"If the US military and intelligence apparatus have really arrested or killed Bin Laden, why don't they show him [his body]? Why have they thrown his corpse into the sea?" Moslehi asked rhetorically, FARS news agency reports. Moslehi labeled the US raid in Abbottabad as a "PR campaign", created to divert the attention of its citizens from domestic problems, such as the "fragile" state of the US economy.

"We believe that what the US is seeking, by dictated media programs, to overshadow the recent awakening in the region through the release of such reports," ISNA quoted Moslehi as saying. Bin Laden was killed on May 2 in the Pakistani town of Abbottabad, north of the capital Islamabad, during a special operation carried out by US Navy Seals. President Barack Obama announced the news in a special address to the nation.

The news of "justice having been done" sparked mass celebrations in the United States and then ignited a new wave of conspiracy theories after Washington refused to release Bin Laden's postmortem photographs, claiming that they might instigate a new wave of radicalism.

"There have been 24 detentions and two police officers have been hurt," said police spokesman Panagiotis Papapetropoulos. "There was a small group of protesters that threw objects at police, and there was some use of teargas, but the clash was fairly minor." Police estimated a modest turnout in the capital of some 20,000 people, while organizers put the number at around 30,000. The protest was backed by a nationwide general strike that effectively shut down most government operations.

Throughout the day, public services across Greece ground to a halt as civil servants, teachers and hospital staff walked off the job, in one of the biggest demonstrations in months. Central and local government offices were closed, hospitals and ambulance services were operating on skeleton staffs, and schools and universities were shut.

Transport services also were disrupted, with ferry and rail services suspended after dock workers joined the strike. Public transport around the capital, Athens, operated on a reduced schedule, and flight operations were hit by a four-hour walkout by air-traffic controllers. Journalists also joined in the strike, leading to a blackout of all radio and television news programs.

"What seems astonishing today could become conventional wisdom in a short period of time," Forbes said. Such a move would help to stabilize the value of the dollar, restore confidence among foreign investors in US government bonds, and discourage reckless federal spending, the media mogul and former presidential candidate said. The United States used gold as the basis for valuing the US dollar successfully for roughly 180 years before President Richard Nixon embarked upon an experiment to end the practice in the 1970s that has contributed to a number of woes that the country is suffering from now, Forbes added.

If the gold standard had been in place in recent years, the value of the US dollar would not have weakened as it has and excessive federal spending would have been curbed, Forbes told 'Human Events'. The constantly changing value of the US dollar leads to marketplace uncertainty and consequently spurs speculation in commodity investing as a hedge against inflation.

The only probable 2012 US presidential candidate who has championed a return to the gold standard so far is Representative Ron Paul (Republican for Texas). But the idea "makes too much sense" not to gain popularity as the US economy struggles to create jobs, recover from a housing bubble induced by the Federal Reserve's easy-money policies, stop rising gasoline prices, and restore fiscal responsibility to US government's budget, Forbes insisted.

Lorca Mayor Francisco Jodar told local radio the four deaths were caused by falling debris and cave-ins. Old buildings, including a clocktower, were badly damaged by the quake, which followed a smaller 4.4-magnitude quake about two hours earlier. Spain's Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero has deployed emergency military units to the scene, the Spanish EFE news agency reported.

Earthquakes are common in southern Spain, but they rarely result in casualties. A number of aftershocks have been felt in the Murcia region, where authorities fear the death toll could rise. The area worst hit by Tuesday's quake suffered previous tremors in 2005 and 1999.

Officials have insisted quakes cannot be predicted and special programmes have run on state TV calling for calm. But many people said they were leaving the city to be on the safe side. There are reports of an 18% increase in the number of city employees planning to stay away from work. The rumours have been circulating on the streets and online for months that the Eternal City is facing imminent destruction.

