But it raises a number of moral and ethical concerns. These include the possibility of CHILDREN BEING BORN THROUGH ENTIRELY ARTIFICIAL MEANS, and men and women being sidelined from the process of making babies. Opponents argue that it is wrong to meddle with the building blocks of life and warn that the advances taking place to tackle infertility risk distorting and damaging relations between family members.

The US government-funded research also offers the prospect of a 'miracle pill' which staves off the menopause, allowing women to wait longer to have a child. It centres on stem cells, widely seen as a repair kit for the body. Scientists at Stanford University in California found the right cocktail of chemicals and vitamins to coax the cells into becoming eggs and sperm.

The sperm had heads and short tails and are thought to have been mature enough to fertilise an egg. The eggs were at a much earlier stage but were still much more developed than any created so far by other scientists. The double success, published in the journal Nature, raises the prospect of men and women one day 'growing' their own sperm and eggs for use in IVF treatments.

In a gross abuse of his high office, David Miliband appears ready to compromise his country's independence to further his own political ambitions and those of his patron, Bonaparte Blair. Indeed, far from standing up for Britain, our Foreign Secretary seems determined to run us down, SUGGESTING WE CANNOT SURVIVE AS AN INDEPENDENT POWER.

Instead, he says, we should 'embrace' EU foreign policy. ANYONE WHO THINKS OTHERWISE IS 'BLINKERED, FATALISTIC AND WRONG'.

Pouring obsequious praise on his former boss, he describes him as a statesman whose motorcades could 'stop the traffic' when he arrives in Washington or Beijing. WHAT A GREAT DEAL THAT PHRASE TELLS US ABOUT MR MILIBAND'S ATTITUDE TO POLITICAL POWER, AS A MERE STATUS SYMBOL. In short, he's playing political games with Britain's future. But what can you expect of a career politician who's never had a job in the real world?

MR MILIBAND'S PREDECESSORS ALWAYS SAW THEIR ROLE AS FIGHTING FOR AND PROTECTING BRITAIN'S INTERESTS OVERSEAS. How depressing that we now have a Foreign Secretary who sees diplomacy merely as a source of job opportunities for the political class.

THE RIGHT TO SEARCH HOMES, SEIZE CASH, FREEZE BANK ACCOUNTS AND CONFISCATE PROPERTY WILL BE GIVEN TO TOWN HALL OFFICIALS and civilian investigators employed by organisations as diverse as Royal Mail, the Rural Payments Agency and Transport for London. The measure, being pushed through by Alan Johnson, the Home Secretary, comes into force next week and will deploy some of the most powerful tools available to detectives against fare dodgers, families in arrears with council tax and other minor offenders.

The radical extension of the Proceeds of Crime Act, through a Statutory Instrument which is not debated by parliament, has been condemned by the chairman of the Police Federation. Paul McKeever said that he was shocked to learn that the decision to hand over "intrusive powers" to people who were not police was made without consultation or debate. Councils and other bodies had access to asset recovery powers before but only with the authorisation and involvement of the police. NOW THEY WILL BE ABLE TO ACT INDEPENDENTLY OF ANY POLICE FORCE OR LAW ENFORCEMENT AGENCY.

The memo says councils and quangos will employ "trained internal financial investigators" and be "less reliant on more traditional law enforcement agencies, notably the police". The extension of such draconian powers to civilian investigators coincides with mounting legal concern about the operation of the law of confiscation. But the Home Office maintained last night that the measures would "boost the fight against crime" and "free up valuable police time".

The "Little Buddy Child Tracker" retails for $100 (far less than other devices that sell for $200 to $500). It combines global satellite positioning and cellular technology to signal the child's whereabouts to a computer or smartphone.

Parents can program the device to set up specific times and locations where the child is supposed to be - in school or at home, for example - and the device sends a text message if the child leaves the site in that time.

Many companies and government offices hope to keep operations going as much as possible with teleworking using the Internet. Among the many problems posed by this idea, however, is the issue of bandwidth - especially the "last mile" between a user's home and central cable systems.

