The figure is nearly 96 percent of the $9.1 billion funneled to the Pentagon from the Development Fund for Iraq (DFI), said the audit report from the US Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR).

The report described lax management of some of the billions of dollars designated for rebuilding war-shattered Iraq, where residents routinely complain about lack of electricity and other basic services more than seven years after the invasion.

Even BP fall guy Tony Hayward, after some early happy talk, admitted that the spill was an "environmental catastrophe." The obnoxious anti-environmentalist Rush Limbaugh has been a rare voice arguing that the spill - he calls it "the leak" - is anything less than an ecological calamity, scoffing at the avalanche of end-is-nigh eco-hype.

Well, Limbaugh has a point. The Deepwater Horizon explosion was an awful tragedy for the 11 workers who died on the rig, and it's no leak; it's the biggest oil spill in US history. It's also inflicting serious economic and psychological damage on coastal communities that depend on tourism, fishing and drilling. But so far while it's important to acknowledge that the long-term potential danger is simply unknowable for an underwater event that took place just three months ago - it does not seem to be inflicting severe environmental damage. "The impacts have been much, much less than everyone feared," says geochemist Jacqueline Michel, a federal contractor who is coordinating shoreline assessments in Louisiana.

Yes, the spill prompted harsh restrictions on fishing and shrimping, but so far, the region's fish and shrimp have tested clean, and the restrictions are gradually being lifted. And yes, scientists have warned that the oil could accelerate the destruction of Louisiana's disintegrating coastal marshes - a real slow-motion ecological calamity - but so far, assessment teams have found only about 350 acres of oiled marshes, when Louisiana was already losing about 15,000 acres of wetlands every year.

Marine scientist Ivor van Heerden, another former LSU professor, who's working for a spill-response contractor, says, "There's just no data to suggest this is an environmental disaster. I have no interest in making BP look good - I think they lied about the size of the spill - but we're not seeing catastrophic impacts." Van Heerden, like just about everyone else working in the Gulf these days, is being paid from BP's spill-response funds. "There's a lot of hype, but no evidence to justify it."

Then, guns drawn, four officers fanned out across Rawesome Foods in Venice. Skirting past the arugula and peering under crates of zucchini, they found the raid's target inside a walk-in refrigerator: unmarked jugs of raw milk. "I still can't believe they took our yogurt," said Rawesome volunteer Sea J Jones, a few days after the raid. "There's a medical marijuana shop a couple miles away, and they're raiding us because we're selling raw dairy products?"

Cartons of raw goat and cow milk and blocks of unpasteurized goat cheese were among the groceries seized in the June 30 raid by federal, state and local authorities - the latest salvo in the heated food fight over what people can put in their mouths.

On one side are government regulators, who say they are enforcing rules designed to protect consumers from unsafe foods and to provide a level playing field for producers. On the other side are " healthy food" consumers - a faction of foodies who challenge government science and seek food in its most pure form.

"This is about control and profit, not our health," said Aajonus Vonderplanitz, co-founder of Rawesome Foods. "How can we not have the freedom to choose what we eat?"

This bill is in the first step in the legislative process. Introduced bills and resolutions first go to committees that deliberate, investigate, and revise them before they go to general debate.

Long standing institutions are scrambling to stay afloat as new rivals challenge old ideas. Meanwhile, the global elite, foreseeing these changes, is fighting to retain control over a global system that is being torn apart by economic meltdown and a global political awakening. As top global strategists like Zbigniew Brzezinski have admitted, cracks are forming in the many bases of establishment control.

Global governance has been a long term goal of elites for decades. However, a global political awakening is taking place that is proving to be a major stumbling block under the feet of the world's elite. During a recent Council on Foreign Relations meeting in Montreal, Zbigniew Brzezinski admitted that, "Mankind is now politically awakened and stirring," stating that a fractured elite "...makes it a much more difficult context for any major power, including currently the leading world power, the United States."

In an earlier speech in 2009, Brzezinski elaborated further, saying, "...in early times, it was easier to control a million people, literally it was easier to control a million people than physically to kill a million people. Today, it is infinitely easier to kill a million people than to control a million people. It is easier to kill than to control...."

You may not be aware of this, but many Western states, including Utah, Washington and Colorado, have long outlawed individuals from collecting rainwater on their own properties because, according to officials, that rain belongs to someone else.

As bizarre as it sounds, laws restricting property owners from "diverting" water that falls on their own homes and land have been on the books for quite some time in many Western states. Only recently, as droughts and renewed interest in water conservation methods have become more common, have individuals and business owners started butting heads with law enforcement over the practice of collecting rainwater for personal use.

After constructing a large rainwater collection system at his new dealership to use for washing new cars, Miller found out that the project was actually an "unlawful diversion of rainwater." Salt Lake City officials worked out a compromise with Miller and are now permitting him to use "their" rainwater, but the fact that individuals like Miller don't actually own the rainwater that falls on their property is a true indicator of what little freedom we actually have here in the US. Access to the rainwater that falls on your own property seems to be a basic right, wouldn't you agree?

But now days later, a hailstone picked up just moments after the storm is getting worldwide attention. The damage is proof that it wasn't a typical South Dakota thunderstorm. Holes were punched through the top of buildings, and Les Scott will never forget what it sounded like. "A guy throwing bricks at the house and many of them and it was scary," Scott said. Scott watched as massive hailstones pummeled the ground. Tuesday, the dents in the ground are still visible, some as large and deep as coffee cans. But when the hail stopped, a certain stone grabbed his attention.

