GPs in England are handing out prescriptions for anti-psychotic drugs for children as young as seven at the rate of 250 a day, according to figures obtained by The Independent on Sunday. Latest data compiled for the NHS show that tranquillisers designed to treat serious conditions including schizophrenia in adults were prescribed to young people 57,000 times in 2003. But the total had risen to more than 90,000 by 2006 - a 59 per cent rise in three years.

The figures do not include drugs dispensed in hospitals. Experts believe the increase is partly down to early detection and treatment of serious mental health problems in children, but there is also concern they are being used inappropriately to treat psychological and learning difficulties. Shortage of staff and resources are further factors.

Psychiatrists and mental health charities have warned against using anti-psychotic drugs on developing minds. Paul Corry, director of public affairs for the mental health charity Rethink, said: "IT IS WORRYING THAT THESE VERY POWERFUL DRUGS DESIGNED FOR ADULTS ARE BEING GIVEN IN SUCH HIGH NUMBERS TO CHILDREN BEFORE THEIR BRAINS ARE FULLY DEVELOPED.

The concerns come as the world suffers for the first time since 1973 from the confluence of record oil and food prices. Corn, soyabean and meat prices jumped this week to all-time highs, while oil prices hit a record of almost $140 a barrel.

This shift toward a national security concern will become apparent at Sunday's oil meeting in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, where ministers are expected to warn that developing countries are cracking under the burden of record oil and food costs. Saudi Arabia, the world's largest oil producer and the only country able to raise output, has recognised the danger after developing countries, including US-ally Pakistan, pleaded for a reprieve from oil payments. Morocco was forced last month to ask for an $800m loan from Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates to cushion the impact of oil and cereal imports.

One Washington official said: "What we have been watching is behaviour [that indicates] China, India, Indonesia, Vietnam [and] Malaysia simply can't bare the burden on the central budget and that the medium to long-term confluence of oil and food prices is just too much." He added: "It is leading to a real security issue where the streets are talking to the president."

The floods, which began at the end of May, have killed 24 people and caused damage estimated at billions of dollars. THEY HAVE ALSO DASHED HOPES OF A BUMPER HARVEST IN THE MIDWEST. Donnie Miller, who has farmed in Iowa for three decades, said he had never known such a disastrous year. Ever since the Iowa River, a tributary of the Mississippi, flooded three weeks ago, much of his 1,400-acre maize and soya bean farm near Solon has been waterlogged.

"If the floods don't go away, nothing will get planted and it's getting very late," said Mr Miller, who now estimates his MAIZE HARVEST WILL BE DOWN 50 PER CENT ON LAST YEAR. "Anything that's growing is stunted. Normally it's chest-high at this time of year. Now, it's five inches." Bad weather - a cold spring followed by heavy rain - had already prompted fears of a poor harvest even before the Mississippi broke its banks so spectacularly that even President George W Bush came to see. This year's maize (known in the US as corn), soya bean and rice crops were all planted late because of the rain, increasing the likelihood of a poor yield.

Now, the flooding that has swept through Iowa, Illinois and Missouri may lead to the loss of up to five million acres of crops. Some agriculturalists say that by the time the water recedes in the next week or two, it will be too late for crop recovery or replanting. Maize farmers aren't the only ones struggling. WHEAT FARMERS IN OKLAHOMA AND SOUTHERN KANSAS face storm forecasts that could make it difficult for them to harvest their winter crop.

Druids, hippies and sun-worshippers were among those who gathered to watch the sun rise at the ancient stone circle at 0458 BST on the longest day. Rainy conditions obscured the sunrise but the turnout was still the highest in five years. Police said the event was peaceful, with 15 arrests overnight for public order offences. As the dawn broke a cheer went up from revellers who gathered at the Heel stone - a pillar at the edge of the prehistoric monument.

A man, dressed in a black hooded top, who gave his name as Cathbad, said: "It's a beautiful experience. It's about celebrating nature, life and what makes the world go round. It's all about the feeling you get when the sun bursts through the stone."

More than 100 Israeli fighter jets took part in manoeuvres over the eastern Mediterranean and over Greece in the first week of June, US officials said. Iran insists its programme is peaceful, but Israel sees Iran's development of the technology as a serious threat. Tehran is defying a demand from the UN that it stop the enrichment of uranium. The UN Security Council approved a third round of sanctions against Iran over the issue in March 2008.

Several US officials briefing the New York Times said the exercise was intended to demonstrate the seriousness of Israel's concern over Iran's nuclear activities, and its willingness to act unilaterally. "They wanted us to know, they wanted the Europeans to know, and they wanted the Iranians to know," a Pentagon official is quoted as saying by the newspaper. "There's a lot of signalling going on at different levels."

