After months of drift following his initial approach to the UN Security Council last September, Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority, said he was willing to risk American ire by once again placing the statehood issue in the international arena. Mr Abbas is to send a long-promised letter to Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, next week setting out Palestinian demands for resuming peace talks, which have been frozen since September, 2010.

He is to call for a total freeze of Jewish settlement construction in the West Bank and East Jerusalem and the release of Palestinian prisoners. He will also request an Israeli acknowledgement that a future Palestinian state should be founded on territory Israel occupied in the Six Day War of 1967, with mutually agreed land swaps to allow Israel to annex some of the larger settlements it has built on occupied land.

The letter will be delivered in person to Mr Netanyahu by senior Palestinian officials, making it the most high-profile encounter between the two sides in more than two years. But the likelihood of it eliciting a positive Israeli response is slight. Mr Netanyahu has persistently refused Palestinian and international calls to halt settlement construction, prompting accusations that it has broken pledges made during earlier peace talks. Israel says it is willing to resume peace talks only if the Palestinians drop what it characterizes as "preconditions".

The tyrant has undergone several bouts of therapy in Asia in recent years. But his condition has now deteriorated and there were claims tonight that he has agreed to hand over power to his feared henchman and defence minister, Emmerson Mnangagwa. Rumours over Mugabe’s health have been rife in recent weeks because of his frail appearance. There was heightened speculation today when the Zimbabwe government postponed a cabinet meeting at the last minute.

The Tehran Times said the tyrant had entered into a ‘gentleman’s agreement’ to hand over power to 65-year-old Mnangagwa, who helped orchestrate the violent opposition to Britain in the 1970s. The former Zimbabwe intelligence chief was also widely blamed for the brutality following the 2008 presidential election after Mugabe’s rival, Morgan Tsvangirai, took an early lead in the voting.

Pumping from boreholes, Severn Trent plans to flow water from sources beneath Birmingham into the River Tame, which joins the Trent. The water will then flow to Gainsborough, Lincs, where Anglian Water will take it up. News of the plan emerged as Britain suffered an Easter washout, with widespread rain and wind. With winds hitting 50 mph in parts of the south of England, Wales suffered the wettest weather, with two inches falling in areas. Parts of the south-west of England experienced an inch-and-a-half.

The Met Office said that the rest of the week is likely to remain the same, with unsettled weather everywhere. Severn Trent is still in talks with Anglian and the Environment Agency about the amount and the cost of the trade, but hopes to make a start by June. A Severn Trent spokesman said: “These are extreme circumstances as far as water resources are concerned. Severn Trent has been talking for a long time about water trading, but this is the first situation where we have been able to put it into practice.”

The deployment of the second aircraft is "routine and not specific to any threat," stated Commander Amy Derrick-Frost of the Bahrain-based Fifth Fleet. The Enterprise and its strike group entered the fleet’s area of responsibility on April 3. Routine deployment or not, the times when the Persian Gulf has seen two US aircraft carriers operating in the region at the same time have been during wars: in the US-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003 and in supporting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in February 2007.

Officially, the nuclear-powered USS Enterprise and its warships are to join the strike group headed by the USS Abraham Lincoln, which is providing air support to the allied mission in Afghanistan. The two groups are also to boost anti-pirate efforts off Somalia’s coast in the Gulf of Aden, after which the USS Enterprise will be homeward bound to be decommissioned in autumn.

The two groups are also expected to put into effect Washington’s pledge to keep the Strait of Hormuz, a major oil traffic lane for Gulf exporters, open. Iran has repeatedly threatened to block the strategic strait in retaliation for recent international sanctions targeting its oil and economic sectors.

USS Enterprise strike group consists of: Carrier Air Wing 1; guided-missile cruiser USS Vicksburg; and Destroyer Squadron 2, comprised of guided-missile destroyers USS Nitze, USS Porter and USS James E Williams. Source: Official Website of the US Navy.

The Bank of Portugal said the use by domestic banks for the various facilities available from the ECB rose to €56.3 billion in March – up from €47.5 billion in February and greater than the previous record level of €49.1 billion in August 2010. Bailed out by the EU and International Monetary Fund in April 2011 for €78 billion, Portugal has €12 billion earmarked for bolstering its banks' capital positions if necessary in the months ahead.

