Blending his trademark humor with tragic individual stories, archive footage and publicity stunts, the 55-year-old launches an all out attack on the capitalist system, arguing that it benefits the rich and condemns millions to poverty. "Capitalism is an evil, and you cannot regulate evil," the two-hour movie concludes.

"You have to eliminate it and replace it with something that is good for all people and that something is democracy." The bad guys in Moore's mind are big banks and hedge funds which "gambled" investors' money in complex derivatives that few, if any, really understood and which belonged in the casino. Meanwhile, large companies have been prepared to lay off thousands of staff despite boasting record profits.

The filmmaker also sees an uncomfortably close relationship between banks, politicians and US Treasury officials, meaning that regulation has been changed to favor the few on Wall Street rather than the many on Main Street.

A team of workers received the blueprint and materials they needed to repair the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge, which carries about 260,000 vehicles a day. But fixing the problem by Tuesday, when the workweek begins and the bridge had been set to reopen, poses "quite a challenge," said CalTrans spokesman Bart Ney.

The bridge was shut down Thursday night so a section of the eastern span could be cut out and replaced with a new double-deck section as part of a long-planned seismic upgrade. California transportation workers used the closure as an opportunity to inspect the bridge from top to bottom, and they discovered the crack Saturday. The damaged link — part of a network of eight similar pieces — is about 2 inches thick and was cracked halfway through.

The last full inspection of the bridge was in 2007, and the crack likely appeared since then, Ney said. He said he did not believe it was related to the construction project.

The Arctic Sea, officially carrying a cargo of timber worth £1.3m, disappeared en route from Finland to Algeria on July 24. It was recovered off West Africa on August 17 when eight alleged hijackers were arrested. The Kremlin has consistently denied that the vessel was carrying a secret cargo. It claims the ship was hijacked by criminals who demanded a £1m ransom.

The official version was challenged by sources in Tel Aviv and Moscow who claimed the ship had been loaded with S-300 MISSILES, RUSSIA'S MOST ADVANCED ANTI-AIRCRAFT WEAPON, while undergoing repairs in the Russian port of Kaliningrad. Mossad, which closely monitors arms supplies to Iran, is said to have tipped off the Russian government that the shipment had been SOLD BY FORMER MILITARY OFFICERS LINKED TO THE UNDERWORLD.

The Kremlin then ordered a naval rescue mission which involved destroyers and submarines. Any evidence that the Kremlin had let advanced weaponry fall into the hands of criminals or be sold to Iran would be highly embarrassing, so military officials believe a "cover story" was concocted.

"The official version is ridiculous and was given to allow the Kremlin to save face," said a Russian military source. "I've spoken to people close to the investigation and they've pretty much confirmed Mossad's involvement. IT'S LAUGHABLE TO BELIEVE ALL THIS FUSS WAS OVER A LOAD OF TIMBER. I'm not alone in believing that it was carrying weapons to Iran."

Sources who suspect Mossad's involvement point to a visit to Moscow by Shimon Peres, the Israeli president, the day after the Arctic Sea was rescued. Peres held four hours of private talks with Dmitry Medvedev, the Russian president. Although the Israeli foreign ministry would not be drawn on the Arctic Sea, it confirmed that the two leaders had discussed the sale of Russian weapons to countries hostile to Israel. According to Israeli officials, Peres received verbal guarantees from the Russians that they would not sell advanced weapons systems to Iran or Syria. "CLEARLY THE ISRAELIS PLAYED A ROLE IN THE WHOLE ARCTIC SEA SAGA," SAID A RUSSIAN MILITARY SOURCE.

German solar firms Conergy and Solarworld have voiced strong concern about the pricing practices of Chinese panel makers - who undercut their German peers' products by around 20 percent. Chinese modules sell in Europe at about 1.70 euros per watt, according to a UBS report. Industry experts say US firms share those German concerns.

Germany's BSW solar industry association is looking into allegations of dumping by Chinese rivals as Conergy rallies support to call on the European Union to examine Chinese pricing tactics. "It cannot be the aim of our environmental and economic policy to lose to the Far East our pioneering role with regard to the last great future technology, which was raised here with great efforts," said Dieter Ammer, CEO at Conergy, Germany's second-biggest solar firm by revenue.

