The 11-day trip is to highlight the supports of US President Barack Obama's administration for the continent's democracy, economic growth and conflict resolution. It is learnt that officers from the US Intelligence Unit who have been in the country for days were at their best to ensure that adequate security would be provided for Clinton.

The STRICT SECURITY BEING PUT IN PLACE AND COORDINATED BY THE US EMBASSY IN ABUJA has taken the security agencies to many points which Clinton is to visit, including the Nnamdi Azikiwe Airport, Abuja, where she is expected to arrive at 8:35 pm local time (1935 GMT) tentatively, on Tuesday.

During the visit, the former first lady is expected to hold discussions with Nigerian President Umaru Yar' Adua on a number of issues affecting both countries. On Wednesday, the US secretary of state is expected to be hosted at a breakfast meeting by Minister of Foreign Affairs Ojo Maduekwe at the minister's residence. A town hall meeting has also been scheduled to take place at the Yar'Adua's Center on Thursday.

"To stay within those limits, coal-power stations will have to fit expensive scrubbing equipment. Because the facilities are comparatively old, many owners will not bother. Unscrubbed stations are allowed to operate for only a limited number of hours, and must close in any case by 2015."

The leader argues in favour of a carbon tax, saying that "carbon must be taxed if firms are to invest in long-term, expensive, technology-heavy projects such as nuclear plants, cleaning up coal and taming renewable sources of power. Carbon is already assigned a price through the European cap-and-trade mechanism, but the system is focused on the short term, vulnerable to gaming and plagued by hugely fluctuating prices."

Meanwhile, an article in Business Week, looking at the EU's carbon emissions trading scheme, argues that if the US launches its own cap and trade scheme it must learn from the EU's mistake of handing out too many permits to pollute for free.

Head of CSU's national committee, Peter Ramsauer, said that a compromise should mean that the German Parliament's voice in EU decisions should be strengthened while at the same time "the government's room for manoeuvre at EU level should be sufficiently guaranteed". Several papers interpret this to mean that the German Parliament will not have a general veto right over EU decisions, as was originally envisioned by the CSU.

However, Ramsauer said that the government would have to provide a justification in case it decides to go against the recommendations by the Parliament. Furthermore, he said that an amendment of the German Constitution is not necessary. According to press reports, this increases the likelihood of the Lisbon Treaty being ratified before German Parliament elections on 27 September, five days before the Irish referendum.

Meanwhile, in an interview with the Tagesspiegel, former Constitutional Court Judge Dieter Grimm stressed that "if competences move to Brussels, they are lost in the national parliaments. Therefore this must not happen without a debate and decision in the Bundestag. That means more work, but it is worthwhile".

Aside from the dangerous ingredients many people already know about (like squalene or thimerosal), one of the key ingredients used in flu vaccines (including the vaccines being prepared for the swine flu pandemic) is the diseased flesh of African Green Monkeys. This is revealed in US patent Number 5911998 - Method of producing a virus vaccine from an African green monkey kidney cell line (http://www.patentstorm.us/patents/5911998.html).

As this patent readily explains, ingredients used in the vaccine are derived from the kidneys of African Green Monkeys who are first infected with the virus, then allowed to fester the disease, and then are killed so that their diseased organs can be used to make vaccine ingredients. This is done in a cruel, inhumane "flesh factory" environment where the monkeys are subjected to a process that includes "incubating said inoculated cell line to permit proliferation of said virus." Then: "harvesting the virus result... and... preparing a vaccine from the harvested virus."

The strained relationship, according to diplomatic sources, developed as a result of a number of reasons, all of which drive strength in the diplomatic parlance that "in foreign policy there is no permanent friend, only permanent interest".

The US action, it is gathered, is informed by its "fear" that it is losing clout in Nigeria to its former cold war foe; Russia, evident in the burgeoning trade relationship between the two oil exporting countries. The current Russian/Nigerian honeymoon was signed, sealed and delivered during the June visit to Nigeria by the Russian President Dmitry Medvedev. During the visit, billions of dollars worth of oil and gas deal was signed between Nigeria's NNPC and its Russian counterpart; GAZPROM.

Even the current African tour by the US Secretary of State, Mrs. Hillary Clinton, which State Department officials said was aimed at "supporting strong and sustainable democratic governments", is viewed in that context by our sources, who assert that Nigeria is the principal reason for the eleven-day, seven-nation tour, with the other six countries simply added as an "afterthought".

