The UNU study estimates the potential value of the globally wasted resources at about $50 billion. The volume of gold alone is more than 10 percent of what is mined every year. Most of the electronic waste comes from the US and China. Combined, they amount for about a third of the enormous pile. But if rated by e-waste per capita, European nations are in the lead, with Norwegians throwing away the most - over 28 kilograms per person.

The least waste is generated by African countries, at just 1.7 kilograms per person. "Worldwide, e-waste constitutes a valuable 'urban mine' - a large potential reservoir of recyclable materials," UN Under Secretary-General David Malone said.

But apart from the valuable metals, growing mountains of e-waste have hazardous components, including 4,400 tons of ozone-depleting toxins and 2.2 million tons of lead compounds. "The hazardous content of e-waste constitutes a 'toxic mine' that must be managed with extreme care," David Malone said. The amount of electronic waste is growing by two tons each year, says the report. The increase is driven by growing sales of gadgets and their decreasing lifecycles.

The meeting of the shadowy organisation will fuel fears of a growing resurgence in hatred towards Jews across Europe. The vile event was observed by a Mail on Sunday undercover team. Held in London’s Victoria, the meeting was, said experts, the most significant gathering of Holocaust deniers Britain has ever seen, with speakers invited from Spain, Canada and the United States.

Last night, there were calls from Jewish community leaders for police to investigate the group for race hate crimes. ‘The material from this white supremacist group makes ugly reading,’ said barrister Jonathan Arkush, vice-president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews. ‘On the face of it, their proceedings should be investigated to ascertain whether criminal offences have been committed, including incitement to racial hatred.’

The so-called Golden State is increasingly turning a dirty brown colour due to a devastating drought that is in its fourth year. Although it’s tempting to blame all those irresponsible Californians filling their huge swimming pools and watering their lawns with abandon, domestic water consumption is dwarfed by that of agriculture.

The state has long been one of the world’s biggest producers of fruit and vegetables — for profit-hungry farmers, its year-round sunshine more than outweighs the obvious drawback that it hardly ever rains there. Californian farmers have been allowed to hog dwindling supplies of water, digging ever-deeper bore holes to keep the rest of us stocked up with all-year-round peaches, sweet peppers and pistachios. And all would still have been fine if it hadn’t been for the addition of almonds.

The trouble is, global demand for the nut is soaring — as customers from David Cameron to millions of middle-class Chinese develop a passion for almond-based foods. The Prime Minister is said to splash almond milk on his breakfast cereal and in his tea. And it almost certainly comes from California. Attracted by the huge profits being made from a crop that is hardly cheap, California farmers now satisfy 84 per cent of the world’s almond demand.

Worth £3.8 billion in 2013, almonds have become California’s second biggest agricultural commodity after milk, as demand has exploded by 1,000 per cent in a decade. The problem is that almonds guzzle water on a monumental scale. It has been calculated that it takes 1.1 gallons of water to grow a single almond. Worse, they need water all the year round, so almond trees must be watered even when they are not producing.

Since almond trees cover almost a million acres of California (about the size of Cornwall) — many of them on previously virgin hillsides or in areas with little or no rain — that’s a lot of H2O being sucked up to satisfy our almond craving. In total, almonds are annually consuming 1.07 trillion gallons of water in the state — a fifth more than the entire indoor water usage of all 39 million Californians. All of which is slightly problematic, given that two-thirds of California is classified as being in ‘extreme drought’, as the region suffers its driest conditions for 1,200 years.

"It's one of the bigger farms in the state," said Bill Northey, Iowa's secretary of agriculture. "But when there's an outbreak like this, you have to make sure the disease doesn't leave." Because of avian influenza, the state's $2 billion commercial egg-laying industry has been on high alert this spring. Iowa, the nation's largest egg producer, has about 50 million hens and supplies nearly 1 in every 5 eggs consumed in the United States.

"Anybody that has a poultry operation — whether large or small, whether you've got hundreds of birds or one bird — this should be a wake-up call," said Randy Olson, executive director of the Iowa Poultry Association. Despite its virulent nature, officials say, the virus doesn't pose a danger to humans or to the food supply. Last week, H5N2 avian influenza was discovered in a flock of 27,000 turkeys in Buena Vista County. Those birds also were euthanized to contain the spread.

The coalition has "ended Operation Decisive Storm based on a request by the Yemeni government and President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi," Brigadier General Ahmed al-Assiri, Saudi spokesman, told a press briefing in the Saudi capital.

