The dollar's trend of moving inversely to the stock market has seemingly been snapped, with the Dow Jones falling over 100 points at one stage today. However, as soon as markets began to claw back losses, the greenback failed to follow suit, indicating that whichever way markets move, the dollar is in big trouble.

The UN report called for "abandoning the US dollar as the main global reserve currency, saying it has been unable to safeguard value," according to Reuters. "A new global reserve system could be created, one that no longer relies on the United States dollar as the single major reserve currency," stated the report, adding that this new system should not be based on a basket of currencies, but on IMF-controlled SDR's.

In May, IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn told elitists in Zurich Switzerland that the introduction of a global currency backed by a global central bank would act as the "lender of last resort" in the event of a severe economic crisis, another lurch towards fascist centralization of power in pursuit of a system of global governance.

The Collier County School District policy specifically allows the distribution of literature by nonprofit organizations, but only with the approval of the superintendent and the Community Request Committee, whose members are appointed by the superintendent. Approval was denied to World Changers, despite the fact that its distribution included a disclaimer of any school endorsement or sponsorship and that receiving a Bible was purely voluntary.

"How sad that on the eve of Independence Day, when we celebrate the religious and political freedom our forefathers won for us at the cost of much blood and great sacrifice, we are compelled to sue to protect the right simply to make free Bibles available to students in public schools," said Mathew D Staver, Liberty Counsel founder.

Meanwhile the eurozone also reported its second successive monthly fall in manufacturing growth. European stock markets closed down between 1.8% and 3% following the news. In the US, the Dow Jones Industrial Average also fell in early trading.

Manufacturing growth in other parts of Asia also slowed, with India's rate of growth down from a two-year high and South Korean manufacturing growing at its slowest rate in six months. In Europe, the PMI measure for the eurozone also fell, raising fears that fiscal tightening measures may already be hitting demand. The UK appears to be faring slightly better, though manufacturing is still growing slower than in May.

Meanwhile in the US, the Institute for Supply Management said its index of national factory activity showed a slowing in US manufacturing. The European figures were of particular concern to analysts. "The second successive drop in the PMI in June suggests that the eurozone's manufacturing upturn may now be flagging," warned Howard Archer, chief European economist at IHS Global Insight. "This could be partly due to inventory corrections drawing to a close in some countries. But it may also be a sign that the eurozone debt crisis and an associated intensified tightening of fiscal policy in a number of countries is having a dampening impact on economic activity."

The USS Nassau (LHA-4) Amphibious Ready Group 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit, tasked with supporting the Bahrain-based 5th Fleet area of operations, is cruising around the Bab al-Mandeb Straits where the Gulf of Aden flows into the Red Sea.

Its presence there accounts for Tehran announcing Sunday, June 27 that its "aid ship for Gaza" had been called off, for fear an American military boarding party would intercept the vessel and search it. This would be permissible under the latest UN sanctions punishing the Islamic Republic for its nuclear program. These new arrivals are a massive injection of naval, air and marine muscle to the strength Washington has deployed in the Persian Gulf-Red Sea-Indian Ocean arena in recent months.

The third US carrier group to reach waters around Iran consists of three vessels: The USS Nassau, USS Mesa Verde and USS Ashland.

The USS Nassau Amphibious Assault ship is not just an enormous landing craft for the 3,000 Marines aboard; its decks carry 6 vertical take-off AV-HB Harrier attack planes; four AH-1W Super Cobra, twelve CH-46 Sea Knight and CH-53 Sea Stallion helicopters, as well choppers convertible to fast V-22 Osprey airplanes capable of landing in any conditions. This vast warship has 1,400 cabinets for sleeping the entire Marine-24th Marine Expeditionary Unit aboard.

The amphibious transport dock ship USS Mesa Verde which carries 800 Marines equipped for instantaneous landing.

The amphibious dock landing ship USS Ashland which carries 400 Marines and 102 commandos trained for special operations behind enemy lines.

The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices voted 11-0 with one abstention to recommend yearly flu vaccination for everyone except for children under the age of six months, whose immune systems have not yet developed enough for vaccination to be safe, and people with egg allergies or other health conditions that are known to make flu vaccines hazardous. If accepted by the CDC, this recommendation will then be publicized to doctors and other health workers. The CDC nearly always accepts the advisory committee's recommendations.

Current CDC recommendations call for the yearly vaccination of all children over the age of six months, all adults over the age of 49, health care workers, people with chronic health problems and anyone who cares for a person in one of these groups. These recommendations cover 85 percent of the US population.

Under the guise of "cybersecurity," the government is moving to discredit and shut down the existing Internet infrastructure in the pursuit of a new, centralized, regulated world wide web.

