A nuclear fix to the leaking well has been touted online and in the occasional newspaper op-ed for weeks now. Washington has repeatedly dismissed the idea and BP execs say they are not considering an explosion - nuclear or otherwise. But as a series of efforts to plug the 60,000 barrels of oil a day gushing from the sea floor have failed, talk of an extreme solution refuses to die.

For some, blasting the problem seems the most logical answer in the world. Mikhailov has had a distinguished career in the nuclear field, helping to close a Soviet Union program that used nuclear explosions to seal gas leaks. Ordinarily he's an opponent of nuclear blasts, but he says an underwater explosion in the Gulf of Mexico would not be harmful and could cost no more than $10 million. That compares with the $2.35 billion BP has paid out in cleanup and compensation costs so far. "This option is worth the money," he says.

The Soviets first used a nuclear blast to seal a gas leak in 1966. Urtabulak, one of its prized gas-fields in Uzbekistan, had caught fire and raged for three years. Desperate to save the cherished reserves, Yefim Slavsky, then Minister of Light Industry, ordered nuclear engineers to use the most powerful weapon in their arsenal.

"The Minister said, 'Do it. Put it out. Explode it,'" recalls Albert Vasilyev, a young engineer and a rising star in the project who now teaches at the Lenin Technical Institute in Moscow. Vasilyev remembers the technology behind the program with obvious pride. "The explosion takes place deep underground," he says. "We pinch the pipe, break it and the pipe collapses." According to Vasilyev, the blast at Urtabulak sealed the well shut leaving only an empty crater.

Roberts said that after they submitted the proposal to the Army Corps of Engineers last week, Corps officials said last Friday that discussion on the plan would have to be put on hold until the following Monday, because the Corps office would be closed for the weekend.

"Whoever reviews permits, and whatever departments and stakeholders and agencies need to give approval for this... should be working around the clock, just like the people are that are trying to get this oil picked up," Roberts said. According to Roberts, after cooling their heels for the weekend, parish officials are still awaiting an answer. He says, however, he would be very surprised to get a response over the long federal holiday weekend to come.

Roberts told WWL First News that even if some federal responders take the 4th of July weekend off, many parish workers would be working overtime. "We don't take breaks, this is an emergency for us," he said. "We're going to continue plugging away at it."

The Pope made a reflection on the "holy roots" of the Church of Rome when he prayed the midday Angelus on Tuesday, following a Mass he celebrated for the feast of Saints Peter and Paul. It is during the Mass for this feast that the Pontiff traditionally gives out the pallium to new metropolitan archbishops.

"THE TWO PATRON SAINTS OF ROME, though having received from God different charisms and different missions to fulfill, ARE BOTH THE FOUNDATION OF THE ONE, HOLY, CATHOLIC AND APOSTOLIC CHURCH," he said. "May the example of the Apostles Peter and Paul illumine minds and ignite in the hearts of believers the holy desire to do the will of God, so that the Church journeying on earth may always be faithful to her Lord," the Pope concluded.

"Let us turn with confidence to the Virgin Mary, QUEEN OF THE APOSTLES, WHO FROM HEAVEN GUIDES AND SUSTAINS THE PATH OF THE PEOPLE OF GOD."

Europe's banking watchdogs have been holding stress tests to see how lenders would be affected by a sharp downturn in the economy or other shocks, aiming to boost confidence and bring a negative spiral in financial markets to a halt.

They are working ahead of an end-of-July deadline to publish the test results. "I do not believe that any of the 16 German banks tested could fall under the crucial 6 percent in terms of the Tier 1 ratio," a senior banking source said.

This source did not see the country's eight landesbanks - regional wholesale banks owned by local states and savings banks - at risk either, given the high level of support they already have from their current owners.

Oil Minister Rafael Ramirez announced that Venezuela would nationalize the Tulsa, Oklahoma-based company's rigs. He said in a statement Wednesday that Helmerich & Payne had rejected government demands to resume drilling operations for more than a year.

Helmerich & Payne announced in January 2009 that it was stopping operations on two of its drilling rigs, because Venezuela's state-run oil company, PDVSA, owed the company close to $100 million. It said it would shut down the rest of its rigs by the end of July as contracts expired unless PDVSA began to make good on its debts.

The company said Thursday that PDVSA's debt was $43 million as of June 14. President and CEO Hans Helmerich said in a statement on Thursday the company's position has remained clear: "We simply wanted to be paid for work already performed."

"We stated repeatedly we wanted to return to work, just not for free," he said. "We are surprised by yesterday's announcement only because we have been in ongoing efforts in a good faith attempt to accommodate a win-win resolution, including a willingness to sell rigs." The company has worked in Venezuela for 52 years, Helmerich added.

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."