They were based on work by Bendandi, who was knighted by Mussolini in 1927 for his prophetic meteorological skill. He was said to have used his theory that the movement of the planets caused seismic activity to accurately predict a 1923 quake that killed 1,000 people. Before he died, he pinpointed 11 May 2011 as the day Rome would be totally destroyed - to be followed by two more catastrophic events in May 2012.

Italian concerns have been heightened after the deadly quake in L'Aquila in 2009, and reports that scientists Giampaolo Giuliani had been trying to warn officials in the days before. Franceso Verselli said that Rome would be spared because it was home to the Pope: "Wherever the Pope is, nothing will happen."

At the first-ever press conference in the 98-year history of the US Federal Reserve, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke announced last Wednesday what everyone was expecting, and wanting, to hear. Flanked by the Stars and Stripes as well as the flag of the US central bank, he said: "The Fed believes that a strong dollar is both in American interests and in the interest of the global economy."

Bernanke has often made similar pronouncements - as has US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner. Invoking the dollar's strength was also part of their predecessors' standard repertoire. This familiar litany is actually a worrying sign, however. The statement is always made when things are not looking good for the dollar. In one sense, currencies are just like people: Anyone who is genuinely strong doesn't feel the need to emphasize that fact over and over.

In reality, the US currency is currently plagued by an acute bout of weakness. Its exchange rate has stabilized at around $1.50 to the euro, which is not far from the low point that it reached before the outbreak of the financial crisis. Since the beginning of the year, the dollar has lost 13 percent against the euro. The decline in the value of the dollar on the currency markets, however, is merely an indication of a profound global development. The dollar is in danger of losing its role as the global reserve currency and the world's benchmark unit for exports.

Not only is the euro gaining in importance - despite the debt crises in Greece, Portugal and Ireland - but the currencies of emerging nations like China, India and Brazil will likely play a larger role in the near future, both in global trade and in the investment practices of central banks. The dollar no longer has a monopoly, according to US economist Barry Eichengreen, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley.

Germany, the world's second largest exporter behind China, also imported a record 69.5 billion pounds of goods as its economy ploughed on while many other EU member states struggled. 'Germany is on the verge of a golden decade,' said Christian Schulz, an economist at Berenberg Bank, the country's oldest private bank.

The German government expects economic growth of 2.6% this year, following a 3.6% expansion in 2010. In Britain, the Coalition predicts the economy will grow by 1.7% in 2011, although some commentators think such a forecast is optimistic.

The software mess at the Geneva-based office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, or UNHCR, has already involved "years of delays," according to the internal UN audit of the situation, and the scramble to fix it may not be over until next year.

In the meantime, the audit report by the UN's Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS) states, information "critical to the decision-making process" could not be recorded, and "users could not compare expenditures against budget, and actual performance against targets" in a sophisticated system that was supposed to provide managers with information on how well the organization is spending its money at myriad locations around the world.

Hundreds of millions of dollars in UNHCR spending have been affected by the lack of information, according to the report.

The memo reads: "Regarding the use of base facilities for same-sex marriages, legal counsel has concluded that generally speaking, base facility use is sexuality orientation neutral. If the base is located in a state where same-sex is legal, then base facilities may normally be used to celebrate the marriage." Navy marriages on Navy bases typically involve Navy Chaplains, but the memo goes on to say the chaplains involvement is not mandatory and he or she could decline to participate if gay marriage is not "consistent with the tenets of his or her religious organization."

On Monday Representative Todd Akin, Republican for Missouri, released a statement saying the Navy's new policy violates the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which defines marriage as between one man and one woman. "While a state may legalize same-sex marriage, federal property and federal employees, like Navy chaplains, should not be used to perform marriages that are not recognized by federal law," Akin says.

The Navy is hoping to have all its chaplains trained on the new guidelines by the end of June, and the Pentagon is expected to remove the Don't Ask Don't Tell policy sometime this summer.

