FATAH - Full name: Reverse acronym of Harakat al-Tahrir al-Filistiniya (Palestinian Liberation Movement) meaning "conquest" in Arabic.

Origins and development:- Founded by Yasser Arafat in the 1950s to promote the armed struggle to liberate all Palestine from Israeli control. It developed into THE LARGEST PALESTINIAN POLITICAL FACTION AND, AFTER RECOGNISING ISRAEL'S RIGHT TO EXIST, LED EFFORTS TOWARDS A TWO-STATE SOLUTION WITH ISRAEL UNDER THE 1990S OSLO PEACE ACCORDS. Fatah members formed the backbone of the Oslo-inspired administration, the Palestinian Authority (PA), especially its bureaucrats and security forces. The party lost power in the 2006 parliamentary elections to Hamas, after Fatah officials came to be perceived as corrupt and incompetent. The shift in power heralded a period of violence on the streets of Gaza.

Attitude to Israel:- PA President Mahmoud ABBAS ADVOCATES RESTARTING THE PEACE PROCESS AND IS STRONG CRITIC OF ARMED "RESISTANCE" AND ATTACKS ON ISRAELI CIVILIANS. His goal is to establish a Palestinian state in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip, with East Jerusalem as capital. The Fatah-affiliated al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades has participated, along with Hamas, in an informal militant ceasefire since 2005, but conducts what it calls retaliatory attacks against Israel.

Current status:- The 2006 election defeat put Fatah on the defensive and subsequent events raised fears it would try using its political influence and military power to maintain predominance. The PA's 70,000 police and security forces are mainly Fatah loyalists. After months of factional street fighting in which hundreds of Palestinians were killed, Fatah struck a deal with Hamas to join a unity government as a junior partner.

HAMAS - Full name: Acronym for Harakat al-Muqawama al-Islamiya (Islamic Resistance Movement) and means "zeal" in Arabic.

Origins and development:- Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, COMMITTED TO ESTABLISHING AN ISLAMIC STATE IN THE WHOLE OF WHAT IT TERMS PALESTINE (POST-1948 ISRAEL, THE WEST BANK AND GAZA).
Since its formation 1987 it has pursued a dual function: social welfare and what it calls armed resistance. This earned respect and gratitude among Palestinians suffering under Israeli occupation, but a string of suicide bombings against Israeli civilians meant it was designated a terrorist organisation by Israel, the US and the European Union. ITS 2006 LANDSLIDE WIN THRUST ON HAMAS THE RESPONSIBILITY OF POWER AND INTERNATIONAL SCRUTINY FOR THE FIRST TIME, BUT THE GOVERNMENT WAS NOT RECOGNISED BY ISRAEL OR THE MAIN INTERNATIONAL MEDIATORS.

Attitude to Israel:- HAMAS'S CHARTER UNCOMPROMISINGLY SEEKS ISRAEL'S DESTRUCTION. However, Hamas's Ismail Haniya, the Palestinian prime minister, has spoken of a long-term truce with Israel if Israel withdraws from territory occupied in 1967. The Hamas armed wing, the Izzedine al-Qassam brigades, has participated in an informal ceasefire since 2005, but claims the right to retaliate against what it calls Israeli attacks.

Current status: - Designated a terrorist group by PA donors, outside funds to the Hamas-led Palestinian Authority have dried up. Banks refuse to handle emergency donations fearing US penalties. Hamas faces financial meltdown of the PA which could cause a major humanitarian crisis. Separately, it has deployed a 3,000-strong shadow security force including its supporters to tackle lawlessness in Gaza. The move exacerbated tensions with pro-Fatah security agencies sparking gunfights. After months of wrangling with Fatah, Hamas became the senior partner in a national unity government in March 2007.

It was the hottest night of the year so far. Cars were overheating left, right and centre, conked out on the hard shoulder of the highway running through Tel Aviv. Roads were sealed off, the police redirecting cars away from Rabin Square in the centre, as tens of thousands made their way on foot for a mass rally that was taking place. There was revolution in the air, a popular protest. It felt like the mid-1990s when thousands would come together in Rabin Square in support of the peace process. But this was May 2007, and the rally was not about pushing for peace. It was about pushing out an Israeli leadership which the public has decided failed at war. In the end - even by conservative estimates - MORE THAN 100,000 TURNED UP AT THE RALLY. THE SORT OF FIGURES PEACE RALLIES HERE COULD ONCE COUNT ON ATTRACTING.

