On 12 November 2011 Iranian Supreme National Security Council's Secretary Assistant Ali Bageri said that Iran is seeking full membership in the SCO, upgrading its current observer status, telling journalists in Moscow, "We have already submitted a relevant application." Now, Iran has gotten an endorsement from the SCO about the unacceptability of force - sort of.

The leaders of SCO members China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan said in a joint statement signed at the end of a two-day summit on 7 June that "any attempts to solve the Iranian problem with force are unacceptable and could lead to unpredictable circumstances."

NATO member Turkey also has "dialogue partner" status and has also requested full membership. Iran's interest in CSTO and SCO are hardly a minor policy exercise, as between Russia, Kazakhstan (both non-OPEC producers) and Iran, the trio account for nearly 20 percent of the world's oil output, which could be offlined to the global community should it embark on "reckless adventureism," to use a piquant Soviet term.

The phrase, "any attempts to solve the Iranian problem with force are unacceptable and could lead to unpredictable circumstances" was signed off by SCO members China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan and should therefore factor into the considerations of those beating the drums for a military strike against Iran. Hardly insignificant, as the SCO statement was signed by all members.

Something for both Washington and Tel Aviv hawks to consider.

The costs include equipping internet and telephone companies to retain and store data on behalf of the police, the security services, the Serious Organised and Crime Agency and HM Revenue and Customs. The Home Office said the expected benefits from the outlay would be in the region of £5 billion to £6.2 billion, including from reducing tax fraud and seizing criminal assets.

Jim Killock, Executive Director of Open Rights Group said: "The government's notes confirm that this is exactly what we expected: black boxes to intercept people's traffic data, and poorly supervised police powers to get access to it. Bluntly these are as dangerous as we expected, and represent unprecedented surveillance powers in the democratic world. China and Iran will be delighted."

Mrs May compared the average £180 million-a-year cost of the plans with the annual policing bill of £14 billion.

Europe has made it clear that to keep receiving the bailout money it relies on, Greece needs to form a coalition that agrees to implement the strict conditions on the loans. Without that, payments would dry up, leaving Greece unable to pay public sector workers, pensioners and suppliers. It would be forced to cut back spending drastically.

If the worst comes to the worst, continued political paralysis or resistance to the bailout conditions could see the euro area carry out its threat and eject Greece from the single currency. Greek banks would be cut off from the lifeline funding they get from the European Central Bank and shunned by international markets, triggering a bank run.

As a result Mr Thomas’s organic carrots and aubergines have been ravaged in Linscombe, Devon. Slug expert Professor David Glen said: “Slugs breed rapidly when conditions suit. They are capable of moving up to five metres a night and detecting food from 2 feet away.” Snails have also increased three-fold in some areas.

Swiss National Bank President Thomas Jordan is among the most vociferous, dangling the threat on Thursday of imposing capital controls to stop the Swiss franc from soaring as a result of investors seeking the currency's relative safety. "The SNB will not tolerate this," he said bluntly. Switzerland is not alone. The Bank of Japan is prioritizing market stability, according to one source, with economists saying the bank's main concern would be to stop the yen taking off. Intervention would be a likely response should the yen rise too high for the authorities' taste. With G20 leaders meeting in Mexico next week there is even speculation of a coordinated global response although no evidence of that has emerged so far.

India has a range of crisis management groups within the government set up to deal with euro zone-triggered financial stress, according to Kaushik Basu, the finance minister's chief economic adviser. In China, key agencies including the central bank, have been asked to come up with similar plans, sources said last week. Measures may include keeping the yuan steady and stepping up policies to stabilize the economy, they said. The big concern for all these countries - and others across Europe and the Americas - is that a victory on Sunday by parties in Greece opposed to austerity attached to its second bailout will send the euro zone further into crisis by pushing the country towards the currency bloc's exit door.

There are already signs of contagion. Spanish 10-year bond yields rose above 7 percent for the first time in the euro era on Thursday, hitting a level widely seen as being unsustainable. It has all triggered concerns about another global financial market spasm similar to the one that followed the collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008. "Europe's debt problems are the biggest risk to the global and Japanese economies," BOJ Governor Masaaki Shirakawa told parliament this week. "A loss of market stability will lead to a severe economic slump, as we experienced during the Lehman crisis."

For weeks, German officials have focused a significant amount of attention on the country's Salafists, members of a fundamentalist strain of Islam who are suspected of having close ties to Islamist extremists. On Thursday, they made their move, raiding Salafist facilities in seven German states and banning one of the most important Salafist groups in the country, the Millatu Ibrahim.

"The organization acts in opposition to the idea of constitutional order and multicultural understanding," German Interior Minister Hans-Peter Friedrich said on Thursday morning. He added that the group promotes violence in its "fight against existing constitutional order." In addition, Friedrich says that two other Salafist groups have now been placed under investigation in the hopes of finding enough evidence to be able to ban them as well. Some 1,000 police officers took part in the early morning raids.

