The magnitude 7.1 quake struck at 2:24am (4:24am EDT; 0824 GMT) off the Caribbean coast of Honduras, 80 miles (130 kilometers) northeast of the beach town of La Ceiba, according to the US Geological Survey in Golden, Colorado.

Democracy Bridge, which spans the country's largest river, the Ulua, collapsed in the town of El Progreso, Cordero said. The bridge is one of two connecting the northern city of San Pedro Sula, Honduras' second-largest, with the rest of the country. Officials closed the other bridge for inspection. "The central part of the bridge fell into the river," Cordero said.

San Pedro Sula is scheduled to host a summit of foreign ministers of the Organization of American States next week. There was no immediate indication that the event would be affected. In all, at least 24 houses collapsed along Honduras' Caribbean coast, according to Carlos Gonzalez, deputy director of the Permanent Emergency Commission. At least five wooden houses on stilts collapsed in three Belizean coastal towns, while Belize City residents ran into the street as glasses and framed pictures crashed off of shelves. A water tower toppled in the town of Independence and electricity was out all the way to the Mexican border, local officials said.

"I want to speak generally about some reports I've witnessed over the past few years in the British media. And in some ways, I'm surprised it filtered down," Gibbs began. "Let's just say if I wanted to look up – if I wanted to read a writeup today of how Manchester United fared last night in the Champion's League cup, I might open up a British newspaper."

"If I was looking for something that bordered on truthful news, I'm not entirely sure it'd be in the first pack of clips I'd pick up. You're not going to find very many of these newspapers and truth within 25 words of each other," Gibbs continued.

The announcement was the clearest indication yet that GM, the No 1 US automaker, is close to filing for bankruptcy under the direction of the Obama administration. It would be the biggest-ever bankruptcy for a US industrial company.

Under the proposed deal, which is supported by major institutional creditors holding about a fifth of its debt, bondholders representing $27 billion in debt would be offered 10 percent of a reorganized GM - the same stake they had been offered previously.

In a sweetener, bondholders would also receive warrants to acquire another 15 percent of the equity in the new company, provided they support a quick Treasury-backed sale process similar to one now being used for rival Chrysler.

The US delinquency rate jumped to a seasonally adjusted 9.12 percent from 7.88 percent, the biggest-ever increase, and the share of loans entering foreclosure rose to 1.37 percent, the Mortgage Bankers Association said today. Both figures are the highest in records going back to 1972. Fixed rates rose to 4.91 percent, Freddie Mac said, and an increase in bond yields earlier this week shows rates may continue rising.

The three-year housing decline is proving resistant to efforts by the Federal Reserve and the Obama administration to keep homeowners current on mortgages by allowing them to refinance or sell to buyers enticed by affordable terms. Prime fixed-rate home loans to the most creditworthy borrowers accounted for the biggest share of new foreclosures at 29 percent, MBA said, a sign job losses are hurting homeowners.

"If people don't have a paycheck they can't support a mortgage," Jay Brinkmann, the MBA's chief economist, said in an interview. "The longer the recession lasts the more people run through their savings reserves, leading to higher delinquencies and higher foreclosures."

Mr Sarkozy, 54, is the son of an 81-year-old Hungarian aristocrat who, a few months after D-Day in 1944, fled to Germany from the family home near Budapest as Russian troops advanced. After years of appeasing Hitler, the Hungarian government had entered the war against the Western allies in 1941.

As for his wife Carla Bruni, 41, she was raised by her stepfather, Alberto Bruni Tedeschi, whose family firm had close links with Benito Mussolini's murderous regime during the Second World War.

More ominously, Glick reports (likely from sources high up in the Israeli government) that the Obama administration has all but accepted as irreversible and unavoidable fact that Iran will soon develop nuclear weapons. She writes, "…we have learned that the [Obama] administration has made its peace with Iran's nuclear aspirations. Senior administration officials acknowledge as much in off-record briefings. It is true, they say, that Iran may exploit its future talks with the US to run down the clock before they test a nuclear weapon. But, they add, if that happens, the US will simply have to live with a nuclear-armed mullocracy [government by islamic mullah]."

In classic Stockholm Syndrome fashion, the Obama administration is empathizing more with the Iranian leaders who are holding Israel hostage than with the nation that may be wiped off the map if Iran acquires the bomb. ALL THIS MEANS IS THAT ISRAEL'S LIFE IS IN DANGER. If Iran gets the bomb, it will use it to kill six million Jews. No threat of retaliation will make the slightest difference.

