Chinese TV showed wrecked buildings and people scrabbling through debris, as the government began a rescue misssion. Yushu is hundreds of miles from an airport, and it is thought rescue crews may take time to reach the quake zone. "Soldiers have been dispatched to save the people buried in the collapsed houses," local official Huang Limin was quoted as saying by China's state news agency Xinhua.

The region, which is home to ethnic Mongolians and Tibetan farmers and herdsmen, is dotted with coal, tin, lead and copper mines. China's Sichuan province, which neighbours Qinghai, suffered a huge earthquake in 2008, when thousands of schoolchildren were among the 87,000 people killed or missing. Five million people also lost their homes, and officials estimated rebuilding work would take at least three years.

The Niagara County Community College, a state university in New York, lecturer said due to the high amount of sightings every year, it should follow that students should be able to investigate phenomenon. "(A sighting) happens to millions of people (around the world)," he said. "It's about time we looked into this as a worthy area of study. It's important that the whole subject be brought out in the open and investigated."

Prof Haseley, who is also head of the Western New York Mutual UFO Network, an organisation that is focused on UFO research, said there were up to 50 UFO sightings are reported every month across region. He said the group investigated the sightings in a "scientific manner" using field investigation, radar, astronomy and meteorology. "To say we are UFO believers basically implies we are taking this on faith, and that's not the case. There's plenty of evidence," he said.

He dismissed the inevitable suggestions from skeptics that such study would be waste of time.

Some nights Albert Snyder wakes up at 3 am. Other nights he doesn't sleep at all, tormented by thoughts of the hateful signs carried by a fundamentalist church outside his Marine son's funeral.

"Thank God for Dead Soldiers."

"You're Going to Hell."

"Semper Fi Fags."

Most mourners try to ignore the taunts. But Snyder couldn't let it go. He became the first to sue the church to halt the demonstrations, and he's pursued the group farther than anyone else. His tireless efforts have drawn support from across the country, including a wave of donations after he was ordered to pay the church's court costs - a $16,500 judgment that the congregation plans to use for more protests.

Lance Corporal Matthew A Snyder, 20, was not gay. But for the Westboro church, any dead soldier is fair game. Pastor Fred Phelps oversees a congregation of 70 to 80 members - mostly his children and grandchildren. They consider themselves prophets, and they insist the nation is doomed.

Israeli diplomats attribute Mr Netanyahu's last-minute cancellation to Turkish and Egyptian plans to discuss Israel's nuclear arsenal. But his absence from an event intended to show US allies and partners rallying around the American president's agenda was, at the very least, deeply symbolic. The US-Israeli alliance, for decades the cornerstone of Middle East power politics, is in rocky shape. The Obama administration is angry about Israeli settlements in occupied East Jerusalem.

Mr Netanyahu's government is recoiling at what it depicts as Mr Obama's unreasonable demands. The tension between the two sides has become a story of personal snubs and policy differences even as the US and Israel profess their devotion to each other. As George Mitchell, Washington's Middle East envoy, prepares to return to the region, US officials are considering eventually issuing outlines of their own for an Israeli-Palestinian deal - a turn of events Israel is desperate to avoid.

One thing is clear: even as the diplomatic tensions mount, no one in Washington is questioning the American commitment to Israel's security, a pledge described by Mrs Clinton as "rock-solid, unwavering, enduring and for ever". She boasted in her Aipac speech that Washington was increasing the $3 billion military assistance the US delivers to Israel each year. Nor does the Obama administration see much scope in reducing other subsidies to Israel. All the same, some officials are looking at one possible source of pressure: eventually issuing US "parameters" or guidelines for a peace deal.

The Obama administration is, in other words, shaping a policy more nuanced than its predecessors': it seeks to blend a cast-iron commitment to Israel's security with a much more critical stance on settlement building and the peace process. As Iran continues its progress towards nuclear capability, it is a distinction that seems unlikely to disappear. For Mr Netanyahu and his government, uncomfortable times lie ahead.

But he said the so-called P5 - the five permanent members on the Security Council - should press Israel on its refusal to join the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). "Let's also try to convince the P5 to bring Israel onboard. You see, you have possibly today two emerging threats" in the Middle East, Gheit told the "PBS Newshour" on US public television.

"We are eager that we do not have a nuclear Iran, as well as we do not want to see a nuclear Israel. We want a zone that is free of nuclear weapons - and it can be done," he said. Israel is widely believed to have nuclear weapons but maintains a policy of strategic ambiguity, refusing to confirm or deny its arsenal.

Iran is part of the NPT but Western powers believe it is in violation of the treaty and is pursuing nuclear weapons. The clerical regime insists it is only seeking the peaceful use of nuclear energy. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the last minute pulled out of the Washington summit, reportedly out of concern that Arab states and Turkey would shift the focus to Israel and away from its arch-enemy Iran.

Analysts said the Dow's move above 11,000 could provide a psychological boost and perhaps draw more investors to the market. "There is a huge stockpile of cash on the sidelines earning virtually nothing," said Jack Ablin, chief investment officer at Harris Private Bank in Chicago. "Maybe this can help shake a few people into the market."