Last month was the warmest April on record in Britain. It was also the 11th driest month, with on average just half the usual rainfall. And in parts of south-east England, there was less than 10% of normal precipitation. Smos is an experimental mission of the European Space Agency (Esa), and is providing some novel information to meteorologists, hydrologists and other scientists interested in how water moves around the globe.

The 760km-high satellite carries an 8m-wide interferometric radiometer that senses the natural emission of microwaves coming up off the planet's surface. Variations in the water content of soils will modify this signal. Understanding how much water is held in the earth under our feet is a key variable if you want to make weather forecasts. If soils are wet then much of the energy coming from the Sun will be used to evaporate water from the ground, keeping temperatures cooler than they would otherwise be.

Generally speaking, more precipitation would be initiated as well. But if soils are dry, then the water available for evaporation is limited. As a result, the incoming solar energy will warm the surface, raising the temperatures above it. Over a sustained period, this can lead to drought conditions.

Meanwhile, the EU has announced an arms embargo on Syria. In a statement, the bloc said it was banning the shipment to Syria of "arms and equipment that could be used for internal repression". Thirteen "officials and associates of the Syrian regime" are banned from travelling anywhere in the 27-nation union and have had their assets in EU countries frozen.

The UN announced last week that President Bashar al-Assad had agreed to a request from the global body's Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon, for a humanitarian mission to be sent to Deraa, where scores of protesters are reported to have been killed in recent weeks. But UN humanitarian chief Valerie Amos told reporters on Monday: "We were expecting to go in with a mission to Deraa yesterday. That was postponed by the government."

At the same time, the UN agency that looks after Palestinian refugees, Unrwa, said that it too had been unable to get emergency medical supplies to the 30,000 or so refugees in the Deraa area. The unrest poses the most serious challenge to President Assad since he succeeded his father, Hafez, in 2000.

During fighting in November 1911 between Italy and forces loyal to the Turkish, Ottoman Empire, Lieutenant Giulio Gavotti wrote in a letter to his father: "Today I have decided to try to throw bombs from the aeroplane. It is the first time that we will try this and if I succeed, I will be really pleased to be the first person to do it."

And soon afterwards Lieutenant Gavotti did indeed hang out of his flimsy aircraft and fling a bomb at troops in a desert oasis below. In that instant he introduced the world to the idea of war from the air. He had begun the age of the bomber, and opened the door to all the horrors it would bring.

With his small bomb, Lieutenant Gavotti may have caused very few if any casualties in his lone raid on that dusty, Libyan oasis. But he had shown for the first time that it was possible to carry out attacks from an aircraft. And the many bombers who would come after him - those who would strike at places like Guernica, Dresden and Hiroshima - would do more damage and take more lives than the young Italian pilot could ever have imagined.

The flooding has been caused by melting snow and heavy rains. Army engineers say it is unlikely that the levee system in Memphis will give way, but have admitted that the water has been rising faster than expected. The authorities have also warned residents to look out for snakes and rats which could seek shelter on higher ground.

Officials downstream in Louisiana have begun evacuating prisoners from one of the state's toughest prisons - the Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola - and opened floodgates to relieve pressure on levees outside New Orleans. On Monday evening, Tennessee Governor Bill Haslam said even though the river was approaching its crest, the water would not recede in some neighbourhoods for at least two weeks. "It's not going to get a lot better for a while," Mr Haslam said.

In downtown Memphis, the river had swollen to three miles (4.8km) wide from its typical width of half a mile, the Memphis Commercial Appeal newspaper reported.

Born amidst deceit and lies that dwarf those told by the most famous 20th century titans of mendacity, the Eurofascists not only kept their totalitarian political aims under wraps, but outright denied that they had any intention of infringing national sovereignties. For more than 40 years, they swore up and down that their only objectives were economic, until the moment that their vast bureaucratic infrastructure appeared to be sufficiently emplaced to permit a naked grab for overt political rule.

