Nicosia/Athens - A fifth euro-zone country turned to Brussels for emergency funding on Monday when Cyprus announced it was seeking a lifeline for its banks and its budget, hours after Spain submitted a formal request to bail out its banks.

Global share prices and the euro slid as investors bet that European leaders - due to meet this week for the 20th time since the currency zone's debt crisis hit Greece in 2010 - would fail to come up with radical measures to back up weak countries.

Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel dashed any hope that Berlin would allow joint bonds issued by the euro zone or other measures sought by partners.

Cyprus joins Greece, Ireland, Portugal and Spain in seeking EU rescue funds, meaning more than a quarter of the 17 euro zone members are now in the bloc's emergency ward. Italy's funding costs have soared too, which means it could be next.

Spain formally submitted its request for up to 100 billion euros of funds to bail out its banks, agreed on June 9.

Moody's Investors Service cut the ratings of 28 out of 33 rated Spanish banks by one to four notches in a decision announced late Monday afternoon in New York. Those downgrades followed a cut of Spain's sovereign rating to just above junk status earlier this month.

When the 32 families of the Riverdale Mobile Home Park in Jersey Shore, Pennsylvania, found out that they were losing their homes to the state's latest fracking operation, the news didn't come from their landlord, or an eviction notice in the mail - they read about it in their morning paper.

The February 18 article, published in the Williamsport Sun-Gazette, nonchalantly detailed the approval of three natural gas projects in Lycoming County, PA, including a water withdrawal station that would pipe millions of gallons of water from the Susquehanna River to fracking stations in the mountains further north. The article noted that an "added benefit" of the plans was "the removal of mobile homes," which were located in a potential flood plain.

Later that afternoon, Riverdale's landlord came by and confirmed what residents had already read in the paper: The property had been sold to Aqua America, a water company dedicated to fracking. The full magnitude of the blow came days later, when the eviction notices arrived, informing the residents that they had until May 1 to relocate so that work on the site could begin in June. Each family was offered $2,500 if they got off the property by April 1; $1,500 if they moved by May 1; and zero compensation after that. It wasn't nearly enough; lawyers for Riverdale residents later estimated that the cost of moving each trailer was, on average, between $8,000 to $10,000.

The efforts of the Global Elite are to enable an environmentally-based economy within a one world government. This includes replacing the currency and economic structures in place.

The Royal Canadian Mint (RCM) has announced that they will stop printing pennies. The RCM have unveiled a digital RFID-chip based currency that can be loaded up, stored and spent in-store and online.

The RCM calls this currency MintChip; which will be a virtual payment method accessible through microchips, microSD cards and USB sticks.

This RFID-chip currency is collaboration with the US corporations and research and development outfits. Ian Bennett, president and CEO of the Mint explains:

As part of its research and development efforts, the Mint has developed MintChip, which could be characterized as an evolution of physical money, with the added benefits of being electronic.

The MintChip is still under development, with patents pending and prototypes being studied. The creation and perfection of the technology must be useable with American markets.

Nine young soccer players and fans have been killed in a bomb explosion near a pitch in southern Iraq.

The deadly bombing is the latest in a wave of attacks that have raised fears of a return to widespread sectarian violence.

The explosion was in a predominantly Shiite Muslim area of the city of Hilla, 100 kilometres south of Baghdad.

The bomb was attached to a minibus, and exploded near a field where two youth teams had just finished a game, according to police and hospital sources.

Officials say the dead and injured soccer players and fans were aged between 15 and 20.

To borrow a phrase from Bill Maher, here's a New Rule: anytime a GMO advocate gushes about the benefits and safety of genetically engineered products, someone must recite the following statistics from Food & Water Watch:

1. Since 1999, the 50 largest agricultural and food patent-holding companies and two of the largest biotechnology and agrochemical trade associations have spent more than $572 million in campaign contributions and lobbying expenditures.
2. Lobbying expenditures for food and agricultural biotechnology more than doubled between 1999 and 2009, rising 102.8 percent from $35 million in 1999 to $71 million in 2009.
3. Food and agricultural biotechnology PACs made more than $22 million in campaign contributions since 1999.
4. Food and agriculture biotechnology firms employ more than 300 former congressional and White House staff members as lobbyists.
5. In addition to in-house lobbyists, the food and agricultural biotechnology firms employed more than 100 lobbying firms in 2010.