One cannot deter a suicide bomber with the threat of death. Nor can one deter a theocracy bent on meriting admission to heaven and its virgins by one glorious act of violence. IRAN WOULD PROBABLY NOT LAUNCH THE BOMB ITSELF, anyway, but would give it to its puppet terrorists to send to Israel so it could deny responsibility. Obama, bent on appeasement, would likely not retaliate with nuclear weapons. AND ISRAEL WILL BE DEAD AND GONE.

Those sunshine Jewish patriots who voted for Obama must realize that WE, AS JEWS, ARE WITNESSING THE POSSIBLE END OF ISRAEL. We are in the same moral position as our ancestors were as they watched Hitler rise but did nothing to pressure their favourite liberal Democratic president, FDR, to take any real action to save them or even to let Jewish refugees into the country. If we remain complacent, we will have the same anguish at watching the destruction of Israel that our forebears had in witnessing the Holocaust.

The Jordanian monarch told the Times of London following his visit last month with President Obama that Israel would win the recognition of the 57-member Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) if it accepts the Saudi 2002 peace plan. Mussa said after a meeting of OIC foreign ministers in Damascus Saturday, "THIS IS NOT ON THE TABLE. ALL TALK OF THIS IS INACCURATE."

He said that Muslim countries might recognize Israel if Israel were to accept the Saudi plan but added, "We do not see any progress in the current circumstances." The Saudi plan calls for Israel to turn over to the Palestinian Authority all of the land that was restored to the Jewish State in the 1967 Six-Day War, including the Old City and neighbourhoods in Jerusalem where more than 250,000 Jews live today.

Mr Morner is the former chairman of the INQUA International Commission on Sea Level Change and formerly a Stockholm professor. According to The Australian, Mr Morner said THAT CLAIMS ABOUT SEA LEVEL RISINGS WERE FALSE AS THEY WERE ALL BASED ON COMPUTER MODEL PREDICTIONS. He added that his research was more accurate as it has involved ACTUALLY VISITING SITES TO MEASURE SEA LEVELS.

When he was running the International Commssion on Sea Level Change, Mr Morner launched a special project in which he and his team of scientists visited the Maldives to confirm that the SEA LEVELS HAD NOT RISEN IN HALF A CENTURY. WHEN MR MORNER OFFERED TO SCREEN A VIDEO EXPLAINING THE MYTH, THE GOVERNMENT REFUSED TO LET IT BE SHOWN.

"My worry is that there can be many false dawns and we shouldn't just assume that everything is over," he told The Times newspaper. "We have to have a rethink. You're going to have to throw away lots of economics and start again. How can anybody not say that when we've had the greatest financial crisis in 100 years?"

BUT THESE ACTIONS, LED BY THE UNITED STATES, HAVE ALARMED SOME WHO FEAR THEY WILL STOKE INFLATION. Traditional inflation harbingers like a steeper government debt yield curve and rising gold prices have flashed warning signals, while a weaker US dollar and near doubling in oil prices since January have also got people worried.

"The timing of when you need to start contracting (monetary policy) is critical and most likely, because of the lags in policy... they are going to be too late because of the politics of tightening," said Robert Eisenbeis, a former head of research at the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta.

"They are going to have to do it in the face of some fairly significant unemployment," said Eisenbeis, who is now chief monetary economist at Cumberland Advisors. The US jobless rate rose to 8.9 percent in April and some fear it will pierce 10 percent as the recession squeezes employers.

Is Sonia Sotomayor judically superior to 'a white male'?

This isn't a jurisprudence that the Founders would recognize, but it is the creative view that has dominated the law schools since the 1970s and from which both the President and Judge Sotomayor emerged. In the President's now-famous word, JUDGING SHOULD BE SHAPED BY "EMPATHY" AS MUCH OR MORE THAN BY REASON. In this sense, Judge Sotomayor would be a thoroughly modern Justice, one for whom the law is a voyage of personal identity.

"Experience being tested by obstacles and barriers, by hardship and misfortune; experience insisting, persisting, and ultimately overcoming those barriers," Mr Obama said yesterday in introducing Ms Sotomayor. "It is experience that can give a person a common touch of compassion; an understanding of how the world works and how ordinary people live. And that is why it is a necessary ingredient in the kind of Justice we need on the Supreme Court."