HER IMPENDING VISIT TO NIGERIA, ON THURSDAY THIS WEEK "has everything to do with the not-so-rosy state of affairs between Nigeria and her country, given the strategic importance of Nigeria to the US", a source said.

According to US government sources, this shift will reflect in the series of town-hall style meetings, which Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is now undertaking in her seven-nation tour of Africa that started last Wednesday in Kenya. Later this week in Nigeria, Clinton is also going to be meeting with Nigerian civil groups and NGOs after meetings with the Foreign Affairs Minister, Ojo Maduekwe, and President Umaru Yar'Adua IN ABUJA.

State Department sources confirmed to The Guardian that the town hall-style meeting, which started last Thursday at the University of Nairobi in Kenya, between Hillary Clinton and the people of Kenya, will be repeated in Nigeria. But the venue of the Nigerian version of the meeting is said to be THE YAR'ADUA INTERNATIONAL CENTRE IN ABUJA.

A town hall-style meeting between the top US diplomat and Nigerian NGOs in Abuja is, therefore, seen as a major avenue for the Obama administration to demonstrate its support for electoral reforms and anti-corruption issues in Nigeria. Secretary Clinton in Kenya asked specifically to talk to a wide variety of Kenyan groups including youths, women and people from different ethnic groups. A similar planning is said to be in place for HER OPEN TOWN HALL MEETING EXPECTED IN ABUJA, (Thursday) according to planners of Clinton schedules on her tour of Africa.

That is one of the main problems facing Clinton on A SEVEN-NATION JAUNT MEANT VARIOUSLY TO SPREAD WASHINGTON'S GOOD GOVERNANCE MESSAGE and shore up relationships with its key oil suppliers on the continent. US officials are keen to trumpet a 28 percent jump in 2008 in trade with sub-Saharan Africa to $104 billion, even if the increase is attributable mainly to the high price of oil, which accounts for more than 80 percent of US imports from Africa.

However, there is another statistic that says more about the direction of development on the poorest continent: THIS DECADE'S TENFOLD INCREASE IN TRADE WITH CHINA TO $107 BILLION LAST YEAR, NARROWLY ECLIPSING THE UNITED STATES.

The financial and then economic crisis that has pushed US and European economies into recession and forced their companies to crimp overseas expansion is only likely to accelerate the trend, analysts say, despite the regional goodwill toward US President Barack Obama, whose father was Kenyan.

Producers, supermarkets and consumers are being encouraged to submit their ideas on how a secure food system in the UK should look in 2030. Some of the findings are expected to be published in the autumn. As well as launching the consultation process, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) has published a scorecard-style assessment of the current state of the UK's food supply.

"It is to stimulate a debate within the UK on what a food policy should be, and how do we define and look at food security more broadly," said Defra's chief scientific adviser Professor Robert Watson. "Food is absolutely essential, and over the past few years we did see a food price increase - not only in the UK, but across the globe," he told BBC News.

"We think it is time to have a debate with consumers, farmers, the private sector... on what the food policy should be for the UK. We are clearly food secure in the UK today," he observed. "We produce about 60-65% of our own food [and] import about 20% from Europe. So the [test] for us will be, as the Earth's climate changes, what will be the challenges not only in the UK but throughout the world?"

While the Bank of England expanded its quantitative easing plan to £175 billion on Thursday, comments from Fed officials suggest the US central bank's $300-billion program to buy longer-dated Treasuries is likely to expire on schedule in September. Investors are already pricing in a chance of an interest rate hike as early as December with some arguing that the Fed's efforts to mend credit markets have sown seeds for inflation.

The Federal Reserve meets on Tuesday and Wednesday to review the outlook for growth. The Fed is seen opting not to prolong Treasury buying, while officials are expected to reinforce their message of no imminent exit from bold policy steps to end the US recession.

But the authors warn that such attempts to control the climate could also cause major changes in precipitation. They want the effect on rainfall to be assessed before any action is taken.

Gabriele Hegerl of the Grant Institute at University of Edinburgh and Susan Solomon of National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) at Boulder, Colorado, write that "if geo-engineering studies focus too heavily on warming, critical risks associated with such possible "cures" will not be evaluated appropriately". They argue that climate change is about much more than changes in temperature. So using temperature alone to monitor the effects of geo-engineering could be dangerous.

