More than 30,000 people are believed to have been forced to abandon their homes or been forcibly evacuated from more than 10,500 homes. Householders in Hull have been worst hit by the filthy, sewage-polluted water, with hundreds of homes in Gloucestershire also affected.

Many people have lost not only their homes, but all their possessions, having been left with only the clothes they were wearing when they fled the rising waters. Victims fear looters will take advange of rows of empty properties and aer being advised to ensure their homes are secure. In Gloucesteshire there were reports of looting in evacuated areas.

Prince Charles took to a rubber dinghy to visit some of theose worst hit in the village of Toll Bar just outside Doncaster, where the high street remains under as much as 5ft of water.

In Hull, hotels and rented accommodation has been swamped and there is now barely a spare room to be found.

Mr Brown announced a raft of proposed constitutional changes in the Commons last night, but THE 1701 LAW BANNING CATHOLICS FROM BECOMING EITHER KING OR QUEEN AND BARRING THE MONARCH FROM MARRYING A CATHOLIC LOOKS LIKELY TO REMAIN.

Cardinal O'Brien, the Edinburgh-based leader of Scotland's Catholics, said the new Prime Minister had missed the chance to remove the outdated sectarian law. He said: "I am deeply disappointed at the statement from Gordon Brown. "I remain deeply concerned that the Act of Settlement will continue to exist and believe it constitutes state-sponsored sectarianism.

"I have been happy to note the recent remarks by Scotland's new First Minister, Alex Salmond, that the Act of Settlement should be removed."

The story began several years ago when Rabbi Zalman Baruch Melamed, the rabbi of Beit El and the dean of the town's yeshiva, began to wonder when he might ever have the chance to fulfill the Biblical commandment (mitzvah) of Reishit HaGez - giving to the Cohen (the priest) THE FIRST CUTTINGS OF THE FLEECE OF SHEEP GROWN IN THE LAND OF ISRAEL.

But Rabbi Melamed was not willing to suffice with just one mitzvah. "I also wanted to fulfill another mitzvah, written in the verse immediately preceding the verse on Reishit HaGez (Deut. 18,3) - that of giving the right foreleg, cheeks and stomach of slaughtered sheep, goats and cows to the Cohen. So after cutting the fleece of one of the sheep and ritually slaughtering it, we are now ready to give these parts, as well as the wool, to a Cohen - and not just any Cohen, but to our great 'teacher and master,' and one who is of undisputed Priestly lineage, the former Chief Rabbi of Israel, Rabbi Avraham Kahane-Shapira."

Rabbi Melamed, who studied under Rabbi Shapira in the Merkaz HaRav yeshiva, said that the ceremony would be continued at that yeshiva at 7:30 this evening, "where I will merit to actually fulfill the commandments by giving the gifts to the Cohen, during the evening meal."

"THESE COMMANDMENTS BRING US CLOSER TO OUR DREAM OF REBUILDING THE HOLY TEMPLE AND SUPPORTING THE PRIESTS," RABBI MELAMED SAID, "WHO WILL BE WHOLLY INVOLVED IN TEMPLE SERVICE. In addition, it counters that which we will read about in this week's Torah portion, regarding Korach's rebellion against the Levites' and Priests' stature."

Beit El Mayor Moshe Rosenbaum said, "This not such a hard mitzvah, yet over the course of our centuries of national exile, it seems to have been largely forgotten - and even after our return, it is still not widely practiced yet - Let us hope that we will be able to fulfill this commandment more often."

One bystander, Elkanah L., said with clear delight, "To hold a ceremony like this with such joy is simply a tremendous idea. It builds up love for mitzvot, ANTICIPATION FOR THE HOLY TEMPLE, bonding with the Land of Israel, and more."

The commandments of Reishit HaGez and the aforementioned gifts to the Priest are numbers 506 and 508 in the Sefer HaChinukh.

The decision to abort the massive bridge, whose construction had been deeply contested by leading Israeli archeologists, effectively means that a salvage excavation under way in the area, which has drawn the wrath of Islamic officials and led to low-level Arab violence in the region earlier this year, will be coming to a close shortly, the officials said.

The planned major bridge was meant to replace a temporary bridge that was constructed on the section of the Western Wall allocated for women's prayer. The temporary bridge was built more than a year ago, after the original stone ramp leading up to the Mughrabi Gate was removed, having been deemed unsafe by city engineers.

The Mughrabi Gate, which is the only designated entryway for non-Muslims to the Temple Mount, is also used by Israeli police to enter the Jerusalem holy site for routine patrols and to quell outbreaks of violence.

The Pope announced June 29, the feast of Sts. Peter and Paul, that he will attend the annual International Encounters of Peoples and Religions, promoted by the Community of Sant'Egidio, to be held October 21-23. During his address before praying the Angelus on Sunday, the [Pontiff] said: "I greet today, in advance, the dear Neapolitan community, who I invite to prepare for this meeting in prayer and with works of charity."