"You used to get tens of thousands," Yehudit Elkana says. She's spent most of her adult life working for Israeli organisations which campaign for peace. "Now if you can get 1,500 people for a demonstration you say, 'Wow! It's great'."

"People are tired," says Yehudit Elkana. "THEY DON'T BELIEVE ANY MORE IN THE POSSIBILITIES OF PEACE. AND WORSE, SINCE THE TERROR ATTACKS PEOPLE BECAME AFRAID AND DISTRUSTFUL OF THE INTENTIONS OF THE PALESTINIANS." "We can't get together any more though," she says. "We can't go to their areas, they can't come here." She also says there's a financial problem. "Oslo led to an increase in funding from international groups. Now, Oslo has collapsed so the funding has collapsed."

The fact that complete, permanent borders still haven't been drawn 60 years later is testimony to the rancour of Israel's relations with neighbouring Arab states. Peace talks have taken place - Jordan and Egypt signed treaties with Israel turning 1949 ceasefire lines into state borders. But the absence of a final settlement with Syria, Lebanon and the Palestinians mean Israel's borders and the state itself remain inherently unstable.

In 1948, when British rule of Palestine ended, Israeli forces managed to push most of the Arab forces that joined the war to the former Mandate boundaries, which became temporary ceasefire lines. The exceptions were what we now know as the West Bank, which remained under Jordanian control, and the Gaza Strip, which was controlled by Egypt.

Thus Israel came into being on 78% of the former Palestine, rather than the 55% allocated under the UN partition plan. Parts of Israel's central region were just 15km (9 miles) wide, and strategic Jordanian-held territory overlooked the whole coastal region. The Sinai was exchanged for peace with Egypt in the early 1980s (at about the time Israel occupied south Lebanon, where it remained until withdrawing unilaterally in May 2000).

So it was more than 30 years after the foundation of Jewish state that it acquired its first recognised international border with an Arab neighbour. Jordan became the second treaty holder with Israel, agreeing river borders in the north and a demarcated desert border south of the Dead Sea. The boundary between Jordan and the occupied West Bank was agreed, but "without prejudice to the status of the territory".

Politically, the most important of the Green Lines - as the 1949 ceasefire lines were called - is the one dividing Israel from the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Occupying the West Bank in 1967 was an important strategic gain in Israeli eyes, and successive governments have ignored the Green Line and built numerous Jewish settlements on the territory.

The settlements are illegal under international law, but Israel disputes this and has pressed ahead with its activity despite signing agreements to limit settlement growth. Today, about 400,000 settlers live in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. The land is strategically significant, but in Judaism is also religiously and historically so.

The first settlers were religious Jews who remained in Hebron after celebrating Passover there in 1968. The settlement movement has become closely affiliated to Jewish religious nationalism, which claims boundaries of modern Israel based on Genesis 15:18: "God made a covenant with Abram and said, 'To your descendants I give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the Euphrates'."

On both political and religious grounds, therefore, it is extremely risky for any Israeli politician to dabble in land-for-peace deals or unilateral pullbacks from occupied territory. From the Arab viewpoint, the acceptable territorial solution for a Palestinian-Israeli settlement is withdrawal from all the 1967 land. Saudi Arabia has proposed such a formula in return for Israel gaining normal diplomatic relations with all Arab countries.

Not all Palestinians, however, want a two-state solution. Hamas, which won the 2006 PALESTINIAN PARLIAMENTARY ELECTION, WANTS AT ALL COSTS TO AVOID A PEACE DEAL WITH ISRAEL THAT INVOLVES DRAWING PERMANENT BORDERS, BECAUSE ITS WIDER AIM IS TO ESTABLISH A SINGLE, ISLAMIC STATE WITHIN THE BORDERS OF PRE-1948 PALESTINE.

They argue that such a state, with the return of 1948 refugees, would have an impregnable and growing Arab, Muslim majority, spelling the end of Israel as a Jewish state. In the long term, therefore, Israel's reluctance to accept the existing Green Line in many ways plays into the hands of militant Islamist groups such as Hamas.

