That's about ten times more than the Bush administration anticipated before the war started four years ago, and no one can predict how high the tab will go. The $124 billion spending bill that President Bush plans to veto this week includes about $78 billion for Iraq, with the rest earmarked for the war in Afghanistan, veterans' health care and other government programs.

Congressional Democrats and Bush agree that they cannot let their dispute over a withdrawal timetable block the latest cash installment for Iraq. Once that political fight is resolved, Congress can focus on the president's request for $116 billion more for the war in the fiscal year that starts on Sept. 1. The combined spending requests would push the total for Iraq to $564 billion, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service.

Before the war, administration officials confidently predicted that the conflict would cost about $50 billion. White House economic adviser Lawrence Lindsey lost his job after he offered a $200 billion estimate - a prediction that drew scorn from his administration colleagues.

"They had no concept of what they were getting into in terms of lives or cost," said Winslow Wheeler, who monitors defense spending for the Center for Defense Information, a nonpartisan research institute. Bush and his economic advisers defend the growing cost as the price of national security.

The preoccupation of the left with the alleged wrongness of the war and the alleged deceit of President Bush is another example of passion rather than reason determining a leftist position on a major issue.

F we leave Iraq, it will be a great victory for the most dangerous ideology on earth today. The people running North Korea are presumably as evil as the Islamists. But there is no ideology emanating from North Korea that threatens mankind. We are fighting an ideology, supported by millions of people, that wishes to conquer the world and routinely engages in mass murder of the innocent, especially the innocent, to achieve its totalitarian goals.

No one will trust America's commitment for the foreseeable future. Nations and forces aligned with America against freedom-hating enemies will conclude that it is actually quite easy to defeat the United States of America. Just kill relatively few of that country's soldiers, and the USA will soon abandon you.

The very best Iraqis and members of their families will be slaughtered like animals. It will mean the end of the possibility of the rise of a moderate form of Islam for the foreseeable future, perhaps generations. In the Arab/Muslim world, might is revered, and the victorious Islamists will therefore be revered. Moreover, they will have earned the right to claim that they constitute an unstoppable force. If America, the most powerful country in the world, surrenders to them because the Islamists murder fellow Muslims and killed the indescribably tragic but militarily small total of 3,000 soldiers in four years, who in the Muslim world will stand up to them?

Iraq will turn into a far more potent terror base than Afghanistan could ever be. One of the major powers of the Arab world, one of the most oil-rich countries in the world, may well be ruled by jihadists.

Moderate Arab regimes will likely be overthrown by a combination of an emboldened Iran and an Islamist Iraq that regards moderate Arabs and Muslims as loathsome as, if not more so than, Americans and Jews. It is almost inconceivable, for example, that the Jordanian monarchy would long survive an American defeat in Iraq.

The American military will suffer a crisis of morale that it will not soon overcome. Though defeated, not by the Islamist enemy, but by the American left, most particularly the Democratic Party and the mainstream news media, it will be hard to convince many people to join or stay in the U.S. military. Why bother? Even if you do a great job, if you haven't done it all whatever "all" means in a place like Iraq, you will be told that you lost the war.

And those who have heretofore murdered fellow Muslims will focus their attention on murdering us. The left dismisses the argument that it is far better to fight them in Iraq than in Europe and America. But the dismissal is simply irrational. The people we are fighting, including Osama bin Laden and all the variations on al-Qaida, know that the battle for Iraq is the battle for their future, that if they win in Iraq, they win all over the Middle East and beyond; that if they lose there, America and the West win.

But none of this matters to the left because Democrats and others on the left do not ask what will happen if America leaves Iraq. They are certain that the war was wrong, and that, in addition to handing George W. Bush and the Republicans a defeat, is what they seem to care about.

In a speech to mark 1 May, Mr Chavez said he wanted the move to take effect as soon as possible. President Chavez also announced an almost 20% increase in the minimum monthly wage. "We don't need to be going up to Washington? we are going to get out," Mr Chavez said.

The president said he had ordered Finance Minister Rodrigo Cabezas to begin formal proceedings to withdraw from the two international bodies. President Chavez has spoken of his ambition to set up what he calls a Bank of the South, backed by Venezuelan oil revenues, which would finance projects in South America.

