Yet, with a handful of employees in a small office here in Reno, Apple has done something central to its corporate strategy: it has avoided millions of dollars in taxes in California and 20 other states. Apple’s headquarters are in Cupertino, California. By putting an office in Reno, just 200 miles away, to collect and invest the company’s profits, Apple sidesteps state income taxes on some of those gains. California’s corporate tax rate is 8.84 percent. Nevada’s? Zero.

Setting up an office in Reno is just one of many legal methods Apple uses to reduce its worldwide tax bill by billions of dollars each year. As it has in Nevada, Apple has created subsidiaries in low-tax places like Ireland, the Netherlands, Luxembourg and the British Virgin Islands — some little more than a letterbox or an anonymous office — that help cut the taxes it pays around the world.

Without such tactics, Apple’s federal tax bill in the United States most likely would have been $2.4 billion higher last year, according to a recent study by a former Treasury Department economist, Martin A Sullivan. As it stands, the company paid cash taxes of $3.3 billion around the world on its reported profits of $34.2 billion last year, a tax rate of 9.8 percent. (Apple does not disclose what portion of those payments was in the United States, or what portion is assigned to previous or future years.)

By comparison, Wal-Mart last year paid worldwide cash taxes of $5.9 billion on its booked profits of $24.4 billion, a tax rate of 24 percent, which is about average for non-tech companies.

But the comments, from San Francisco Fed President John Williams and Dallas Fed President Richard Fisher, do not mean they believe the central bank should quickly move to raise rates, which it has kept near zero for more than three years. "I don't think we are ready to exit yet," Fisher, an inflation hawk, told Reuters at the Milken Institute Global Conference in Los Angeles.

Fisher said he would oppose the extension of Operation Twist, the Fed bond-buying program that is set to end in June, but stopped short of calling for outright monetary tightening. "We'll have to see how the year works out," he said. Fisher's opposition to further easing is rooted less in a conviction that the recovery has strengthened than in his long-held view that lower rates are doing little to boost jobs and may simply be giving Congress an excuse not to tackle the difficult job of reining in deficits and the national debt.

"By providing monetary accommodation, we are saying, in essence, 'Congress, you better eat your vegetables, or we are going to serve you a big plate of monetary cookies,'" Fisher said at a panel on job creation at the Global Conference. The Fed's program of bond purchases is pushing down the price of debt, interfering with a pricing mechanism that would otherwise force Congress to come to terms with its "fiscal misfeasance," he said. "We have children in Congress," he said. "They need to be disciplined."

It gave great powers to the military, curbed individual rights and largely ignored the country's minorities, including the Kurds. The new draft is expected to be completed by the end of the year. The multi-party committee has up to now operated with a rare degree of consensus, promising a charter that represents the will of the people and creates a truly representative democracy, the BBC's Jonathan Head in Istanbul reports.

To that end there have been meetings across Turkey, encouraging civil society groups to contribute their views, our correspondent says. But contentious issues lie ahead, he adds, in particular, how much cultural autonomy to allow the Kurds and what powers the presidency should have.

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has dominated politics for a decade, has made no secret of his ambition to move into the president's office when his final term is finished. If consensus on the constitution breaks down in parliament, Mr Erdogan has threatened to push the issue through by means of a referendum.

The number of pregnant women testing positive for illegal or legal opiates increased fivefold in the same period. Not all babies born to women who used opiates during pregnancy showed the symptoms, the report said. But those that did were often born earlier and smaller, suffered seizures, restlessness, breathing problems or difficulty feeding and often required treatment with the opiate-replacement drug methadone to help wean them off their dependency.

"They appear uncomfortable, sometimes they breathe a little faster. They're scratching their faces," said Dr Stephen Patrick of the University of Michigan, who worked on the study. The babies were kept in hospital for an average of 16 days, compared to three for healthy babies. As most were born to mothers who were entitled to financial help with their medical costs, the study said this was placing a serious burden on health budgets. The report says abuse of prescription painkillers is partly to blame.