The plight of Portugal's banks was revealed following the cash injection by the ECB in February when the central bank lent €529 billion to 800 banks across the eurozone through its long-term refinancing operation (LTRO). Portuguese banks were among those frozen out from the wholesale funding markets – where banks borrow from each other or professional investors – during the height of the eurozone crisis and as a result are among a number in the eurozone that utilise ECB funding.

A weak auction of Spanish government bonds last week – when some €2.5 billion rather than €3.5 billion were sold – was regarded as a sign that the initial confidence the ECB created through its injections of cheap cash was evaporating. New data on Monday showed that industrial production in Greece – the first eurozone country to receive a bailout – continued to fall in an economy already on track for its fifth consecutive year of recession. In February industrial production fell 8.3% on the year, after falling 6% in January and almost 12% in December.

Diplomats trying to contain a crisis that has inflamed the Middle East and pitched old Cold War rivals into opposing camps will not wish to abandon their most comprehensive peace plan yet. The plan's author, international envoy Kofi Annan, visits Turkey and Iran on Tuesday, while Russia hosts the Syrian foreign minister.

"April 10 has become void," concluded Turkish Deputy Foreign Minister Naci Koru. Ankara, Assad's former ally and now a foe, deplored shooting that wounded five people in a refugee camp inside Turkey - in the border area which Annan, the former UN secretary-general, is expected to visit on Tuesday. Another neighbor, Lebanon, condemned the killing of a local journalist by Syrian soldiers firing over the border. "You will not need a long air campaign. Seventy percent of the Syrian military is already out of action and air strikes would be a message to the Syrian people that the international community is really with them," Mustafa al-Sheikh told Reuters at a camp where Turkey is giving refuge to Syrian army officers.

Saying Assad could not rely on conscript troops from the Sunni Muslim majority to follow orders from an officer corps dominated by members of the president's minority Alawite sect, the general urged the United States, Turkey and Arab states to mount the kind of strikes used against Yugoslavia in the 1990s. The aim would be to create safe areas for Syrian army deserters to gather. Assad's Alawites, many of whom, even beyond the wealthy elite around the president's family, see themselves engaged in a battle for survival. They have lined up with Shi'ite Iran against an Arab world where Sunni Islamists are in the ascendant.

This time O’Keefe’s shocking hidden video records poll workers on Primary Day in Washington, DC offering US Attorney General Eric H Holder’s voting ballot to a complete stranger, while other voting locations in the district offer to sign for ballots. Eric Holder has said multiple times there exists no evidence of Voter Fraud… until now. While the police state control grid tightens all around us, tracking every email, phone call, retail purchase, and our day-to-day movements, the one thing no one in government wants to track is who is actually casting the votes for elected representatives, even though these very people hold the future of 310 million Americans in their hands.

As it stands now, and as evidenced by O’Keefe’s latest video, the voting system in the United States is a complete farce. Without identification requirements, candidates looking to solidify their seats need only determine who has yet to cast a vote (even if that person is dead), and then provide a body with a heartbeat to assume that person’s identity. Furthermore, and perhaps even more alarming, is that in a previous video Project Veritas shows that election law actually allows voters to be created out of thin air as in the case of Timothy Tebow and Thomas Brady who were registered to vote in the state of Wisconsin. Once registered, ANYONE could then cast a vote as that registered voter.

For video: http://www.blacklistednews.com/Shocking_Hidden_Video%3A_America%E2%80%99s_Voting_System_is_a_Complete_Farce/18888/0/38/38/Y/M.html

The Pope, who turns 85 on April 16, looked tired during Easter services in Rome. His duties included leading the annual Way of the Cross procession around the Colosseum on Good Friday and celebrating Mass on Sunday in St Peter's Basilica. During his traditional "Urbi et Orbi" (Latin for "to the city and to the world") Easter speech he called for an end to the bloodshed in Syria and for a return to peace in Mali, which was recently hit by a military coup.

During his trip to Mexico and Cuba last month, he used a walking stick publicly for the first time, amid long-standing concerns for his physical wellbeing. Instead of walking down the long central aisle of St Peter's, he travels on a platform on wheels which is pushed by Vatican aides.

