The military commands in both the US and Britain have sought increased funding and stepped up deployments of arms and personnel to the Persian Gulf in preparation for an anticipated war against Iran.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the Pentagon, acting on the request of the Central Command, which oversees US military operations in the region, has requested the re-allocation of some $100 million in military spending to ratchet up war preparations.

The Journal cast these preparations as defensive measures aimed at countering an Iranian threat to close the Strait of Hormuz, the waterway through which some 20 percent of the world's exported oil flows. Iran's threat came in response to trade sanctions and embargoes imposed by the US and Western Europe that amount to a blockade, an act of war, as well as open Israeli threats to bomb the country.

"The US military has notified Congress of plans to preposition new mine-detection and clearing equipment and expand surveillance capabilities in and around the strait, according to defense officials briefed on the requests," the Journal reports. "The military also wants to quickly modify weapons systems on ships so they could be used against Iranian fast-attack boats, as well as shore-launched cruise missiles, the defense officials said."

The recent announcements of mass layoffs by the US Postal Service, Procter & Gamble, and Archer Daniels Midland, together with the bankruptcies of Fuller Brush and American Airlines, have upended claims that the United States is in the midst of an "economic recovery."

In fact, the US economy remains mired in mass unemployment, with falling real wages and growing poverty a fact of life for millions of people. Small and medium businesses, facing immense pressures to cut costs, are collapsing by the tens of thousands.

The worst of the recent job cuts was conducted by the government itself: the US Postal Service announced last week that it would wipe out 35,000 jobs by the end of September, part of a longer-term plan to eliminate 150,000 jobs.

One well-known corporate name after another has joined the procession of bankruptcies and layoffs, eliminating tens of thousands of jobs combined: Sears, Procter & Gamble, American Airlines, Kodak, Fuller Brush Company (which filed bankruptcy last week), Archer Daniels Midland, IBM.

Foreign minister intervenes after Danish man loses appeal to have 137,000 kroner returned to him by the Americans

Authorities in the US have refused to return 137,000 kroner that was confiscated from a Danish policeman who attempted to legally purchase Cuban cigars from Germany.

Torben Nødskouv intended to resell the cigars through his small business Cigarhuset and made the transaction in dollars with a Hamburg-based distributor. But the transaction, which was automatically routed through the US, was picked up by American authorities who froze the money, arguing that the transaction violated the American trade embargo with Cuba.

Nødskouv appealed after the $20,000 transaction was frozen last autumn, but the money may be permanently lost after he was recently informed that it would not be returned to him.

The one year anniversary of the devastating earthquake and tsunami in Japan is less than two weeks away, but details about the nuclear meltdown that happened that tragic day are just beginning to emerge.

On Feb. 27, a news helicopter was allowed close enough to get a good glimpse of the crippled Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear power plant. Today, a report revealed the chaos between Japan's leaders during the crisis.

"The normal lines of authority completely collapsed," Tetsuro Fukuyama, the prime minister's adviser, told investigators.

CBS News correspondent Lucy Craft reported that in the hours after the tsunami struck the nuclear plant, Japanese officials huddled in an emergency bunker struggled to grasp the size of the catastrophe.

"As we listened to our top nuclear experts, we politicians had no idea what they were talking about. Was anyone going to suffer radiation contamination? Would this be another Chernobyl or Three Mile Island? No one could give us a straight answer," Fukuyama recalled in the report.

Wife of Syrian President, Asma Al-Assad, speaks out about the despicable Israeli abuses against Palestinians in this interview with CNN, recorded three years ago. Are we beginning to see why the Al Assads have been targeted for elimination? Conscientious leaders of just societies must be removed to make way for barbaric 'democrazi' and total world domination of, by and for psychopaths.

Beirut - The bodies of dozens of men were found dumped on wasteland on the outskirts of the stricken city of Homs on Monday in what appeared to be one of the worst instances of mass killing since the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad began last March.

The Local Coordination Committees, an opposition group, said that the bodies of 64 men were taken to the National Hospital in Homs and that an unknown number of women and children who had been with them are missing. Activists said they thought that the men had been trying to flee the violence with their families when they were stopped and gunned down by security forces.

