone can do their bit to use water more wisely, not only through the summer, but throughout the year." Low levels of water are causing considerable problems for farmers, with crop yields being hit. In parts of the Fens, some farmers and growers have volunteered to irrigate only at night to reduce evaporation, and co-operatives have formed to share limited amounts of water available.

But according to a Pentagon memo which includes a detailed update on the progress and pace of operations, by mid-May US operations in Libya had cost $664 million, a figure confirmed by the Department of Defence. The document, entitled the "United States Contribution to Operation Unified Protector'', adds that US costs are running at a rate of about $2 million a day or $60 million a month. The memo has been circulating on Capitol Hill since last week. The DoD declined to comment on the increased costs of the operation.

Although it is working under Nato, the US is by far the largest contributor to operation Unified Protector. As of mid-May it was conducting 70 per cent of reconnaissance missions, over 75 per cent of refuelling flights and 27 per cent of all air sorties. The US has about 75 aircraft, including drones, involved in the operations and since the end of March has conducted about 2,600 aircraft sorties and about 600 combat sorties.

In addition the US military can call on a number of naval assets in the Mediterranean. As well as its contribution to the Nato operation, US spending on Libya includes its twelve day operation Odyssey Dawn that took place before Nato took over. In total the US military has fired about 228 missiles as of mid-May. For comparison the US Navy plans to buy 196 or so missiles this year for about $300 million or about $1.5 million each, according to US budget documents.

The attendee list of Bilderberg is still pretty much the only thing that is not a closely guarded secret, as 120 of the world's richest and most powerful people meet behind closed doors, this time at the Suvretta House hotel in Switzerland, a venue which not only boasts a "fairytale castle" design, but also its own "Teddy World."

UK Prime Minister David Cameron and Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne are known to have attended in the past, although it seems unlikely that either will attend this week. A spokesperson at the UK Treasury press office said it "didn't know" whether or not Osborne would go this year, but promised to call CNBC.com back. They did not. Given the secretive spirit of Bilderberg, that could well be taken as a confirmation.

Andrew Kakabadse is professor of international management development at Cranfield University. For his recent book "Bilderberg People," co-authored with Nada Kakabadse and Ian Richardson, Kakabadse interviewed a number of past attendees in order to understand how the network of global influence works. "It's a meeting. It's not an organization. It's not an official summit," he told CNBC.com. "It's basically a meeting of friends." The Bilderbergs are probably the most influential global network of all time. It's an honor to be invited, it's a tremendous honor. Part of it is recognition for work done and part of it is for contribution to enabling world affairs.

"The people we talked to are quite genuine. Mostly they don't understand the conspiracy bit, because they say when you go there what you find is people of all sorts of varying views. But the fact that they've been invited is indicative of the position that they've reached in life," he said. Nevertheless, Bilderberg is where ideas are shared and a transatlantic, capitalist consensus view of the world comes together.

"You do get the impression that what is happening is a shaping of ideas and the shaping of a way forward does take place," Kakabadse said.

"The name we'd put to this is smart power or shaping, but it is definitely not doing something definite, like 'we're going to go and make that investment or conspire against them.' It's more about getting a consensus around a position that then infiltrates itself into society."

The situation with Britain's current account deficit is lamentably rather more serious than a mere six shilling overspend. Last year we imported approximately 50 billion pounds more than we exported, or in Mr Micawber's terms, we spent 50 billion pounds more than we earned. Large though this number is, it wouldn't be much of a concern if it was just a one off, but in fact Britain has been persistently living beyond its means for nearly thirty years now. To find the last recorded trade surplus in goods and services, you have to go as far back as 1982.

The Bank of England's intention in keeping the bank rate at just 0.5 per cent is to support demand, but by the by, it is also engineering a massive transfer of wealth from savers to borrowers, or to use more moralistic terminology, from the thrifty to the profligate. At the centre of the policy response to the crisis is a giant flaw - that in seeking to address the crisis in demand, policymakers are only sowing the seeds for the next one.

"The idea that the US could threaten to default is a dangerous one," he said in an interview. "The reverberations in those global markets would be very severe. That's where the real risk comes in," Bullard warned. Some Republican lawmakers have said a brief default, which would be inevitable in August if lawmakers fail to raise the nation's $14.3 trillion debt ceiling, might be acceptable if it forces the White House to deal with large budget deficits.

Bullard's warning came just after Fitch said it would slash to "junk" the ratings on all Treasury securities, seen worldwide as a risk-free investment, if the government misses debt payments by August 15. The ratings would go back up once the government fulfills its debt obligations, but probably not to the current AAA level, Fitch said, in a stark statement about the impact of even a short-lived default on the credit-worthiness.

"The notion of flirting with a default on existing obligations flirts with irresponsibility," Richard Bernstein, chief executive of Richard Bernstein Capital Management LLC, said at the Reuters 2011 Investment Outlook Summit in New York. The White House said Fitch's warning makes it clear that "there is no alternative to raising the debt ceiling."

But any form of default could destabilize the global economy and sour already tense relations with big US creditors such as China, government officials and investors warn. Li Daokui, an adviser to the People's Bank of China, said a default could undermine the US dollar, and Beijing needed to dissuade Washington from pursuing this course of action.

"I think there is a risk that the US debt default may happen," Li told reporters on the sidelines of a forum in Beijing. "The result will be very serious and I really hope that they would stop playing with fire." China is the largest foreign creditor to the United States, holding more than $1 trillion in Treasury debt as of March, US data shows, so its concerns carry considerable weight in Washington. "I really worry about the risks of a US debt default, which I think may lead to a decline in the dollar's value," Li said.

Congress has balked at increasing a statutory limit on government spending as lawmakers argue over how to curb a deficit which is projected to reach $1.4 trillion this fiscal year. The US Treasury Department has said it will run out of borrowing room by August 2. If the United States cannot make interest payments on its debt, the Obama administration has warned of "catastrophic" consequences that could push the still-fragile economy back into recession.

"It has dire implications for the economy at a time when the macro data is softening," said Ben Westmore, a commodities economist at National Australia Bank. "It's just a horrible idea," he said.

"The US fiscal situation, if not handled correctly, could turn into a global macro shock," Bullard said in an interview on Wednesday. "The idea that the US could threaten to default is a dangerous one." Some Republican lawmakers have said a brief US default might be acceptable if it forces the White House to deal with large budget deficits, but few Wall Street analysts believe it will come to that.

However, Bullard is worried about reaction overseas if the US government would technically default - basically delaying interest payments for a couple of days. That could happen in the absence of a political compromise on this year's budget. "If it were just US markets, it might not cause too many problems, but we've got people participating in foreign markets who are probably not as tuned in to the US political situation," Bullard said. "The reverberations in those global markets would be very severe. That's where the real risk comes in."

This strange, hypothetical, article, which first appeared on April 24, hammers home again and again the message that an Iranian nuclear test will not lead to disaster. On the contrary, life will go as before except that Iranians will feel better about themselves.

This has the look of a kite being flown, but for whom? It could be intended to get Iranians used to the idea of a nuclear test, and less fearful of international reaction. It could be a gesture of defiance to the world by hardline elements - according to independent experts, Gerdab is run by the Revolutionary Guards' cyber defence command, which is presumably still smarting from the Stuxnet attack. Opposition websites describe it as an enforcement tool for the regime, identifying and threatening independent bloggers inside Iran.

The article comes during a period when Tehran's official stance is particularly defiant and assertive, announcing today that it will triple its production of 20% enriched uranium and shift it to the underground Fordow site, near Qom.