"Such network congestion could prevent staff from broker-dealers and other securities market participants from teleworking during a pandemic," reads the GAO report, available here. "The Department of Homeland Security is responsible for ensuring that critical telecommunications infrastructure is protected." Private Internet providers might need government authorization to block popular websites, it said, or to reduce residential transmission speeds to make way for commerce.

The Financial Services Sector Coordinating Council for Critical Infrastructure Protection and Homeland Security, a group of private-sector firms and financial trade associations, has been working to ensure that trading could continue if big exchanges had to close because of the risk of disease transmission.

The treaty, which aims to streamline the way the EU is run, must be approved by all 27 member countries. The Czech Republic is the only country which has yet to sign. Court officials in Brno said the 15-member Czech Constitutional Court panel would reconvene on 3 November when a ruling was "very probable", the Reuters news agency reported.

The court challenge is one of two hurdles to be cleared before Czech President Vaclav Klaus will sign the Lisbon Treaty. A similar case has already been dismissed, but the president - a Eurosceptic who strongly opposes the treaty - still has to sign it to complete ratification. He has said he will not do that unless provided with solid guarantees about property rights in the Czech Republic, a subject which will be addressed by a summit later this week in Brussels.

Our correspondent says the EU is keen to get on with the task of implementing far-reaching reforms, including the appointment of a new permanent EU president, but is being frustrated by the lack of Czech ratification. The Lisbon Treaty is also under threat from the UK's Conservative Party. They say they will hold a referendum on the treaty if they form a government next year, and if it is not signed into law by then.

This allegedly claimed mass immigration would make Britain more multicultural and allow Labour to portray the Tories as racists. Speaking in the Commons yesterday, Shadow Home Secretary Chris Grayling said it would be 'utterly disgraceful' for ministers to base immigration policy on party politics.

He asked Immigration Minister Phil Woolas: 'Can I invite you to put the record straight - what was the motivation behind the very rapid increase in immigration under this Government?'. Incredibly, Mr Woolas did not appear to know which report Mr Grayling was referring to - despite the widespread coverage it received over the weekend. Yesterday, the Daily Mail told how ministers were facing calls for an inquiry into claims by former Labour adviser Andrew Neather that the Government opened up Britain's borders in part to try to humiliate Right-wing opponents of immigration.

His allegations referred to a 2001 report from the Performance and Innovation Unit, a think-tank based in the Cabinet Office, which made the case for mass immigration. Earlier drafts are said to have included the statement of 'a driving political purpose: that mass immigration was the way that the Government was going to make the UK truly multicultural'.

On 8 October, the rock crashed into the atmosphere above South Sulawesi, Indonesia. The blast was heard by monitoring stations 10,000 miles away, according to a report by scientists at the University of Western Ontario. Scientists are concerned that it was not spotted by any telescopes, and that had it been larger it could have caused a disaster.

The asteroid, estimated to have been around 10 metres (30ft) across, hit the atmosphere at an estimated 45,000mph. The sudden deceleration caused it to heat up rapidly and explode with the force of 50,000 tons of TNT. Luckily, due to the height of the explosion – estimated at between 15 and 20 km (nine to 12 miles) above sea level – no damage was caused on the ground.

However, if the object had been slightly larger – 20 to 30 metres (60 to 90ft) across – it could easily have caused extensive damage and loss of life, say researchers. Very few objects smaller than 100 meters (300ft) across have been spotted and catalogued by astronomers. An asteroid or comet fragment around 60 meters across is believed to have been behind the Tunguska Event, a powerful explosion that took place over Russia in 1908. The blast has been estimated at equivalent to 10-15 million tons of TNT – enough to destroy a large city.

Direct emissions of methane from cows and pigs is a significant source of greenhouse gases. Methane is 23 times more powerful than carbon dioxide as a global warming gas. Lord Stern, the author of the influential 2006 Stern Review on the cost of tackling global warming, said that a successful deal at the Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen in December WOULD LEAD TO SOARING COSTS FOR MEAT AND OTHER FOODS that generate large quantities of greenhouse gases.