The details available were murky, however, and the bodies had not been identified, making it difficult to establish exactly how or why the men died.

The discovery came as Syria's state media announced that a big majority of Syrians had voted to approve a new constitution that would allow Assad to remain in power until 2028. U.S. and European leaders have condemned the exercise as meaningless, since it seemed designed primarily to ensure Assad's survival rather than to implement genuine reforms.

The apparent mass killing in Homs spoke to the rising ferocity of the violence engulfing many parts of Syria as the government seeks to quell the revolt and the once-peaceful protest movement increasingly resorts to arms to resist the onslaught, stirring fears of a civil war that could ignite a wider regional conflict.

Israeli officials say they won't warn the U.S. if they decide to launch a pre-emptive strike against Iranian nuclear facilities, one U.S. intelligence official familiar with the discussions told the Associated Press. The pronouncement, delivered in a series of private, top-level conversations, sets a tense tone ahead of meetings in the coming days at the White House and Capitol Hill.

Israeli officials said that if they eventually decide a strike is necessary, they would keep the Americans in the dark to decrease the likelihood that the U.S. would be held responsible for failing to stop Israel's potential attack. The U.S. has been working with the Israelis for months to persuade them that an attack would be only a temporary setback to Iran's nuclear program.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak delivered the message to a series of top-level U.S. visitors to the country, including the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the White House national security adviser and the director of national intelligence, and top U.S. lawmakers, all trying to close the trust gap between Israel and the U.S. over how to deal with Iran's nuclear ambitions.

Netanyahu delivered the same message to all the Americans who have traveled to Israel for talks, the U.S. official said.

Mexico's bloody drug wars could mean new opportunities for private military companies like XE Services, better known as Blackwater, which became infamous in Iraq. Latin America provides such firms with both quality recruits and new business opportunities.

Mexico City -- The Iraqi resistance nicknamed him "Al-Shaitan" (the devil) and put a hefty bounty on his head. In the United States, he has been decorated as a hero. Newspapers there call him the "deadliest sniper in U.S. history." During his various missions as a Navy SEAL he officially killed 150 people. The Texan himself counts his kills at 255.

These days, however, 37-year-old Chris Kyle is too busy running his own business to add to his "legendary" kill count. In 2009, after completing his military service - with full honors - he founded Craft International, a company that offers private military and security services and specializes in training sharpshooters. The company forms part of a new trend in military outsourcing, a business model that has quickly spread across the globe, including into Latin America, where modern mercenaries are being put to work in everything from mining to coca eradication.

Craft International is by no means the first such for-profit paramilitary venture. In 1997, another former SEAL, Erik Prince, used his generous inheritence to set up a large private facility specialized in training police and soldiers. Prince, whose wealthy family has close ties to the Republican Party, called his operation Blackwater and staffed the new company with a long list of experienced and skilled trainers.

The compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, which authorities claim was Osama Bin Laden's home for several years before his supposed killing by a US special forces team last May, has this weekend been totally demolished. Pakistani authorities began tearing down the house on Saturday night, working under floodlights, with the local population subject to a strict curfew and Pakistan Army soldiers and police personnel reportedly deployed in large numbers.

The high security surrounding the building since last May, coupled with its sudden and secretive demolition, have naturally led to suspicions that this weekend marked the successful completion of a brazen coverup - journalists have never been allowed to enter the building, and were banned from going anywhere near it very soon after Bin Laden's supposed killing. The total destruction of the death scene makes it much less likely independent verification of the official narrative will ever be established, though considering that no evidence proving Bin Laden was actually killed in the compound has ever been provided by the authorities, this weekend's events are hardly surprising.

The official account stretched credulity from the outset and changed significantly in the days and weeks following the Navy Seals' attack. At first we were told that Bin Laden had offered resistance by firing a weapon at the Seals, but it was soon admitted that the person shot had not in fact been armed. If the unarmed individual shot dead posed no threat, then it is hard to view his death as anything other than a cold-blooded execution. The claim that Bin Laden cowered behind his wife, who was initially reported to have been killed whilst her husband used her as a human shield, also had to be retracted.