They cite the powerful effects on rainfall of volcanic eruptions which also prevent solar radiation reaching the Earth's surface, albeit by throwing up dust rather than reflecting the radiation back into space. For example in 1991, the eruption of Mount Pinatubo not only reduced global temperatures but also led to increases in drought. The pair correlated 20th Century weather records with data for the increase in greenhouse gases and dates for major volcanic eruptions.

The so-called English and Welsh Defence League and Casuals United formed after British soldiers were abused by Islamic radicals at a homecoming parade in Luton earlier this year. But Unite Against Fascism claim that the Casuals are made up of members of far-right groups and had planned to cause racial unrest in the city.

Two people were injured, according to West Midlands Police, and there were several reports of criminal damage including a car. A force spokesman said the majority of the arrests were for disorder. Scores of officers were involved in policing the rival protests, which had gathered near Birmingham's Bullring shopping complex around 7pm. Gary Nichols watched the disturbances from his city centre flat and said he was unable to go outside for about two and a half hours.

He told the BBC: 'It started off with a group of white guys who were chanting, 'England, England'. I thought they were just football fans, but then a larger group of black and Asian people turned up and it all kicked off. You had people burning the Union flag. People were being kicked - some of them weren't anything to do with the protests.'

The most widely eaten species is known locally as Kapuku, gray in color and with a shorter tail than the more common rat. The mouth of the pot is smeared with fried corn husks. As some of the mice fight for the husks, they fall into the pot and drown. Malawi, with a population of 12 million, is among the poorest countries in the world, with rampant disease and hunger, aggravated by periodic droughts and crop failure.

"What we would do is TAKE THIS WHEAT FIELD AND RESTORE IT TO A NATIVE GRASSLAND which would sequester carbon from the atmosphere which we could potentially sell," said Sutton, an environmental specialist with the city. Potential projects in the emerging carbon market are sprouting like wheat after a good rain across the United States in anticipation of "cap and trade" provisions in a climate bill that has narrowly passed the US House of Representatives but could see significant revision in the Senate.

They could be part of a strategy to meet the bill's current target to cut US greenhouse gas emissions by 17 percent of 2005 levels by 2020. A cap and trade inspired market in Europe has been in place since 2005 and is the biggest by far. Carbon trading and projects are already underway in various versions in the United States and contribute to a global voluntary market that last year saw turnover more than double to $705 million, according to Ecosystem Marketplace and New Carbon Finance, which track such trends.

But some environmentalists feel trading in pollution is ultimately a ruse. "By using offsets, industry will be able to sidestep emissions reductions. It is a get out of jail free card," says Damon Moglen, the Global Warming Campaign Director for environment group Greenpeace. Trees store carbon while they grow and release it back into the atmosphere when they rot. So in the vocabulary of carbon markets a healthy forest is a "carbon sink." Tree growth in the United States currently sucks up about 12 percent of the country's greenhouse gas emissions — a huge total.

The lengthy quake, felt across the capital just before 8 pm (7 am EDT), prompted railway services to halt some high-speed services briefly while tracks were checked, national broadcaster NHK said, but there were no immediate reports of damage. The tremor was centred 340 km (210 miles) deep under the sea south of Tokyo but, based on a Japanese scale of ground shaking from the Japan Meteorological Agency, it was unlikely there was much damage.

Earthquakes are common in Japan, one of the world's most seismically active areas. The country accounts for about 20 percent of the world's earthquakes of magnitude 6 or greater. In October 2004, an earthquake with a magnitude of 6.8 struck the Niigata region in northern Japan, killing 65 people and injuring more than 3,000.

But rising levels of immigration from Muslim countries and low birth rates among Europe's indigenous population mean that, by 2050, the figure will be 20 per cent, according to forecasts.

The UK, which currently has 20 million fewer people than Germany, is also projected to be the EU's most populous country by 2060, with 77 million people. The findings have led to allegations that policy-makers are failing to confront the widespread challenges of the "demographic time bomb".

Experts say that there has been a lack of debate on how the population changes will affect areas of life from education and housing to foreign policy and pensions. Although some polls have pointed to a lack of radicalisation in the Muslim community, little attention is being given to the integration of migrants, it is claimed, WITH FEARS OF SOCIAL UNREST IN YEARS TO COME.