A columnist with The Washington Times declared the mid-March order — an update of a 60-year-old document outlining the president's authority in a national emergency — "stunning in its audacity and a flagrant violation of the Constitution." The conservative Drudge Report website linked to it with the headline, "Martial Law?" And Adams, Republican for Orlando, said it "leaves the door open for the president to give himself control over American resources during both times of peace, and national crisis."

So Adams filed a nonbinding resolution specifying what Obama cannot do with the order — including institute a draft, confiscate personal property and "force civilians to engage in labor against their will or without compensation." As written, the executive order outlines the powers the president can exercise "in the event of a potential threat," such as mobilizing for war. These range from the mundane, such as preparing disaster plans, to more robust authority that includes taking control of civil transportation and forcing US companies to prioritize defense contracts.

All this has been on the books for decades. Experts on national-security law say the big difference between what Obama signed and the version in place since President Bill Clinton was in office is reference to the Department of Homeland Security, which wasn't around then. "It's valid to be concerned that the president has too many powers that are justified by national-defense needs," said Benjamin Friedman, a defense expert with the libertarian Cato Institute. "But this executive order doesn't change much compared to prior executive orders that Republican and Democratic presidents have put in place."

Adams denies any political motivation and said she was doing her duty to uphold the US Constitution. Still, she is running in a tough Republican primary against veteran US Representative John Mica of Winter Park and is positioning herself as the hard-line conservative in that race.

John Kampfner, the chief executive of the Index on Censorship, clarified Cameron’s comments: “It’s very easy to defend the case of black and white – human rights against dictatorships around the world. But as soon as our own Western-style stability of the state is called into question, well then freedom of expression is expendable. There should be one rule for all including Western governments.” Cameron’s comments are viewed as a response to China and Russia. Both countries have pushed for tighter regulation of the internet through binding international treaties.

In the United States, the government has used a mostly phantom cyber threat to call for draconian legislation to control the internet. In January, Senators Joseph Lieberman (Independent for Connecticut) and Susan Collins (Republican for Maine) renewed their call for an “internet kill switch” that would allow the president to shut down the internet in response to a national emergency.

The effort came as the Egyptian government shut down the internet in response to demonstrations calling for the removal of president Hosni Mubarak. The move demonstrated that governments have the ability and technical capacity to shut down the internet in response to political crises.

“If given the proper authorization, the United States government could stop files in the process of being stolen from getting to the Chinese hackers.” Clarke writes. “If government agencies were authorized to create a major program to grab stolen data leaving the country, they could drastically reduce today’s wholesale theft of American corporate secrets.”

While Clarke may well be coming at this subject well intentioned, the fact that government has a long history of attempting to crackdown on internet freedom and control the web will mean his words are a cause of concern for many. “Under Customs authority, the Department of Homeland Security could inspect what enters and exits the United States in cyberspace…” Clarke continues. “And under the Intelligence Act, the president could issue a finding that would authorize agencies to scan Internet traffic outside the United States and seize sensitive files stolen from within our borders.”

We have seen with the recent attempts to pass legislation such as SOPA, PIPA, and ACTA, that the federal government is hell bent on skirting around legal oversight in order to seize more control over web content and communications. While those particular bills have more of a focus on copyright protection, there is a huge move afoot to use the issue of cybersecurity as a means to crack down on the free internet.

Essentially all of these bills legislate for moves by the federal government to access and monitor the online communications of all Americans, much like the more open agenda of the British government to snoop on citizens.

And developer Larry Hall has options to retro-fit three more Cold War-era silos when this one fills up. "They worry about events ranging from solar flares, to economic collapse, to pandemics to terrorism to food shortages," Hall told AFP on a tour of the site. These "doomsday preppers", as they are called, want a safe place and he will be there with them because Hall, 55, bought one of the condos for himself. He says his fear is that sun flares could wipe out the power grid and cause chaos. He and his wife and son live in Denver and will use their condo mostly as a vacation home, he says, but if the grid goes, they will be ready.