An editorial in the journal accompanying the study said that while such opiate medications provide "superior pain control" they have been "overprescribed, diverted and sold illegally, creating a new opiate addiction pathway and a public health burden for maternal and child health". In 2011, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) warned that painkiller abuse in the US had reached "epidemic proportions". It said overdoses of pain relievers cause more deaths than heroin and cocaine combined.

Organizers say they hope the coordinated events will mark a spring resurgence of the movement after a quiet winter. Calls for a general strike with no work, no school, no banking and no shopping have sprung up on websites in Toronto, Barcelona, London, Kuala Lumpur and Sydney, among hundreds of cities in North America, Europe and Asia.

In New York, Occupy Wall Street will join scores of labor organizations observing May 1, traditionally recognized as International Workers’ Day. They plan marches from Union Square to Lower Manhattan and a “pop-up occupation” of Bryant Park on Sixth Avenue, across the street from Bank of America’s Corp’s 55-storey tower.

“We call upon people to refrain from shopping, walk out of class, take the day off of work and other creative forms of resistance disrupting the status quo,” organizers said in an April 26 email. Occupy groups across the US have protested economic disparity, decrying high foreclosure and unemployment rates that hurt average Americans while bankers and financial executives received bonuses and taxpayer-funded bailouts. In the past six months, similar groups, using social media and other tools, have sprung up in Europe, Asia and Latin America.

It's one that could see Europe's most extreme far right deputies take up seats in Greece's Parliament in crucial May 6 elections. Black-clad Golden Dawn members have been storming across the campaign trail across Greece, stopping to chat at cafes and shops, handing out fliers promising security in crime-ridden neighborhoods - and vowing to kick out immigrants.

Greece's borders, they say, must be sealed with land mines to stop illegal crossing into a country that became the entry point for 90 percent of the European Union's illegal migrants. Authorities estimate there are about 1 million migrants living in this country of 11 million. Appealing to populist sentiment, Golden Dawn has been gathering donations of food and clothing to deliver to the needy while pledging to make politicians accountable for the crisis. Ordinary Greeks are struggling under tough conditions demanded for rescue loan deals that have pushed the country into a fifth year of recession.

"Golden Dawn stands against this corrupt system of power. All those who are responsible for the waste of public money must go to jail. That is our priority," said Ilias Kasidiaris, a 31-year-old party member who served in the Greek army's special forces. Golden Dawn seem confident of taking up parliamentary seats after May 6 - even if it is on a protest vote. "That is why the whole system is fighting us, because they are afraid that when we get into Parliament, the Greek people will understand that we are neither a gang, nor Nazis, nor children of Hitler... We are just Greek patriots, we love our country. We are prepared even to sacrifice ourselves for our beliefs, for the country, for its people."

The United States and its European allies can no longer drive the global political and economic agenda. The scramble to produce a coordinated and effective multinational response to the 2008 financial crisis made that clear, but the growing leverage of emerging states like China, India, Brazil, Russia and others was apparent years before US financial institutions began melting down and the Eurozone descended into crisis.

Yes, America remains the most powerful and influential country on Earth – and will for the foreseeable future. Its economy is still the world’s largest. No single nation can compete with its cultural influence, and only America can project military power in every region. But in coming years mounting federal debt and the domestic political attention now focused on this issue will force the architects of US foreign policy to become more sensitive to costs and risks when making potentially expensive strategic choices.

At home, it will be harder for presidents to persuade taxpayers and lawmakers that bolstering the stability of countries like Iraq or Afghanistan is worth a bloody, costly fight. That means decoupling support for a “strong military,” an always popular position, from security guarantees for countries that no longer meet a narrowing definition of vital US interests. Abroad, questions will arise about America’s commitment to the security of particular regions, encouraging local players to test US resolve and to exploit any weakness they think they’ve found. Few want a global policeman, but some will have second thoughts when they realize they lack protection against a neighborhood bully.

Yet, other countries aren’t exactly lining up to fill this vacuum. But the G-Zero cannot last indefinitely, because tomorrow’s most important powers, whoever they turn out to be, won’t be able to allow it to continue.