The exercise involved Israeli helicopters that could be used to rescue downed pilots, the newspaper reported. The helicopters and refuelling tankers flew more than 1,400km (870 miles), roughly the distance between Israel and Iran's main uranium enrichment plant at Natanz.

The declaration, to be agreed at an EU summit in Brussels, will note that the Czechs cannot complete ratification for the moment, officials said. The Czech parliament's ratification has been suspended, after the Senate demanded that the constitutional court decide whether the treaty conformed with the constitution. With growing opposition from Euro-sceptics, and key elections due in October, the future of the treaty in the Czech Republic looks uncertain, says the BBC's Oana Lungescu at the summit in Brussels.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy said leaders agreed Lisbon should survive. But a senior UK judge warned that the UK's ratification should be suspended until he rules on a challenge to it. The treaty passed through British parliament this week, but has still to complete formal ratification.

A Euro-sceptic businessman has launched a High Court challenge to the British government's decision to ratify the treaty without a referendum. Lord Justice Richards said: "The court is very surprised that the government apparently proposes to ratify while the claimant's challenge... is before the court."

Tom Harris, a junior transport minister, claimed people are spending money on food and clothes in sums "that would have made our parents gasp". He raised comparisons with the former Prime Minister Harold Macmillan's famous claim that Britain had "never had it so good" by saying OUR CITIZENS HAVE NEVER BEEN SO WEALTHY. "We live longer, eat healthier, have better access to forms of entertainment never imagined a generation ago, the majority of us have fast access to the worldwide web, which we use to enable even more spending and for entertainment. Crime is down. So why is everyone so bloody miserable?"

The comments were seized upon by the Conservatives, who said hard-working families were struggling with soaring living costs, stagnant earnings and falling house prices. Britain's largest mortgage lender, Halifax, warned that homeowners will see £18,000 wiped off the value of the average home by the end of the year. Tory Treasury spokesman Philip Hammond said: "Tom Harris's breathtaking comments raise Labour's arrogance and complacency to a whole new level."

An EU summit in Brussels has been overshadowed by divisions over the reform treaty - which was rejected by Irish voters in a referendum last week. A DECISION ON WHAT TO DO NEXT IS EXPECTED TO BE POSTPONED UNTIL OCTOBER. The EU leaders, who continue talks on Friday, did agree to scrap diplomatic sanctions against Cuba imposed in 2003.

Mr Sarkozy's comments about EU expansion came after clear divisions emerged over the future of the treaty and the meeting decided that the Irish should report back in October on possible ways out of the impasse. "Without the Treaty of Lisbon there won't be any enlargement," he said. "You can't say no to reforms and yes to enlargement."

The BBC's Jonny Dymond says ONE DIPLOMAT DESCRIBED MR SARKOZY'S COMMENTS AS A THREAT - and the wrong signal to send to the Irish people - and those of Croatia and Turkey, who hope to join the 27-member bloc.

The name suggests a mysterious netherworld of misinformation and mind control. But military chiefs say that psy-ops - psychological operations - are a routine feature of modern conflict, as old as warfare itself. The term replaced a phrase that had even murkier connotations - propaganda.

However, the Ministry of Defence defines psy-ops simply as a way of getting "the enemy, or other target audience, to think and act in a way which will be to our advantage". Leaflets dropped from aircraft, radio broadcasts, loudspeaker vans and face-to-face conversations with civilians are all devices used by armed forces to win hearts and minds or damage opponents' morale.

Col Bob Stewart, who commanded the British peacekeeping forces in Bosnia, said, "There are two types of propaganda - white and black," he says. "White is when you tell things as they are, while black is putting more devious stuff about. The value of psy-ops can be immense - but whatever you say must be believable, and preferably the truth."

THE U.S. KEEPS AN ESTIMATED 350 THERMONUCLEAR BOMBS IN SIX NATO COUNTRIES. In four of those - Belgium, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands - the weapons are stored at the host nation's air bases, where they are guarded by specially trained U.S. military personnel.

But according to an internal U.S. Air Force report, the sites are falling short of Department of Defense requirements, with fencing and security systems in need of repair, thin rotations that often lead to staffing shortages, and responsibilities falling to inadequately trained foreign security personnel. "In some cases," the report said, "conscripts, whose total active duty commitment is nine months, provide security manpower, while other locations have the challenge of working with unionized security personnel."