However, he said the coalition would continue to impose a naval blockade on Yemen and target any movements by the Huthi Shiite rebel forces. A coalition statement said that the next phase of operations was aimed at resuming the political process in Yemen, delivering aid, and "fighting terrorism" in the country, home to a deadly Al-Qaeda franchise.

The Saudi defence ministry said in a statement that the air strikes had managed "to successfully remove threats to Saudi Arabia's security and that of neighbouring countries".

Negotiations began in July 2013 and the 9th round starts on April 20 in New York. Karel De Gucht, a former EU commissioner for trade, said there is “a window of opportunity” to tie up the deal in 2015, or early 2016. Talk of a trade deal between the EU and US has been around for decades but the catalyst for action was the economic crisis in 2008.

The powers-that-be decided that, because the EU-US trade relationship was already the biggest in the world, it could be a relatively cheap way of boosting both economies. The idea is that, by removing trade barriers, it will make it easier and simpler to buy and sell goods and services.

Where are the main differences of opinion?

One key area where the US and EU differ is genetically modified foods.

The EU has some of the strictest GM regulations in the world and has authorised just 52 GM foods to date. The US, on the other hand, is the largest commercial grower of GM crops in the world. There is also concern that US producers will be able to sell their meat in European markets, even though it is produced to different standards. For example, chickens in the US are disinfected with chlorine, a practice banned in Europe.

The European Commission is negotiating the deal on behalf of the EU and its member states. But there are concerns around transparency, despite the recent efforts made by the Commission. The EC says the deal requires confidentiality, arguing that greater transparency would be like showing your hand to a rival card player.

Opposition to the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) is particularly high in Germany, in part due to rising anti-American sentiment linked to revelations of US spying and fears of digital domination by firms like Google. A recent YouGov poll showed that 43 percent of Germans believe TTIP would be bad for the country, compared to 26 percent who see it as positive.

The level of resistance has taken Chancellor Angela Merkel's government and German industry by surprise, and they are now scrambling to reverse the tide and save a deal which proponents say could add $100 billion in annual economic output on both sides of the Atlantic.

In Berlin, a crowd estimated by police at 1,500 formed a human chain winding from the Potsdamer Platz square, past the US embassy and through the Brandenburg Gate to offices of the European Commission. "I think this deal will open the door to genetically-modified foods here," said Jennifer Ruffatto, 28, who works with handicapped people and was pushing her baby in a stroller. "Companies will gain from this at the expense of people."

Helmut Edelhauesser, a 52-year-old from Brandenburg, said he would prefer a free trade deal with Russia. "The US push for world domination is unacceptable," he told Reuters. "Obama sends out drones to kill people and wins the Nobel peace prize. This has to stop." Marchers held up posters reading "People have a right to food not profits" and "Beware the TTIP trap - companies win, people lose!"

The cases include those of 32 defendants sentenced to death. Of those, 14 have been executed or died in prison, the groups said under an agreement with the government to release results after the review of the first 200 convictions.

The FBI errors alone do not mean there was not other evidence of a convict’s guilt. Defendants and federal and state prosecutors in 46 states and the District of Columbia are being notified to determine whether there are grounds for appeals. Four defendants were previously exonerated.

The admissions mark a watershed in one of the country’s largest forensic scandals, highlighting the failure of the US courts for decades to keep bogus scientific information from juries, legal analysts said.

Some commentators railing against the event referred to an online slide show allegedly created by USASOC, which outlined a special operations exercise slated to take place across multiple states, outside the confines of US military bases. In the slide show, a map of the southwest region of the United States labels Texas and other territory as “hostile” or “insurgent pocket.” The document also refers to coordination with law enforcement agencies.

Officials at USASOCM were not able to immediately verify the authenticity of the slide show because their computer firewalls prevented them from accessing the websites where the document appeared. Army Lieutenant Colonel Mark Lastoria, a USASOC spokesman, confirmed that there is an upcoming exercise called Jade Helm 15 which is scheduled to take place this summer at locations in Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, Colorado, California and Nevada.

But he denied the event is preparation for some sort of military takeover. He said his office has been receiving a lot of calls from people who heard about the exercise and are concerned about “the nature of the training objectives.”

Major General Gary Cheek, Army assistant deputy chief of staff for operations, plans and policy, told reporters on April 14 that 24 AH-64 Apache helicopters from Germany will join a company, or 12, unmanned Gray Eagles in Alaska by 2017.

Only one combat aviation brigade (CAB) is permanently stationed in Europe, the 12th CAB, headquartered in Katterbach. An Army spokesman would not confirm it as the source of the Apaches — a sensitive issue as the Army has yet to formally announce two of the three combat aviation brigades it plans to render inactive. With budget-driven efforts to draw down its presence in Europe on the one hand and a need to deter Russian aggression on the other, the US is walking a fine line. Analysts said moving Apaches now would be out of balance.