New figures collected by Global Witness on the killings of activists, journalists and community members who were defending rights to land and forests show the true, shocking extent of competition for access to natural resources. The briefing, A Hidden Crisis?, finds that over 711 people appear to have been killed in the last decade - more than one a week. In 2011 the toll was 106 people, almost doubling over the past three years.

On the eve of the Rio +20 UN Conference on Sustainable Development, the briefing warns of a hidden crisis in environmental protection, highlighting a pervasive culture of impunity around such violence, a lack of information, reporting or monitoring of the problem at national and international levels, and the involvement of governments and the domestic and foreign private sector in many killings.

Billy Kyte, campaigner at Global Witness said,

"This trend points to the increasingly fierce global battle for resources, and represents the sharpest of wake-up calls for delegates in Rio. Over one person a week is being murdered for defending rights to forests and land."

As the Syrian crisis enters its 16th month, the recent massacres in Houla and Hama have revived calls for foreign intervention and the toppling of President Bashar al-Assad. US Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice has recently hinted that the United States would soon take action outside of the Annan plan and the authority of the United Nations if the persistent violence in Syria continued unabated. While the Syrian opposition severs its commitment to uphold Kofi Annan's peace plan and openly calls for a UN- no-fly zone to replace the monitoring mission, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has announced a new transition plan that would remove Assad from power completely. As outside forces plan a post-Assad transition strategy, the people of Syria are fast approaching a historic crossroads, of which may lead to a broader sectarian conflict that would forever reshape the Middle East.

Prof. Michel Chossudovsky, Director of the Centre for Research on Globalization weighs in on the insurrectionary nature of the Syrian conflict and its potential to generate a larger regional conflict in the Middle East.

President Obama on Wednesday asserted executive privilege over Fast and Furious documents just as a House panel prepared to push ahead with a contempt vote against Attorney General Eric Holder.

Here's what the president's action means:

-- Executive privilege allows Obama to withhold from Congress documents revealing internal communications and decision-making of the executive branch of government that he believes should remain confidential.

-- A subpoena by Congress cannot override claims of executive privilege. However, the privilege is considered "qualified" and "not absolute," meaning it can be challenged and overturned in the courts, according to the Congressional Research Service.

US radio host Dennis Bernstein and investigative reporter Dave Lindorff illustrate just how much US tax money goes towards the country's war chest.

"People have to realize that 53 cents of every dollar that they are paying into taxes is going to the military to an astonishing figure. There is an enormous, enormous amount of money being blown on war an killing and destruction."

Foreign minister says Ankara will take incident to Nato and dismisses Syria's claim it did not know plane was Turkish

Ahmet Davutoglu says the Turkish jet entered Syrian airspace but quickly left, and was then shot down without warning by Syrian forces.

Nato is to meet on Tuesday at Turkey's request following the shooting down of one of its warplanes by Syria in what it says was international airspace.

Turkey's foreign minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, said Ankara would formally present the incident to its Nato allies to prepare a response under article four of the organization's founding treaty.

The article provides for states to "consult together whenever, in the opinion of any of them, the territorial integrity, political independence or security of any of the parties is threatened". It stops short of the explicit mention of possible armed responses cited in article five.

The Turkish foreign ministry said on Sunday it knew the coordinates of the plane's wreckage 1,300 meters deep in the Mediterranean sea, but had not found it or the pilots. Turkey has filed an official protest to Syria about the shooting down.

Davutoglu told the state broadcaster TRT on Sunday that the plane had entered Syrian airspace but quickly left when warned by Turkey and was shot down in international airspace several minutes later.

He said the plane was clearly marked as Turkish, dismissing Syria's earlier statement that it had not known the plane belonged to Turkey, and that it was shot down over Syrian airspace. He said it was on a training flight to test Turkey's radar capabilities and had no "covert mission related to Syria".

Turkey's president, Abdullah Gül, said on Saturday that it was "routine" for jets flying at high speeds to violate other countries' air spaces for short periods of time.

A statement by the Syrian military said the Turkish plane was flying low 1km off the Syrian coast when it was hit by anti-aircraft fire. The plane fell in Syrian waters seven miles west of the village of Um al-Touyour.