The National Pandemic Flu Service, which offers callers or internet users a prescription code for antiviral drugs if they have symptoms, was experiencing "unprecedented demand", with 9.3 MILLION HITS EVERY HOUR. The website crashed within minutes of going live at 3pm but was later restored. By 5pm it was receiving the equivalent of 2,600 HITS PER SECOND. The Government said that it was increasing capacity for the site.

It also emerged that:

• swine flu is at epidemic levels in many areas, with the under-14s — described as "super-spreaders" by the Chief Medical Officer — the worst hit. About 100,000 people in England were infected with the H1N1 virus in the week to Sunday compared with 55,000 cases the previous week;

• 16 per cent of those with swine flu who have died were described as fully "healthy". A further 17 per cent had conditions regarded as moderate such as diabetes or high blood pressure;

• Vodafone could make millions of pounds by charging 20p a minute for calls to the 0800 hotline number;

• the Church of England issued an unprecedented order to suspend "sharing of the chalice" at Communion.

Town hall leaders will meet today to discuss new measures, such as asking social workers to collect Tamiflu prescriptions for vulnerable people.

While Wall Street has rallied on better-than-expected quarterly results from chipmakers Intel Corp and Texas Instruments Inc this month, Thursday's disappointing batch of earnings underscored the challenges still facing many technology businesses. "The problem is people have been running all stocks up, there's hasn't been any kind of differentiation at all," said Dan Niles, co-Chief Investment Officer of Alpha One Capital Partners.

According to Niles, the financial results of Intel and TI are not a reliable indicator of demand since they were component vendors that sold into the supply chain rather than to customers. Investors have overlooked negative news from companies like Dell Inc, which sells its wares directly to customers and which warned last week of profit margin contraction and weak demand from corporate buyers of PCs. Microsoft was a "reality check" said Niles.

Fellow bellwether Amazon.com Inc, the world's largest online retailer, delivered lackluster results on Thursday, sending its shares down more than 6 percent in after hours trade. "WE HAD A BARRAGE OF BAD NEWS. THAT WILL PROBABLY SET THE MARKET BACK A BIT," said Fred Hickey, editor of the High-Tech Strategist Newsletter.

The FTSE 100 index closed up 66.07 points, or 1.5%, at 4,559.80, also its highest level since January. Traders were buoyed by figures showing a bigger-than-expected jump in US home sales and profits at carmaker Ford. The Dow Jones closed at 9069.29. Elsewhere, France's Cac 40 index rose by 2% while Germany's Dax climbed 2.5%.

TECHNOLOGY GIANT MICROSOFT AND ONLINE RETAILER AMAZON ANNOUNCED DISAPPOINTING RESULTS AFTER THE MARKET CLOSED.

All eyes will now be on Friday's UK GDP figures. If these are worse than expected, then the FTSE will certainly give up some of its recent gains, analysts say. "A weak number has the potential to derail the recent rally and bring things crashing down to earth," said Jimmy Yates at CMC Markets.

Witnesses said the naked girls in Bihar state plowed the fields and chanted ancient hymns after sunset to invoke the gods. They said elderly village women helped the girls drag the plows. "They (villagers) BELIEVE THEIR ACTS WOULD GET THE WEATHER GODS BADLY EMBARRASSED, who in turn would ensure bumper crops by sending rains," Upendra Kumar, a village council official, said from Bihar's remote Banke Bazaar town.

"This is the most trusted social custom in the area and the villagers have vowed to continue this practice until it rains very heavily." India this year suffered its worst start to the vital monsoon rains in eight decades, causing drought in some states.

According to a classified Federal Intelligence Service (BND) study, THE COLLAPSE OF THE WESTERN NATIONAL ECONOMIES, WHOSE RECUPERATION IS UNPREDICTABLE, could lead to a drastic acceleration of China's rise and the decline of West Germany's long-term primary ally, the United States. This intelligence service paper is being currently discussed in Berlin and excerpts have been LEAKED TO THE PRESS TO PREPARE PUBLIC OPINION FOR POSSIBLE CHANGES IN GLOBAL POLICY ORIENTATION.

"A LONG-TERM GLOBAL CRISIS" CANNOT, FOR THE MOMENT, BE EXCLUDED, assesses the BND, who, if this happens, is anticipating "massive unemployment and movements of migration in unprecedented dimensions" as well as an escalation of nationalism and very serious international tensions. An essential question, for the future global conflict constellations, according to this paper, will be IF RUSSIA CAN BE BOUND TO THE WEST OR IF MOSCOW WILL GO OVER TO THE CHINESE ADVERSARY.

On the backdrop of protests from Jordan, the Palestinian Authority and the Muslim Waqf, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu recently postponed a decisive discussion aimed at setting a date for beginning the construction of the new Mugrabi Gate on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, Ynet has learned.

