Mr Netanyahu has previously rejected such a freeze, saying "natural growth" of settlements must be allowed. Mr Mitchell is one of several senior US officials in the region pushing for a comprehensive Middle East peace deal. The Palestinians have said all Israeli settlement building on occupied territory must cease before talks can resume.

The informed view is that both sides are groping for a common ground that will allow THE AMERICANS TO SAY THEY HAVE FORCED A FREEZE IN SETTLEMENT BUILDING AND FOR THE ISRAELIS TO SAY THAT NORMAL LIFE CONTINUES. Officials from the Palestinian Authority say they are frustrated. There was a vague hope, in some quarters, that the PA might have won some fresh political ground from Israel ahead of the long-delayed Fatah conference, which is due to start a week today.

The figure only drops to 12% for those who remarry, researchers write in the Journal of Health and Social Behaviour. They say we start adulthood with a "health stock" that is kept or eroded depending on our marital experience. Only those who are continuously married can expect the same rate of chronic health problems as the never-wedded, the study suggests.

Anastasia de Waal, of the think tank Civitas, said: "This research highlights the fact that whilst divorce has become much more common, IT CAN TAKE NOT JUST A TREMENDOUS EMOTIONAL AND FINANCIAL TOLL, BUT ALSO A HEAVY HEALTH ONE."

Christine Northan, a counsellor for Relate, said: "I'm not surprised by the findings. It's another reason to work hard to make marriages last, unless it is a very destructive relationship. She said a surprising number of people unconsciously look for someone like their first wife or husband and that the chance of a second marriage ending in divorce was two-fold."

The Chancellor met the chief executives of seven of the country's biggest banks in the Treasury yesterday along with Lord Mandelson, the Business Secretary, Baroness Vadera, Minister for Competitiveness, Small Business and Enterprise, Lord Myners, the City Minister, and senior officials from the Bank of England. Mr Darling presented the bankers with official data showing that THEY HAD FAILED TO PASS ON CHEAP LENDING FACILITIES TO MORTGAGE BORROWERS AND TO SMALL AND MEDIUM-SIZE BUSINESSES. He is concerned that the banks are exploiting historically low base rates in order to beef up their profit margins.

Mr Darling told the financiers that Lord Myners would summon each of the banks to the Treasury over the coming weeks to comb through their lending books to ascertain how much they are charging for borrowing facilities. He warned them that the Treasury would be "looking over their shoulder" to monitor whether they were failing to offer loans at fair rates to businesses and mortgage borrowers.

Lord Oakeshott of Seagrove Bay, a Liberal Democrat Treasury spokesman, said: "BRITAIN IS STILL DEEP IN A RECESSION BECAUSE THE BANKS ARE NOT LENDING TO BUSINESS. Alistair Darling must stop playing Pontius Pilate and abdicating responsibility for the banks when HE HAS THE POWER AS A CONTROLLING SHAREHOLDER to compel RBS and Lloyds. If he fails to do so, thousands of sound businesses will go down, and hundreds of thousands of jobs will be needlessly lost."

But Gibbs, sounding alternately bemused and exasperated, told White House reporters that conspiracy theories about the president's birthplace would never go away. "I hate to indulge, in such an august setting as the White House briefing room... the made-up, fictional nonsense whether the president was born in this country," Gibbs said. "If I had some DNA, it wouldn't assuage those who believe he wasn't born here."

Attempting to put the issue to rest, once more, Gibbs assured reporters: "The president was born in Honolulu, in the 50th state of the greatest country on the face of the earth... There are 10,000 more important issues for people in this country to discuss, than whether or not the president is a citizen when it's been proven ad nauseam."

Asked to speculate on why conspiracy theorists continue to fixate on the issue, Gibbs joked: "Because for $15 you can get an Internet address and say whatever you want."

The nation's most drought-stricken state is deep-frying under relentless 100-degree days and waterways are drying up, especially in the hardest-hit area covering about 350 miles across south-central Texas. THAT'S MAKING FOLKS WORRIED ABOUT THE WATER SUPPLY — AND HOW LONG IT MIGHT LAST. "The water table's fallin' and fallin' and fallin,' like a whole lot of other people around here," said Wendell McLeod, general manager of Liberty Hill Water Supply Corp and a 60-year resident of the town northwest of Austin. "THIS IS THE WORST I CAN RECALL SEEING IT. I TELL YOU, IT'S JUST PRETTY BLEAK."

