Saudi Arabian officials will pay the salaries of the Free Syria Army in order to encourage mass military defections and increase pressure on the regime of President Bashar al-Assad's, the Guardian of London newspaper reported Friday.

The move has been discussed by Riyadh with senior U.S. and Arab world officials, the Guardian said.

The Guardian did not specify sources for its report. However, it said, Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., an active supporter of the Syrian opposition, recently endorsed the idea of ensuring pay for armed Syrian opposition, though not necessarily with U.S funds.

The plan is gaining support as weapons sent recently to rebel forces by Saudi Arabia and Qatar make a difference on battlefields in Syria.

Saudi officials embraced the pay idea when it [was] suggested by Arab officials in May, sources in three Arab states told the Guardian.

At that time, weapons started to flow across the southern Turkish border to Free Syria Army leaders, the Guardian said.

There are no signs of rioters, wind-damaged homes or flooding. The brand new City Hall features gleaming marble floors and the public recreation centers offer Zumba, karate and Pilates classes.

Despite all of its suburban trimmings, North Las Vegas is officially a disaster area.

After five years of declining property taxes, massive layoffs and questionable spending, leaders of the blue-collar, family-oriented city outside Las Vegas declared a state of emergency, invoking a rarely used state law crafted for unforeseen disasters.

No matter that the statute, which allows municipalities to suspend union contracts and avoid paying scheduled salary increases, doesn't actually include fiscal emergencies among the list of potential disasters.

"It says, in case of 'emergency such as.' You can't list how many different types of emergencies there are in the world," City Council member Wade Wagner said of the move, which will save the city $9 million.

Secret negotiations among dozens of countries preparing for a United Nations summit could lead to changes in a global treaty that would diminish the Internet's role in economic growth and restrict the free flow of information.

The U.S. delegation to the World Conference on International Telecommunications to be held in Dubai in December has vowed to block any proposals from Russia and other countries that they believe threaten the Internet's current governing structure or give tacit approval to online censorship.

But those assurances have failed to ease fears that bureaucratic tinkering with the treaty could damage the world's most powerful engine for exchanging information, creating jobs and even launching revolutions, according to legal experts and civil liberties advocates who have been tracking the discussions. Social networks played a key role in the Arab Spring uprisings that last year upended regimes in Egypt and Tunisia.

Russia, for example, has proposed language that requires member states to ensure the public has unrestricted access and use of international telecommunication services "except in cases where international telecommunication services are used for the purpose of interfering in the internal affairs or undermining the sovereignty, national security, territorial integrity and public safety of other states, or to divulge information of a sensitive nature," according to a May 3 U.N. document that details the various proposals for amending the treaty.

A costly mess, including court battles with employees and lenders that could stretch over years, is likely to await Stockton, California, if it cannot reach a last-minute deal with creditors and becomes the largest U.S. city ever to file for bankruptcy.

"A Chapter 9 bankruptcy proceeding is complicated, expensive, time-consuming and uncertain," said James Spiotto, a lawyer and municipal bankruptcy specialist at the Chapman and Cutler law firm in Chicago. "More likely than not, you're not going to get your desired result."

Stockton on Wednesday provided an initial outline of what a "bankruptcy budget" might look like for the city of 292,000 as a June 25 deadline for mediation talks with bond holders, employee unions and others approaches. The city proposes to stop payments on much of its debt and impose wage and benefit cuts including the elimination of all retiree healthcare benefits after a one-year transition period.

Stockton has already slashed its workforce sharply in recent years, cutting the police force by 25 percent, the fire department by 30 percent, and all other departments by more than 40 percent.

Recently revealed plans to deploy tens of thousands of military drones over the US mainland in the coming years expose a significant component of the developing infrastructure of an American police state.

According to government estimates, 30,000 drones could be buzzing overhead within the next decade. These drones will operate out of at least 110 military bases located in 39 states around the country. Ordnance is already being stockpiled, pilots and crews are being trained and airspace is being cordoned off.

These drones range from small surveillance planes weighing a few pounds to armed airships carrying thousands of pounds of equipment and armaments. Under development is a new generation of micro air vehicles (MAVs) that are no larger than insects and capable of entering homes and workplaces undetected to photograph, record and even kill.

Hundreds of drones are already deployed over the US, with local law enforcement agencies acquiring their own drones as well. And these are just the drones we know about.