He predicted that people's attitudes would evolve UNTIL MEAT EATING BECAME UNACCEPTABLE. "I think it's important that people think about what they are doing and that includes what they are eating," he said. "I am 61 now and attitudes towards drinking and driving have changed radically since I was a student. People change their notion of what is responsible. They will increasingly ask about the carbon content of their food."

He said that he was deeply concerned that popular opinion had so far failed to grasp the scale of the changes needed to address climate change, or of the importance of the UN meeting in Copenhagen from December 7 to December 18. "I am not sure that people fully understand what we are talking about or the kind of changes that will be necessary," he added. UP TO 20,000 DELEGATES FROM 192 COUNTRIES ARE DUE to attend the UN conference in the Danish capital.

The 326-page report, published by the environment protection agency, is the latest piece in an increasingly alarming jigsaw. A picture is emerging of ubiquitous chemical contamination driving down sperm counts and feminising male children all over the developed world. And anti-pollution measures and regulations are falling far short of getting to grips with it. Sperm counts are falling so fast that young men are less fertile than their fathers and produce only a third as much, proportionately, as hamsters. And gender-bending chemicals are increasingly being blamed for the mystery of the "lost boys": babies who should normally be male who have been born as girls instead.

The WWF (formerly the World Wildlife Fund), which commissioned the older research, warned that the chemicals were so widespread that "THERE IS VERY LITTLE, IF ANYTHING, INDIVIDUALS CAN DO TO PREVENT CONTAMINATION OF THEMSELVES AND THEIR FAMILIES." Prominent among them are dioxins, PVC, flame retardants, phthalates (extensively used to soften plastics) and the now largely banned PCBs, one and a half million tons of which were used in countless products from paints to electrical equipment.

Yet GENDER-BENDERS ARE LARGELY EXEMPT FROM NEW EU REGULATIONS controlling hazardous chemicals. Britain, then under Tony Blair's premiership, was largely responsible for this – restricting their inclusion in the first draft of the legislation, and then causing even what was included to be watered down. Confidential documents show that it did so after pressure from George W Bush's administration, which protested that US exports "could be impacted".

On Friday, the FDA authorized the emergency use of BioCryst's (BCRX) investigational antiviral drug peramivir for hospitalized adult and pediatric patients with confirmed or suspected 2009 H1N1 influenza infections and who aren't responding to other forms of the drug. Apart from peramivir, no FDA-approved intravenously administered antivirals can treat influenza. BioCryst has donated and transferred to the US Department of Health & Human Services an initial supply for 1,200 courses of peramivir and is producing 130,000 additional courses, with plans to produce even more. NVAX SHARES TRADED ABOUT 7 PERCENT HIGHER in late-afternoon trading. BCRX shares jumped MORE THAN 10 PERCENT by late afternoon trading.

If vaccine and drugmakers are thriving as the H1N1 flu pandemic takes root, INSURERS ARE TAKING A BEATING. Health insurer Amerigroup Corp (AGP) cut its third-quarter earnings outlook and withdrew its full-year outlook due to medical costs associated with a severe H1N1 season. The virus is particularly virulent among children, pregnant women and other high-risk groups - a category representing about 87 percent of the Amerigroup's 1.7 million members.

"In September, we experienced a spike in flu-related activity among our Medicaid members," said James G Carlson, Amerigroup chairman and CEO. "It is difficult to determine if, and when, the situation will abate, continue at current trends, or worsen." SHARES DROPPED OVER 3 PERCENT in late-afternoon trading.

More than 11 million doses of the H1N1 vaccine have been shipped out so far, and the 16 million total doses available are not remotely close to the 195 million doses the CDC planned to have by year-end (or the 40 million to 45 million doses it had expected by mid-October). Swine flu is widespread in 46 states, with 1,000 confirmed deaths and more than 20,000 hospitalized.

"America's healthcare system is indeed hemorrhaging billions of dollars, and the opportunities to slow the fiscal bleeding are substantial," the report reads. "The bad news is that an estimated $700 billion is wasted annually. That's one-third of the nation's healthcare bill," Kelley said in a statement. "The good news is that by attacking waste we can reduce healthcare costs without adversely affecting the quality of care or access to care."