There are 230 Texas public water systems under mandatory water restrictions, including those in and near San Antonio, Dallas, Houston and Austin. Another 60 or so have asked for voluntary cutbacks. Water levels are down significantly in lakes, rivers and wells around Texas. Liberty Hill's website urges its 1,400 or so residents in all-red letters to stop using unnecessary water with this plea: "IF WE FOLLOW THESE STRICT GUIDELINES, WE MAY HAVE DRINKING WATER." The town's shortage eased some with the arrival this week of 35,000 gallons a day from a nearby water system, but residents are still worried.

Lake Travis is more empty than full, down 54 percent. All but one of the 12 boating ramps are closed because they no longer reach the water, and the last may go soon. The receding waters have even revealed old stolen cars shoved into the lake years ago, authorities said. There's no threat to the area's drinking water supply, Rose said, but there are increased boating hazards from the "sometimes islands" that pop up when the water's low, increased risk of wildfires, AND MORE INTERACTIONS BETWEEN HUMANS AND WILDLIFE.

"We're seeing deer and armadillo and other animals in places we don't typically see them," he said. "THEY'RE STARVING FOR WATER AND FOOD." At the Oasis, a popular restaurant with a deck overlooking Lake Travis, the islands are even starting to grow heavy vegetation.

Obama said that Washington and Beijing needed to forge closer ties to address a host of challenges from lifting the global economy out of a deep recession to nuclear proliferation and global climate change. "I believe that we are poised to make steady progress on some of the most important issues of our times," the president told diplomats from both countries assembled in the vast hall of the Ronald Reagan Building.

Obama said he was under "no illusions that the United States and China will agree on every issue" but he said closer cooperation in important areas was critical for the world. "The relationship between the United States and China will shape the 21st century, which makes it as important as any bilateral relationship in the world," Obama said.

With the global economy trying to emerge from a deep recession, the United States and China have enormous stakes in resolving tensions in such areas as America's huge trade deficit with China and the Chinese government's unease over America's soaring budget deficits.

"It is critical that we take effective steps to contain and reduce the enormous burden of obesity on our nation," Dr Thomas Frieden, director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told a news conference at a CDC obesity meeting where the study was presented.

More than 26 PERCENT OF AMERICANS ARE OBESE, which means they have a body mass index of 30 or higher. BMI is equal to weight in kilograms divided by height in meters squared. A person 5 feet 5 inches tall becomes obese at 180 pounds (82 kg)

For the study, Eric Finkelstein of the non-profit RTI International and researchers at the CDC and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality analyzed medical cost data from 1998 and 2006. They found US OBESITY RATES ROSE 37 PERCENT BETWEEN 1998 AND 2006, driving an 89 percent increase in spending on treatments for obesity-related diseases such as diabetes, heart disease and arthritis. OBESITY NOW ACCOUNTS FOR 9.1 PERCENT OF ALL MEDICAL SPENDING IN THE UNITED STATES, up from 6.5 percent in 1998.

A graduate of Innsbruck, Zurich and Harvard universities, Dr Bischofberger headed a research team to create Tamiflu, the first orally active commercially developed anti-influenza medication, for US company Gilead Sciences in the 1990s. He is now a director of research and vice-president of Gilead in California which owns the intellectual rights to Tamiflu and outsources it to Swiss pharma giant Roche to manufacture and distribute.

He earns about £450,000 a year but has STOCK OPTIONS AND BONUSES IN THE TENS OF MILLIONS OF POUNDS. And he takes a handsome percentage of Tamiflu profits as governments around the world stockpile it as the virus spreads. But in an interview with a German Sunday newspaper it was reported he "gets quite angry" if it was suggested he had become rich through the deadly virus.

Swine flu has killed more than 700 people globally, and Dr Bischofberger predicted the death toll would rise. He warned that pandemics were one of the biggest threats to the human race. "I THINK THE THREAT BY NEW BACTERIAL OR VIRAL AGENTS IS HIGHER THAN THE POTENTIAL OF A NUCLEAR WAR."

Mr Ma responded, suggesting that they had "put aside disputes", a statement from Mr Ma's KMT party said. Mr Ma was elected president last year on pledges to improve ties. The two sides split in 1949 amid civil war. Taiwan's Nationalist Party (KMT) elected Mr Ma as its chairman on Sunday, giving him more control of the island's legislative agenda as well as its China policy.

"I hope our two parties can continue to promote peaceful cross-Strait development, deepen mutual trust, bring good news to compatriots on both sides and create a revival of the great Chinese race," said Mr Hu's message. As well as being China's president, Mr Hu is also head of the country's Communist Party. Neither man used their presidential titles in their messages; CHINA DOES NOT RECOGNISE TAIWAN AS AN INDEPENDENT COUNTRY AND SO DOES NOT RECOGNISE ITS PRESIDENCY.

