UK TO PUT IN 10,000 TROOPS FOR EU ARMY
According to EUROPEAN VOICE, Nicolas Sarkozy plans to create an elite defence group of the EU's six biggest member states once the Lisbon Treaty comes into force next year. The UK will not support the plan publicly until the new Treaty comes into force, but an EU official told the paper that the UK had pushed for the provision when the Constitution was being drafted. The six would provide 10,000 troops for a 60,000 strong intervention force, agree to 'Europeanise' their foreign military bases and launch common major defence infrastructure projects such as space and intelligence technology (including intelligence-gathering satellites) and missile defence.

CHILD FINGERPRINT SCANS AT EUROPEAN BORDERS
Evening Standard - Reporting on EU proposals for automated border controls, the Evening Standard writes that children as young as six could be ushered into private booths and fingerprinted at European borders.

KOSOVO BREAKAWAY ILLEGAL, SAYS PUTIN
Guardian - Vladimir Putin yesterday accused Europe and the United States of double standards over their support for an independent Kosovo, and warned that any declaration of statehood by Pristina would be "illegal, ill-conceived and immoral". If Kosovo's Albanian leaders ignored Russian objections and announced independence this Sunday Moscow would be forced to act, he said. Yesterday the EU gave its final "operational" go-ahead to the 1,800-strong mission of policemen, prosecutors and judges to be deployed to Kosovo, with the actual deployment expected to start on Saturday morning.

THE NEXT GLOBAL CRISIS
In the FINANCIAL TIMES, Gillian Tett argues that the next global crisis could well derive from RISING FOOD PRICES, not limited oil supply or instability on the financial markets.

A large hole opened up on the Temple Mount during Friday's earthquake which was soon covered by officials from the Wakf Islamic Authority that administers the mosques built atop Judaism's holiest site. Wakf officials tried to blame Israel for the 6-foot by 5-foot hole, which is about three feet deep, claiming it was caused by Israel, which it accuses of tunneling beneath the Temple Mount. They demanded an end to all Israeli excavations in the area.

Though several excavation projects are taking place around the Western Wall Plaza, none of them entail tunneling past the wall itself and beneath the mount. The Wakf's official position is that there was never a Jewish Temple on the Temple Mount and has gone to great efforts to erase archaeological evidence of Judaism's historical ties to the site.

Western Wall Rabbi Shmuel Rabinowitz issued a statement rejecting the Muslim claims. "These are mendacious reports without a grain of truth," he said, adding that work in the Temple Mount compound would be contrary to Jewish law. "Such claims are a desecration and cause hatred and incitement for no reason whatsoever," Rabbi Rabinowitz said.

There have been numerous disputes concerning the correct courts to be used in different cases. One of the most famous controversies concerns Lina Joy. Actually that's only her name now, her Christian name. Her birth name is Azlina Jailani, and she was born a Muslim. In 1981 Lina Joy became a Christian and she is trying to have herself declared as such on her identity card, her MyKad. One reason is that she wishes to marry her Christian boyfriend and it is illegal for her to do this while she remains classified as a Muslim. However her attempts to have her conversion recognised have failed.

The civil courts, and finally the highest court - the Federal court - have ruled that she can't decide on her religion for herself. She has to be given approval by the Islamic courts. Which, of course, is not forthcoming. As the decision was announced last May, outside the federal courts a crowd chanted Allahu Akhbar. This is not the only type of case, by any means, where the joint jurisdiction poses fundamental problems of human rights. Another type concerns what is known as body snatching.

The conversion of non-Muslims near death without the knowledge of their families has caused fierce rows. One reason, according to my correspondents, is that conversion changes the destination of any inheritance with Islamic courts deciding and inherited assets flowing only to Muslim relatives or the community. Divorce battles raise similar questions. Conversion by the father in the run-up to a divorce gives him crucial advantages - he gets custody, turns the children into Muslims and prevents his wife using the civil courts. Running a dual court system produces extraordinary practical difficulties and the opportunity for human rights abuses.

Last year the agencies and bailiffs pursued no fewer than 20 million cases and the methods they used to squeeze money from people are so aggressive that experts ranging from the Citizens' Advice Bureau (CAB) to members of the House of Lords are now calling for legislation to curb these excesses. A growing army of thousands of "debt chasers" is making millions from the misery of Britons who have spent years spending above their means, in what campaigners have slammed as "legalised profiteering".

