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.

Anyone who refuses to comply with a formal request for co-operation by a foreign-based force is likely to be arrested by UK officers. The move will spark a damaging row with backbench Tory MPs opposed to giving such draconian powers to Brussels. The Tories were opposed to the directive in opposition, saying it showed a 'relish for surveillance and disdain for civil liberties'.

But ministers have made a dramatic U-turn since joining the pro-EU Lib Dems in government, and the wide-ranging powers are due to be approved later this week. According to the campaign group Fair Trials International, under the new rules it would be possible, for example, for Spanish police investigating a murder in a nightclub to demand the ID of every British citizen who flew to the country in the month the offence took place.

They could also force the UK to search its DNA database - which contains nearly one million innocent people - and send samples belonging to anybody who was in Spain at the time. This could leave an entirely innocent person facing an agonising battle to establish his or her innocence.

A total of 91,731 reports from United States military databanks relating to the war in Afghanistan are to be made publicly available on the Internet. Never before has it been possible to compare the reality on the battlefield in such a detailed manner with what the US Army propaganda machinery is propagating. WikiLeaks plans to post the documents, most of which are classified, on its website.

Britain's Guardian newspaper, the New York Times and Spiegel have all vetted the material and compared the data with independent reports. All three media sources have concluded that the documents are authentic and provide an unvarnished image of the war in Afghanistan - from the perspective of the soldiers who are fighting it.

The reports, from troops engaged in the ongoing combat, were tersely summarized and quickly dispatched. For the most part, they originate from sergeants - but some have been penned by the occasional lieutenant at a command post or ranking analysts with the military intelligence service.

The editors in chief of Spiegel, the New York Times and the Guardian have agreed that they would not publish especially sensitive information in the classified material - like the names of the US military's Afghan informants or information that could create additional security risks for soldiers stationed in Afghanistan. The publishers were unanimous in their belief that there is a justified public interest in the material because it provides a more thorough understanding of a war that continues today after almost nine years.

Global reserve managers are leading the trend. In the first quarter, central banks who report their reserves added a record $24.5 billion of "other" currencies to their portfolios, Nomura data show. The share of reserves in "other" currencies stood at 3.7 percent in the first quarter, up from 1.5 percent at the beginning of this decade. It's generally believed this category includes currencies of Canada, Australia, Norway, Sweden and New Zealand.

Still, debate over the dollar's role in the global economy continues. Talk of more stimulus money and the possibility of a double-dip recession could lead to escalating worries about the swelling US deficits.

Jerome Booth, head of research at Ashmore Investment Management in London, said investors "should never equate the dollar with risk-free." Booth added that the argument that the US Treasury market is the most liquid in the world may not hold true if a few central banks started selling.

The revelations by the organization Wikileaks emerged as Admiral Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, warned of greater NATO casualties in Afghanistan as violence mounts over the summer. It also came as the Taliban said they were holding captive one of two US servicemen who strayed into insurgent territory, and that the other had been killed. The reported capture will further erode domestic support for America's nine-year war.

Documents leaked by Wikileaks said representatives from Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence met directly with the Taliban in secret strategy sessions to organize militant networks fighting US soldiers. The White House condemned the leak, saying it could threaten national security and endanger the lives of Americans. Pakistan said leaking unprocessed reports from the battlefield was irresponsible.

US national security adviser Jim Jones said the leak would not affect "our ongoing commitment to deepen our partnerships with Afghanistan and Pakistan".

The revelations were contained in more than 90,000 classified documents in which US officials focused on the period leading to the launch of President Barack Obama's Afghan strategy last December, when he authorized deployment of 30,000 additional troops.

Declaring itself "appalled" at this "shameful" act of racism, the NAACP said it would investigate the Georgia crowd that cheered her and praised the Department of Agriculture for firing her. On Wednesday, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack was begging for Sherrod's forgiveness, and the NAACP was burbling apologies.

For the video turned out to be an excerpt from a speech in which Sherrod described her growth from a bitter black woman whose father was murdered by a white man into one who found joy helping poor white folks keep their farms. What was it that caused the rush to judgment by Vilsack, the NAACP and a White House that supported the ouster of Sherrod without talking to her or viewing the full tape?