Ecuador, led by another left-wing president, Rafael Correa, has also spoken of leaving the IMF, and recently expelled World Bank representatives from the country.

Planned Parenthood is claiming another victory today in its decade-long war with Wal-Mart saying the retail giant will revise its policy over emergency contraception and mandate that its pharmacists distribute Plan-B without delay, and without judgment.

Planned Parenthood Federation of America claims to have received today a survey from Wal-Mart that guarantees customers will now receive their prescriptions or over-the-counter products in store without discrimination (no harassment or lectures).

Wal-Mart had announced previously in March 2006 that its pharmacies would stock the emergency contraceptive Plan-B, but back then allowed its pharmacists the right to conscientious objection and to refer customers to other pharmacies that would fill prescriptions for Plan-B.

The new policy revision means pharmacists will all be forced to provide emergency contraception (EC), whose high hormone doses act as an abortifacient by making the womb inhospitable to an embryo before implantation.

This is a huge victory for women's health and for Planned Parenthood's campaign for accessible birth control, PPFA President Cecile Richards said in a press statement. We're pleased that Wal-Mart has changed its policy to meet the real-life health care needs of women and families.

While Wal-Mart may be making a business decision to cut its losses with Planned Parenthood, it marks a radical departure from its pro-life founder Sam Walton, who said, Each Wal-Mart store should reflect the values of its customers and support the vision they hold for their community.

Scientists from Nasa say that Mars has warmed by about 0.5C since the 1970s. This is similar to the warming experienced on Earth over approximately the same period.Since there is no known life on Mars it suggests rapid changes in planetary climates could be natural phenomena.

The mechanism at work on Mars appears, however, to be different from that on Earth. One of the researchers, Lori Fenton, believes variations in radiation and temperature across the surface of the Red Planet are generating strong winds.In a paper published in the journal Nature, she suggests that such winds can stir up giant dust storms, trapping heat and raising the planet's temperature.

Fenton's team unearthed heat maps of the Martian surface from Nasa's Viking mission in the 1970s and compared them with maps gathered more than two decades later by Mars Global Surveyor. They found there had been widespread changes, with some areas becoming darker.

When a surface darkens it absorbs more heat, eventually radiating that heat back to warm the thin Martian atmosphere: lighter surfaces have the opposite effect. The temperature differences between the two are thought to be stirring up more winds, and dust, creating a cycle that is warming the planet.

Recent indicators from the financial sector show the U.S. economy is taking a beating, with a possible bursting of the stock market looming on the horizon. On Friday, April 27, the dollar hit an all-time low of $1.3682 against the euro, before closing at $1.3651.

The Commerce Department announced the same day the first quarter 2007 gross domestic product grew at only a 1.3 percent annual rate, the slowest reported in four years during the first quarter. The GDP decline is a second down quarter, following the 2.5 percent rate reported by the Commerce Department for the fourth quarter 2006. The economy has slowed considerably from the 4.8 percent GDP growth reported for the first quarter of 2006.

WND previously reported the economy may have entered a recession in February 2006, a conclusion further supported by Friday's sluggish GDP growth report. The AP has reported former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan has put the chance of recession this year at one at three. Economists widely credited the national collapse in the sub-prime housing market as a primary cause of the GDP slowdown.

Meanwhile, the stock market hit an all-time high of 13,000 last Wednesday, setting a new trading high of 13,148 on Friday, before closing at 13,120.94. WND previously attributed the continued rise of the stock market to an excess of liquidity in world markets.

Bob Chapman, who publishes a biweekly Internet newsletter, The International Forecaster, http://www.theinternationalforecaster.com/ told his 100,000 worldwide subscribers that, "We are facing the biggest decline in housing values since the 1930s and nobody gets it yet. In former hot markets, prices will fall 15 percent to 25 percent this year and more next year as the tragedy plays out."

Chapman continued to predict a collapse in the heavily leveraged $1.4 trillion dollar unregulated hedge fund market and in the little-understood derivative market where leveraged exposure may be as high as $500 trillion. Chapman advised his subscribers that gold was one of the few secure asset classes he was recommending for investors.