The once red-hot solar sector faces a massive oversupply of cells and modules that has driven down average selling prices for solar systems by more than a fifth in Germany and the United States - two major solar markets - and Chinese companies are grabbing market share by slashing costs. A solar system below 10 kilowatt costs about 3,400 euros in Germany, while a large home solar set-up would sell at more than $70,000 in the United States.

The fee now under consideration in Congress would finance a new US program to promote travel, a burden that the EU believes Americans should bear. "Only in 'Alice in Wonderland' could a penalty be seen as promoting the activity on which it is imposed," the European Commission's Ambassador to Washington, John Bruton, said in a statement Friday.

One of the bill's sponsors, Democratic Representative William Delahunt, said the EU was getting too worked up over what he called "a nominal fee." But Europeans see the issue as yet another potential hassle that the United States is preparing to burden Europe's citizens with. Visitors from most European countries have long enjoyed the privilege of visa-free travel to the United States.

Sponsors have been promoting the law as cost-free to the US taxpayer. The EU thinks it should not be. Bruton said the EU will have to reconsider whether the US registration system with the new fee would amount to a visa. THE EU MIGHT THEN HAVE TO CONSIDER VISAS FOR US TRAVELERS.

However the G20 meeting in London did not agree on specific limits on the amounts individual bankers get paid. Britain, the US and Canada opposed the idea, but the Financial Stability Board is to examine the issue. It will report back to the summit of G20 leaders in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania later this month.

The G20 countries agreed on measures requiring banks to disclose the pay and bonuses of their highest-paid employees and TO ALLOW BONUSES TO BE "CLAWED BACK" IF DECISIONS WHICH SEEMED SUCCESSFUL LATER GO WRONG. The FSB has also been asked to look at the desirability of new rules which would allow regulators to rule on whether the total pool of cash set aside by a bank for bonuses is excessive, given its long-term financial stability and strength.

Ministers also pledged to continue financial support for the global economy until recovery from recession is secured. They said they would develop co-ordinated "exit strategies" to deal with ballooning public deficits once the recession is over. But they warned that although there were signs of recovery in the world economy, that recovery would not have happened without massive intervention from governments - AND ALL BANKERS SHOULD TAKE NOTE THAT THEY OWED THEIR SALVATION TO ACTION BY TAXPAYERS.

The Justice Secretary said he was unapologetic about including Abdelbaset al Megrahi in the agreement, citing a multi-million-pound oil deal signed by BP and Libya six weeks later. The admission directly contradicts Gordon Brown's insistence only days ago that oil deals were not a factor in the prisoner's release.

In an interview with The Daily Telegraph, Mr Straw also suggested that Kenny MacAskill, the Scottish justice minister, released the terminally-ill bomber on compassionate grounds earlier than the British Government would have done. Mr Brown has been accused of putting Britain's trade interests before justice for the Lockerbie victims. Earlier this week, the outcry forced him to say: "There was no conspiracy, no cover-up, no double dealing, no deal on oil, no attempt to instruct Scottish ministers, no private assurances."

When asked in the interview if trade and BP were factors, Mr Straw admits: "Yes, [it was] a very big part of that. I'm unapologetic about that... Libya was a rogue state. We wanted to bring it back into the fold. And yes, that included trade because trade is an essential part of it and subsequently there was the BP deal." IN JANUARY 2008, LIBYA RATIFIED A $900 MILLION (£551 MILLION) OIL DEAL WITH BP.

He told a meeting of the Morgan County Republicans on Wednesday night that Obama already has or will have THE THREE THINGS HE NEEDS TO MAKE HIMSELF A DICTATOR: a national police force, gun control and control over the press. "He has the three things that are necessary to establish an authoritarian government," Broun said. "And so we need to be ever-vigilant, because freedom is precious."

As he did when comparing Obama to Hitler and the Soviets last year, Broun cited a speech Obama gave in Colorado during the campaign last July calling for "a civilian national security force that's just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded" as the military.

In the speech, Obama called young Americans to serve both at home and abroad, and said he would expand the Peace Corps, AmeriCorps and other volunteer opportunities. Broun, however, said Obama was referring to a national police force. Broun also cited the dozens of so-called "czars" Obama has appointed to oversee areas like the troubled car industry as evidence that he is overstepping his bounds to seek power. "THEY'RE DEVELOPING A SHADOW GOVERNMENT THAT (DOES NOT) ANSWER TO THE AMERICAN PEOPLE," Broun said. Health care reform also is about Democrats seeking more power, Broun said. "IT GIVES THEM MORE POWER, MORE CONTROL OVER YOUR LIFE," HE SAID.