In a speech published in the Berkeley La Raza Law Journal in 2002, Judge Sotomayor offered her own interpretation of this jurisprudence. "Justice [Sandra Day] O'Connor has often been cited as saying that a wise old man and wise old woman will reach the same conclusion in deciding cases," she declared. "I am... Not so sure that I agree with the statement. First, THERE CAN NEVER BE A UNIVERSAL DEFINITION OF WISE. Second, I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life."

JUDGE SOTOMAYOR'S BELIEF IS THAT A "LATINA WOMAN" IS BY DEFINITION A SUPERIOR JUDGE TO A "WHITE MALE" BECAUSE SHE HAS HAD MORE "RICHNESS" IN HER STRUGGLE. The danger inherent in this judicial view is that THE LAW ISN'T WHAT THE CONSTITUTION SAYS BUT WHATEVER THE JUDGE IN THE "RICHNESS" OF HER EXPERIENCE COMES TO BELIEVE IT SHOULD BE.

Israel, the possessor of the sole nuclear arsenal in the Middle East, has long strived to portray Iran as a regime hell-bent on starting a nuclear war through the pursuit of its nuclear program. "It is my job as army chief to prepare all the options, and that is what we're doing," Lieutenant General Gabi Ashkenazi, Israel's military Chief of Staff, said.

The Israeli general added that the army would take "every possible measure" when it has to deal with Iran. The remarks come amid doubts raised by Western experts that the Israeli Air Force does not possess the necessary power to bomb the Iranian program out of existence. In return, ISRAELI DEFENSE EXPERTS CLAIM THAT A NUCLEAR STRIKE MIGHT GET THE JOB DONE.

According to a report by the Sunday Times, Israeli air force squadrons have trained TO BLOW UP IRANIAN NUCLEAR FACILITIES USING LOW-YIELD NUCLEAR "BUNKER-BUSTERS."

When the economy slumps, so does tax revenue, and this recession has been no different, says Kerry Lynch, senior fellow at the AIER and author of the study. "It illustrates how severe the recession has been." For example, 6 MILLION PEOPLE LOST JOBS IN THE 12 MONTHS ENDED IN APRIL — and that means far fewer dollars from income taxes. INCOME TAX REVENUE DROPPED 44% FROM A YEAR AGO.

"THESE ARE STAGGERING NUMBERS," LYNCH SAYS. Big revenue losses mean that the US budget deficit may be larger than predicted this year and in future years. "It's one of the drivers of the ongoing expansion of the federal budget deficit," says John Lonski, chief economist for Moody's Investors Service. The Congressional Budget Office projects a $1.7 trillion budget deficit for fiscal year 2009.

Pakistani leaders stressing to US lawmakers that they are doing all they can to fight terrorism, and taking umbrage at any suggestions to the contrary. Pakistan also highlighted the need for international assistance, and noted that much of the promised aid had not been received, according to the Pakistani newspaper Dawn.

The Americans' visits were preceded by Islamabad forging closer ties with the Islamic Republic. THE DAY BEFORE THE FIRST SENATE DELEGATION ARRIVED, ZARDARI SAT DOWN WITH IRANIAN PRESIDENT MAHMOUD AHMADINEJAD AND AFGHAN PRESIDENT HAMID KARZAI IN TEHRAN, a summit that came after Pakistan and Iran inked an agreement on the exportation of Iranian gas to Pakistan.

The three leaders, who also met with Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, adopted the Tehran Declaration at the summit, which pledged further economic and development cooperation as well as joint efforts against terrorism. The Iran-Pakistan Gas Pipeline Project will see Iran selling 21.5 million cubic meters of gas to Pakistan on a daily basis.

Interfax quoted an unnamed security source as saying a stand-off triggered by Pyongyang's nuclear test on Monday could affect the security of Russia's far eastern regions, which border North Korea. "The need has emerged for an appropriate package of precautionary measures," the source said.

"We are not talking about stepping up military efforts but rather about measures in case a military conflict, PERHAPS WITH THE USE OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS, flares up on the Korean Peninsula," he added. The official did not elaborate further. Itar-Tass news agency quoted a Russian Foreign Ministry official as saying the "war of nerves" over North Korea should not be allowed to grow into a military conflict, a reference to Pyongyang's decision to drop out of the armistice deal.