An article in TheStreet.com credited legendary value investor, Jeremy Grantham "the man Dick Cheney, plus a lot of other rich people, trusts with his money" as saying we are experiencing "the first worldwide bubble in history covering all asset classes."

Democratic presidential hopefuls flashing their anti-war credentials last night at a national debate by stating they would immediately withdraw from Iraq, encouraged Palestinian terrorist leaders here, who labeled the debate a victory for Iraqi insurgents and "resistance movements" throughout the world. The debate was widely covered today by the Palestinian and pan-Arab media.

"We see Hillary (Clinton) and other candidates are competing on who will withdraw from Iraq and who is guilty of supporting the Iraqi invasion. This is a moment of glory for the revolutionary movements in the Arab world in general and for the Iraqi resistance movement specifically," said Abu Jihad, one of the overall leaders of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades terror organization. I think democrats will do good if they will withdraw as soon as they are in power," he said.

At the televised primary debate last night, Democrat presidential hopefuls heaped criticism on President Bush's Iraq war policy. "The first day, I would get us out of Iraq by diplomacy," said New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, one of eight rivals on the debate stage. "If this president does not get us out of Iraq, when I am president, I will," pledged Sen. Clinton. "We are one signature away from ending this war," declared Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill. He said if Bush won't change his mind about vetoing a bill requiring troop withdrawal, Democrats need to work on rounding up enough Republican votes to override him.

I think democrats will do good if they will withdraw as soon as they are in power," he said. The terrorists told WND an electoral win for the Democrats would prove to them Americans are "tired." They rejected statements from some prominent Democrats in the U.S. that a withdrawal from Iraq would end the insurgency, explaining AN EVACUATION WOULD PROVE RESISTANCE WORKS AND WOULD COMPEL JIHADISTS TO CONTINUE FIGHTING UNTIL AMERICA IS DESTROYED.

A nationally distributed training video produced by a "gay" advocacy group, which claims it's been shown on more than 100 public television stations, advises teachers to promote homosexuality as normal and healthy to children as young as kindergarten age, regardless of what values the child has been taught at home.

"We are asking kids to believe this [homosexuality] is right. Not as a matter of moral principle, but as a matter of, we're educating them and this is part of what we consider to be a healthy education," one unidentified teacher said during the videotaped meeting of educators preparing to teach, or as their critics charge, "brainwash", their students.

"Although 'It's Elementary' was made over a decade ago, it's still a major training film for homosexual activists, is still being shown in schools across the country, and has become a standard feature at homosexual teachers' conferences," the Mass Resistance site says. "How much further has that agenda reached since then? How many more young children are being desensitized to homosexuality in their young years by these sophisticated techniques. And more importantly, when are you going to get involved to do something about it?"

"Although 'It's Elementary' was made over a decade ago, it's still a major training film for homosexual activists, is still being shown in schools across the country, and has become a standard feature at homosexual teachers' conferences," the Mass Resistance site says. "How much further has that agenda reached since then? How many more young children are being desensitized to homosexuality in their young years by these sophisticated techniques. And more importantly, when are you going to get involved to do something about it?"

The homosexual activist strategy is stated plainly in the film's promotion. "Waiting to teach children to accept differences of all kinds until middle school or high school is too late; statistics show that by sixth, seventh and eight grades, harmful stereotypes already have begun to take hold "

There is no date scheduled for the visit just yet, but the United Nations confirmed that Secretary General Ban Ki-moon met with the Pope and extended an invitation for the visit, to which the Pope agreed.

Press Office Director Fr. Federico Lombardi S.J. made the announcement Friday. "The Pope," said Fr. Lombardi, "has accepted the invitation in general terms, and has expressed his willingness to visit the U.N. headquarters, although as yet there is no date or program for the trip."

John Paul II visited the U.N. headquarters in 1979, and again in 1995 for the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the foundation of the organization.

The corpse of the decapitated animal was the centrepiece of a party to celebrate the launch of the God Of War II game for the company's PlayStation 2 console. Guests at the event were even invited to reach inside the goat's still-warm carcass to eat offal from its stomach.