Some other findings in the report from Thomson Reuters, the parent company of Reuters:

* Unnecessary care such as the overuse of antibiotics and lab tests to protect against malpractice exposure makes up 37 percent of healthcare waste or $200 to $300 billion a year.

* Fraud makes up 22 percent of healthcare waste, or up to $200 billion a year in fraudulent Medicare claims, kickbacks for referrals for unnecessary services and other scams.

* Administrative inefficiency and redundant paperwork account for 18 percent of healthcare waste.

* Medical mistakes account for $50 billion to $100 billion in unnecessary spending each year, or 11 percent of the total.

* Preventable conditions such as uncontrolled diabetes cost $30 billion to $50 billion a year.

"The average US hospital spends one-quarter of its budget on billing and administration, nearly twice the average in Canada," reads the report, citing dozens of other research papers.

All this could help explain why Americans spend more per capita and the highest percentage of GDP on healthcare than any other OECD country, yet has an unhealthier population with more diabetes, obesity and heart disease and higher rates of neonatal deaths than other developed nations. Democratic Senator Charles Schumer said on Sunday that Senate Democratic leaders are close to securing enough votes to pass legislation to start reform of the country's $2.5 trillion healthcare system.

The agency's executive director Josette Sheeran blamed climate change, escalating fuel costs and falling incomes. She said the number of "urgently hungry" had now reached its highest ever — 1.02 billion. "One out of six people in humanity will wake up not sure that they can even fill a cup of food," Sheeran told reporters. "We have to make no mistake that hunger is on the march."

She said while prices had tumbled on global commodities markets due to the financial crisis, the prices of most food staples in the developing world have soared. "The food crisis is not over. We have an anomaly happening where on global, big markets, the prices are down, but for 80 percent of commodities in the developing world, prices are higher today than they were a year ago, and the prices a year ago were double what they were the year before that," she said.

She said there had been a fourfold increase in the number of natural disasters in the past 20 years. "All we know is that THE WORLD IS FACING INCREASINGLY FREQUENT AND FEROCIOUS NATURAL DISASTERS and the most vulnerable people and nations are getting hit hard and we better prepare now," she said.

"The gap is still wide and Israel does not give a single sign of meeting its obligations under the road map, halting settlement activities and resuming negotiations where they left off," he told Voice of Palestine radio. "I do not see any possibility for restarting peace talks in the near future."

The US-backed peace "road map" of 2003, which charts a course to Palestinian statehood, commits Israel to halting settlement activity in the occupied West Bank. "If President (Barack) Obama's administration cannot make Israel abide by its commitments, it has to announce that Israel is the party that is obstructing the launching of peace negotiations," Erekat said, referring the road map agreements.

Resisting US pressure to comply, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has ruled out a complete cessation of construction within settlements, saying the needs of growing settler families must be accommodated. Israel also accuses Palestinians of failing to meet their road map commitments to curb violence and incitement against Israel - notably by Hamas Islamists who control the Gaza Strip.

Few analysts believe there is a high risk of Palestinian frustration turning into a new uprising of the kind seen in the years of Intifada from 2000. However, clashes between youths and Israeli police around Jerusalem's al-Aqsa mosque, most recently on Sunday, HAVE RAISED CONCERNS ABOUT GREATER INSTABILITY.

Could it happen here in Chicago? It already has nearby. Homer Glen in Will County relies on Lake Michigan water, but the supply comes from a German-owned firm. Locals say there's a lot more than water going down the drain. It's a vital resource you can't live without. But in Homer Glen, THE QUESTION IS CAN YOU AFFORD WATER. RESIDENTS SAY RATES ARE BREAKING THE BANK.

Mayor Jim Daley says residents pay about three times more than those in neighboring communities. He said Illinois-American Water Company offers the same explanation. "They simply say that they have infrastructure improvements they need to make, that they can show their costs," he said. "What we're saying: It's absolutely absurd."

But Could Chicago be next? A trade publication says the city's Department of Water Management is "considering a lease of its water and wastewater system." According to the mayor's 2010 budget, the city expects to bring in $453 million from water sales next year. That's a drop in the bucket compared to what a private firm would get.