In Brussels, a NATO official said there is no alliance-wide policy on weapons security: "Security arrangements for U.S. nuclear weapons are made bilaterally between the U.S. and the host country. Any improvements that would be deemed necessary should be discussed between those two governments and not in a NATO context."

Richard Falk, the special reporter on human rights in the Palestinian territories, investigates alleged Israeli violations of human rights law for the UN's Human Rights Council.

But the former Princeton professor would also like to investigate whether "some sort of controlled explosion from within" destroyed the Twin Towers, he told FOXNews.com. "I DO THINK THERE ARE QUESTIONS THAT HAVEN'T BEEN ANSWERED, questions about the way the buildings collapsed and the failure to heed a variety of signals that there was danger coming," Falk said.

"I think his beliefs are fruitcake city, but among many delegations to the UN it's probably the conventional wisdom," said John Bolton, a former US ambassador to the UN known for his straight talk on UN hypocrisy. It's just an example of the inmates running the asylum," Bolton said. "It's a particularly graphic example for Americans, but this is not an aberration - this is, unfortunately, TYPICAL OF MUCH OF 'WHAT GOES ON' AT THE UN."

The U.S. central bank in March said it would allow emergency loans to investment banks for the first time since the Great Depression to stave off WHAT OFFICIALS FELT WAS A THREAT OF A FULL-SCALE FINANCIAL MARKET MELTDOWN. U.S. policy-makers, including Paulson, now want to install new regulatory ground rules for such an emergency backstop.

"We should quickly consider how to most appropriately give the Fed the authority to access necessary information from highly complex financial institutions and THE RESPONSIBILITY TO INTERVENE IN ORDER TO PROTECT THE SYSTEM, so they can carry out the role our nation has come to expect -- stabilizing the overall system when it is threatened," Paulson said at a luncheon event.

The Fed and the Securities and Exchange Commission have nearly completed a formal agreement to oversee the financial system as an interim measure.

There are 6.7 billion people in the world today. The United States ranks third, with 304 million, behind China and India, according to projections released Thursday by the Census Bureau. The world's population surpassed 6 billion in 1999, meaning it will take only 13 years to add a billion people.

By comparison, the number of people didn't reach 1 billion until 1800, said Carl Haub, a demographer at the Population Reference Bureau. It didn't reach 2 billion until 130 years later. "You can easily see the effect of rapid population growth in developing countries," Haub said.

The BBC Ten O'clock News yesterday reported on the protests which erupted as the UK House of Lords ratified the Treaty yesterday. Over the course of the start of the debate four different people were ejected from the public gallery for shouting "give us a referendum". THE FT REPORTS THAT "BRITISH APPROVAL IS SEEN IN EUROPEAN CAPITALS AS A SIGNIFICANT SIGNAL THE LISBON TREATY IS NOT DEAD." The paper reports "Mr Brown will tell the President that he will not stand in the way of efforts to salvage the Treaty."

The Guardian reports that the Government will get the Queen to give royal assent to the Treaty bill to ratify the Treaty this morning ahead of Gordon Brown's lunch with Nicolas Sarkozy today. A separate piece notes that France wants to agree a deadline of October for a deal to be agreed which would lead to a second referendum in the spring.

Gullible journalists who bought the line that the UK was "secretly" in favour of killing off the Treaty, and was only going along with ratification for diplomatic reasons, should now realise that THE UK GOVERNMENT IS NOT REMOTELY IN FAVOUR OF DROPPING THE TREATY. Rushing through royal assent just to please Sarkozy shows where the Government really stands.

The Prime Minister has been held up as an EU role model after his refusal to suspend Parliament's approval of the Treaty after last week's Irish referendum rejection. Britain's parliamentary approval of the EU Treaty, which received Royal Assent this morning, will be used by Europe's leaders at Brussels summit dinner tonight to push Ireland into holding a second referendum next year.

Hans-Gert Pöttering, President of the European Parliament, told The Daily Telegraph that THE EU TREATY WAS "CERTAINLY NOT" DEAD FOLLOWING A FINAL RATIFYING VOTE IN HOUSE OF LORDS YESTERDAY NIGHT. "This shows that the Reform Treaty is very much alive. The decisions in the House of Lords and the Commons are an encouragement to do everything to get the Treaty ratified as well in those countries where it is not yet ratified," he said.

William Hague, the Shadow Foreign Secretary, said: "People should recognise that as far as the people of Britain are concerned THE TREATY SHOULD BE DEAD. The vote in Parliament in no way represented the British people's view. It is increasingly likely that in two years there will be a Conservative Government that will put the genuine British view."