But fittingly, since economics was the sword they used to conquer an unwitting Europe, economics is also the sword by which their dark visions of a Fourth Reich will die. The prosperity which the European Union brought to the lesser nations of the continent, the Irelands, the Portugals, the Greeces and the Spains was always a mirage. There was no genuine wealth generation. What looked like a new paradigm of free trade and single-currency-based growth was nothing more than the short-term consequences of debt-based spending on a continental scale.

It was all a lie. Just as the bureaucrats of Brussels were aiming at unquestioned, unelected political rule over a single, sovereign super-state all along, the explosion of new European wealth was never anything more than the parents of today robbing their children, their grandchildren and their great-grandchildren. But now the lies are being unearthed, one after another, even as the great administrative infrastructure trembles before the barely surfaced anger of the voiceless, voteless, European citizenries who realize that they have been financially raped, plundered and left for dead without ever realizing that their nations were under attack in the first place.

Even as the bankers and politicians rush from Greece to Ireland and from Spain to Iceland in increasingly desperate attempts to shore up their collapsing charade, they are being rocked by new economic and political cataclysms after another. In just the last month, four major events have taken place that spell the eventual end to the most recent attempt to conquer Europe.

1) The rise of the True Finns in Finland. Being a more pragmatic nation than most, the Finnish people are the first to openly reject the idea that sending millions of Euros to other European countries and importing large quantities of foreigners is beneficial to the nation of Finland. Unlike Americans, the Finns recognize that a foreigner who comes to Finland is not a Finn. He is merely a foreigner in Finland, and his interests have little in common with those of the Finnish people.

2) The revelation that Portugal, which is seeking a bailout from the other European states, is presently in possession of GOLD RESERVES WORTH $17.5 BILLION. This was not readily known by the voting populations, especially in Finland, which is now poised to kill the third "rescue package" being prepared by the EU and the IMF, following the bailouts provided to the bankers who had loaned money to Greece and Ireland. Even German politicians, normally among the most staunch advocates of EU expansionism, have begun to openly question why other Europeans should pay off Portuguese debts while Portugal sits on its gold.

3) The referendum in Iceland which killed the Icelandic government's plan to tax Icelandic taxpayers billions of dollars for the debt incurred by a single Icelandic bank.

4) The failure of the original Greek bailout. The Greek budget deficit is actually getting worse and is falling far short of its targets; total debt has now reached 150 percent of its already-exaggerated GDP, and there is no sign that the southern European country will ever be able to even service its debts, let alone repay them. This sparked a report in Der Spiegel that Greece would be the first to withdraw from the Euro, an act that would be the first solid indicator that the EU had reached terminal status and was beginning to contract. Greek officials denied that they were considering leaving the single currency, but it should be kept in mind that they also denied their creditors were in need of a bailout in the first place.

On Friday, Spiegel Online reported on a secret meeting taking place in Luxembourg at which finance ministers from leading euro-zone countries and Athens discussed options for dealing with Greece's ongoing crisis, which even a multibillion euro bailout has failed to resolve. Spiegel Online reported that Athens is mulling, among other scenarios, a possible departure from the common currency area. On Saturday, Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou denied the report, calling it "rumor mongering."

It emerged Sunday, however, that finance ministers from Europe's largest economies, including Germany, France, Italy and Spain, have already attended secret meetings several times in order to be able to discretely discuss the euro crisis, the Suddeutsche Zeitung newspaper reported on Monday. The fact that politicians initially denied there was any secret meeting on Friday and then later trying to play down what had been discussed, has led to speculation on the editorial pages of major newspapers in Germany that a second bailout for Greece is likely to come soon.

Several editorialists also believe that a debt restructuring, or "haircut," will also be necessary for Athens. That would involve debt forgiveness that will hit taxpayers in Germany and other countries straight in the pocketbook. They warn, however, that a haircut, if done incorrectly, could also have an incalculable impact on the European banking sector that might echo the collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008.