Hall isn't the first person to buy an abandoned nuclear missile silo and transform at least part of it into a shelter. Built to withstand an atomic blast, even the most paranoid can find comfort inside concrete walls that are nine feet thick and stretch 174 feet (53 meters) underground. Instead of simply setting up shop in the old living quarters provided for missile operators, Hall is building condos right up the missile shaft. Seven of the 14 underground floors will be condo space selling for $2 million a floor or $1 million a half floor. Three and a half units have been sold, two contracts are pending and only two more full units are available, Hall said.

Doomsday fears have flourished throughout history, but what once involved isolated pockets of fear now spreads worldwide through the media and Internet. They have also expanded into the popular culture thanks to the success of dystopian fantasies like the Hunger Games and a National Geographic reality show about those preparing for doomsday. "Fear sells even better than sex," said John Hoopes, a professor in the anthropology department at the University of Kansas who has studied the spread of doomsday culture.

"We just don't see people walking up, looking for jobs like they used to," he says. Now he has to pay a labor contractor to find enough people to tend his 2,200 furrowed acres under the harsh Sonoran sun near Yuma, in the southwestern corner of Arizona. The dwindling supply of labor available to Mr Dunn illustrates a significant shift in migration from Mexico, which has caused illegal immigration to drop to its lowest levels.

Even as states loudly debate new immigration restrictions – including Arizona's proposed armed, all-volunteer state militia to keep Mexicans from sneaking across the US-Mexican border – research suggests the illegal immigration has slowed. The migration explosion that since the 1970s had pushed millions of men, women, and children into the United States has fizzled, says Douglas Massey, a sociologist at Princeton University and codirector of the long-term, binational Mexican Migration Project. "We're at a turning point, and what unfolds in the future remains to be seen. But I think the boom is over."

Mr Massey's research shows that after the US recession hit, the illegal population fell from about 12 million to 11 million, where it has hovered since 2009 (about 60 percent of the illegal population is Mexican). The shrinking labor pool already is having an impact in agricultural fields scattered throughout the US, some say.

Meanwhile, South Korean officials say new satellite images suggest the North is preparing to carry out a third nuclear test. The images show piles of earth and sand at the entrance of a tunnel at the Punggye-ri site, where tests of a nuclear bomb were previously carried out in 2006 and 2009, South Korea's Yonhap news agency reports.

"Recent satellite images led us to conclude the North has been secretly digging a new underground tunnel in the nuclear test site... besides two others where the previous tests were conducted," one unnamed official told the AFP news agency. North Korea has been under close scrutiny by its neighbours and the international community since Kim Jong-un became leader of the secretive state following the death of his father, Kim Jong-il, in December 2011.

Pyongyang has previously said the launch, for "peaceful purposes", is to mark the centennial of the birth of founding leader Kim Il-sung. But the United States and North Korea's neighbours say it contravenes UN resolutions that were imposed after a similar launch in April 2009. Japan and South Korea have warned they will shoot the rocket down if it strays into their territory. The North says any of those responses would be considered hostile acts. But it seems determined to go ahead even if it sets off a dangerous cascade of events, says our correspondent.

As the legendary journalist John Pilger said in April 2009, "No one knew what the new brand actually stood for." Since it stands for nothing, the Obama brand is falling into oblivion. Obama, who was sold as the defender of the rule of law and the rights of the American people, is now being exposed to be a liar and a fraud.

Obama is a fig leaf, and the hijacked US government is a hollowed out rotten tree that is barely standing. It has had no real power since it abandoned the American people and the US Constitution on November 22, 1963, when America's last real president was assassinated. Such a weak structure cannot survive the storms of change. It is bound for failure and catastrophe just like the Soviet system and Nazi Germany. In some ways, the cult of Obama is similar to the cults of Stalin, Mao, Hitler, Khomeini, and other totalitarian cult personalities of the 20th century.

The CIA and Mossad may commit a new staged terrorist attack in an American city to mobilize public support for the declining Obama presidency and a war against Iran, but such a desperate move by the power elite will not produce the desired change in public perception. It will only accelerate the collapse of the Obama White House, the bankster hijacked US government, and the terrorist state in Israel. The war criminals in Washington, London, and Tel Aviv have already lost the war for the global narrative of history. No amount of lies, propaganda, false flag terror attacks, and wars can rehabilitate the power and prestige of these three totalitarian terrorist states.