Chinese associations in the United States had applied to hold a ceremony in front of the US President's residence to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the founding of PRC. Chen Ronghua, chairman of Fujian Association of the United States, told reporters that their application was approved not only because of the sound Sino-US relations but also because China is a responsible country.

"Many Americans admire China due to the success of last year's Beijing Olympics," said Chen. More than 1,000 people will attend the ceremony and the performances held after it, according to Zhao Luqun, who will direct the performances.

Zhao said the performances will demonstrate THE FRIENDSHIP, MAGNANIMOUS SPIRIT AND KINDNESS OF MODERN CHINESE PEOPLE.

For a few hours on September 25, the site where US presidents are traditionally inaugurated, will essentially be turned into A GIANT OUTDOOR MOSQUE. The Jummah service – weekly Friday prayers – will "echo off of the Lincoln Memorial, the Washington Monument and other great edifices that surround Capitol Hill," according to the organizers.

They explain that the objective of the gathering is to "invite the Muslim Communities and friends of Islam to express and illustrate the wonderful diversity of Islam. We intend to manifest Islam's majestic spiritual principals [sic] as revealed by Allah to our beloved prophet Mohammed (peace be upon him) of Arabia. Likewise, we intend to inspire a new generation of Muslims to work for the greater good of all people."

The event, organized by a mosque in Elizabeth, New Jersey, is billed as a "Day of Islamic Unity. Thousands of Muslims from all races, creeds, colours and ethnicities will gather for the sole purpose of prayer," the organizers' website states, and "the peace, beauty and solidarity of Islam will shine through America's capitol."

THE WEBSITE PAGE CONCLUDES, "OUR TIME HAS COME."

The attacks in April left their 11-year-old victim fighting for his life at the foot of a steep ravine near Doncaster, his unconscious body bleeding from a slashing head wound and half-submerged in the waters of a former brick quarry. His nine-year-old friend and nephew was found wandering the streets of Edlington, South Yorkshire, dazed, covered in mud and bleeding from head to foot with a knife wound to his arm. Both boys had also been burnt with cigarettes.

The CPS decision means that the gruesome details of the case — which has chilling echoes of the 1993 James Bulger case — will no longer be have to heard in court although the events will be outlined in a sentencing hearing later this year. The brothers, who were in the care of social services, had moved to Edlington only three weeks earlier, having been placed with foster carers in the village.

The pair also pleaded guilty today to robbing one of the boys of a mobile phone and the other of cash. They also admitted two counts of intentionally causing a child to engage in sexual activity. The brothers had also been charged with one count each of attempted grievous bodily harm with intent and making a threat to kill in connection with an attack on another 11-year-old boy in Doncaster on March 28 — a week before the other attack.

Gordon Brown faced a backlash at home and abroad after it was confirmed that the Libyans had been told privately that he did not want Abdelbaset Al Megrahi to die in jail. And the Foreign Office was accused of tearing up a 'cast-iron' promise given to the Americans and the United Nations a decade ago that the terrorist - released last month on compassionate grounds - would stay behind bars in Scotland.

Some senior Labour figures are in despair at the Prime Minister's handling of the affair, and there was ill-disguised fury in the US, where there were claims that the Obama administration had been given only ten minutes' notice of the decision to release Megrahi.

Former US Justice Department official David Rivkin, who worked in both the Reagan and Bush administrations, said the Prime Minister had shown 'no interest' in keeping promises made to the US. 'THIS WILL DAMAGE US RELATIONS WITH BRITAIN FOR YEARS TO COME,' he said. 'This is the kind of duplicitous behaviour that most people here do not expect from Britain. I really can't think about a more duplicitous act by Britain vis-à-vis the United States in the post-war period.'

An extraordinary editorial in the New York Daily News called Mr Brown a 'sellout Prime Minister' who had 'broken faith and ties with the US. Can he remain in power having been revealed as at least complicit in an atrocious miscarriage of justice and breach of faith?' it demanded. 'AS FOR THE "SPECIAL RELATIONSHIP" between the US and Britain, the alliance built on the resolve of World War II and carried on through Thatcher and Blair, through Iraq and Afghanistan, IT IS, IN A WORD, GONE.'