China and Taiwan have signed trade and travel deals recently, but contacts have always taken place at a lower level than that of president, and have avoided political issues. Although ties have improved in the past year, BEIJING HAS NOT PUT ASIDE ITS TERRITORIAL CLAIM TO TAIWAN, insisting the island is a breakaway province of China. Taiwan is self-governing, but holds no seat at the UN and is recognised by only about two dozen states - most of them small Caribbean and Pacific nations.

Impressed and alarmed by advances in artificial intelligence, a group of computer scientists is debating whether there should be limits on research that might lead to loss of human control over computer-based systems that carry a growing share of society's workload, from waging war to chatting with customers on the phone. Their concern is that further advances could create profound social disruptions and even have dangerous consequences.

They focused particular attention on the specter that criminals could exploit artificial intelligence systems as soon as they were developed. WHAT COULD A CRIMINAL DO WITH A SPEECH SYNTHESIS SYSTEM THAT COULD MASQUERADE AS A HUMAN BEING? What happens if artificial intelligence technology is used to mine personal information from smart phones?

The idea of an "INTELLIGENCE EXPLOSION" in which smart machines would design even more intelligent machines was proposed by the mathematician I J Good in 1965. Later, in lectures and science fiction novels, the computer scientist Vernor Vinge popularized the notion of a moment when humans will create smarter-than-human machines, causing such rapid change that the "human era will be ended." He called this shift THE SINGULARITY.

This vision, embraced in movies and literature, is seen as plausible and unnerving by some scientists like William Joy, co-founder of Sun Microsystems. "Something new has taken place in the past five to eight years," Dr. Horvitz said. "TECHNOLOGISTS ARE REPLACING RELIGION, and their ideas are resonating in some ways with the same idea of the Rapture."

Father Vlasic was named as the 'creator' of the phenomenon by Pavao Zanic, the local bishop at the time the apparitions began in 1981. In the midst of a spat with the local bishop and the Vatican, he had earlier made a prophecy that the Virgin Mary would appear in Bosnia. Months later, six local children said they had seen the Virgin on a nearby hillside. Soon after Father Vlasic announced he was 'spiritual adviser' to the 'visionaries' who now claim that Our Lady has visited them 40,000 times over the last 28 years.

AN ESTIMATED 30 MILLION PILGRIMS HAVE VISITED THE SHRINE SINCE 1981, including many from Britain and Ireland. Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict, issued a ban on pilgrimages to the site but this has been widely ignored. Father Vlasic was suspended last year by the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith amid an inquiry into his conduct after three commissions failed to find evidence to support the visionaries' claims.

The defrocking of Father Vlasic means he is stripped of his priest status. This represents a massive blow to millions of Medjugorje followers worldwide who were hoping that the Vatican would one day legitimise the controversial shrine. THE SEERS HAVE GROWN WEALTHY AS A RESULT OF THEIR CLAIMS – and so has their town, which has boomed as a result of the 'Madonna gold rush'. Some today own smart executive houses with immaculate gardens, double garages and security gates, and one has a tennis court. They also own expensive cars and have married, one of them, Ivan Dragicevic, to an American former beauty queen.

But, WITHOUT ALERTING THE PUBLIC AS IS USUAL WHEN SUCH TRIALS BEGIN, the project has been restarted, prompting environmental groups to warn that local farms and nearby residents could be put at risk. The 400 plants in the field, near Tadcaster in North Yorkshire, were removed just weeks after planting in May 2008 as a result of damage caused by unidentified environmentalists. However, the Department for the Environment Food and Rural Affairs maintains that the original permission for the trial to begin - granted for three years - remains valid and the crops can be replanted without giving further notice.

Campaigners accused ministers of trying to "slip it under the radar" and warned the trial could affect human health. Defra said the potatoes, that will not be used for human or animal consumption, will be grown in a safe environment where there is no risk of contamination. The potatoes will be grown next to plants that will later be destroyed and the whole area will be left fallow for some years after the trial. Fencing, CCTV cameras and guards will protect the crops from being ripped up again.

However Clare Oxborrow, food campaigner at Friends of the Earth, said AN ANTIBIOTIC RESISTANT GENE USED IN THE POTATO COULD HAVE POTENTIAL HEALTH IMPLICATIONS IF IT ESCAPES. She was also concerned about pollen being blown into neighbouring fields. "Defra clearly does not want people to know it is going on this year. This worries us because farmers, gardeners and people living nearby should know about it because of the risk of contaminating other plants with an untested GM product," she said.

Under current EU rules, scientists have to publish the map reference for every GM field trial. HOWEVER MINISTERS ARE UNDERSTOOD TO BE REVIEWING THE RULES SO MORE TRIALS CAN GO AHEAD WITHOUT THREAT OF DISRUPTION.