Personal debt is at a record high of £1.4 trillion, averaging £29,684 for every adult in the country. And people now face the possibility of bailiffs being able to break into their homes and take possessions by force. The sweeping new powers will be outlined by the Government in May, when it publishes details of how a new 'Tribunals, Courts and Enforcement Act' will work in practice. In a statement to the IoS, a Ministry of Justice (MoJ) spokesperson claimed that the new powers for forcing entry will be used only "as a last resort - in strictly controlled circumstances", and only "once full independent regulation of all private-sector bailiffs has been implemented".

But it emerged last night that, despite bailiffs remaining unregulated, MoJ officials are proposing that they be allowed "to use reasonable force, restraint or violence against debtors thwarting the bailiff's seizure of their goods".

Parents of his classmates are unaware of the Afghan child's terrifying past. MP Philip Davies said the youngster should be removed from school immediately so a proper investigation can take place into any potential danger he poses. The Tory MP for Shipley, West Yorks, said, "This boy has had a tragic upbringing through no fault of his own. But there should be a detailed and thorough look at his past and the threat he could pose in the future. I am sure that the parents in the school would be concerned if they were told about it."

Extremists recruited the boy shortly after his father, a Taliban fighter, was shot dead by British soldiers in a gun battle. One elder told him: "You must avenge his death by becoming a martyr." During intensive mountain training the youngster learned how to handle explosives and sophisticated detonators. He even went on dummy missions with bags taped to his body.

Taliban fanatics instructed him to wander towards British patrols, pretending to be a tearful lost child, and once surrounded by soldiers - or taken to an Army base - he would blow himself up. But after weeks of secret training the boy blurted out to his mother what he was doing. She could not bear the thought of losing a son as well as her husband, so worried family members pulled all their resources together and paid for him to be spirited out of Afghanistan to escape the clutches of evil Taliban leaders.

The imminent departure of the 1st Bn Welsh Guards to Kosovo has been ordered in response to fears that the newly formed independent state could slide into "ethnic cleansing". But last night MPs and former military chiefs described the move as "irresponsible" and "demented", accusing the Ministry of Defence of being "bankrupt". The deployment - part of Britain's commitment to the Nato-led Kosovo Force (KFOR) - takes place at a time of growing pressure on the military. It will mean that more than 14,000 British troops are on overseas operations, a figure last equalled at the end of the Iraq War in May 2003.

The Army is currently 3,800 men under strength, virtually every infantry battalion is undermanned and one in 14 serving soldiers is not fit for active service. In the next few weeks thousands of Paras from 16 Air Assault Brigade will fly out to Helmand in southern Afghanistan for the start of a widely anticipated Taliban "spring offensive". Sources have also indicated that despite the troop shortages, the British Task Force in Helmand might need to be reinforced before the summer in order to hold on to the strategic town of Musa Qala, which was taken from the Taliban in December.

The military overstretch has been described by General Sir Richard Dannatt, the head of the Army, as "unsustainable". Patrick Mercer, the Tory MP and a former infantry commander, added: "Committing all of your reserves is a basic failure of military planning. This is a demented action."

In a confidential presentation to colleagues at a meeting in the Ministry of Defence to discuss budget cuts, he said defence spending had been so severely pruned that vitally needed equipment was simply unaffordable. He also warned that the government risked "mortgaging the future" of national defence.

The official, a senior defence equipment capability manager, resorted to black humour, portraying the Treasury as an axeman who has cut off the arms of his MoD victim and is saying: "Stop whingeing . . . at least you have got your legs." The meeting, one of a series to try to work out how to pay for all the equipment the forces need to meet their commitments in Iraq and Afghanistan, was also told that the Treasury has exaggerated the increase in the military budget.

Officially, it will rise by a modest 1.5% this year. In fact, it will increase by only 0.6% in cash terms, leaving a black hole of hundreds of millions of pounds, the meeting was told. Gerald Howarth, Conservative defence spokesman, said yesterday that the way in which funding for defence had been cut was "an absolute scandal of catastrophic proportions". He said the government was "guilty as charged by the coroners last week - unforgivable and inexcusable ".

Nick Harvey, Liberal Democrat defence spokesman, said: "The words of the coroners last week should be ringing in their ears. This is the reality of why Paul Drayson quit [as defence procurement minister] - there is such a gross mismatch it wasn't possible to look anybody straight in the eye and defend it."

BRITAIN IS TO BECOME THE FIRST WESTERN NATION TO ISSUE BONDS APPROVED BY MUSLIM CLERICS in line with sharia law, which bans conventional loans involving interest payments as "sinful". THE SCHEME WOULD MARK ONE OF THE MOST SIGNIFICANT ECONOMIC ADVANCES OF SHARIA LAW IN THE NON-MUSLIM WORLD. It will lead to the ownership of Government buildings and other assets currently belonging to British taxpayers being switched wholesale to wealthy Middle-Eastern businessmen and banks.