Authorities estimate that some 4,000 people belong to Salafist groups in Germany, and that it is the fastest growing strain of Islam in the country. Salafists are considered by the German government to be particularly dangerous and prone to violence, primarily because of their single-minded goal of establishing Sharia in Germany and their rejection of Western values. Furthermore, authorities believe that Salafist groups have close ties to jihadist fighters in Afghanistan and elsewhere.

The ruling on parliament means that it must be dissolved, state TV reported. An Egyptian constitutional law expert told CNN that following the court's decision, a political decision will be made about what steps to take next. Parliament had been in session for just over four months. The court found that all articles making up the law that regulated parliamentary elections are invalid, said Showee Elsayed, a constitutional lawyer.

The Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, in control of the country since Mubarak's ouster, announced that it now has full legislative power and will announce a 100-person assembly that will write the country's new constitution. The court's rulings come a day after Egypt's military-led government imposed a de facto martial law, extending the arrest powers of security forces.

But German Chancellor Angela Merkel rebuffed pressure from EU partners and the United States for Europe's most powerful economy to underwrite debt or guarantee bank deposits in the single currency area. Spain's 10-year bond yield hit a euro lifetime high above 7 percent on Thursday - a danger level above which Greece, Ireland and Portugal were driven to seek international rescues - despite last weekend's euro zone agreement to lend Madrid up to €100 billion ($125 billion) to recapitalize ailing banks.

"It is not a situation that can be maintained over time... and I am convinced that we will continue to take more measures in the coming days and weeks to help bring it down," Spanish Economy Minister Luis de Guindos told reporters in the corridors of parliament. In Rome, Parliamentary Affairs Minister Piero Giarda, in charge of a public spending review, said Italy will seek to cut €5 billion in state administration spending this year instead of a previously announced €4.2 billion. The money saved would help fund areas hit by two earthquakes last month.

Moody's Investor Service slashed Spain's sovereign credit rating by three notches to Baa3, just one level above junk, late on Wednesday, citing the government's "very limited" access to international debt markets and the weakness of the economy. The downgrade added to a sense of emergency in financial markets ahead of an election in debt-plagued Greece on Sunday that could deliver a mandate to an anti-bailout party.

The yield on Spanish benchmark 10-year debt hit 6.8 per cent just days after eurozone finance ministers agreed a €100 billion bailout package for the country’s banks. The move was accompanied by rising bond yields in countries deemed less risky, such as Germany and the UK, where market interest rates have been at record lows.

“The crisis is deteriorating at an ever-increasing pace,” said Mark Schofield, a senior strategist at Citigroup. “Investors are increasingly pricing in either of the two tail risks – full eurozone break-up or fiscal union.” Officials have insisted the EU has sufficient short-term mechanisms to deal with the crisis in the form of its rescue funds, while the debate over longer-term measures has shifted towards greater fiscal co-ordination and Europe-wide banking supervision.

Angela Merkel, German chancellor, spoke out in support of European banking regulation, although she stopped short of backing a region-wide resolution scheme, which Berlin fears could burden the country with joint liability for other’s debts. “Germany – and I can say this for the whole country – is prepared to do more on integration but we cannot get involved in things which I am convinced will lead to an even bigger disaster than the situation we are in today,” she said.

In London, George Osborne, Britain’s chancellor of the exchequer, questioned whether a Greek exit from the eurozone was a price that had to be paid to persuade Germany to save the single currency. The ECB saw EU banks shrinking balance sheets by €1.5 trillion, mainly via asset sales, by the end of 2013 – although that was less than estimated by the International Monetary Fund. The report did not consider the risks of a possible Greek exit from the eurozone, which Mr Constâncio said would be “virtually impossible to assess”.

The Federal Reserve said the median net worth of families plunged by 39 percent in just three years, from $126,400 in 2007 to $77,300 in 2010. That puts Americans roughly on par with where they were in 1992. The data represent one of the most detailed looks at how the economic downturn altered the landscape of family finance.

Over a span of three years, Americans watched progress that took almost a generation to accumulate evaporate. The promise of retirement built on the inevitable rise of the stock market proved illusory for most. Homeownership, once heralded as a pathway to wealth, became an albatross.

The findings underscore the depth of the wounds of the financial crisis and how far many families remain from healing. If the recession set Americans back 20 years, economists say, the road forward is sure to be a long one. And so far, the country has seen only a halting recovery. “It’s hard to overstate how serious the collapse in the economy was,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist for Moody’s Analytics. “WE WERE IN FREE FALL.”

The announcement comes as the Falklanders prepare to mark the 30th anniversary of the liberation of the Islands. Argentina have continued to claim the territory calling them 'Las Malvinas' despite it being three decades since Margaret Thatcher sent 27,000 troops to the land. The Falkland Islands government said it hopes a referendum will send a firm message to Argentinian president Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner that islanders want to remain British.

Ms Fernandez de Kirchner has continuously ramped up tensions with Britain over the Falkland Islands, calling Prince William a 'conqueror-pirate' as he undertook a tour of duty earlier this year. The Falklanders were also left outraged after the Argentines aired an advert describing the disputed islands as 'Argentine soil'. Reacting to the announcement of a referendum, Foreign Office minister Jeremy Browne said this is a "truly significant moment".