One team of IT specialists taking part in Locked Shields, were detailed to attack nine other teams, located all over Europe. At their terminals in the Nato Co-operative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence, they cooked up viruses, worms, Trojan Horses and other internet attacks, to hijack and extract data from the computers of their pretend enemies. The idea was to learn valuable lessons in how to forestall such attacks on military and commercial networks. The cyber threat is one that the Western alliance is taking seriously.

Today, the fear is that Web War II - if and when it comes - could inflict physical damage, leading to massive disruption and even death. "Sophisticated cyber attackers could do things like derail trains across the country," says Richard A Clarke, an adviser on counter-terrorism and cyber-security to presidents Clinton and Bush. "They could cause power blackouts - not just by shutting off the power but by permanently damaging generators that would take months to replace. They could do things like cause [oil or gas] pipelines to explode. They could ground aircraft."

"The US military ran headlong into the cyber age," he says. "And we became very dependent on cyber devices without thinking it through. Without thinking that if someone got control of our software, what would we be able to do? Do we have backup systems? Can we go back to the old days?" The answer it seems is no. A new form of weapon appears to be emerging. And the world may have to learn to adapt.

Flood warnings are in place with up to 20mm to 30mm of rain forecast for southern England on Monday night. A 52-year-old man has died after his car became submerged at a ford south of Newbury following heavy rain. The man and his dog died when a Toyota Yaris was trapped in "5ft of fast-flowing water" as it drove across the ford on Thornford Road, Compton Wood.

The Badminton Horse Trials, in Gloucestershire, have been cancelled for the second time in their history because of a waterlogged course. The Met Office has issued an amber warning with severe weather expected in parts of Devon, Dorst and Somerset. It says further flooding is possible and driving conditions may be difficult.

Despite the heavy rain, swathes of England are still in drought, with warnings that the downpours were not enough to counteract the effects of two unusually dry winters. A spokesman for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) said: "While we welcome the rain we have received recently, we cannot be complacent and still need everyone to save water where they can."

With support for the Conservatives at its lowest ebb since 2004, just days before crucial London mayoral and local council elections, Mr Cameron promised to 'strain every sinew' to prompt economic growth. But he warned that the eurozone's failure to contend with its problems risks dragging the UK down for years to come. His remarks will infuriate EU leaders, who face crunch elections in France and Greece. In both countries, voters are likely to return governments which will unpick a treaty on 'fiscal union' which Mr Cameron refused to sign up to.

'I don't think we are anywhere near halfway through it because what's happening in the eurozone is a massive tension between the single currency that countries are finding very difficult to adapt to,' Mr Cameron told the BBC's Andrew Marr programme. 'It's going to be a very long and painful process in the eurozone as they work out do they want a single currency with a single economic policy and all the things that go with it, or are they going to have something quite different?'

He also dismissed the idea that the US is seeing stronger economic growth and lower employment because it has delayed spending cuts and tax rises. 'First of all, the United States' plans are for tougher austerity measures than we have here in the UK. The second point – they don't have the eurozone on their doorstep,' he said.

The Government has stumbled from crisis to crisis following the Budget, which prompted rows over a 'granny tax' on pensioners and a 'pasty tax' on hot takeaway food. The anti-EU UK Independence Party has seen its support rise to 10 per cent, not far behind the LibDems.

Tewkesbury in Gloucestershire, which was devastated by flooding in July 2007, is on alert and the EA has set up an incident room there along with two others in the Midlands and another in the Wessex area. Forecasters warned that more rain is expected to fall in the coming week with southern and western areas likely to see the worst of the wet weather. After a brief respite today, more heavy showers are expected this evening and through Tuesday. The damp conditions then look set to continue right through the week.

An Environment Agency spokeswoman said: "We are continuing to closely monitor the forecast and rainfall particularly in areas along the rivers Severn, Teme and Avon, including Worcestershire, Shropshire, Herefordshire and Gloucestershire. Environment Agency teams are out on the ground continuing a close watch on river levels as well as checking defences and clearing any potential blockages to reduce the risk of flooding."

South West England and Wales were battered by gusts of up to 71mph yesterday, while other parts of the country also suffered from strong winds and further downpours. Trees and debris bringing lines down led to around 10,000 homes being left without power in south Wales and the West Midlands, as well as 2,000 in the South West, Western Power said.