The Government sees sharia-compliant bonds as a way of tapping Middle-East money and building bridges with the Muslim community. But CRITICS SAY THE SCHEME WOULD WASTE MONEY AND COULD UNDERMINE BRITAIN'S FINANCIAL AND LEGAL SYSTEMS. Senior Conservative MP Edward Leigh, chairman of the Commons Public Accounts Committee, said: "I am concerned about the signal this would send - it could be the thin end of the wedge. British Common Law must be supreme and should apply to everyone."

A spokesman for the National Secular Society said: "There are lots of different ways to arrange financing. Constructing financial instruments to be sharia-compliant seems to me to involve a lot of unnecessary complication, which will serve only to make a lot of lawyers very rich." THE ATTEMPT TO EMBRACE ISLAMIC FINANCING WOULD ALSO APPEAR TO BE AT ODDS WITH MR BROWN'S PROMISE TO PROMOTE BRITISHNESS AND BRITISH VALUES AND INSTITUTIONS. The Treasury has already faced heavy criticism for removing Britannia from 50p coins.

Other Western nations have been reluctant to issue Islamic bonds. In the United States the bonds are banned partly as a result of claims that the money could be linked to terrorism. THE GOVERNMENT HAS ALREADY BACKED ISLAMIC CAR LOANS AND MORTGAGES. Sharia-compliant bonds were designed to get round the ban on paying interest - "riba" in Islamic law. The Koran says it is sinful to make money from money.

Unlike a conventional bond which is debt-based, a "sukuk" is asset-based. INSTEAD OF RECEIVING INTEREST, BOND HOLDERS RECEIVE "RENT" ON THE ASSET, THEREBY COMPLYING WITH SHARIA LAW. The Treasury consultation document says Government assets such as "buildings or a piece of infrastructure" would be switched to a "special-purpose vehicle" set up to administer the bond. This would be carried out by a contract known as an "ijara".

The asset would then be leased back by the Government, generating rental payments for the Islamic bond holders. When the "sukuk" matured, the Government would guarantee to buy back the asset, allowing the bond-holders to get their redemption payments. "Sukuk are akin to Islamic investment certificates," the document says. "They are designed to be in compliance with sharia law, the divine law in Islam which is based on the Quran."

Even the 2007 growth rate wasn't that high when compared with the peaks of the 1980s and 1990s, when GDP growth in some years surpassed 15 percent, coming out of the stagnation and even losses at the end of the Maoist era. The downturn is going to be welcomed in some Chinese leadership quarters because of the fear of runaway inflation from an overheated economy - now fed by food shortages and the impact of the worst winter in 50 years.

But a look over that horizon isn't good news either: massive unemployment is China's continuing biggest long-term problem. The macro-statistics look good: China's official GDP reached $3.43 trillion in 2007, the National Bureau of Statistics reported, making it the third-largest economy in the world after the United States and Japan. China is also the third-largest exporting country after the U.S. and Germany. China's foreign currency reserves are the largest in the world, driving up more than $1.4 trillion. And China appears to have shifted from a primarily agricultural country to an industrial one.

The official urban unemployment rate has typically remained around 4 percent, but that isn't the real story. Chinese unemployment statistics do not include the laid off - and workers can be laid off for up to three years before they officially count as unemployed. Nor did the officially "unemployed" include men past the age of 50 and women over 45 or those who have migrated to the cities and are thus not registered as formally urban dwellers.

The official long-term policy is for as many as 800 million people to migrate to the cities from the virtually stagnant rural areas where subsistence agriculture does not support them and is an impediment through land dispersion to a reform of agriculture. So, faced with something like 300 million people without jobs, it is easy to see why, despite all the talk about inflation (and pollution), Beijing leadership will always go for growth and providing new jobs. That is true even when threatened by inflation.

The flu shot is a good match for only about 40 percent of this year's flu viruses, officials at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Friday. The situation has even deteriorated since last week when the CDC said the vaccine was protective against roughly half the circulating strains. In good years, the vaccine can fend off 70 to 90 percent of flu bugs.

Infections from an unexpected strain have been booming, and now are the main agent behind most of the nation's lab-confirmed flu cases, said Dr. Joe Bresee, the CDC's chief of influenza epidemiology. It's too soon to know whether this will prove to be a bad flu season overall, but it's fair to say a lot of people are suffering at the moment. "Every area of the country is experiencing lots of flu right now," Bresee said.