Forty years ago, Israel's army captured East Jerusalem from Jordan in the June 1967 War. The area fell in the heat of a deadly battle, but Israel did not massacre its Palestinian inhabitants or destroy its holy shrines like the medieval Christian knights. From the Jewish perspective 1967 brought the "reunification" of the holy city, restoring a divine plan after centuries of interruption.

The victory of 1967 and the capture of East Jerusalem was an exhilarating time for Jews, both religious and secular. Battle-weary Israeli troops ran through the narrow alleys of the Old City to the Western Wall to pray and celebrate. UNDER ARAB CONTROL SINCE 1948, THE JEWISH HOLY PLACES HAD BEEN TANTALISINGLY OUT OF REACH TO ISRAELIS - IN VIOLATION OF THE ISRAEL-JORDAN ARMISTICE AGREEMENT.

Nothing was going to stop the 1967 leaders from creating facts on the ground that made it impossible for Muslim Arabs to reclaim the eastern half of the city. "We have returned to our holy places - And we shall never leave them," said Gen Moshe Dayan as he stood before the timeworn stones of the Western Wall.

The international consensus has never recognised Israeli sovereignty in East Jerusalem - the city and its surroundings were designated a corpus separatum by the UN in 1947 to be given a special international status and government. No country has its embassy in Jerusalem. Even Israel's closest ally the US has withstood pressure from Congress to move its embassy from Tel Aviv, insisting the status of Jerusalem should be decided in Israeli-Palestinian negotiations rather than unilaterally.

Palestinians from outside the city - in the West Bank and Gaza - are rigorously excluded by a ring of roadblocks and Israeli military checkpoints. They now find themselves experiencing the same sense of deprivation and longing for Jerusalem, and determination to make it theirs again, that the Diaspora Jews once did.

In recent years Israel has been building the controversial West Bank barrier around Palestinian population centres, a response to the suicide bombings of the 1990s and after 2000. Around parts of East Jerusalem it is a massive wall, separating some Palestinian suburbs from the centre of Jerusalem and others from the West Bank.

Many observers see the possibility of disaster in Israel's unyielding pursuit of its policies in Jerusalem. THEY ARGUE THAT RESOLUTION WITH THE PALESTINIANS, AND THE WIDER ARAB AND MUSLIM WORLD, WILL NOT BE POSSIBLE WITHOUT COMPROMISE ON THE HOLY CITY.

The Six-Day War in 1967 arguably had its origins in a water dispute - moves to divert the River Jordan, Israel's main source of drinking water. Years of skirmishes and sabre rattling culminated in all-out war, with Israel quadrupling the territory it controlled and gaining complete control of double the resources of fresh water. A country needs water to survive and develop.

In Israel's history, it has needed water to make feasible the influx of huge numbers of Jewish immigrants.
Therefore, on the margins of one of the most arid environments on earth, the available water system had to support not just the indigenous population, mainly Palestinian peasant farmers, but also hundreds of thousands of immigrants.

In addition to their sheer numbers, citizens of the new state were intent on conducting water-intensive commercial agricultural such as growing bananas and citrus fruits. In the 1967 war Israel gained exclusive control of the waters of the West Bank and the Sea of Galilee, although not the Litani.Those resources - the West Bank's mountain aquifer and the Sea of Galilee - give Israel about 60% of its fresh water, a billion cubic metres per year.

Heated arguments rage about the rights to the mountain aquifer. Israel, and Israeli settlements, take about 80% of the aquifer's flow, leaving the Palestinians with 20%. With water consumption outstripping supply in both Israel and the Palestinian territories, Palestinians say they are always the first community to be rationed as reserves run dry, with the health problems that entails.

Not surprisingly, during the era of Arab-Israeli peacemaking in the 1990s, water rights became one of the trickiest areas of discussion. In the 21st Century Israel has tried to solve the Palestinian problem unilaterally, pulling troops and settlers from Gaza and building a barrier around West Bank areas with the largest concentration of Palestinians.

Although Israel says this is a temporary security measure, the barrier encroaches deep onto occupied territory - especially areas of high water yield. Demand for water already outstrips supply, requirements are rising and current supply is unsustainable.

