Three of the 22 banks make no small business loans at all. Of the remaining 19 banks, 15 have reduced their small business loan balance since April, when the Treasury department began requiring the biggest banks receiving Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) funding to report monthly on their small business lending.

Over the six months that the reporting requirement has been in effect, the banks have cut their collective small business lending by 4%. Their cumulative balance stood at $258.7 billion as of September 30, according to a Treasury Department report.

Some banks are unapologetic about their cutbacks. SMALL BUSINESS DEFAULTS ARE SOARING, and banks are under pressure to shore up their balance sheets and reduce their exposure to risky loans. Two key small business lenders, CIT Group and Advanta, filed for bankruptcy this month.

While Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said programs such as food stamps softened the impact of an economic recession, anti-hunger groups pointed to the huge increase from the preceding year when 36.2 million people had trouble getting enough food and a third of them occasionally went hungry. "The survey suggested that things could be much worse but for the fact that we have extensive food assistance programs," Vilsack told reporters. "This is a great opportunity to put a spotlight on this problem."

ABOUT 14.6 PERCENT OF US HOUSEHOLDS, EQUAL TO 49.1 MILLION PEOPLE, "HAD DIFFICULTY OBTAINING FOOD FOR ALL THEIR MEMBERS DUE TO A LACK OF RESOURCES" DURING 2008, up 3.5 percentage points from 2007 when 11.1 percent of households were classified as food insecure. About 5.7 percent of households, or 17.3 million people, had "very low food security," meaning some members of the household had to eat less. Typically, food runs short in those households for a few days in seven or eight months of the year, USDA said.

President Barack Obama called the USDA report "unsettling" and vowed to reverse the trend of rising hunger. "Our children's ability to grow, learn, and meet their full potential - and therefore our future competitiveness as a nation - depends on regular access to healthy meals," Obama said in a statement.

The machine packs more than 70,000 chips and can compute 563 trillion calculations per second (teraflops). It is used for petroleum exploration and engineering tasks such as simulating aircraft designs.

However, the fastest machine is the US-owned Jaguar supercomputer, which now boasts a speed of 1.759 petaflops. One petaflop is the equivalent of 1,000 trillion calculations per second. The Cray computer has more than 220,000 chips and is owned by the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee. It is used to conduct research in climate science, materials science and nuclear energy amongst other areas.

Europe has 153 systems on the list, including the world's fourth most powerful machine. The IBM BlueGene/P supercomputer at the Forschungszentrum Juelich (FZJ) in Germany is the fastest machine outside the US and is able to run at more than 800 teraflops. The UK has the largest number of European machines on the list, with 44 systems.

Welcome to the 2009 bull market — or so many people think. They're buying up shares of everything from Google Inc to Bank of America Corp at a pace not seen since the 1930s. Since March, the Dow Jones industrial average has jumped 57 percent and the Standard & Poor's 500 index has gained 62 percent. Investors are betting on a strong economic recovery. But here's the problem: GOOD NEWS AHEAD COULD BE BAD NEWS FOR THE BULL.

To understand why, consider the very thing that has boosted the market. The US government has spent nearly $1 trillion to stimulate the economy and the Federal Reserve has maintained a policy of keeping interest rates near zero. Those will disappear as the economy's health improves, potentially HALTING THE BULL MARKET BY TAKING AWAY WHAT HAS BEEN ITS CRUTCH — SOURCES OF CHEAP AND PLENTIFUL MONEY.

"Pretty soon the easy money phase could be behind us," said Hugh Johnson, chairman and chief investment officer of Johnson Illington Advisors, an investment firm in Albany, New York. Investors still should heed the potential danger signs of today's market, before their exuberance gets the better of them.

Some doctors have likened the symptoms to those seen in many of the victims of the Spanish flu which caused millions of deaths world-wide after World War One. An unnamed doctor in western Ukraine told of the alarming effects of the virus. He said: 'We have carried out post mortems on two victims and found THEIR LUNGS ARE AS BLACK AS CHARCOAL. THEY LOOK LIKE THEY HAVE BEEN BURNED. It's terrifying.' Neighbouring Poland has called on the EU to take action, fearing the mystery virus may spread westwards.