Prime Minister David Cameron said Britain would "respect and defend" the outcome of the referendum. He said: "I have always said that it is up to the Falkland Islanders themselves to choose whether they want to be British and that the world should listen to their views. Thirty years ago they made clear that they wanted to stay British. That's why British forces bravely liberated the island from Argentine invaders."

"Now the Argentine government wants to put that choice in doubt again, by shouting down the Islanders' ability to speak for themselves and punishing them for exercising their own free choice."

The analysts said that all potential negative scenarios involved Europe “to some degree” with the starting point of collapse coming over the summer. However, Brent crude rose $1.06 to $98.20 yesterday after the US Energy Department said the country’s stockpiles had seen a surprise fall of 191,000 barrels to 384.4 million barrels last week.

Comparing the situation in 2008 and today, Mr Stuart and Mr Revielle noted that “global imbalances are worse and much of the available political and real capital has merely been squandered in the interim.” The comments come ahead of an expected clash between the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries’ members at today’s key meeting in Vienna.

The OPEC cartel will hold a meeting to decide on crude output levels for the second half of the year and comments from Saudi Arabia ahead of the meeting have been at odds with fellow producers. Last week, Ali al-Naimi, Saudi Arabia’s oil minister, said that OPEC may have to raise its collective production ceiling of 30 million barrels a day in order to protect global economic growth. This increase in output would be needed despite the fact that the oil price has fallen below $100 a barrel, he said.

"Spain will reiterate its position and talk about the how the situation has been developing in recent months," confirmed a spokesman at Spain's Ministry of Foreign Affairs to the Daily Telegraph. "We will ask the UK to engage in conversation over sovereignty."

The report to the United Nations Decolonisation Committee comes amid rising diplomatic tensions over the Rock and just days after a Royal visit by the Earl and Countess of Wessex to the territory raised hackles over the border. Jose Garcia Margallo, Spain's foreign minister, had labelled the visit "inopportune" coming amid an ongoing dispute over fishing rights in the waters around Gibraltar that have led to stand-offs between Spanish Civil Guard boats and Royal Gibraltar police vessels.

Last week Spain lodged a formal complaint to the European Union over Gibraltar's new tax laws. Spain has told the Competition Directorate that it believes Gibraltar's 10 per cent tax regime amounts to illegal state aid under EU laws.

Father Ninni Treppiedi was sacked from serving as a priest after a series of church funds transactions made by his parish came to anti-mafia prosecutors’ attention this spring. The dealings, involving millions of euros, date back to 2007-2009. Prosecutors suspect Treppiedi was involved in money-laundering operations linked to Matteo Messina Denaro, a Mafia Godfather on the run. The cleric’s former post in Aclamo, near Trapani, is said to be the richest parish in the Mafia stronghold of Sicily.

Trapani prosecutor Marcello Viola made the request to disclose Treppiedi’s account details over six weeks ago. But the Vatican, though confirming the request has been received, maintains the issue is not mafia-related. “The letter the Vatican received on May 9 did not speak of any money laundering or mafia issues. It contained concerns over shortages and fraud made by ecclesiastical authorities in the Diocese of Trapani,” the Vatican spokesman told the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera on Monday.

The first reports on the scandal emerged in the Italian media two weeks after the head of the Vatican Bank, Ettore Gotti Tedeschi, was ousted after receiving a unanimous vote of no-confidence from bank overseers. The banker is under investigation for another case of alleged money laundering. But there is speculation that the actual reason behind the no-confidence vote is that Tedeschi was aware of possible mafia links and leaked names and accounts details to police.

Described in two papers in Nature and a raft of reports in other journals, the data released Wednesday describe microbes of the skin, saliva, nostrils, guts and other areas of 242 adults in tiptop health. The $170-million, federally funded Human Microbiome Project also cataloged the genes contained within this zoo of life. The results shed light on the hum of microbial activity inside us as nutrients are chopped and guzzled, gas and other wastes are expelled, and bugs send chemical messages to one another, jostling for supremacy or attracting new neighbors to help keep their community going.

The research is important because it gives scientists a reference point of what the microbial community looks like in healthy people, and they plan to use it to study how changes in a person's microbiome can lead to illness. A spate of studies in the last few years has documented potential links to conditions such as inflammatory bowel disease, asthma and obesity.

Each of us is home to about 100 trillion microscopic life forms — a figure that's about 10 times higher than the number of cells in the human body. In a 200-pound adult, these organisms can weigh a combined 2 to 6 pounds. The team had set out to identify a "core microbiome," a base-line set of flora that would always be found in the mouth, say, or the large intestine. They didn't really find this, but their analysis revealed that each place in the body seems to have a distinct set of metabolic abilities, be it digestion of sugars in the mouth or of complex carbohydrates in the large intestine. In different people, different microbes appear to be performing the same tasks.