The biggest surprise has been how poorly the vaccine has performed. Each winter, experts try to predict which strains of flu will circulate so they can develop an appropriate vaccine for the following season. They choose three strains - two from the Type A family of influenza, and one from Type B. Of all flu samples tested this year, 4.6 percent have been resistant to antiviral medications. That's up from fewer than 1 percent last year. "This represents a real increase in resistance," Bresee said.

Ivan brought 1-minute maximum sustained winds to the region of around 212 km/h (132 mph). Wind gusts in the area may have been considerably higher. According to the Saffir-Simpson damage scale the potential property damage and flooding from a storm of Ivan's strength (category 4) at landfall includes:

Storm surge generally 4.0-5.5 metres (13-18 feet) above normal.
Curtainwall failures with some complete roof structure failures on small residences.
Shrubs, trees, and all signs are blown down.
Complete destruction of mobile homes.
Extensive damage to doors and windows.
Low-lying escape routes may be cut by rising water 3-5 hours before arrival of the centre of the storm.
Major damage to lower floors of structures near the shore.
Terrain lower than 3 metres (10 feet) above sea level may be flooded requiring massive evacuation of residential areas as far inland as 10 km (6 miles).

There is also the potential for flooding further inland due to heavy rain.

More than 316,000 cattle had perished since the onset of winter in mid December, Noor Padshah Kohistani of the National Disaster Management Commission said. "The figure for human losses stands at 926 today. It could go higher, for roads have been reopened and we will find unreported fatalities," he said.

Nearly half of the victims came from western areas and where more than 90 people have had their fingers or toes amputated because of frostbite. A special hospital is dealing with frostbite victims in the western city of Heart. Apart from human losses, the deaths of cattle are regarded as a huge loss for Afghanistan, an agricultural country that largely relies on foreign aid.

The festivities follow a statement by Prime Minister Hashim Thaci that Sunday would be a big day for "implementing the will of the citizens of Kosovo". But correspondents say the potential for trouble between Kosovo's Serbs and ethnic Albanians is enormous.

Posters have been stuck on the walls of buildings expressing thanks to the US, Britain and the EU for supporting Kosovan independence. In Belgrade, meanwhile, about 1,000 Serb demonstrators protested against the loss of territory they consider their heartland. On Saturday, the EU approved sending a police and justice mission to Kosovo. The 2,000-strong mission, known as Eulex, will begin deploying from next week and is expected to take over from the United Nations by early June.

Serbia has threatened to use diplomatic and economic measures against Kosovo, though it has ruled out using force. Russia's foreign ministry has indicated that Western recognition of an independent Kosovo could have implications for the Georgian breakaway provinces of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. The UN has administered Kosovo since a Nato bombing campaign in 1999 drove out Serb forces.

Statistics show that only 38,680 Poles signed up to the Government's register of migrant workers in the third quarter of 2007, a slump of 18 per cent from the previous year. Polish officials also back these figures by saying that those leaving Britain outnumber those coming in.

Since Poland joined the EU in 2004, a total of 274,065 Poles have signed up for work permits in Britain. They make up 66 per cent of all applications from Eastern European countries. But a combination of tightening economic conditions in this country, a comparatively weak pound and an unprecedented surge in the Polish economy has made it unattractive for Poles to remain.

Krzysztof Trepczynski, the minister for economic development at the Polish embassy in London believes the end of 2007 marked the 'tipping point'. "It's a real change," he told The Times. "There are now definitely more Poles going back to Poland."

In China, officials are dealing with a different dilemma: keeping growth solid and inflation contained by slowly allowing the yuan to strengthen. Government data there shows that consumer inflation remains near an 11-year high. With continuing solid growth in the global economy, hardly any region in the world has not encountered higher prices on everything from cooking oil and gasoline to education and health care.

Inflation is at 16-year highs in Saudi Arabia, a 14-year high in Switzerland, a 25-year high in Singapore. And the list goes on and on. Australia's central bank bluntly warned Monday that it would need to raise interest rates further to contain inflation, even though it had lowered its outlook for economic growth.

The dilemma for the European Central Bank is difficult. The euro-zone economy has shown signs of slowing, and many fear it that will get worse if the United States falls into recession. But with inflation at 14-year highs, the European Central Bank's ability to follow the Fed's lead and slash interest rates aggressively is limited.

"Once the authorities give in to growth concerns, the euro will probably head even lower, and that will push inflation up even more," said Schultz, the executive at Allegiant Asset Management. "The biggest loser is going to be the Europeans."