Naples will host some 300 people from over 70 countries who will take place in round table discussions and other activities. The International Encounters of Peoples and Religions was inspired by the World Day of Prayer for Peace convoked by Pope John Paul II in 1986. The event was held in Assisi.

After six months of deadlock, gun battles flared between police and students from a religious seminary in the heart of the capital, Islamabad. More than 140 were injured in the shooting.The incident was sparked by dozens of baton-wielding -students and their women, clad in burqas, who attacked policemen near the Lal Masjid (Red Mosque) and stole four guns and a radio set.

A ceasefire was negotiated but as night fell and the security forces cordoned off Lal Masjid, where the students are based, a mullah shouted through the mosque's loudspeaker that the "blood of the martyrs" would be avenged.

Western diplomats suspect that the government has used the madrassa to play up the level of the extremist threat in order to ensure a continuing flow of money from America. However, the American perception of Gen Musharraf's usefulness as an ally has been tarnished over the past six months.

As thunder and lightning swept across the UK, an inch of rain fell in less than an hour in parts of England, overwhelming drains and triggering floods. At the peak of the storm, parts of the country were peppered with hailstones the size of 50p pieces. Battersea in South London was blanketed in white in a scene more like winter than the height of summer.

Two girls aged 13 and 15 were treated for serious burns after being struck by lightning at the end of the school day at Ipswich High School. 'They were struck simultaneously,' said a spokesman. 'They both had entry and exit wounds on their arms and feet.' He said the girls, who remained conscious throughout their ordeal, had not suffered life-threatening injuries. The East of England Ambulance Service said the strike had blown the girls' shoes apart.

The stormy start to July follows the third wettest June on record. According to Met Office statistics, 105.3mm or 41ins of rain fell last month. Only 1912 and 1982 were wetter. It was also the dullest June for ten years, with just 33 hours of sunshine recorded at Jersey Airport - 15 hours below the average for the month. But despite the cloud and rain, it was the 11th consecutive month to be warmer than average.

The warning was delivered to Canon Andrew White, a senior British cleric working in Baghdad, and could be highly significant as the eight Muslims arrested in the wake of the failed plot are all members of the medical profession.

Canon White told The Times that he had passed the general warning, but not the specific words, to a senior official at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) in mid-April. A Foreign Office spokesman said last night that it was forwarding the actual words to the Metropolitan Police.

The Times also learnt yesterday that one of the suspects, the Iraqi doctor Bilal Abdulla, had links to radical Islamic groups, and that several of the eight suspects have now been linked to known extremist radicals listed on MI5's data base. Canon White, who runs Baghdad's only Anglican parish, said that he met the al-Qaeda leader on the fringes of a meeting about religious reconciliation held in Amman, the Jordanian capital.

Several of the suspects have now been linked to known extremist radicals listed on MI5's data base. Security sources told The Times that none of them had been under surveillance as part of any counter-terrorist operation.

They are the latest casualties from bad weather that has devastated parts of the country during the northern summer.The tornado hit three villages around Tianchang in Anhui province on Tuesday, destroying more than 100 houses, the official Xinhua news agency said. The bodies of seven people had been recovered from the rubble.

State television showed footage of uprooted trees, toppled electric poles and a truck blown into a river.Of the 93 injured, 35 were in serious condition, Xinhua said. A further 200 people had been evacuated.Seven people were killed in Gaoyou city in neighbouring Jiangsu province, the agency said, adding that 53 were injured.

"Winds and heavy rain cut off power and telecommunications, ripped off rooftops and uprooted thousands of trees," a Gaoyou government official was quoted as saying.Forecasters were now warning of possible floods along the Huai river, which runs through the region. The upper reaches of the Huai had already reached critical levels.

Up to Monday, 18 provinces and major cities across China had been hit by floods and accompanying disasters, with a total of 233 people killed and 118,500 houses destroyed, the State Flood Control and Drought Relief Headquarters said on its website.

COMMUNITIES NIX FIREWORKS ON 4TH - A laser light show will replace traditional July Fourth fireworks in Burbank, Calif. Woodstock, Ga., cancelled its fireworks and plans to shoot them off on Halloween.Dozens of communities in drought-stricken areas are scrapping public fireworks displays and cracking down on backyard pyrotechnics to reduce the risk of fires.Burbank Fire Chief Tracy Pansini says he recommended calling off fireworks at the Starlight Bowl because they're launched from a mountainside covered with vegetation that's "all dead."