Sickening images of the party have appeared in the company's official PlayStation magazine, but after being contacted by The Mail on Sunday, Sony issued an apology for the gruesome stunt and promised to recall the entire print run. Critics condemned the entertainment giant, which produces scores of Hollywood blockbusters each year, for its "blood lust" and said the grotesque "sacrifice" highlighted increasing concerns over the content of video games and the lengths to which the industry will go to exploit youngsters.

It asks readers how far they would go to get hold of Sony's next-generation console, the PlayStation 3. "How about eating still warm intestines uncoiled from the carcass of a freshly slaughtered goat? At the party to celebrate God Of War II's European release, members of the Press were invited to do just that . . ."

In God Of War II, which is so violent it has been given an 18 certificate, players follow Kratos into battle against a series of fearsome characters from Greek mythology. Sony describes it as "an adult-rated, fast-paced bloodbath and enormous fun to boot", adding that it is "bigger, better and as brutal as ever". One reviewer said the title featured "the most brutal, visceral combat of any action game".

Former Minister Keith Vaz, Labour MP for Leicester East and a long-time campaigner against violent computer games, branded the stunt "distasteful and irresponsible". He said: "The slaughter of animals is not something that should be done to advertise a product. "Sony as a global entertainment company has a social responsibility. At this event it failed in that responsibility. "I think people should think very carefully before bringing games like this into their homes.

"I would understand if customers wanted to boycott other Sony products such as their televisions because of this controversy." It is not the first time Sony has been involved in controversy over its games. In 2004, the PlayStation 2 game Manhunt was banned by High Street stores in the UK after it was linked to the murder of a 14-year-old Leicester boy.

Last September the relatives of a family massacred by a New Mexico teenager addicted to Grand Theft Auto: Vice City launched a £317million lawsuit against the entertainment company. And in November, Europe's justice commissioner Franco Frattini was so shocked by the "obscene cruelty and brutality" of Sony's Rule Of Rose PlayStation game that he wrote to all EU governments urging tighter controls on the "dreadful game".

Britain is in danger of "committing slow social suicide" as such Big Brother techniques as surveillance cameras and recording equipment spread into every aspect of our lives, the nation's information watchdog will warn this week.A new report from Richard Thomas, the information commissioner, will say that the public needs to be made more aware of the "creeping encroachment" on civil liberties created by email monitoring, CCTV and computer tracking of our buying habits.

It is understood that one of the concerns in Mr Thomas's report is the use of special listening devices which can be placed in lamp posts, street furniture and offices. These are already widely used in the Netherlands to combat crime and anti-social behaviour. More than 300 of the cameras with built-in microphones have been fitted in benefit offices and city centres. The equipment can pick up aggressive tones on the basis of decibel level, pitch and speed at which words are spoken.

Westminster council has already started piloting the listening devices, but experts say the use of these microphones raises questions about how surveillance can be used to intrude into the private lives of citizens. His warning comes as MPs launch their first inquiry into the impact of surveillance in Britain. The Home Affairs Select Committee will investigate the use of video cameras to monitor high streets and residential areas as well as the holding of personal information on both government and commercial databases.

On Tuesday, Mr Thomas, who last year warned that Britain was "sleepwalking into a surveillance society", will tell the committee at its first hearing that new safeguards must be introduced to protect the public from the increasing intrusion of surveillance into their daily lives.

Civil liberty campaigners have already warned that Britain is becoming a Big Brother society where its citizens are increasingly being watched. There are more than four million CCTV cameras in this country, one for every 14 people, and the national DNA database which was set up by police to combat crime now holds 3.5 million profiles.

Congress has yet to investigate the role of psychiatric drugs relating to school shootings despite international drug regulators warning these drugs can cause mania, psychosis, hallucinations, suicide and homicidal ideation.

At least eight of the recent school shooters were under the influence of such drugs, and according to media reports, investigators working on the Virginia Tech school shootings claim Cho Seung-Hui may also have been taking drugs for "depression."

Their call came after the UN said livestock emissions were a bigger threat to the planet than transport. The MEPs have asked the European Commission to "look again at the livestock question in direct connection with global warming."

The official EU declaration demands changes to animals' diets, to capture gas emissions and recycle manure
They warned," The livestock sector presents the greatest threat to the planet." The proposal will be looked at by the 27 member states. The UN says livestock farming generates 18 per cent of greenhouse gases while transport accounts for 14 per cent.