Hydrologists say joint solutions need to be found, because water requirements are interdependent and water resources cross political boundaries. That necessitates improved conservation and recycling by both sides.

Improving the political atmosphere would allow supplies to be piped from neighbouring countries. Also crucial, experts say, are investment in desalination and other technical advances. Such solutions are desperately needed in the medium to long term. In other words, Israel and the Palestinians must work together, because they cannot survive as combatants.

In the course of Israel's creation in 1948 and its occupation of the West Bank and Gaza in 1967, more than half the Arabs of pre-1948 Palestine are thought to have been displaced. Today there are millions of Palestinians living in exile from homes and land their families had inhabited for generations. Many still suffer the legacy of their dispossession: destitution, penury, insecurity.

Palestinian historians, and some Israelis, call 1948 a clear example of ethnic cleansing - perpetrated by the Haganah (later the Israeli Defence Forces) and armed Jewish gangs. What is undisputed is that the refugees' fate is excluded from most Israeli-Palestinian peace efforts because, given a right of return, their numbers endanger the future of the world's only Jewish state.

Four million UN-registered Palestinian refugees trace origins to the 1948 exodus; 750,000 people belong to families displaced in 1967 - many for the second time. Palestinian advocacy group Badil says another million and a half hail from pre-1948 Palestine but were not UN-registered, while an additional 274,000 were internally displaced inside Israel after 1948, and 150,000 were displaced in the occupied territories after 1967.

That makes more than six million people, one of the biggest displaced populations in the world. The 1948 war ended with Israel in control of 78% of the former Palestine, with a Jewish-Arab ratio of 6:1. The equation brought security for Jewish Israelis, but emptied hundreds of Palestinian villages and towns of 700,000 inhabitants - the kernel of the Palestinian refugee problem today.

With the justification of not wanting to jeopardise its Jewish majority, Israel has kept Palestinian refugees and their descendants out of negotiations on a settlement to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. But for most Palestinians, their fate remains an open wound, unless there is a Middle East peace deal that acknowledges what happened to the refugees.

Israel says the barrier is the only way to defend against a wave of suicide bombings by Palestinian militants which shook the country in the early years of the intifada, or uprising, which began in 2000.

Palestinians view the structure as the prelude to an annexation of the parts of the West Bank where most Jewish settlers live, in line with Israel's plan for a unilateral solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the absence of a negotiated peace deal.

In July 2004, the International Court of Justice declared that the barrier was illegal and construction should be immediately halted, but Israel said it would not abide by what was an advisory ruling by the ICJ.

1897 - FIRST ZIONIST CONGRESS - The Congress issued the Basle Programme to establish a "home for the Jewish people in Palestine secured by public law".

1917 - SHIFTING SANDS - In 1917, the British Foreign Minister Arthur Balfour committed Britain to work towards "the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people" - It became known as the Balfour Declaration.

1947 - UN PARTITION OF PALESTINE - Britain, which had ruled Palestine since 1920, handed over responsibility for solving the Zionist-Arab problem to the UN in 1947.

1948 - ESTABLISHMENT OF ISRAEL - The State of Israel, the first Jewish state for nearly 2,000 years, was proclaimed at 1600 on 14 May 1948 in Tel Aviv.

1964 - FORMATION OF THE PLO - In January 1964, Arab governments voted to create a body called the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO). Yasser Arafat who took over the chairmanship of the PLO in 1969..

THE 1967 WAR - six days which changed the face of the Middle East conflict.

The 1973 Yom Kippur war - Egypt and Syria launched major offensives against Israel on the Jewish festival of the Day of Atonement. Soon after the war, Saudi Arabia led a petroleum embargo against states that supported Israel.

1974 - ARAFAT'S FIRST UN APPEARANCE - He condemned the Zionist project, but concluded: "Today I have come bearing an olive branch and a freedom fighter's gun. Do not let the olive branch fall from my hand."

1977 - ISRAEL'S RESURGENT RIGHT WING - Agriculture minister Ariel Sharon spearheaded this movement until 1981.

1979 - ISRAEL AND EGYPT MAKE PEACE - Egyptian President Anwar Sadat recognises Israel, only four years after launching the October 1973 war. Sadat was assassinated in 1981 by Islamist elements in the Egyptian army.