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk has written to European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso and the Swedish Prime Minister, Fredrik Reinfeldt, who holds the EU presidency. The letter said: 'THE CHARACTER OF THIS THREAT DEMANDS THAT RAPID ACTION BE UNDERTAKEN AT THE EUROPEAN UNION LEVEL.' Russia, Slovakia, Poland, Hungary and Romania have already launched health checks on Ukrainians entering their territory. Slovakia has closed two of five border crossings.

Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko has called in the World Health Organisation. A team of specialists are carrying out tests in Kiev and Lviv in an effort to identify the virus. President Yushchenko said: 'PEOPLE ARE DYING. THE EPIDEMIC IS KILLING DOCTORS. THIS IS ABSOLUTELY INCONCEIVABLE IN THE 21ST CENTURY.'

In a TV interview, the President added: 'Unlike similar epidemics in other countries, three causes of serious viral infections came together simultaneously in Ukraine: two seasonal flus and the Californian flu. Virologists conclude that this combination of infections may produce an EVEN MORE AGGRESSIVE NEW VIRUS AS A RESULT OF MUTATION.'

NATURALNEWS REPORTS - The mainstream media is blaming Ukraine's poor health care system for the relatively high rates of hospitalization and death, BUT THEY REFUSE TO MENTION (YET AGAIN) THE VITAMIN D DEFICIENCY FOUND ACROSS THIS POPULATION LIVING AT HIGH LATITUDE IN THE WINTER, where sunlight is relatively scarce. One possible scenario that could unfold with all this is that the Ukraine strain might spread around the world, WIPING OUT THOSE WHO GOT VACCINATED AGAINST H1N1 because their immune systems suffer from a suppressed ability to naturally generate antibodies to a new strain.

Meanwhile, drug companies will try to scramble and create a whole new batch of "super flu" vaccines, but they're always too little, too late. Theoretically, millions of people could die around the world while waiting in line for yet another vaccine shot. All they really need is vitamin D3, some herbal anti-virals, a healthy diet and plenty of rest, but no one is telling them that.

EVEN THE UKRAINE SUPER FLU IS NO MATCH FOR A HEALTHY IMMUNE SYSTEM. Remember: Out of 65,000+ hospitalizations, fewer than 300 people have died so far. That's still a very low mortality rate, even if the spread of the viral infection seems aggressive.

WILLIAM STROEGER, AN ASTROPHYSICIST AT THE VATICAN OBSERVATORY RESEARCH GROUP AND A JESUIT PRIEST, pointed out that the Catechism introduced after the second Vatican council states that there can be no conflict between science and religion. "If there's a contradiction it means that we haven't understood or interpreted one of them correctly," he said.

This may be the case, but I agree with Davies that this isn't a trivial issue for theologists. Giggle factor aside, the question of whether Jesus would save aliens goes right to the heart of Christian beliefs. If you believe that "intelligent life" equals having a soul, then you have to ask where you'd draw the line. If scientists found dolphins on a distant planet, they would be mad with excitement at having found something so smart. But what would theologians make of them?

Stroeger conceded that the discovery of intelligent life elsewhere in the Universe would pose a challenge, but said that it would not be insurmountable. "There are some difficult issues to resolve, such as whether Jesus as saviour is the one who saves everyone in the Universe or if there are other equivalent salvation events that take place elsewhere in the Universe," he said.

British power plants are already shipping wood from Canada, Brazil, Scandinavia and South Korea. Just one of the new biomass plants at Port Talbot, South Wales, will consume THREE MILLION TONNES OF WOOD PER YEAR — equivalent to 30 per cent of the UK's domestic annual wood harvest of ten million tonnes.

But the plant, which is due to open in 2012, will generate only 300 megawatt hours of electricity, or about 0.4 per cent of the UK's current power-generating capacity. At least four more 300-megawatt plants are planned, including three in Yorkshire that have been proposed by Drax, operator of Britain's largest coal-fired power station. Another company, MGT, plans to build one on Teesside.

A spokesman for Prenergy, which is behind the Port Talbot plant, said 90 per cent of its wood supplies would be imported, although he insisted that all of it would be sourced from proven sustainable sources. Nevertheless, environmental campaigners have raised concerns about the carbon emissions involved in shipping the wood such large distances, while to meet UK pest control laws the timber will need to be baked before it can be shipped to the UK.