Stocks have been rising this year on growing expectations that the economy will shake off job market weakness and housing problems. A test of whether the Dow can hold the 11,000 mark will come in the next three weeks when companies report earnings. Investors also will want to see whether the government's next employment report, due in early May, shows that employers added jobs in April as they did during March.

On Monday, a loan agreement for Greece allowed US investors to focus on domestic economic and corporate news, including announcements of two big deals. Investors have been concerned that mounting debt in Greece and other European nations including Spain and Portugal would stunt a global recovery. "This is clearly a positive development that the EU is identifying and dealing with what has really been it's first real challenge," said Alan Gayle, senior investment strategist for RidgeWorth Investments.

Britain's FTSE 100 rose 0.1 percent, Germany's DAX index rose less than 0.1 percent, and France's CAC-40 slipped less than 0.1 percent. Japan's Nikkei stock average rose 0.4 percent.

Schmidt said he doesn't want 'to be treated as a stranger' when reading online, Politico reports. He envisions a future where technology for news editing could help tailor advertisements for individual readers. And he wants to be challenged through technology that 'directs readers' to a story with an 'opposing' view.

An odd suggestion from the CEO of a company long accused of offering little to no conservative-leaning links on its news page, while aggressively promoting left-leaning hubs. Schmidt said GOOGLE is working on new ways to push adverts and content for consumers, based on what stories they've read.

Meanwhile France's leader stressed his country could not give up its own nuclear weapons. The US welcomed a Ukrainian pledge to eliminate its stockpile of highly enriched uranium by 2012. The two-day summit is taking place without representatives of Iran and North Korea, neither of whom were invited by the US because of the disputes over their nuclear programmes. The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Ikia Amano, said that nuclear powers needed to do more to protect nuclear materials.

"The problem is that nuclear material and radioactive material are not well protected and member states need to better protect these materials against the theft or smuggling," he told the BBC. "On average every two days we receive one new information on an incident involving theft or smuggling of nuclear material." British Foreign Secretary David Miliband said that nuclear nations like Pakistan were vulnerable. "The message from this summit is that any country can be treated as a normal country on nuclear matters if it behaves like a normal country," he said.

Speaking in an interview before the summit opened, French President Nicolas Sarkozy said his country would not give up its nuclear weapons because to do so would be to jeopardise national security. "I cannot jeopardise the security and safety of my country," he told CBS News. "I have inherited the legacy of the efforts made by my predecessors to build up France as a nuclear power and I could not give up nuclear weapons if I wasn't sure the world was a stable and safe place."

Last week, the US and Russia signed a new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, reducing each country's deployed nuclear arsenal to 1,550 weapons. Mr Obama has also approved a new nuclear policy for the US, saying he plans to cut the nuclear arsenal, refrain from nuclear tests and not use nuclear weapons against countries that do not have them.

More than 1 million pounds and hundreds of hours of treatment time are being spent tackling conditions such as obesity, tooth decay, alcohol abuse and the problems caused by passive smoking. Steve Ryan, medical director at Alder Hey, said preventable conditions are also diverting vital resources away from more serious illnesses.

One of the areas most affected by preventable conditions is the dental department. More than half of the 1,000 dental operations carried out each year are on children under the age of six. Dental surgeon Sharon Lee said she sees a constant stream of toddlers: "It obviously upsets me immensely but we do have a job to do to look after the child." Between 500 to 1,000 children a year end up in hospital because they are exposed to their parents' smoking.

Obesity is also putting a strain on resources, with admissions linked to obesity in both adults and children in England up from 5,056 in 2007-08 to 8,085 for 2008-09. In Liverpool, the consultant who deals with children who are seriously obese is Mohammed Didi. He said he is seeing heavier children at a younger age: "It is maybe to do with their diet. With parents working quite often, the amount of time they spend watching television, how much time they spend outside being physically active and the type of foods they eat." He added that while he can give advice - it is what goes on at home that matters.

He said the very real prospect of a generation of British children dying before their parents is a sleeping giant. "I think that we've never been here before. We've never faced this epidemic. It didn't happen in history. There were cholera epidemics, measles epidemics, whooping cough epidemics... (this) is subtle. It is in the background. But it's massive."

Some 87 per cent of Latvia's debts are in euros or other foreign currencies, and are owed mainly to Swedish banks, while Hungary and Romania owe euro-debts mainly to Austrian banks. So their government borrowing by non-euro members has been to support exchange rates to pay these private-sector debts to foreign banks, not to finance a domestic budget deficit as in Greece.

All these debts are unpayably high because most of these countries are running deepening trade deficits and are sinking into depression. Now that real estate prices are plunging, trade deficits are no longer financed by an inflow of foreign-currency mortgage lending and property buyouts. There is no visible means of support to stabilize currencies (eg healthy economies).

For the past year these countries have supported their exchange rates by borrowing from the EU and IMF. The terms of this borrowing are politically unsustainable: sharp public sector budget cuts, higher tax rates on already over-taxed labor, and austerity plans that shrink economies and drive more labor to emigrate.