It is important to stress that "cybersecurity" has nothing to do with protecting the infrastructure of the United States and everything to do with taking over the Internet. Cybersecurity is about attacking non-compliant Internet users, not defending against hackers. Non-compliance equates as using the Internet as a political tool to dissent against the policies of the US government. Having already tried and failed in flooding the web with paid disinformation agents, the government is now turning to its only recourse, exploiting hyped or outright staged cyberattacks as an excuse through which to implement an Internet 2 system controlled and regulated solely by the authorities.

We are constantly told that the Internet needs to be subject to government control because cyberterrorists could hack in and bring down the national power grid. However, the vast majority of the US power infrastructure is not connected to the Internet. It will only be connected to the Internet if the government accelerates the implementation of "smart grid" technology, so in this sense, the government itself is leaving the power grid more vulnerable to hackers by its own programs.

Consultant reconstructive surgeon Raj Ragoowansi said despite seeing hundreds of dog bites in his career and one other fox bite, Isabella's injuries were the most severe animal bites he had ever seen: "The bite was a very strong bite because as far as the upper arm was concerned the wound was down to the bone." As she grows, doctors say she will require further surgery into her teenage years.

"We had a police guard on the front door 24/7 for about three or four days and a panic alarm installed in the house because there were lots of things on websites... and they were just concerned that it could potentially be animal activists." They stressed that they had not had a family pet since their eldest child was born and, while they had seen foxes in their back garden and their neighbourhood, they had never fed or encouraged the animals.

Wildlife expert John Bryant said that while rare, the attack on the Koupparis twins should serve as a warning to the general public "that making pets of foxes, feeding foxes, getting them too used to people and certainly going into houses is not a good idea".

But critics fear the move could threaten crucial infrastructure projects in Afghanistan. Meanwhile, General David Petraeus, who has replaced General Stanley McChrystal as the commander of US forces in Afghanistan, is on his way to brief US allies at Nato headquarters in Brussels. He will then travel to Afghanistan to take up his new post, after he was confirmed by the US Senate on Wednesday.

US Congresswoman Nita Lowey, chair of the subcommittee responsible for aid appropriations, has demanded that an audit is carried out of billions of dollars of past funds. She said that alleged corruption in the Afghan government made taxpayer money hard to justify. "I do not intend to appropriate one more dime for assistance to Afghanistan until I have confidence that US taxpayer money is not being abused to line the pockets of corrupt Afghan government officials, drug lords and terrorists," Ms Lowey said. The money could be reinstated in a few months after a review of Kabul's efforts to tackle the issue.

On Monday, the Wall Street Journal claimed that US investigators believed that "Afghan officials and their associates were sending billions of diverted US aid and logistics dollars and drug money to financial safe havens abroad". The BBC's Jane O'Brien in Washington says that the aid cuts will send a very strong message to the Karzai government that they need to do more about corruption.

They believe they are winning the war, and cannot see why they should help Nato by talking to them. They assume, perhaps wrongly, that the Americans are in disarray after the sacking of the Nato commander General Stanley McChrystal last week, and regard any suggestion that they should enter negotiations with them as a sign of Nato's own weakness. June, they point out, has seen the highest number of Nato deaths in Afghanistan: 102, an average of more than three a day.

Nowadays it is extremely hard for Westerners to meet Taliban leaders face to face, either in Afghanistan or in Pakistan. But a trusted intermediary conveyed a series of questions to Zabiullah Mujahedd, the acknowledged spokesman for the Afghan Taliban leadership, and gave us his answers.

The text runs as follows:

"We do not want to talk to anyone - not to [President Hamid] Karzai, nor to any foreigners - till the foreign forces withdraw from Afghanistan. We are certain that we are winning. Why should we talk if we have the upper hand, and the foreign troops are considering withdrawal, and there are differences in the ranks of our enemies?"

This is propaganda, of course - yet many Afghans, even those who hate and fear the Taliban, are coming round to exactly the same view. There is an instinctive and widespread dislike of having foreign troops, and especially non-Muslim ones, based in Afghanistan. People who do not support the Taliban know that the Nato-led force is preventing the Taliban from returning to power. But the dislike of occupying forces goes very deep.

Simultaneously there are "diverse discussions of dictatorial powers and measures" even if usually in terms of a temporary dictatorship. They see as the primary question, whether "beyond the system of rule of law, legitimacy reserves can be tapped" to "rejuvenate the system (- democracy -) that has grown old" is the formulation of the journal, a terminology used in the 1930s by the key Nazi jurist, Carl Schmitt to justify the annulment of the democratic constitution.

This article suggests that some business representatives are in no way adverse to authoritarian measures and are questioning whether "the constitutional state can still hold its own" in the competition of systems against China and Russia. The author, a member of the advisory board of Berlin's Federal College for Security Studies, considers that the dictatorship "has been proven to be the wrong route to take," but he does not refuse to participate in a discussion of principles on the advantages of dictatorial methods.