Natural fuel Facts - 1% The amount of UK energy consumption from biomass

744 sq miles - The size of forest needed for UK wood-fuelled power station growth in next three years

50% The rise in carbon discharges caused by long-distance transport and burning of wood over burning coal

30 years The time new trees need to absorb the equivalent amount of carbon released by cutting down and burning wood for fuel

Researchers tested urine samples from mothers in the 28th week of pregnancy for traces of phthalates, chemicals which can mimic the female sex hormone oestrogen. The women, who gave birth to 74 boys and 71 girls were contacted again when their children were aged between four and seven and were asked about their personalities, the toys they played with and the activities they liked.

The study, by the University of Rochester in New York State, found that TWO TYPES OF PHTHALATE – DEHP AND DBP – WERE STRONGLY LINKED WITH THE MORE FEMININE PLAY IN THE BOYS but had no impact on girls. Boys with higher doses were less likely to play with cars, trains and guns and preferred "GENDER NEUTRAL" activities such as sports, according to the research published in the International Journal of Andrology.

The research adds to growing evidence that HORMONE-DISRUPTING CHEMICALS IN THOUSANDS OF HOUSEHOLD PRODUCTS are interfering with the development of children. Although the plastics industry says phthalates are safe, the EU has banned many of them from cosmetics, teething rings and children's toys. However, pregnant women are still exposed to the chemicals, which are USED TO SOFTEN PLASTICS, in household items such as plastic furniture, shoes and PVC flooring.

MILITARY SPENDING BY REGION, 2008
Americas - $603bn
Europe - $320bn
Africa - $20.4bn
Midle East - $75.6bn
Asia & Oceania - $206bn

In 2008, a record 187,586 people were deployed on peacekeeping missions, an 11% rise over 2007. Military forces accounted for 166,146 of the personnel deployed. Most of the missions were deployed in Africa, including in DR Congo and in Darfur, Sudan, but the largest single peace operation was in Afghanistan.

The sharp rise in global military spending has benefited the defence industry. In total, the 100 leading defence manufacturers sold arms worth $347bn during 2007, the most recent year for which reliable data are available. Since 2002, the value of the top 100 arms sales has increased by 37% in real terms, according to Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (Sipri).

STEPHEN SCOTT, DIRECTOR OF RESEARCH AT THE NATIONAL ACADEMY FOR PARENTING PRACTITIONERS, has said his research shows children from lesbian couples do better in life than the offspring of heterosexual couples. "Lesbians make better parents than a man and a women," Mr Scott told a meeting for the launch of think tank Demos. His controversial position draws backing from research that suggests children with two female parents are more aspirational than those with opposite-sex parents.

Some studies also show children with lesbian parents are no more or less likely to have tendencies towards homosexuality. Research at Birkbeck College, part of London University, and Clark University in Massachusetts suggests that same-sex couples make good parents because children cannot be conceived accidentally - parents must make an active decision to adopt or find a sperm donor.

However, campaigners counter that fathers play an important part in family life and children have a right to get to know both of their biological parents. According to the annual British Social Attitudes Report, MORE THAN A THIRD OF PEOPLE NOW BELIEVE SAME-SEX PARENTS ARE AS GOOD AS HETEROSEXUAL COUPLES.

Monday, at a conference focusing on the consequences of the GDR's collapse, Angela Merkel declared that THE UNITED STATES MUST BE PREPARED TO SUBORDINATE ITSELF TO MULTINATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS, because without "MORE MULTINATIONAL COOPERATION" this will "NOT BE A PEACEFUL WORLD". Merkel's remarks reflect GERMANY'S DRIVE, OVER THE PAST 20 YEARS, TO BREAK US HEGEMONY AND ITSELF BECOME A WORLD POWER. Berlin has significantly increased its power, with its persistent expansionist policy over the past few years - also through military means.

Just last week a US journal published reflections on Germany, which has continued to grow "more powerful, more influential and more dominant than ever before." Thanks to Angela Merkel, this has not led to "RISING ANXIETY AND MUMBLING ABOUT THE FOURTH REICH," explains the journal. Her personal manner provokes "no jealousy or competitiveness among the alpha males who run large countries" and she inspires "no fear among the citizens of smaller ones."