The official explanation given for the delay was a stormy discussion at the Knesset on Wednesday, in which the Coalition was humiliated. However, security sources have expressed their fear that making such a decision on the eve of the Ramadan fast would set Jerusalem on fire and spark another international row, in addition to the dispute over the construction of a hotel in the east Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah.

The Muslims' fear of the new bridge stems from the possibility of bringing major forces onto the Temple Mount. "You are planning to bring armored personnel carriers to al-Aqsa through this bridge," a senior Muslim official recently told his Israeli colleague during an international conference in Europe. "No," the Israeli responded. "We want this bridge to hold 300 police officers, in case of riots on the mount or an attack on Jewish worshippers at the Western Wall plaza." A senior state official involved in the matter says that the discussion on this issue has been going on for five years.

There are now around 439,000 cocaine users in their late teens and early 20s, up by 1.5 per cent in just a year. Martin Barnes, chief executive of charity DrugScope, said: 'These figures show a marked and worrying increase in the use of cocaine powder, in the adult population as a whole and among 16 to 24-year-olds.'

'While this is not necessarily a surprise given the drug's decrease in price and increase in availability over recent years, it is of significant concern, particularly the rise in use among younger people. Police and their partner agencies are seizing record numbers of drugs and cocaine purity is recorded at an all-time low. When people think they are taking cocaine, in some instances the actual purity is as low as four per cent.'

'Police are increasingly seeing drugs cut with a hazardous cocktail of chemicals which include phenacetin, a known carcinogen. Cocaine can cause serious damage to health and these chemicals can, in themselves, cause significant harm to the user.'

They were sworn at by local people and told to 'go home to your disease-ridden country. We were treated appallingly,' said a member of the party from Lea Manor High School, in Luton. 'It was as if we were dangerous criminals. The French wanted us back across the Channel as quickly as possible. It was horrendous.'

Early on Monday the French authorities ordered the whole party on to a coach back to Calais - an eight-hour journey in sweltering heat, with all the curtains closed. They were then put on a London-bound Eurostar train. The pupil said: 'We were given five minutes to pack and leave. We didn't even have time to go to the loo. Some girls were still wearing swimming costumes under their clothes on the trip back.'

'We were told to close the curtains on the bus because we were wearing masks and the French would have been shocked. We were even chased by French people at a service station. They were shouting at our teachers because they'd seen our masks.' Headmaster Henri Welschinger said: 'They're French language students aged 15 to 18. None are in a worrying condition. PEOPLE ARE BEHAVING AS IF IT IS THE PLAGUE, BUT IT'S ONLY THE FLU.'

"It is not clear when the performance of ITS services will lead to the collection and processing of personal data and what are the purposes and modalities for which data processing may take place," reads a note published yesterday (22 July) by the European data protection supervisor, Peter Hustinx. The supervisor was recently reappointed after having shown a tough approach to guaranteeing data protection for a number of increasingly sensitive issues, ranging from EU-US negotiations on plane passengers or financial data to the business model of online search engines.

Hustinx is now replicating his fierce stance for the transport sector, asking the EU institutions to clarify "the specific circumstances in which a vehicle will be tracked, strictly limiting the use of location devices to what is necessary for that purpose".

Satellite navigation systems, such as GPS, can allow the localisation of drivers and the collection of potentially sensitive information like driving habits or the journey patterns of average citizens. Growing deployment of RFID tags and sensors in transport vehicles and infrastructure also brings with it a POWERFUL MEANS OF LOCATING PEOPLE WITHOUT THEIR PRIOR CONSENT.

In a speech in Poland this week to Polish Ambassadors, French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said "Without the Lisbon Treaty… we cannot speak about the future of Europe, about European defence, about the enlargement of Europe, about perfecting Europe. With 27 countries, it's not possible." He continues: "WITH THIS WE WILL BE THE MOST POLITICALLY SIGNIFICANT ENTITY IN THE WORLD with a responsibility for our destiny, which goes well beyond our borders."

He says, "There are no more issues anymore which can be decided in one country, they must all be considered in the Europe of 27." He said, "We must bear in mind, THE NECESSITY OF SUPPORTING OUR DIPLOMATIC EFFORTS WITH A COMMON DEFENCE, A EUROPEAN DEFENCE, as we showed in Georgia and Kosovo. Without this European defence, our diplomacy lacks strength. One way of strengthening this, making it less fragmented - and which will be one of the tasks of your Presidency - is to build a European diplomacy, through the European external action service, provided for in the Lisbon Treaty."

"The external action will be a European diplomacy which will not only be a diplomacy of bureaucrats. It is absolutely necessary that our diplomacies meet each other, unite and take their rightful place in this external action service, alongside the Commission." He concludes saying, "In Europe, I have learned something - I should say that with President Sarkozy it is quite easy to see - you have to be determined, solid, a little bit demanding, so as not to get lost in the complexities of sometimes interminable meetings."

