The campaigning is over, the opinion surveys have all been done and now the only poll that counts is underway.

Canadians are voting today in the fourth federal election in seven years and, by most accounts, it's going to be a game-changer.

A buoyant Stephen Harper cast his ballot at an elementary-junior high school in his Calgary Southwest riding, with wife Laureen and their two children at his side.

Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff and his NDP rival, Jack Layton, both voted in their Toronto ridings earlier in the day, reflecting what is expected to be the most significant dynamic of the national ballot.

Ignatieff, a relative unknown going into the 36-day race, got a boost early on but his support appeared to fade as the campaign evolved.

Layton's NDP surged to unprecedented levels in Quebec after the leaders' debate and appeared to gain momentum across Canada in the last two weeks of the campaign.

If today were April 1 and not May 2, we could dismiss as an April fool's joke this morning's headline that Osama bin Laden was killed in a firefight in Pakistan and quickly buried at sea. As it is, we must take it as more evidence that the US government has unlimited belief in the gullibility of Americans.

Think about it. What are the chances that a person allegedly suffering from kidney disease and requiring dialysis and, in addition, afflicted with diabetes and low blood pressure, survived in mountain hideaways for a decade? If bin Laden was able to acquire dialysis equipment and medical care that his condition required, would not the shipment of dialysis equipment point to his location? Why did it take ten years to find him?

Consider also the claims, repeated by a triumphalist US media celebrating bin Laden's death, that "bin Laden used his millions to bankroll terrorist training camps in Sudan, the Philippines, and Afghanistan, sending 'holy warriors' to foment revolution and fight with fundamentalist Muslim forces across North Africa, in Chechnya, Tajikistan and Bosnia." That's a lot of activity for mere millions to bankroll (perhaps the US should have put him in charge of the Pentagon), but the main question is: how was bin Laden able to move his money about? What banking system was helping him? The US government succeeds in seizing the assets of people and of entire countries, Libya being the most recent. Why not bin Laden's? Was he carrying around with him $100 million dollars in gold coins and sending emissaries to distribute payments to his far-flung operations?

"The American people should see that corporations have abandoned them long ago," says scientist, environmentalist, and food justice activist Dr. Vandana Shiva, named one of the seven most influential women in the world by Forbes magazine. "The people will have to rebuild democracy as a living democracy."

Dr. Shiva has been fighting corporate takeover in every area in her native India, combating a nuclear plant one week and patented, genetically modified seeds another. She joins Laura in studio to advise American activists how they can fight the merging of corporations and government here at home and around the world.

Local residents dispute circumstances of Osama bin Laden's death:

An image apparently showing a dead Osama bin Laden broadcast on Pakistani television and picked up by British newspaper websites is a fake.

The bloodied image of a man with matted hair and a blank, half-opened eye has been circulating on the internet for the past two years. It was used on the front pages of the Mail, Times, Telegraph, Sun and Mirror websites, though swiftly removed after the fake was exposed on Twitter.

It appears the fake picture was initially published by the Middle East online newspaper themedialine on 29 April 2009, with a warning from the editor that it was "unable to ascertain whether the photo is genuine or not".

The mastermind of the 9/11 attacks warned that al-Qaeda has hidden a nuclear bomb in Europe which will unleash a "nuclear hellstorm" if Osama bin Laden is captured, leaked files revealed.

The terror group also planned to make a 9/11 style attack on London's Heathrow airport by crashing a hijacked airliner into one of the terminals, the files showed.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed told Guantanamo Bay interrogators the terror group would detonate the nuclear device if the al-Qaeda chief was captured or killed, according to the classified files released by the WikiLeaks website.

Sheikh Mohammed, the self-professed mastermind of the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States, has been held at Guantanamo since 2006 and is to be tried in a military court at the US naval base on Cuba over the attacks.

Numerous news outlets across the globe are reporting that Osama Bin Laden is dead and that the U.S. has his body. The New York Post and CNN claim to have additional information, stating that the 9/11 mastermind was killed by an unmanned drone in Pakistan last week. Other family members were said to have been killed in the attack, which occured outside a mansion in Islamabad.

DNA tests were said to have been conducted to confirm his identity.

CNN reports that the U.S. military is taking steps to prepare for the possibility that Al Qaeda and/or Bin Laden supporters may immediately retaliate.

Usama bin Laden has died a peaceful death due to an untreated lung complication, the Pakistan Observer reported, citing a Taliban leader who allegedly attended the funeral of the Al Qaeda leader.

"The Coalition troops are engaged in a mad search operation but they would never be able to fulfill their cherished goal of getting Usama alive or dead," the source said.

Bin Laden, according to the source, was suffering from a serious lung complication and succumbed to the disease in mid-December, in the vicinity of the Tora Bora mountains. The source claimed that bin Laden was laid to rest honorably in his last abode and his grave was made as per his Wahabi belief.

Washington - A U.S. official says Osama bin Laden has been buried at sea.

After bin Laden was killed in a raid by U.S. forces in Pakistan, senior administration officials said the body would be handled according to Islamic practice and tradition. That practice calls for the body to be buried within 24 hours, the official said. Finding a country willing to accept the remains of the world's most wanted terrorist would have been difficult, the official said. So the U.S. decided to bury him at sea.

The official, who spoke Monday on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive national security matters, did not immediately say where that occurred.

America and its allies invaded Afghanistan to hunt down Osama bin Laden, but his death will not signal the end of the Taliban-led insurgency facing Nato troops.

While his death is powerfully symbolic and will be widely welcomed in Afghanistan, his al Qaeda network has held little sway in the country for several years.

A decade after the Taliban regime gave him safe haven and refused to hand him over following the September 11 attacks, many in the Taliban are reportedly now ambivalent toward their former guest and his network.

The Taliban have denied they share the international jihadist ambitions of al Qaeda and the CIA has long estimated the network has fewer than 100 fighters and operatives inside Afghanistan.

Instead the Taliban say their insurgency is a home-grown nationalist campaign of resistance waged not by international terrorists, but waged by Afghans against a puppet government and its foreign backers.

Nato commanders often state that 80 per cent of Taliban foot soldiers are local men fighting within 20 miles of their homes.