Merkel speaks constantly of "friendship," after which "she returns home and works to make Germany stronger and more dominant in the region. And everyone smiles." This explanation overlooks the ties, with WHICH GERMANY BINDS EU STATES TO ITSELF, making open criticism nearly impossible. But it does show the obvious irritations that are beginning to spread in the US establishment over THE GERMAN CHALLENGE.

The clog had idled the $260,000 harvester, another delay in what has been the harvest from hell across the USA's Midwest corn and soybean belt. The clock is ticking on farmers like the Pierce brothers all across the Midwest as they scramble to bring in the largest US soybean crop on record and the second-largest corn crop before winter arrives.

LATE-MATURING CROPS AND PERSISTENT RAIN THROUGHOUT OCTOBER HALTED FIELDWORK, making this the slowest start for the US harvest since the 1970s. The delays - and questions about crop quality - have kept Chicago Board of Trade grain markets on the boil. "Just look at the price of corn from October to now. The delayed harvest has had a bullish impact on prices," said Terry Reilly, an agricultural analyst with Citigroup.

CBOT corn futures are up about 15 percent since October 1. CBOT soybeans, already supported by strong export demand from China, are up about 7 percent. THE UNITED STATES PRODUCES 40 PERCENT OF THE GLOBAL CORN CROP AND 35 PERCENT OF ALL SOYBEANS, and is the leading exporter of both commodities. In a normal year, farmers would be nearly finished harvesting the two primary crops, which help feed people across the globe, from Europe to Asia to Africa. By November 1, US farmers had brought in only half the soybean crop and one-quarter of the corn, well below the five-year averages of 87 percent and 71 percent, respectively.

Intel, the world's biggest maker of computer chips, ringed its offices with barbed wire before the protest. There were no reports of violence. Ultra-Orthodox Jews have recently held a series of such protests in Israel. More than 1,000 people took part in Saturday's rally.

It was staged after talks between Intel and Jerusalem's ultra-Orthodox Jewish community broke down earlier this week. Intel has been operating on Saturdays for years - and the company defends the policy. "We have always worked according to the company's needs. IF THE NEEDS CALL FOR IT, WE WORK ON THE SABBATH AS WELL," Intel Israel spokesman Kobi Becker told Israel's Ynet website.

Israel's ultra-Orthodox Jews have become increasingly militant in recent months in their attempts to enforce a Saturday work ban. They have held regular protests against the opening of a Jerusalem car park on the Jewish Sabbath.

Under current plans, the targets will not be met until 2100, it argues. The Department of Energy and Climate Change accused the institution of having a "can't do, won't do attitude". The Institute also called for a major investment in geo-engineering.

It is calling for a "war" on climate change with a beefed up government department in charge. It could also mean the introduction of SOME FORM OF CARBON "RATIONING" FOR INDIVIDUALS to make people aware of how much energy they are consuming. The UK's Climate Change Act passed into law in 2008, putting a legal imperative on the government to cut emissions by 80% of their 1990 levels by 2050, with a mid-term target of 34% cuts by 2020.

But the report investigates how practical these targets are to reach and concludes that they cannot be met with the current approaches to cutting carbon. They would not, in fact, be reached until the year 2100.

But the group dropped a target to halve greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, which was outlined in an earlier draft. Leaders also vowed to pursue A NEW STRATEGY FOR GROWTH AFTER THE WORLD'S WORST ECONOMIC CRISIS IN DECADES. They resolved to conclude the Doha round of global trade talks in 2010.

In a joint declaration issued at the end of their two-day annual summit, they said: "WE FIRMLY REJECT ALL FORMS OF PROTECTIONISM and reaffirm our commitment to keep markets open and refrain from raising new barriers to investment or to trade in goods and services." They also agreed TO KEEP STIMULUS SPENDING IN PLACE until a recovery was seen.

But leaders have failed to agree a target for reducing greenhouse gas emissions at the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation (Apec) forum. Officials said the leaders - including presidents Barack Obama of the US and Hu Jintao of China - NOW VIEWED THE COPENHAGEN SUMMIT AS A "STAGING POST", AND NOT AN END POINT, in the search for a global deal to cut emissions of greenhouse gases.