1982 - ISRAEL INVADES LEBANON - The Israeli army launched a massive military incursion into Lebanon in the summer of 1982. Israeli troops reached Beirut in August.

1987 - PALESTINIAN INTIFADA - A mass uprising - or intifada - against the Israeli occupation began in Gaza and quickly spread to the West Bank.

1988 - PLO OPENS DOOR TO PEACE -The Palestinian National Council convened in Algeria in November 1988 and voted to accept a "two-state" solution.

1991 - MADRID SUMMIT - The US set up separate bilateral meetings in Washington between Israel and Syria, and with the Jordanian-Palestinian delegations.

1993 - THE OSLO PEACE PROCESS - Negotiations culminated with a historic first handshake between Rabin and Yasser Arafat watched by 400 million people around the world.

1994 - BIRTH OF THE PALESTINIAN AUTHORITY - Arafat was elected president of the Authority in January 1996.

1995 - OSLO II AND THE ASSASSINATION OF RABIN - Oslo II was greeted with little enthusiasm by Palestinians, while Israel's religious right was furious at the "surrender of Jewish land". A Jewish religious extremist assassinated Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin on 4 November, sending shock waves around the world.

2000 - SECOND INTIFADA - Ariel Sharon toured the al-Aqsa/Temple Mount complex in Jerusalem on 28 September. Sharon's critics saw it as a highly provocative move. Palestinian demonstrations followed, quickly developing into what became known as the al-Aqsa intifada, or uprising.

2001 - SHARON RETURNS - Ariel Sharon was swept to power by an Israeli electorate that had overwhelmingly turned its back on the land-for-peace formulas of the 1990s and now favoured a tougher approach to Israel's "Palestinian problem".

2002 - WEST BANK RE-OCCUPIED - Palestinian militants killed 29 people on the eve of the Jewish Passover holiday. In response, Israel and sent tanks and thousands of troops to re-occupy almost all of the West Bank.

2003 - ROAD MAP HOPES - In late April, the US published the much-delayed roadmap, which outlined a step-by-step timetable towards a negotiated Palestinian state.

2004 - ARAFAT DIES - In late October Arafat was taken ill and flown to France for emergency treatment. He died of a mysterious blood disorder on 11 November.

2005 - GAZA PULLOUT - Mahmoud Abbas was elected president of the Palestinian Authority after a landslide victory in January elections.

Full story - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/spl/hi/middle_east/03/v3_ip_timeline/html/history.stm

THE FIRST, IN 1948, left East Jerusalem and the River Jordan's West Bank under Jordanian control and the coastal Gaza Strip under Egyptian control.

IN 1956, ISRAEL INVADED THE GAZA STRIP AND EGYPT'S SINAI PENINSULA. Israel was forced to leave the Sinai the following year and a United Nations Emergency Force (Unef) was deployed. Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser was keen to unite the Arab world and spoke of "the destruction of Israel", while Israel feared it could be wiped out.

In May 1967, President Nasser demanded the removal of Unef troops from the Sinai, closed the Straits of Tiran to Israeli shipping and signed a defence pact with Jordan. Historians question whether Nasser planned to go to war, but all three factors, and Egyptian troop deployment in the Sinai, led to a pre-emptive strike by Israel.

5 June - At 0745 Israeli time, Israel launches Operation Focus and the first wave of air attacks against 11 Egyptian airfields, destroying dozens of planes parked on the runways. The pre-emptive strikes catch the Egyptians off guard and air defences are limited. Dozens of Egyptian pilots are killed in the raids. The Israeli Air Force (IAF) loses 19 planes, about 10% of its strength, mostly due to mechanical failure or accidents.

6 June - IAF jets provide air support for advancing ground troops in the Sinai, at Umm Katef, and the Gaza Strip. There is fierce fighting between Israeli and Jordanian troops at Ammunition Hill in the northern part of East Jerusalem, which is eventually taken by the Israelis. Syria launches its only ground offensive of the war, shelling frontier settlements before attacking with ground forces. Egyptian Field Marshal Abd al-Hakim Amer orders a general retreat. The move leads to the death or capture of thousands of its soldiers. By nightfall IDF forces have taken control of Gaza from Egypt and Hebron and Bethlehem from Jordan.