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing, convened by Senator John F Kerry of Massachusetts, focused on what so far has received only modest attention in the climate change debate: the effect it is bound to have on national defense. "Addressing the consequences of changes in the Earth's climate is not simply about saving polar bears or preserving the beauty of mountain glaciers," retired Navy Vice Admiral Lee F Gunn, president of the American Security Project, told the panel. "CLIMATE CHANGE IS A THREAT TO OUR NATIONAL SECURITY."

Gunn and other military specialists said that climate change could have broad effects on how the US military operates. It will likely expand the number of humanitarian missions the Pentagon will have to undertake, they said, and even change how it deploys its fighting forces. For example, they warned that rising sea levels could swamp critical US military bases in the Indian Ocean and even the headquarters of the Atlantic Fleet in Norfolk, Virginia, which could be under water after just a one-meter rise in the ocean level.

In a second day of testimony on the Fed's semiannual monetary policy report, Bernanke told the Senate Banking Committee that THE US CENTRAL BANK WANTS TO SHIELD MONETARY POLICY FROM POLITICAL INTERFERENCE, but understands the need to be accountable to taxpayers. "We do think that the Congress has the right to see how we are using taxpayer money. Where we are concerned is that the Congress would be intervening in our specific policy decisions relating to monetary policy and the economy," Bernanke said when asked about a proposal to expand audits of the Fed.

"So yes, we are quite willing to work with Congress to try to figure out exactly where the line should be," he said. The Fed has pushed back hard against a bill that has already won sponsorship by a majority of the US House of Representatives, and a companion Senate measure, that would expose monetary policy decisions to audits by the Government Accountability Office, a federal watchdog.

THE CENTRAL BANK HAS ARGUED SUCH AUDITS WOULD ALARM FINANCIAL MARKETS AND DRIVE US BORROWING COSTS HIGHER as investors would come to let politics, not economics, drive monetary policy-making. Some investors are already nervous that the Fed might face pressure to create money to finance record US budget deficits. The Fed says these concerns would intensify if there was any move to put its policy under political sway.

US lawmakers have responded to public anger over last year's crisis and subsequent multibillion-dollar bailouts of investment bank Bear Stearns and insurer American International Group by DEMANDING GREATER FED ACCOUNTABILITY.

Roche missed forecasts with a 29 percent drop in first-half net profit on Thursday, hit by costs related to the Genentech purchase earlier this year, but its stock rose thanks to the strength of its underlying business. The world's largest maker of cancer drugs upped its earnings guidance and now expects double-digit core earnings per share growth in 2009 and 2010, compared to a previous target to stay at the 2008 level.

It said sales at both its pharma and diagnostics should grow well ahead of the market this year. It also said it will use cash flow to repay debt, expects to repay 25 percent of debt by the end of 2010 and to return to a positive net cash position by 2015.

Total production capacity for antiviral Tamiflu, which has been boosted by sales linked to the H1N1 swine flu pandemic, will be expanded to 400 million packs annually by the start of 2010, Roche said. Tamiflu sales rose more than 200 percent to just over 1 billion francs and Chief Executive Severin Schwan said Roche was able to meet all orders.

That should help ease concerns about any possible upset in the relationship, under which Japan has for decades kept in lockstep with the United States on security policy in return for the shelter of its "nuclear umbrella." Analysts say the change in emphasis by the opposition Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) is both a bid to avoid alienating voters ahead of the August 30 poll and a sign of a new realism as it confronts a growing probability of taking power.

"The stage is completely different now," said Yukio Okamoto, a former diplomat now of think tank Okamoto Associates. "They have to really, realistically think about what they are going to do," he added. "The line they have been insisting on so far is untenable, unsustainable in the face of the stark realities of the world security situation."

The long-ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) has made the US-Japan alliance the core of its diplomatic and security policies since the end of World War Two, and has stretched the limits of its pacifist constitution, often at US urging. In an effort to erode the rival Democrats' lead in opinion polls, the LDP has repeatedly accused opposition leaders of lacking the experience to handle growing regional threats.

As concern mounts about the spread of the virus, which has killed at least 29 people in the UK, some Anglican churches have begun to allow "intinction" or dipping bread in communion wine rather than sharing the chalice, while others have stopped offering wine altogether. The practices are permitted under the 1547 Sacrament Act, introduced after the plague, which requires both bread and wine to be given "except necessity otherwise require"

In London's Southwark diocese parishioners have been advised to hug rather than shake hands as a "sign of the peace", while in Chelmsford they have been discouraged from using shared holy water stoops to dip their fingers and make the sign of the cross.

Similar practices have emerged in the Catholic church, with some priests now passing bread into worshippers' hands rather than on to the tongue. The Right Reverend Christopher Budd, the bishop of Plymouth, advised in a recent letter: "In the light of the decision to designate the swine flu outbreak a pandemic, I now recommend suspending the chalice and giving the Sacred Host in the hand only." Michael Fay, a spokesman for the diocese, added: "Some people say they are receiving the body of Christ and he will protect you, but it's not a magic potion. We need to be prudent."