The most recent shot was fired on April 6 when Moody's downgraded Iceland's debt from stable to negative. "Moody's acknowledged that Iceland might still achieve a better deal in renewed negotiations, but said the current uncertainty was hurting the country's short-term economic and financial prospects." The fight is on. It should be an interesting decade.

A total of 33 states and the Virgin Islands have depleted their funds and borrowed more than $38.7 billion to provide a safety net, according to a report released Thursday by the National Employment Law Project. Four others are at the brink of insolvency. Debt-challenged California has borrowed the most, totaling more than $8.4 billion, followed by Michigan and New York, which have loans worth more than $3 billion. Nine other states have borrowed at least $1 billion from the federal government.

"The nation's financing system for jobless benefits is under unprecedented stress," said Andrew Stettner, deputy director of the New York-based advocacy group for the unemployed. "While the recession has certainly made things worse, this funding crisis has been developing for years."

During debate over the draft of a new Kenyan constitution, James Orengo, the country's minister of lands and a member of parliament for the Ugenya constituency, cited America's election of a Kenyan-born president as an example of what can be accomplished when diverse peoples unite:

"If America was living in a situation where they feared ethnicity and did not see itself as a multiparty state or nation," Orengo posited, "how could a young man born here in Kenya, who is not even a native American, become the president of America?"

Orengo held up the US as a country no longer "living in the past," since Americans elected a Kenyan-born president without regard to "ethnic consideration and objectives."

The convention, which is not yet ratified in the United States but has been adopted by numerous other nations, orders that children can choose their own religion with parents only having the authority to advise them, the government can override a parent's decision regarding a child if a social worker disagrees, a child has a right to a government review of every parental decision and Christian schools would violate the law if they refused to teach children "alternative worldviews."

And all corporal punishment, such as spankings, would be banned by law. The conflict had arisen over legislation that was proposed in the United Kingdom, called the Children, Schools and Families Bill, that would have set into law many of the provisions and issues demanded by the UN plan.

However, according to a report from the Home School Legal Defense Association, that proposal for now has been dropped. The British government's Department of Children, School and Families said it was tabling the plan because "no agreement could be reached between government and opposition parties."

Full story:- http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=138613

However, Mr Soros added that he still hoped that Germany and others would be willing to forge a last-minute solution, since the consequence of a break-up would be so dangerous. He was speaking before an announcement on Sunday afternoon by eurozone finance ministers of the terms of a support package for Greece.

"It is 50-50 whether the eurozone breaks up. The damage that break up would cause is so great, that I think that as people realise it, they will pull back from the brink," Soros told the Financial Times in an interview. "But we are at the brink now ... a solution has to be found in a matter of days."

Mr Soros's comments on the fringes of a conference in Cambridge came as Dominique Strauss Kahn, the managing director of the International Monetary Fund spoke of the fiscal challenges facing all advanced economies and the need for a European Budgetary Authority to underpin the euro. "The launching of the euro was only a first step. You can't have a single currency without having a more coordinated economic policy," Mr Strauss Kahn said.

This will be the third element in a nuclear season that began with this month's unveiling of the Obama administration's nuclear strategy, the Nuclear Posture Review. This identified nuclear proliferation - the spread of nuclear weapons and the danger that they might fall into the hands of terrorist groups - as now the key nuclear threat to America's security.

That was step one. Step two was the meeting between Mr Obama and his Russian counterpart, Dmitry Medvedev, in Prague that got the strategic arms reduction process back on track. Step three will be this week's Nuclear Security Summit in Washington. All three events are aimed at strengthening Mr Obama's hand as he heads into step four: the review of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) scheduled for next month in New York.

The NPT is the centre-piece of international efforts to halt the spread of nuclear weapons. However the treaty is looking increasingly threadbare. Both North Korea and Iran have driven a coach and horses through its provisions. Pyongyang has abandoned the agreement altogether and is widely thought to have built a small nuclear weapons arsenal. Tehran remains within the treaty but refuses to obey UN Security Council calls to halt its enrichment activities, amidst concerns that Iran's ambition - despite its vehement denials - is also to have the bomb.

Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will not attend. No formal reason has been given though there are suggestions that either Mr Netanyahu feared being ambushed by Arab states who might raise concerns about Israel's own nuclear arsenal or that he did not want to face more pressure from the Obama administration to give ground on settlement construction in Jerusalem. Israel will nonetheless be represented by a senior minister and says it fully backs the summit's agenda.

The presence of Israel, India and Pakistan at this summit is fascinating. All three are believed to have nuclear weapons and none of them have signed the NPT. Israel's arsenal clearly has wider ramifications in the Middle East. India and Pakistan's nuclear rivalry is seen by experts as a serious concern given the huge conventional military imbalance between them. And Pakistan is also a major worry in terms of the security of its nuclear installations and materials.

Having all three on board is an attempt by the Obama administration to extend the circle of nuclear security in new directions. This is an unprecedented gathering. Mr Obama will hope for an unprecedented outcome.