According to an ABC News report, "Drones can carry facial recognition cameras, license plate scanners, thermal imaging cameras, open WiFi sniffers, and other sensors. And they can be armed." The precise technological capabilities of these drones, developed by defense giants such as Northrop Grumman at a cost of billions of dollars, are a closely guarded state secret.

When most people think of "Big Brother", they think of the FBI, the CIA, the NSA, the Department of Homeland Security and other shadowy government agencies. Yes, they are definitely watching you, but so are many big corporations. In fact, there are some companies that are making tens of millions of dollars by gathering every shred of information about all of us that they can and selling it for profit to anyone willing to pay the price.

It is called "data mining", and these data miners want to keep track of literally everything that you do. Most people know that basically everything that we do on the Internet is tracked, but data mining goes far beyond that. When you use a customer rewards card at the supermarket, the data miners know about it.

When you pay for a purchase with a credit card or a debit card, the data miners know about it. Every time you buy a prescription drug, that information is sold to someone. Every time you apply for a loan, a whole host of organizations is notified. Information has become an extremely valuable commodity, and thanks to computers and the Internet it is easier to gather information than ever before. But that also means that our personal information is no longer "private", and this trend is only going to get worse in the years ahead.

You have probably never even heard of many of these companies that are making millions of dollars selling your personal information. Acxiom and Epsilon are two of the biggest names in the industry, and most of the time they are selling your information to companies that want to sell you stuff.

Arriving in a village in southern Vietnam, I caught sight of two children who bore witness to the longest war of the 20th century. Their terrible deformities were familiar. All along the Mekong river, where the forests were petrified and silent, small human mutations lived as best they could.

Today, at the Tu Du paediatrics hospital in Saigon, a former operating theatre is known as the "collection room" and, unofficially, as the "room of horrors". It has shelves of large bottles containing grotesque foetuses. During its invasion of Vietnam, the United States sprayed a defoliant herbicide on vegetation and villages to deny "cover to the enemy". This was Agent Orange, which contained dioxin, poisons of such power that they cause foetal death, miscarriage, chromosomal damage and cancer.

In 1970, a US Senate report revealed that "the US has dumped [on South Vietnam] a quantity of toxic chemical amounting to six pounds per head of population, including woman and children". The code-name for this weapon of mass destruction, Operation Hades, was changed to the friendlier Operation Ranch Hand. Today, an estimated 4.8 million victims of Agent Orange are children.

Len Aldis, secretary of the Britain-Vietnam Friendship Society, recently returned from Vietnam with a letter for the International Olympic Committee from the Vietnam Women's Union. The union's president, Nguyen Thi Thanh Hoa, described "the severe congenital deformities [caused by Agent Orange] from generation to generation". She asked the IOC to reconsider its decision to accept sponsorship of the London Olympics from the Dow Chemical Corporation, which was one of the companies that manufactured the poison and has refused to compensate its victims.

Private companies will be running large parts of the police service within five years, according to security firm head

Private companies will be running large parts of the UK's police service within five years, according to the world's biggest security firm.

David Taylor-Smith, the head of G4S for the UK and Africa, said he expected police forces across the country to sign up to similar deals to those on the table in the West Midlands and Surrey, which could result in private companies taking responsibility for duties ranging from investigating crimes to transporting suspects and managing intelligence.

The prediction comes as it emerged that 10 more police forces were considering outsourcing deals that would see services, such as running police cells and operating IT, run by private firms.

Moody's Investors Service has lowered the ratings of some of the world's largest banks, including Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup and Goldman Sachs.

The ratings agency said late Thursday that the banks were downgraded because their long-term prospects for profitability and growth are shrinking.

The ratings agency said it was especially concerned about banks with significant capital market activities during a time of increased volatility in markets.

A downgrade usually means that it becomes more costly for banks to raise money by selling debt. Investors demand higher interest for riskier debt, which is what the downgrades represent.

British banks are set to be downgraded by a leading credit ratings agency, it was claimed today.

Royal Bank of Scotland, Lloyds Banking Group and Barclays are all in line for a downgrade by ratings agency Moody's over fears the eurozone crisis threatens their stability.

In a move that would cost financial institutions billions of pounds and could have a knock-on effect on the cost of credit to business and consumers, Moody's is set to push some banks down two notches, sources said.

Moody's will also downgrade a number of the biggest banks around the world, it was claimed, a decision that would show how the eurozone sovereign debt crisis is hitting all areas of global finance.

The cuts are part of a wider review by Moody's of the global banking sector that Sky News said is likely to be unveiled tonight after the US market closes.