However, he emphasized, both Israel and America would prefer a diplomatic resolution to the confrontation with Iran. During a press conference for Israeli media in Washington on Wednesday, Lt.-Gen. Ashkenazi said: "We are all united in the view that Iran needs to be prevented from obtaining a nuclear weapon. There is no doubt that diplomatic activity and sanctions are the best way to accomplish that. I think that is the preferred method, through international activity. "

"That is also the Israeli policy, insofar as I understand it, and it is also the American preference. In addition, I think we all understand - the Americans and certainly us - that we need to prepare all the other options." As for himself, the IDF commander-in-chief said: "My duty is to ready the army for war, to fight and to win."

The new measure would allow public transportation to run and permit many recreation and entertainment-oriented businesses to open. Government agencies and services would still remain closed. The proposal, which states "the freedom of movement must not be harmed on Shabbat," was initiated by Likud MK Gilad Erdan and Kadima MK Elchanan Glazer. If passed, it will require buses that operate on the Sabbath to avoid neighbourhoods populated primarily by observant Jews.

"In places in which a predominantly religious population lives, we don't need to operate public transportation. We can also conclude that since it is not a work day, the frequency will be much lower. But there has to be permanent public transportation, so the public knows it has an alternative," said Erdan.

Special bus lines already run on the Sabbath, albeit in an extremely restricted manner, primarily in routes leading to hospitals and other essential services.

The latest figure on Web use at the end of June is a 56 percent increase over the same time last year, the China Internet Network Information Center said. It said the share of the Chinese public using the Internet is still just 19.1 percent, leaving more room for rapid growth.

The United States had an estimated 223.1 million Internet users in June, according to Nielsen Online, a research firm. The Pew Internet and American Life Project puts U.S. online penetration at 71 percent. "This is the first time the number has drastically surpassed the United States, becoming the world's No. 1," a CNNIC statement said.

The communist government encourages Internet use for business and education but tries to block access to Web sites deemed pornographic or subversive. Web surfers have been jailed for posting or e-mailing material that criticizes communist rule or is deemed a violation of vague national security laws.

The economy expanded by just 0.2% between April and June - the slowest pace since the first three months of 2005, although in line with City forecasts. The impact of the credit crunch on a struggling housing market was underlined as construction output fell by 0.7% due to a "particularly large" fall in new house-building, according to the Office for National Statistics' (ONS) first estimates.

A raft of the UK's house-builders have shelved new projects since March as would-be buyers struggle to get mortgages because lenders hit by the credit squeeze have hiked borrowing costs. In recent weeks, builders have axed around 5,000 jobs as the market heads downwards.

The figures come amid fears of recession after recent industry surveys signalled contracting activity in construction, services and manufacturing sectors during June.

Dr. Hugh Cort, president of the American Foundation for Counter-Terrorism Policy and Research, believes the answer to all of these questions is yes. Cort has assembled a body of evidence which he claims supports the view that bin Laden has a plan for an "American Hiroshima" which will be implemented in the near future. He has sent this material to various U.S. officials, including Robert S. Mueller III, director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Cort believes that the government is not doing enough to prevent an attack.

Much of his evidence centres around one Hamid Mir, a Pakistani journalist who has conducted the only interview of bin Laden after 9/11. Bin Laden told Mir that he had acquired 20 suitcase nuclear bombs from the former Soviet Union. Mir told Cort that bin Laden's men have smuggled these bombs into the United States.

His men supposedly are waiting for bin Laden to give them the signal, then seven to ten American cities will be struck. If true it is little wonder that Iran's leader confidently predicts that the United States will be bombed back to the Stone Age. Bin Laden supposedly has fulfilled Islamic law by warning the United States that an attack is coming and offering a truce - convert to Islam and you will not be attacked. Refusal to convert to Islam means that an attack against America is justified. Three weeks prior to 9/11 bin Laden warned that the United States would be attacked in an unprecedented way for its support of Israel.

