They found that the quake raised the land by as much as 2.5 metre near the coast and shifted the coastline out to sea. The findings appeared in the journal Science. An international team of scientists, led by University of Chile geologist Marcelo Farias, measured land-level changes at 24 sites along the country's coast and in nine estuarine valleys.

They said the 8.8-magnitude earthquake was "the fifth largest event in modern seismology". Daniel Melnick, a geologist from Potsdam University, Germany, said seismologists had warned the Chilean authorities a possible disaster could happen at any given moment - but the state did not act.

"Scientists met with authorities in Talcahuano several months before the earthquake," he told BBC News. "And they warned them that there was a possibility of an earthquake and of a big tsunami. The team measured the coastal level changes right after the earthquake to calculate the size of the rupture and then determined how much "slip" was released during the shaking.

Slip is the displacement that results when the tectonic oceanic plate jumps back like a spring during an earthquake after years of compressing the continental plate. They found an average slip of 10 metre - very similar to the forecasted data of 11.9 metre.

He said that scientists determined another area that was "ready" for a potentially devastating shaking - northern Chile, close to the border with Peru. "The region hasn't ruptured since 1877. We can estimate that it is ready for another magnitude 8 or 8.5 earthquake any day - it could happen tomorrow or it could happen in the years to come," he said.

Bank of England figures show that net lending to businesses was negative for ten of the last 12 months. Over this period, 46 billion pounds more was paid back by small businesses to banks than loaned in the other direction. In contrast, the banks are paying ever rising amounts in bonuses to their staff and dividends to their shareholders.

Banks forked out a large chunk of the 6 billion pounds of bonus payments to City workers last year, said the Centre for Economics and Business Research. Royal Bank of Scotland handed out a staggering 1.3 billion pounds to its 16,800 investment bankers, with more than 100 of them scooping a bonus of at least 1 million pounds. This is despite the fact the bank had just been rescued by taxpayers who own 84 per cent of RBoS.

At HSBC, the five best-paid executives earned a total of 40 million pounds last year. The total bonus pool of 6 billion pounds for 2009 was up from 4 billion pounds the year before - and is expected to rise to 6.75 billion pounds this year. As well as rewards to staff, banks handed out a total of 5.8 billion pounds in dividend payments to their shareholders last year, according to experts Capita Registrars.

A spokesman for the British Bankers' Association said: 'Banks link pay and bonuses to the long-term success of the business and do not reward staff in ways which encourage undue risk taking.'

Fort Dimanche, a former prison in the hills above the Haitian capital Port-au-Prince, is a hell on earth. In the past, it was home to the torture chambers of former dictator "Baby Doc" Duvalier's death squads, the Tontons Macoutes. Today thousands of impoverished Haitians live in the prison's grounds, digging through piles of garbage for food. But even dogs find little to eat there.

On the roof of the former prison, enterprising women prepare something that looks like biscuits and is even called by that name. The key ingredient, yellow clay, is trucked in from the nearby mountains. The clay is combined with salt and vegetable fat to make dough, which is then dried in the sun.

For many Haitians, the mud biscuits are their only food. They taste of fat, suck the moisture out of the mouth and leave behind an aftertaste of dirt. They often cause diarrhoea, but they help to numb the pangs of hunger. "I'm hoping one day I'll have enough food to eat, so I can stop eating these," Marie Noel, who survives with her seven children on the dirt cakes, told the Associated Press.

Even by the standards of London's exclusive Mayfair neighborhood, businessman Anthony Ward leads a luxurious lifestyle. He and his family live in a 500-square-meter (5,380-square-foot) townhouse with five bedrooms, each with its own bath. There are separate quarters for the staff. When Ward opens a bottle of wine on his veranda in the evening, it's likely that it comes from his own vineyard at the foot of Paardeberg Mountain near Cape Town.

Ward's fabulous wealth comes as a result of his involvement in the cocoa business. The 50-year-old Briton with the nickname "Choc Finger" heads Armajaro, a commodities business and hedge fund he co-founded in 1998. In recent weeks, the hedge fund has caused a furor in the commodities markets. Traders report that Ward has purchased a vast number of futures contracts for the delivery of 241,000 tons of cocoa worth $1 billion (770 million euros).

The cocoa represents about 7 percent of annual world production, enough to supply Germany with chocolate for an entire year. It was also enough to substantially drive up prices on the cocoa market. Last week, the price of cocoa climbed to a 33-year high.

What is so unusual about the British investor's coup is that he did not resell the contracts on the London International Financial Futures and Options Exchange (LIFFE) before they expired, but instead took delivery of the beans. As a result, Armajaro now controls almost all the cocoa beans currently stored in registered warehouses in Europe, from Liverpool to Rotterdam to Hamburg.

The turbulence in the cocoa market is the most recent sign that speculation is back, and that the international financial markets have rediscovered agricultural commodities. They are now betting big again on commodities like wheat, coffee, rice and soybeans. As a result, prices are no longer determined by supply and demand, but by investment banks and hedge funds.

Al-Houl's story of his trip to Gaza and his realization that "in actual terms, Gaza is not under siege" was written up in the Egyptian daily Al-Ahram and translated by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI). "A sense of absolute prosperity prevails, as manifested by the grand resorts along and near Gaza's coast. Further, the site of the merchandise and luxuries filling the Gaza shops amazed me," he reported.

Concerned that his initial impression of prosperity may have been misleading, "I toured the new resorts, most of which are quite grand, as well as the commercial markets, to verify my hypothesis. The resorts and markets have come to symbolize prosperity, and to prove that the siege is formal or political, not economic," Al-Houl said.

Gaza's markets are filled with a "plethora of goods," he wrote. Prices on many items, particularly food, are much lower than they are in Egypt, he said. With goods entering Gaza from both smuggling tunnels to Egypt and humanitarian aid shipments coming in via Israeli crossings, "supply is much greater than demand," he stated.

The evident prosperity is not enjoyed by all, or even most, of Gaza's residents, according to Al-Houl. The problem is the vast differences in the distribution of wealth. The luxury resorts and wide range of consumer goods are enjoyed by "only a few groups," he said, primarily those who own smuggling tunnels to Egypt and those who work for international organizations such as the United Nations' UNRWA and who do not include or aid the rest of the population.

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.