"At a time when the US is rightly pressing our European allies to do more, reducing real capability in Europe sends the wrong message — to our allies and to the Russians," said former US Ambassador to NATO Ivo Daalder, now president of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. "This is a time when budget decisions need to be reviewed in terms of geopolitical reality — which now includes a growing Russian threat to security in Europe."

To the south in Yemen, Shiite Muslim militias that had seized control of the capital, Sana, last year began advancing on the southern commercial hub of Aden, where the Saudi-backed president had set up a parallel government. To the Saudis, the implications were clear: Iran, which Riyadh says is supporting the Yemeni rebels known as Houthis, was making a play to extend its reach into their backyard. The response was swift: The king assembled a coalition of fellow Sunni states and launched punishing airstrikes in Yemen aimed at reinstating the now-exiled President Abdu Rabu Mansour Hadi.

The operation, now in its fourth week, is a dramatic departure for Saudi Arabia, which has preferred to use diplomacy, cash and religion to defend its interests and influence over the Persian Gulf region. Analysts say the air war signals a shift to a more muscular foreign policy that no longer relies on the United States to take an active role in protecting the oil-rich nation and defending vital shipping lanes for its tankers.

Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al Faisal accused Iran of meddling in Yemen, saying the kingdom is "not at war with Iran." Hadi had asked the Saudis to intervene to "protect the legitimacy of the state" and prevent the Houthis from occupying all of Yemen, Faisal told reporters in the Saudi capital.

A quote from Thomas Jefferson flashes across the screen in blood-red colours: "We must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt." We learn that public debt in the rich economies fell from 124 percent of GDP at the end of Second World War to 29 percent in 1973, a dream era that we have left behind.

The debt burden has since climbed at a compound rate of 2 percent a year, accelerating into an upward spiral to 105 percent of GDP after the Lehman crash. It is as if we had fought another world war. Christine Lagarde, the Fund's managing-director, calls it the "New Mediocre". The painful ritual of her IMF tenure has been to admit at each meeting that the previous forecasts were too hopeful. First it was Europe's debt crisis. Now it is because China, Brazil, Russia, and a host of mini-BRICS have hit the limits of easy catch-up growth.

This year the curse was finally broken. There will be no downgrade. The IMF is crossing its fingers that world growth will still be 3.5 percent for 2015. Yet the Fund's underlying message is that sky-high debt ratios and old-age populations are a dangerous mix, leaving the world prone to the "Japanese" diseases of deflation and atrophy. The monetary and fiscal buffers are largely exhausted. Authorities have little left in their policy arsenal to fight the next downturn, whenever it comes.

Six people have already died from anaphylactic shock after being stung by the insects which originally come from China but have spread across the world. Next month the Department of Environment’s National Bee Unit is to meet in Suffolk for a seminar on how to tackle the predators, which can devour up to 50 honey bees a day.

UK beekeepers have been sent email alerts by Defra asking them to be on the look-out for the menaces. Members of the public are being urged not to approach nests, which are usually found high in trees or on the sides of buildings. Most people die after disturbing a nest and being stung multiple times, which can cause those with allergies to suffer a fatal reaction.

The offer of Russian largesse comes as no surprise. During Alexis Tsipras's trip to Moscow earlier this month, Vladimir Putin hailed the gas project - dubbed "Turkish Stream" - as providing "hundreds of millions of euros of transit taxes a year, just like that,” to the stricken economy. Syriza's firebrand Leftist energy minister has also promised to threaten Europe's "deep economic and geo-strategic interests" in a bid to finally gain some leeway in the country's acrimonious bail-out negotiations. "We still do not know our own strength," said Panagiotis Lafanzis, head of Syriza's Left Platform, who attacked Greece's creditors as "neo-colonial powers".

"Several of the so-called partners and certainly some in the International Monetary Fund want to denigrate and humiliate our government, blackmailing us to implement measures against the working classes," said the uncompromising minister. A potential €5 billion advance would certainly help alleviate the immediate financial pressures on the Leftist government. Every month, Syriza faces a €1.7 billion social security bill, on top of its commitments to payback its lenders. The latest is an €80 million interest bill to the European Central Bank due on Monday. Yet, should Russian money reach Athens' coffers as early as next week, it could help Athens stay afloat until mid-June.

But in the absence of any further bridging funds, Greece could well be scrambling to make ends meet by the end of June, when a combined €2 billion will be due to the Greek people and the IMF.