In its annual report, the EU's Rapid Alert System for Food and Feed (RASFF), released by commissioner Androulla Vassiliou on Wednesday (23 July), recorded 7,354 notifications of health risks from food or animal feed that were passed on to the European Commission in 2007 - an "all-time high", according to the commissioner, and up 13.5 percent on the previous year.

The RASFF allows a rapid, round-the-clock exchange of information between EU member states (and non-member-states Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway) and the commission when risks to human health are detected in the food and feed chain.

"We reached an agreement on the principle of the European PNR," French interior minister Michele Alliot-Marie said after meeting her colleagues on Thursday (24 July), referring to a system for the collection and analysis of passenger name records suggested by the European Commission in November last year as part of its new anti-terrorism strategy.

EU home affairs commissioner Jacques Barrot wants the union's air passenger name recording scheme - similar to the controversial US database on European air travellers - to be up and running by the end of 2009.

The Netherlands and the UK have already been testing their own pilot projects.

It's hard to know where to begin to assess such a statement, when one considers the source. Officially, the archbishop of Canterbury is the chief bishop and principal leader of the Church of England, the symbolic head of the worldwide Anglican Communion and the diocesan bishop of the Diocese of Canterbury, the Holy See that churches must be in communion with in order to be a part of the Anglican Communion.

The archbishop of Canterbury is the spiritual head of one of the oldest mainstream Christian denominations of the Reformation and as such, a defender of the faith. Except, evidently, where it offends Muslims.

According to Rev. Dr. Rowan Williams, the Christian doctrine of the Trinity, that is, the concept of one God in Three Persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, is "difficult, sometimes offensive, to Muslims." For the record, the Islamic doctrine that the Crucifixion was a lie is offensive to Christians. So is the Islamic doctrine that Mary was not a virgin, and the Islamic doctrine that Jesus is not the Son of God.

These doctrines are hugely offensive to Christians, since they deny the very foundations upon which Christianity rests. However, it is doubtful that most Muslims know, or care, which of their doctrines are offensive to Christians. Why should they?

When someone can rise to the post as head of one of the largest denominations in Christianity without understanding the most basic elements of salvation, one can truly say that the apostasia has arrived.

The plan sponsored by Sen. Barack Obama, the presumptive Democratic nominee for the office of president, is estimated to cost the United States some $845 billion over the coming few years in an effort to raise the standard of living around the globe.

$2433 already has been approved in one form by the U.S. House of Representatives, and now has been placed on the Senate Legislative Calendar for pending debate. Cliff Kincaid at Accuracy in Media has published a critique asserting that while the Global Poverty Act sounds nice, the adoption could "result in the imposition of a global tax on the United States" and would make levels "of U.S. foreign aid spending subservient to the dictates of the United Nations."

The Pope affirmed this in a message to the World Conference on Dialogue, held in Madrid, Spain, and sponsored by the Mecca-based Muslim World League. Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran, president of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue, who delivered the meeting's closing address, transmitted the papal message to participants.

King Juan Carlos of Spain and spiritual representatives of virtually all religions attended the conference, held from July 16-18 and convoked by King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia. In his address, the French cardinal expressed the Pope's greeting to participants and said that the [Pontiff] believes "that dialogue between believers, based on love and truth, is the best way to contribute to the harmony, happiness and peace of the peoples of the earth."

"I do not wish to say that all religions are more or less the same," he affirmed. "I wish to say that all who seek God have the same dignity." Benedict XVI has always warned against interreligious dialogue ending up in syncretism. We all know that interreligious dialogue cannot be based on ambiguity. "As believers, Jews, Christians and Muslims, we do not believe in fate. We know that, having received a heart and intelligence from God, we can change, with his help, the course of history."

But he claimed that as violence has become more prevalent in films, viewers have become desensitised to real-life crime - making the carrying of knives "almost an acceptable commonplace". His comments come as England is gripped by a wave of knife crime. In London alone, 17 teenagers have been stabbed to death since the New Year, while official figures disclosed earlier this month that a knife crime took place every four minutes in 2007.