Scott decided to contact the National Weather Service. They carefully took the stone from the freezer and placed it in a cooler with dry ice. The next stop was at the post office where the hail had a date with the federally certified scale. Moments later, the hailstone weighed in at 1.9375 pounds.

But the inspection of the new world record hail wasn't done there. To ensure that the hailstone didn't melt, it was then measured while inside a freezer at a local convenience store. The hailstone is down to 17 inches around, but was measured just a few days ago at 18 and a half inches. That is another world record number.

As impressive as the size and weight are, it may have topped two pounds when it fell from the sky. While Scott placed it in the freezer, the power was out for six hours following the storm, and it likely melted a bit in that time.

The oil has largely been dissipated due to the warm Gulf waters, high winds from recent storms, evaporation and bacteria. Officials aren't sure exactly how much oil still lies below the surface. No oil has leaked from the well in two weeks.

Scientists are unsure of the impact of oil dissolved under the surface and how it will affect animals. Experts will be studying oil-affected shorelines for years. And the cleanup effort is far from done - oil-skimming boats are still working on the Gulf waters.

Crews don't expect to be able to cap the well before 6pm ET, Coast Guard Rear Admiral Paul Zukunft told reporters. "We cannot catch a break," Deano Bonano, Jefferson Parish emergency management director, said in a note to parish officials.

Coast Guard Chief Petty Officer John Edwards said a strip of oil 50 yards wide and a mile long was spotted on the water near the well, which was no longer in operation when it was hit. The extent of the damage beyond that was unclear.

Some 6,000 feet of boom were placed around the site, Thad Allen, the national incident commander for the nearby BP spill, told reporters.

Speaking later after talks with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Cameron defended his harsh description, saying that "even though some progress has been made we're still in a situation where it's very difficult to get in, it's very difficult to get out... We've long supported lifting the blockade of Gaza," he said.

Cameron however acknowledged Israel's security concerns, pointing to rocket attacks from Gaza, run by the radical Palestinian group Hamas, on Israel. "We both share the view that direct talks (between Israel and the Palestinians) is the right answer," he said, referring to Erdogan.

The prime minister also called on Turkey to repair ties with Israel after an Israeli raid on Gaza-bound aid ships left nine Turkish activists dead on May 31.

Their warning came as new figures indicated there were 41 million pounds fake 1-pound coins in Britain - one in every 36 in circulation. This is a record level and suggests that the proportion of counterfeit coins had tripled in the last decade.

The situation has worsened since last year, when one in 40 1-pound coins were fake. Experts and MPs said the level of fakes were so high there was now a serious risk that consumer confidence in Britain's most popular coin was becoming compromised.

Mr Rossindell said the number of counterfeits was "a genuine matter for concern".

"This has a huge effect on confidence in our currency. Clearly the one pound coin is something the Royal Mint needs to reconsider. Even one in a hundred fake coins is too many. The effect on consumers has to be a major consideration. if you take it to the shop that gives it to you they may replace it on trust, but they don't have to. A lot of people have lost out because of this. I hope that the Government will look at it more deeply."

The biggest losers are small shopkeepers who are not refunded by banks if they send fake coins from their tills.

At its peak last month, the oil slick was the size of Kansas, but it has been rapidly shrinking, now down to the size of New Hampshire. Today, ABC News surveyed a marsh area and found none, and even on a flight out to the rig site Sunday with the Coast Guard, there was no oil to be seen.

Mr Hayward is likely to retain a role within the company. BP plans to nominate him as a non-executive director of its Russian joint venture, TNK-BP. BP also announced it would sell off $30 billion of assets. Mr Hayward said now that oil had stopped spilling from the Macondo well it was a good time to leave his post.

"With the leak now capped, we have reached a significant milestone. This provides a firm basis to reshape the company," he said. The $32.2 billion cost of the clean up includes the $20 bilion already set aside in an escrow account for compensation claims. BP admitted the total figure could rise further.

In an interview with the BBC's business editor, Robert Peston, BP's chairman, Carl-Henric Svanberg, said there was no 100% certainty the final bill for the spill would not be higher.

The Gulf Stream importance in the global climate thermoregulation processes is well assessed. The latest real time satellite... data maps of May-June 2010 processed by CCAR(Colorado Center for Astrodynamics Research), checked at Frascati Laboratories by the means of the SHT congruent calculus and compared with past years data, show for the first time a direct evidence of the rapid breaking of the Loop Current, a warm ocean current, crucial part of the Gulf Stream.

As displayed both by the sea surface velocity maps and the sea surface height maps, the Loop Current broke down for the first time around May 18th and generated a clock wise eddy, which is still active. Since comparative analysis with past satellite data until May 2010 didn't show relevant anomalies, it might be therefore plausible to correlate the breaking of the Loop Current with the biochemical and physical action of the BP Oil Spill on the Gulf Stream.

It is reasonable to foresee the threat that the breaking of a crucial warm stream as the Loop Current may generate a chain reaction of unpredictable critical phenomena and instabilities due to strong non linearities which may have serious consequences on the dynamics of the Gulf Stream thermoregulation activity of the Global Climate.

Go to http://www.silverbearcafe.com/private/07.10/loop.html to view graphs

Asked the significance of the list, Grassley said, "I hope it's as simple as taxpayers deserve to know what happened to their money."

He added, "We thought originally we were bailing out AIG. Then later on... we learned that the money flowed through AIG to a few big banks, and now we know that the money went from these few big banks to dozens of financial institutions all around the world."

Grassley said he was reserving judgment on the appropriateness of US taxpayer money ending up overseas until he learns more about the 32 entities.