7 June - IDF troops move into the West Bank after the Jordanian army is given orders overnight for a general retreat. Jericho is taken by the end of the day. By 1000, Israeli troops hear the radio message: "HAR HABAYIT BEYADEINU" - "THE TEMPLE MOUNT IS IN OUR HANDS" after their forces take the Old City of Jerusalem. Soon afterwards, Jordan's governor in Jerusalem, Anwar al-Hattib signs an official surrender. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians living in the West Bank flee their homes to Jordan proper. In the Sinai peninsula, the first Israeli forces reach the Suez Canal

8 June - The three-pronged conquest of the Sinai peninsula reaches its conclusion. By the end of the day, Israeli troops have taken up positions along the eastern bank of the Suez Canal.

9 June - Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser announces his resignation in a television broadcast.Israel bombs Damascus and launches a ground and air assault on the Golan Heights.

10 June - On the Syrian front, Israeli airborne brigades press on to capture Quneitra, 40 miles from Damascus, meeting little resistance. By 1430, Israeli forces have taken the Golan Heights. The UN ceasefire comes into effect at 1830.

After six days of fighting, Israel's forces have captured the entire Sinai peninsula, the West Bank and Golan Heights. The territory under Israeli control is four times larger than it had been a week earlier.

Cities with big increases in the number of murders included Orlando and Miami in Florida; Oakland and San Diego in California; Phoenix, Arizona; Corpus Christi, Texas; Grand Rapids, Michigan; Reno, Nevada and Little Rock, Arkansas.

Even though the higher violent crime numbers had been expected, they still represented bad news for Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, who has targeted violent crime as a top priority for the U.S. Justice Department.

A department study released last month of 18 metropolitan areas cited more violence by local gangs or street crews, a greater prevalence of guns in the hands of criminals and younger, more violent offenders as key reasons for the rising crime rates.

Criminologists agreed with those reasons and also said there are fewer police on the beat. They cited the Bush administration's shift in emphasis to prevent terrorism since the September 11 attacks and funding cuts for programs to put more police officers on the street.

The Shia Muslim tradition of temporary marriage, or sigheh, allows a man and a woman in Iran to marry for a set period of time, ranging from an hour to 99 years. However, the practice is regarded as illicit sex by the majority Sunni community.

Even in Iran, it has been considered socially taboo and uncommon, but now the country's hardline interior minister has ignited controversy by promoting temporary marriage as a way of countering a perceived increase in illegal extra- and pre-marital sex.

Mostafa Pourmohammadi, a cleric, said: "We have to find a solution to meet the sexual desire of the youth who have no possibility of marriage. Temporary marriage is God's rule. We must encourage that." Sexual frustration is acknowledged as a problem by the Islamic Republic of Iran. Half the country's population of 70 million is aged under 30, there is high unemployment and many young Iranians complain they cannot afford to get married or buy a house.

For some, sigheh strikes a balance between the needs of the flesh and the legal demands of marriage.
A married man can have as many temporary wives as he wants and break the contract whenever he wants, while a woman cannot. Once the contract is over, temporary wives cannot enter another relationship for three months and ten days - to determine if there is a child and to establish its paternity. There is no such restriction on men.

The stunning news follows WND's report last week that FDA inspectors report tainted food imports from China are being rejected with increasing frequency because they are filthy, are contaminated with pesticides and tainted with carcinogens, bacteria and banned drugs.

China has consistently topped the list of countries whose products were refused by the FDA ? and that list includes many countries, including Mexico and Canada, who export far more food products to the U.S. than China. While less than half of Asia has access to sewage treatment plants, aquaculture - the raising of seafood products - has become big business on the continent, especially in China.

In China, No. 1 in aquaculture in the world, 3.7 billion tons of sewage is discharged into rivers, lakes and coastal water - some of which are used by the industry. Only 45 percent of China has any sewage-treatment facilities, putting the country behind the rest of Asia.

According to a new report by Food & Water Watch, the aquaculture industry crams fish and shellfish into facilities to maximize production, generating large amounts of waste, contaminating water and spreading disease if left untreated. The industry tries to control the spread of bacterial infections, disease and parasites by pumping the food supplies with antibiotics and the waters with fungicides and pesticides.