Lord Attenborough said: "Thirty years ago if Gary Cooper pulled out a gun the audience would give a sharp intake of breath. Now the act of violence with a gun or a knife is the norm and we in the entertainment industry are partly responsible in making the presence of weapons such as knives almost an acceptable commonplace. So now knife crime is not thought of as something that is horrific and to be abhorred. It's part of normal existence."

Earlier this year censors approved the release on DVD of a group of "video nasties" which had been banned for 20 years, on the grounds that modern attitudes to on-screen violence are more relaxed.

A German television report on the availability of gene doping in China has stunned anti-doping experts shortly before the Beijing Olympics. In a documentary by ARD television, a Chinese doctor offers stem-cell therapy to a reporter posing as an American swimming coach. The report, filmed with a concealed camera, shows the doctor with his face blurred speaking in Chinese and offering the treatment in return for $24,000, according to a translation provided by the ARD television.

Still, keep this report in mind as China and its leaders glorify in the country's medal parade in a couple of weeks, as athlete after athlete collects gold. Think east German swimmer Kornelia Ender (Montreal '76) sprinter Ben Johnson (Seoul 1988), Ma's army (Chinese track coach Ma Junren, who had six of his athletes suspended in Sydney 2000 for doping), and Marion Jones, the US track star who "dominated" her events in Sydney and is now serving a six month jail sentence for lying to federal agents about her steroid use.

The anti doping cops can't keep up with advances made in delivery systems, shielding agents and, most importantly, the stem cell based gene tweaking, which is now the cutting edge of this stuff. For all of the above, China's a one stop shop.

The Israelis, along with everyone else, are now counting on European-led diplomatic efforts to persuade the Iranians to halt their uranium-enrichment program. But they know diplomacy may fail, which is why a debate now rages in the highest circles of Israel's government and military: If the Europeans fail and the Americans remain reluctant to launch another war in the Middle East, should Israel strike alone against Iran?

When President Bush visited Israel in mid-May, senior Israeli leaders came away from talks confident that the U.S. would attack Iran if it refused to stop enriching uranium. Says one top Israeli military planner privy to Israel's discussions with the U.S. on Iran, "We were under the illusion during Bush's last visit that he was much more determined to order a military action." No longer.

Last week's U-turn, in which the Bush Administration sent a high-ranking State Department official to join the European delegation meeting Iran's top nuclear negotiator, and the proposal to open a U.S. Interests Section to handle consular matters in Tehran - which would be the first U.S. diplomatic presence in Iran since its embassy was stormed in 1979 - has stunned Israeli officials. So dismayed were the Israelis by the latest U.S. moves, one military source told TIME, that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert wrote to Bush complaining that Israel should have been forewarned about the White House's abrupt change of course towards Iran.

"If we're honest - we know that sometimes, on both sides of the Atlantic, we have drifted apart and forgotten our shared destiny," he said. At least 200,000 people heard the Democratic Party candidate make the only public speech of his world tour. His words were broadcast live in Germany, where he is a popular figure.

Mr Obama began his speech by paying tribute to the Berliners who held out against Soviet pressure during the blockade in 1948. Appealing for a renewed partnership with Europe, he identified terrorism, nuclear proliferation, trade barriers and climate change as global challenges.

Mr Obama's appearance had the air of a rock concert in the Tiergarten Park, a place that has become associated with huge feel-good football parties in recent years, the BBC reports. His rhetoric and unusual background have captured the imagination of a country which views its own politicians as rather dour and grey, our correspondent says.

The fast of the 17th of Tammuz, the day of the breaching of the walls of Jerusalem, marks the beginning of the Three Weeks. The fast of the 9th of Av, commemorates the day of the actual destruction by fire of the Holy Temple, and is the last day of the Three Weeks. The three weeks is a period of mourning over these destructions.

The Three Weeks, for the year 5768 / 2007-2008, begin on JULY 20, 2008 (17th of Tammuz), and continue through AUGUST 10, 2008 (9th of Av).