The kingdom's police arrested 172 terrorist suspects, seized large quantities of weapons and netted more than $30 million in cash from the conspirators. The ambitious plot that was thwarted bore chilling echoes to the 11 September attacks. Most of those hijackers were Saudi-born.

Saudi officials said some of the terrorists had taken advantage of the chaos in neighbouring Iraq to train - reinforcing fears among western intelligence officials that the war-torn country is spawning a new generation of deadly and battle-hardened terrorists.

"One of their main targets was to carry out suicide attacks against public figures and oil installations and to target military bases inside and outside [the country]," the Saudi interior ministry said in a statement. It added: "Some had begun training on the use of weapons, and some were sent to other countries to study aviation in preparation to use them to carry out terrorist operations inside the country."

Any airborne terror attack from the oil-rich kingdom would put British warships in the Gulf at risk as well as the 7,100 British forces in the nearby southern Iraqi city of Basra. The Bahrain-based 5th Fleet, of the US, also makes a major target for a terrorist spectacular. Al-Qaeda has long called for attacks on key Saudi oil installations to undermine the kingdom's economy and hit western energy supplies.

Suicide car-bombers in February last year targeted the world's biggest oil processing plant at the heavily-fortified Abqaiq facility in the country's eastern province. They rammed the facility's outer gates but were killed by specialised units of the Army and National Guard well before they reached the heart of the complex.

Virtually impenetrable security measures are in place at all the kingdom's key oil installations now, making a suicide air attack the only way to inflict damage. Saudi Arabia - home to 25,000 British expatriates - suffered its own 9/11 in May 2003 when al-Qaeda suicide bombers attacked three western compounds in the capital Riyadh.

Terrorists committed to overthrowing the western-backed Saudi monarchy went on to kill some 144 foreigners and Saudis over the next few years. But since those first attacks, Saudi security forces have hit back with great determination, breaking the back of the al-Qaeda threat by killing scores of terrorists and arresting hundreds more.

Al-Qaeda also miscalculated badly by killing Saudi officials - leading to a backlash by the Saudi public which has provided invaluable tip-offs. "It's fair to say the Saudis get huge intelligence from the public - far greater than in most western countries," a British security consultant in Riyadh told The Scotsman.

German authorities have told a lawyer for a teenager who was confined in a psychiatric hospital because she was homeschooled she can remain with her family for now, a new report has confirmed.

Joel Thornton, president of the International Human Rights Group told WND that the authorities' letter to the lawyer said they plan to "de-escalate" the case so that Melissa Busekros could remain in her home.
WND earlier reported that the teen, who was removed from her home by a team of police officers at the beginning of February and then was held in various psychiatric wards and foster home situations, fled government custody on April 23, her 16th birthday.

"At 3 a.m., in Erlangen, Germany, Melissa reached her home to the surprise of her entire family," Thornton told WND then. "Earlier in the morning Melissa left a note with the foster family where she was being held and began the journey to her family. She left of her own volition." He said Melissa left government custody and was in contact with her lawyer, Johannese Hildebrandt, because in Germany different laws are applicable depending on whether a child is 15 or 16.

"The nightmare faced by the Busekros family for the past two months may be finally over," Thornton told WND. "In a letter to the family's attorney, the youth welfare agency responsible for taking her from her home affirmed that they were going to 'de-escalate' the situation and allow her to remain with her family as long as they would continue to dialogue with authorities."

"This is a great victory for the Busekros family," Thornton said, "but the situation is not completely resolved. We are considering it a significant half-time lead, but not the final win." Michael Farris, founder of the Home School Legal Defense Association, said he believes the German treatment of Christian homeschoolers is the "edge of the night that's coming" for believers.

"Germany is the only Western democracy taking this incredibly hard-line approach, but there are growing clouds on a number of national horizons," Farris told WND. "The philosophy that the government knows best how to raise children is really becoming a worldwide phenomenon," Farris said. "I think Germany represents the edge of the night that's coming."

For the U.S., Farris has called for an amendment to the U.S. Constitution to protect the right of parents to educate their children at home.