Panic. The White House fears it is losing white America because of a false perception that it harbors a bias against white America. As the National Journal's Ron Brownstein has been reporting, white America is increasingly alienated and distrustful of all our major economic and political power centers - the banks, big corporations, the government. And, for the first time in our lifetimes outside the South, white racial consciousness has visibly begun to rise.

View full article - http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=182461

The decree covers all districts of the country more than 3,000 meters (9,800 feet) above sea level, as well as three regions in the Peruvian jungle that have registered strangely low temperatures in the last few weeks. According to official figures, so far this year at least 409 people have died of pneumonia and ailments related to the cold weather, most of them younger than 5 years old (200 deaths) and over 60 years (158 deaths).

The emergency declaration, which has a duration of 60 days, covers districts in the regions of Ancash, Apurimac, Arequipa, Ayacucho, Cusco, Huancavelica, Huanuco, Junin, Lima, Moquegua, Pasco, Puno and Tacna, which in recent days reached a temperature of -24C (-11 F).

A state of emergency was also declared in the jungle regions of Madre de Dios, Ucayali and Loreto.

This GM soy variety now occupies half the cultivated soy area in the Brazilian state of Matto Grosso, and GM crops occupy half of all agricultural fields in the northern part of the state. The Sinop Rural Union of northern Matto Grosso stated recently that after failing to achieve any positive resolutions through meetings with Monstanto, it is preparing to take the company to court. The union objects to the company's practice of carrying out two separate royalties collections for its patented GM seeds.

In part, they object simply to the high prices Monsanto demands upon purchase of its seeds. "In January they charged R$0.45 (US$0.25) per kilo of seed, which is equivalent to 30 percent of the price of each sack," said the union's president, Antonio Galvan. More fundamentally, however, the union objects to Monsanto's practice of carrying out a second royalties collection at the time of harvest.

The company tests all seeds arriving at warehouses to determine whether they are GM or not, then charges royalties to all farmers who bring in GM seeds and have not paid already. Farmers object that this practice does not account for possible contamination at the warehouse, and penalizes farmers whose seeds have been genetically contaminated through cross-pollination with Monsanto's product.

A second farmers group, the Association of Soya and Corn Producers of Matto Grosso, is also suing Monsanto over excessive royalties, and objects that the company pressures farmers to buy only GM seeds.

In comments posted to the People's Bank of China Web site, the central bank's Deputy Governor Hu Xiaolian said using a basket of currencies from the nation's top trading partners would allow the Chinese yuan to better reflect trading fundamentals. "Compared with pegging to a single currency, the exchange-rate regime with reference to a basket of currencies will help adjust exports and imports, current account, and balance of payment in a more effective manner," she said.

China's central bank currently sets a "central parity rate" against the US dollar each day, with that day's trading range confined to 0.5% above or below that level

North Korea will "legitimately counter with their powerful nuclear deterrence the largest-ever nuclear war exercises to be staged by the US and the South Korean puppet forces," the National Defense Commission said, according to the Korean Central News Agency.

The maneuvers, which involve 20 vessels and 200 aircraft from the US and South Korea, pose a threat to the country's sovereignty and security, Ri Tong Il, an official with North Korea's delegation to the Asean Security Forum, told reporters in Hanoi yesterday.

Ri's comments came after North Korean Foreign Minister Pak Ui Chun sat in the same room with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in Hanoi for a security meeting of Asia's largest powers. Clinton condemned North Korea for being "on a campaign of provocative, dangerous behavior," urging Kim Jong Il's regime to change.

Much of the money went on developing and promoting a green-skinned EU superhero called Mr Fruitness designed to persuade children to eat more fruit. Last night critics said such examples of profligacy go to show that the EU should not be insulated from the kind of spending cuts that member states are making.

A spokesman for Open Europe, the Eurosceptic think-tank, said: 'ridiculous spending like this just goes to show that the EU budget contains plenty of fat that can be trimmed away. In these tough economic times, do we really need an EU-funded superhero to tell us that fruit is healthy?'

The website set up to publicise Mr Fruitness - www.fruitness.eu - describes him as 'a superhero with special powers that come from the nutritional substances in fruit - vitamins and others; key components of an intelligent and conscious diet'.