The article notes that the French government is intent on taking advantage of the financial crisis and the City's dented reputation. "It is clear today that the City is in great difficulty and that is an opportunity for France to reinforce its financial attractiveness," Patrick Devedjian, the Minister in charge of La Défense expansion, said last month. His ambition is to turn La Défense into a "great financial centre, rival to the City of London".

The article notes that France is pressing ahead with its drive to promote French competitiveness in financial services above all by pursuing the harmonisation of financial regulation and supervision at the EU level - a way of eliminating what Mr Sarkozy refers to as 'regulatory dumping'. "I don't want to run down another city, another system, another supervisory scheme," says Christine Lagarde, Finance Minister. "But I do think Paris is well-positioned to play a key role in what will be a rejuvenated and re­invigorated but certainly disciplined financial sector."

The article notes that French bankers are counting on EU rules on bank capital requirements to end what they see as the advantages afforded to British banks under existing UK definitions. France is also calling for an EU clampdown on hedge funds, which many in the industry in London regard as protectionist.

In the Economist, Charlemagne argues that "mutual suspicions and national interests underlie European rows over financial regulation". He notes that earlier this month, Christine Lagarde tried to stop the chairmanship of the European Parliament's committee on financial regulation going to a British MEP, Sharon Bowles. Ms Lagarde spoke to key MEPs about blocking Mrs Bowles, who is a Liberal Democrat. Charlemagne adds that decisions on EU financial regulations will be taken by qualified-majority vote, so Britain will not have a veto.

When Geert Wilders first brought up what he called "the cost of multiculturalism" in the Dutch parliament last year, he got mostly laughs. Wilders claimed non-Western immigration had already cost the Netherlands 100 billion euros and speculated about how that money could have been put to better use. Every elderly person could have had his or her own room in a nursing home, Wilders suggested; we could all have retired at 50.

The CPB (economic policy bureau) calculated that an immigrant who arrives in the Netherlands at age 25 will cost Dutch taxpayers 43,000 euros over the rest of his lifetime. The study did not look into second or third generation immigrants. Economist Pieter Lakeman made an attempt at a cost-benefit analysis of immigration in the Netherlands ten years ago. He said he was the first to ever do so. In his book Binnen zonder kloppen (Enter without knocking), he argued that immigrants were a considerable write-off, costing the government 13 billion guilders (5.9 billion euro) a year.

Immigrants from Turkey and Morocco alone have cost the Netherlands more than 70 billion guilders (31.8 billion euro) in the twenty years until the year 1999. "Without anybody noticing, Dutch immigration policy has become one of the most wasteful forms of government aid around," Lakeman told NRC Handelsblad at the time.

The information that many of the 29 'KILLED SO FAR BY SWINE FLU' HAD OTHER POTENTIALLY LIFE-THREATENING CONDITIONS WAS RARELY MENTIONED. THIS COMPARES WITH 6,000 PEOPLE A YEAR WHO 'DIE OF' NORMAL FLU, without ever making the front page or the ministerial dispatch box. By this Monday, madness ruled. Supplies of the anti-flu drug Tamiflu were said to be 'rolling into the capital in convoys of lorries' to a secret location in Tower Hamlets that was 'surrounded by a ring of steel'. The BBC broadcast a warning that the public should not panic, then promptly bought up 4,000 doses for its staff, doubtless on expenses.

All the victims found the flu less severe and certainly briefer than a bad cold. Most confirm that the one thing not to take is Tamiflu. I do not want to dent the soaring profits of Roche pharmaceuticals, but most I spoke to found the TAMIFLU SIDE- EFFECTS, OF BAD DREAMS, NAUSEA AND IRRITABILITY, FAR WORSE THAN THE ILLNESS. People should take an aspirin.

In Dread, an analysis of medical scares, the American public health expert, Philip Alcabes, offers the sober warning of the 1976 outbreak of swine flu in America. After immunising 45million against a near harmless strain initially compared with the 1918 virus, the federal government had to pay out $93m in compensation for side effects. Time and again, says Alcabes, SCARES ARE USED BY SOMEONE WITH A VESTED INTEREST 'TO INCITE ANXIETY OR SHAKE LOOSE SOME FUNDS'.

What should scare the public is not flu but the shambles of scaremongering that regularly envelopes it. Suppose Britain were afflicted by a serious disease? A HABIT OF MODERN GOVERNMENT IS TO GENERATE PUBLIC DEPENDENCE BY PERIODIC SCARES. To do this with the nation's health is the politics of fear at its worst.

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