Herfried Munkler, a political science professor in Berlin writes that, "according to some observers," the West finds itself today in a "state of democratic fatigue and an erosion of democratic institutions." Munkler is referring to the British political scientist, Colin Crouch, who, in his work entitled "Post-Democracy," detects an internal decomposition of western democracies. Crouch defines post-democracy as "a commonwealth, where, although elections still take place, competing teams of professional PR experts have such tight control over the public debate during the electoral campaign, that the whole thing is reduced to a spectacle". He sees western nations headed toward this sort of social formation. Munkler, then detects that a "spreading discomfort with democracy" provides "a certain seductiveness for a flirt with dictatorships."

Not long after publicly blaming GM critics for prolonging hunger in Africa, Gates announced that his foundation is partnering with DuPont subsidiary Pioneer Hi-Bred to develop higher yield GM strains of corn. Two years ago, the Gates Foundation also partnered with Monsanto to develop drought-tolerant GM corn.

The companies claim that these GM seeds will be delivered to small farmers free of charge. Yet Monsanto says its drought-tolerant corn will not be ready until 2012, at which point it will be introduced into the commercial market. It will not be made available to poor African farmers until 2016.

The Nigeria National Variety Release Committee has already developed - without the use of biotechnology - various new corn strains that are resistant to drought, pests, disease, and poor soil fertility. These conventionally bred seeds do not pose any of the well-documented risks of GM crops, such as toxic health and environmental effects; the production of "super-weeds" and contamination of organic crops through cross-pollination; increased pesticide use; or encouraging monocultures and a loss of seed diversity.

"If only Bill Gates, not to mention USDA Chief Tom Vilsack or Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, would spend some of their money getting those Nigerian seeds into farmers' hands today," Laskawy writes. "Instead, they'd prefer to funnel billions of dollars to biotech giants because, well, 2016 isn't really so long to wait."

Arguments earlier had been scheduled for June 29 in the dispute, but a court order recently cancelled the hearing and instead announced the case would be decided based on the merits of the legal briefs submitted by attorneys. A document from court clerk Marcia Waldron said the case will be decided by Judge Dolores Sloviter, who was appointed by Jimmy Carter; Maryanne Trump Barry, who was appointed by Bill Clinton; and Thomas Hardiman, who was appointed by George W Bush.

The filings were due on the day the hearing would have been held, but there's no published timetable for a decision to be released. The case argues Obama probably is not even a US citizen, much less a "natural born citizen" as required by the US Constitution of the chief executive officer,

The case has argued, "Under the British Nationality Act of 1948 his father was a British subject/citizen and not a United States citizen and Obama himself was a British subject/citizen at the time Obama was born. We further contend that Obama has failed to even conclusively prove that he is at least a 'citizen of the United States' under the Fourteenth Amendment as he claims by conclusively proving that he was born in Hawaii," the arguments have claimed.

It was 7.45am on June 30 last year when the senior, longstanding broker for PVM Oil Futures was contacted by an admin clerk querying why he'd bought 7 million barrels of crude in the middle of the night. The 34-year old broker at first claimed he had spent the night trading alongside a client. But the story began to fall apart when he refused to put the customer in touch with his desk for official approval of the trades.

By 10 am it emerged that Mr Perkins had single-handedly moved the global price of oil to an eight-month high during a "drunken blackout". Prices leapt by more than $1.50 a barrel in under half an hour at around 2 am - the kind of sharp swing caused by events of geo-political significance. Ten times the usual volume of futures contracts changed hands in just one hour.

By the time PVM realised the trades were not authorised and swiftly began to unwind the positions, losses of exactly $9,763,252 had stacked up. According to the regulator, Mr Perkins first started trading irregularly the day before the enormous price spike. He had been drinking heavily over the weekend at a PVM golf event and was returning to a day off work.

The investigation shows that he was able to trade huge volumes with very little cash up front and no position limit, exposing how it easy it was for a single British broker on a bender to cause chaos in the oil market.

Most economists believe the housing market will cool in the second half of this year as Britain's economy struggles to recover after an 18-month recession as the government tackles a record budget deficit of around 11 per cent of national output. The slowing of the property market, combined with signs of consumer retrenchment across the globe, have raised fears of a "double-dip" in the economy.

The FTSE yesterday dropped below the crucial 5,000 mark, hitting its lowest level in 10 months, on concerns the recovery may be faltering. However Martin Gahbauer, Nationwide's chief economist, said part of the housing slowdown could be due to an increase in the number of homes on the market, "perhaps in response to the abolition of HIPs in the opening days of the new coalition government".

"I'm not going to pretend a faith I don't feel," she said. Ms Gillard's views on religion are in stark contrast to those of Mr Rudd, who was a regular at Canberra church services, and those of her rival, Tony Abbott, who once trained as a priest and is known as a devout Catholic.

Since taking over from Mr Rudd and becoming the country's first female prime minister, Ms Gillard has presided over a lift in the polls for the Labour government. It has since been rumoured that Ms Gillard may consider calling an election within the next two months to capitalise on her early popularity.