GERMANY IS LEADING DEMANDS that the Pittsburgh summit start discussions on how to scale back the bail-out. Peer Steinbrück, its Finance Minister, has called FOR THE REDUCTION OF FISCAL MEASURES as soon as possible. Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, has echoed the call for an exit strategy. An insider at the Bundesbank, said: "I never walk into a room without knowing how to get out of it."

Philip Shaw, chief economist at the investment bank Investec, said: "The authorities are aware that if they START EXITING TOO QUICKLY THEY RUN THE RISK OF KILLING OFF ANY RECOVERY. In the 1930s they tightened policy too early and it set everything back. THE RISK OF LEAVING IT TOO LATE IS THAT YOU CREATE AN ASSET BUBBLE, leaving interest rates too low for too long. That is precisely the sort of behaviour which sparked off the asset bubble that led up to the current crisis."

"The various governments are starting to talk about the need to draw up an exit strategy. It makes sense that since the bailout and stimulus packages were co-ordinated, the winding down of programmes should be co-ordinated too."

Last night Mr Darling said that the biggest risk to global economic recovery was complacency and that it was too soon to withdraw stimulus measures. "My view is that the biggest single risk to recovery is that people think the job is done," he told The Independent. He said that the situation was at a critical stage and added: "BANKS MUST REMEMBER THEY WERE RESCUED NOT FOR THEMSELVES BUT TO GET CREDIT GOING. THEY FORGET THAT AT THEIR PERIL."

We exposed Greenpeace's lie less than two weeks ago on our blog and on Big Hollywood, and forced the group to issue a rare "CLARIFICATION." Our piece and the companion video went viral. Even the pro-environment blog at the left-wing Guardian newspaper acknowledged that "GREENPEACE WILL BE BRUISED BY THIS FUROR."

But none of that exposure kept Kerry, Democrat representative for Massachusetts, from repeating and amplifying the lie in a predictably hysterical open editorial about "CATASTROPHIC CLIMATE CHANGE" for the liberal Huffington Post. To justify his alarmism that global warming is a national security threat, Kerry parroted the tired and discredited claim about Arctic ice. "Scientists project that the Arctic will be ice-free in the summer of 2013," he wrote. "Not in 2050, but four years from now."

Greenpeace wasn't even willing to distort the truth that much when it mentioned melting Arctic ice in a July 15 article. The group pinpointed 2030 as doomsday, 17 years later than Kerry.

But even that claim was so bogus that Greenpeace's own leader recanted when pressed by BBC reporter Stephen Sackur. "I DON'T THINK IT WILL BE MELTING BY 2030 ...THAT MAY HAVE BEEN A MISTAKE," Gerd Leipold said last month on "Hardtalk." Kerry's decision to regurgitate and exaggerate the lie about melting ice just goes to show that NO FACT IS TOO SOUND FOR ENVIRONMENTALISTS TO DISTORT and that they have NO QUALMS ABOUT USING THEIR SCARE TACTICS EVEN AFTER BEING CAUGHT IN A LIE. Being an environmentalist means never having to say you're sorry.

The new hardware on display also will include conventional cruise missiles and both short- and medium-range missiles, the Global Times newspaper reported, citing an unnamed People's Liberation Army source. "These missiles are domestically designed and manufactured and HAVE NEVER BEEN OFFICIALLY REPORTED BEFORE," the source, who is with the PLA's strategic missile defence unit, was quoted as saying.

THE WEAPONS HAVE ALREADY BEEN DISTRIBUTED TO THE MILITARY AND ARE READY FOR OPERATION, the source said. China's missile development programme has caused concern overseas, particularly in the United States, amid projections that it could soon tip the security balance in the Taiwan Strait. An August report by the Rand Corporation, a US think-tank, said China was increasing both the quantity and quality of its short-range ballistic missiles, which could challenge the US's ability to protect Taiwan from possible attack.

China also caused alarm overseas in 2007 when it successfully tested an anti-satellite missile, raising fears of a space arms race. China issued a military policy white paper earlier this year, saying its missile programme was aimed mainly at "deterrence". However, it added it was also capable of "conducting nuclear counter-attacks and precision strikes with conventional missiles."

China will stage a huge military parade and pageant in Beijing on October 1 to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the founding of communist China.