Many areas at risk of floods are currently in a state of drought, which is gripping the south east, East Anglia, the Midlands, the south west and south and east Yorkshire after two unusually dry winters in a row. Despite one of the wettest Aprils on record, the water is not penetrating deep enough into the ground to raise groundwater levels which remain too low, the Environment Agency said.

The goal is to construct homes across the country that can withstand the worst Mother Nature has to offer, which lately has been quite a lot - not to mention tough if not impossible for insurers to predict. "One thing we as a society don't really do anymore is build for where we live. We build for how we want to live," said Julie Rochman, chief executive of the Institute for Building and Home Safety, the industry-sponsored group behind the wind tunnel initiative. "There's a wonderful ability to be living in denial and where disaster happened a long time ago we get disaster amnesia."

It's a tough time to be in the $500 billion US property insurance business. Storms are happening in places they never happened before, at intensities they have never reached before and at times of year when they didn't used to happen. Those bizarre weather patterns damage not just homes but also insurance companies' financials. If seas rise and houses flood, insurers pay. If winds shift and buildings blow down, they also pay. If temperatures rise and crops fail, same thing. The industry hasn't reached a consensus on what's causing weird weather.

What no one disputes is that the storms the industry expects aren't happening and the ones they don't expect are hitting them hard. The implications are profound for consumers as well as insurers. If hundred-year storms are now at risk of happening every 40 years or every three, it is difficult to know how much property insurance should cost.

The volcanic activity has disrupted airline flights and blanketed nearby vegetable farms with ash, but there have been no reports of serious injury or deaths. The Japan Meteorological Agency expected rainfall of more than 4 mm (0.16 inch) per hour to last until Thursday night, an amount that the local government said could cause mudslides.

The official, in the city of Miyakonojo, said 63 people had moved to evacuation centers by midday. The town of Takaharu, located at the foot of 1,421 meter (4,662 ft) mountain on the southern island of Kyushu, also advised about 250 residents and a business to prepare for evacuation in case it was necessary.

Ohio's Department of Natural Resources on Sunday suspended operations at five deep well sites in Youngstown, Ohio, where the injection of water was taking place, while they evaluate seismological data from a rare quake in the area. The wells are about 9,000 feet deep and are used to dispose of water from oil and gas wells. The process is related to fracking, the controversial injection of chemical-laced water and sand into rock to release oil and gas. Critics say that the high pressure injection of the liquid causes seismic activity.

Won-Young Kim, a research professor of Seismology Geology and Tectonophysics at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University, told Reuters in an interview on Tuesday that circumstantial evidence suggests a link between the earthquake and the high-pressure well activity. "We know the depth (of the quake on Saturday) is two miles and that is different from a natural earthquake," said Kim, who is advising the state of Ohio. Data collected from four seismographs set up in November in the area confirm a connection between the quakes and water pressure at the well, Kim said.

Conservative President Nicolas Sarkozy set out with great energy in 2007 to shake things up but ran out of steam after loosening the 35-hour work week and raising the minimum retirement age to 62 from 60 in the face of massive resistance. His most recent move has been to reduce labor costs by cutting social insurance charges on payrolls and raising value-added tax on goods and services instead.

Socialist challenger, Francois Hollande, hot favorite to sweep Sarkozy from office in Sunday's decisive runoff, says he will reverse that switch and sounds disinclined to even try the structural economic reforms advocated by many economists and the European Union. "Does anyone really believe that liberalism, privatization, deregulation which led us to where we are today in the financial crisis will help us get out of this crisis?" Hollande said last week when asked whether he would emulate measures being taken in Spain and Italy. "I believe that today the way we can create growth is through new technologies, through higher education and new energy sources," he said.

The inconvenient truth is that most of the French are too comfortably off, despite 10 percent unemployment, a flat-lining economy and a national debt approaching 90 percent of economic output, to countenance radical changes to their way of life. The French, it seems, would rather live with nearly 25 percent youth unemployment than see the minimum wage or rigid job protection for incumbent workers eroded. And many are unwilling to see any connection between the two.