Many of the products used are banned in the U.S. Traces of these drugs have been showing up increasingly in imports - especially from China. "In addition to potentially making people sick, overuse of such drugs is contributing to antibiotic resistance, a growing public health concern in a variety of foods," says Food & Water Watch in its report "Import Alert: Government Fails Consumers, Falls Short on Seafood Inspections."

But the grave news on China's seafood exports is worsened by the FDA's inability to inspect imports. The percentage of important seafood shipments with samples taken for laboratory inspection has decreased over the past four years, from 0.88 percent in 2003 to 0.59 percent in 2006 - this while seafood consumption in the U.S. was rising and more of that seafood was coming from China.

In a speech to world Islamic leaders at a conference in London, the PM also said politicians must listen harder to the majority's "voice of moderation". He pledged £1m more for Islamic studies courses at UK universities, after a report criticised quality of teaching. But critics said the conference had excluded those Muslim groups which had opposed government policies.

In a speech at the conference, hosted by Cambridge University, Mr Blair said his ambition was that more imams and religious leaders could be trained in the UK so they understand British society and speak good English. He said the conference had been organised to "let the authentic voices of Islam, in their various schools and manifestations, speak for themselves".

"Some of the most distinguished scholars and religious leaders the world over are gathered here. And I ask people in the country and wider to listen to them. They are the authentic voices of Islam," he said. "The voices of extremism are no more representative of Islam than the use in times gone by of torture to force conversion to Christianity represented the teachings of Christ."

Muslim News editor Ahmed Versi was among those at the conference, he told BBC News that overall, the language used by Mr Blair was "quite welcoming". But he said he did not properly address the most important issue to Muslims - what he called the "double standards" of foreign policy in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere.
These are the issues which are radicalising young people and he did not talk about that," he said.

Among those attending the two-day conference are clerics including the Grand Mufti of Egypt, Shaykh Ali Gomaa, and the Grand Mufti of Bosnia, Mustafa Ceric.

But the worst drought in 100 years is bankrupting farms daily and health agencies say increasing numbers of farmers are falling into depression and committing suicide. Now, a national push is under way to persuade men that it's time to talk.

More than 2,000 suicides are recorded each year in Australia, four-fifths of them among men. Those living in rural areas are four times more likely to kill themselves than city dwellers, according to a national depression awareness group, beyondblue.

The isolation of country people, whose access to medical services is patchy, plays a part. But it is the taciturn temperament of many outback farmers that puts them at particular risk. Leonie Young, the chief executive of beyond-blue, said: "Rural men will say: 'No worries, mate, come and have a beer', however dire things may be. It's all about talking the tough talk. Talking about feelings just isn't okay.

"There is a great resilience and resourcefulness among rural people. They feel they have the stoicism to endure whatever life dishes up. They deal with bush fires, floods, famines and droughts on a seasonal basis. Depression is seen as something you should be able to fix yourself."Leonie Young concedes that country Australians are unlikely to metamorphose into sensitive, new-age men any time soon. But she said that if the stigma of depression were removed, men might be persuaded to take the first, crucial step towards seeking help.

At present, those who do attempt to tackle their depression are often defeated by the lack of mental health services, most of which are in towns several hours' drive from rural properties.Janet Golding believes only regular counselling by a visiting professional would make a difference to her husband's health.

That, and a good thunderstorm.

Disillusioned by what they call an empire about to fall, a small cadre of writers and academics is plotting political strategy and planting the seeds of separatism.

They've published a "Green Mountain Manifesto" subtitled "Why and How Tiny Vermont Might Help Save America From Itself by Seceding from the Union." They hope to put the question before citizens at Town Meeting Day next March, eventually persuading the state Legislature to declare independence, returning Vermont to the status it held from 1777 to 1791.

"The argument for secession is that the U.S. has become an empire that is essentially ungovernable- it's too big, it's too corrupt and it no longer serves the needs of its citizens," said Rob Williams, editor of Vermont Commons, a quarterly newspaper dedicated to secession.

"Congress and the executive branch are being run by the multinationals. We have electoral fraud, rampant corporate corruption, a culture of militarism and war. If you care about democracy and self-governance and any kind of representative system, the only constitutional way to preserve what's left of the Republic is to peaceably take apart the empire."