Extreme weather warning - FORECAST HIGHS ON THE FOURTH OF JULY INCLUDE 114 AT COOLIDGE-116
AT PHOENIX AND YUMA-117 AT BLYTHE - IMPERIAL AND GILA BEND - AND
119 AT PARKER. HIGH TEMPERATURES ON THURSDAY WILL CHANGE VERY LITTLE
AND SHOULD REMAIN AT NEAR RECORD OR RECORD LEVELS.

CALIFORNIA - While the state escaped power disruptions on Tuesday, the grid agency remains concerned about tight supply conditions on Thursday when offices and industrial plants reopen after the July 4th holiday."Thursday is looking to be a difficult day," said Gregg Fishman, spokesman for the California Independent System Operator. "Temperatures across the western U.S. will be at triple digits."The regional heat wave "will tax the whole system," Fishman said. "We are encouraging people to think about what they can do to conserve power."

US WILDFIRE 'COULD BURN ALL SUMMER' - A wildfire in the US which has killed three people and charred more than 62 square miles could burn all summer even as hundreds of firefighters continue to fight it.More than 700 firefighters have joined the battle with more expected to arrive to help protect homes and control the blaze.

OIL PLUS FLOODS TURN KANSAS TOWN SLIMY - The flood engulfing homes to the rooftops carried an extra curse Tuesday as a slick of 42,000 gallons of thick crude oil floated downstream with the mud and debris, coating everything it touched with a slimy, smelly layer of goo.On Monday night, President Bush declared a major disaster in Kansas and ordered federal aid for recovery efforts.

TEXAS - Eleven deaths have been blamed on weeks of heavy rain and flooding in Texas, where two men are missing. More thunderstorms hit parts of Texas on Monday, flooding some roads. The National Weather Service said about 10 inches of rain fell by noon at Corpus Christi.A year ago, many Texas officials warning boaters about lakes that were too low and banned fireworks because the ground was too dry. Now some popular lakes might be closed for the Fourth of July because they're too full, and fireworks shows are threatened by a continuing forecast of rain.

FLOODWATERS DELUGE NORTHEASTERN OKLAHOMA - Hundreds of residents fled their northeastern Oklahoma homes Tuesday with all they could carry as floodwaters pushed destruction downstream. One river carried an oil slick toward a reservoir that supplies water to several cities.

Natalie Ceeney said society faced the possibility of "losing years of critical knowledge" because modern PCs could not always open old file formats. Microsoft's UK head Gordon Frazer warned of a looming "digital dark age". He added: "Unless more work is done to ensure legacy file formats can be read and edited in the future, we face a digital dark hole." Research by the British Library suggests Europe loses 3bn euros each year in business value because of issues around digital preservation.

The National Archives, which holds 900 years of written material, has more than 580 terabytes of data - the equivalent of 580,000 encyclopaedias - in older file formats that are no longer commercially available.
Ms Ceeney said: "If you put paper on shelves, it's pretty certain it is going to be there in a hundred years. "If you stored something on a floppy disc just three or four years ago, you'd have a hard time finding a modern computer capable of opening it." "Digital information is in fact inherently far more ephemeral than paper," warned Ms Ceeney.

She added: "The pace of software and hardware developments means we are living in the world of a ticking time bomb when it comes to digital preservation. "We cannot afford to let digital assets being created today disappear. We need to make information created in the digital age to be as resilient as paper."

The agreement between the National Archives and Microsoft centres on the use of virtualisation. The archive will be able to read older file formats in the format they were originally saved by running emulated versions of the older Windows operating systems on modern PCs. For example, if a Word document was saved using Office 97 under Windows 95, then the National Archives will be able to open that document by emulating the older operating system and software on a modern machine.

Adam Farquhar, head of e-architecture at the British Library, praised Microsoft for its adoption of more open standards. He said: "Microsoft has taken tremendous strides forward in addressing this problem." He warned that the issue of digital preservation did not just effect National Archives and libraries.

"It's a huge challenge for anyone who keeps digital information for more than 15 years because you are talking about five different technology generations." He said that open file formats were an important step but there was still work to be done. "Automation is a key area to work on. We need to be able to convert hundreds and even thousands of documents at a time," he said.

He said it was "fantastic" to be free after an "appalling experience". Mr Johnston, 45, was seen leaving a Gaza City building accompanied by armed men. He said he had been unable to see the sun for three months, and was once chained for 24 hours. The BBC reporter was handed over to officials of the Hamas administration in the early hours of Wednesday morning. He later appeared beside Hamas leader Ismail Haniya and thanked everyone who had worked for his release.

Hamas' military wing had said it would actively work towards securing Mr Johnston's release, warning his kidnappers it was prepared to use force. Gunmen from the Palestinian Islamist Hamas movement overran Gaza last month, expelling their rivals from the Fatah faction. Fatah's defeat in Gaza prompted its leader, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, to sack Mr Haniya as prime minister.

A senior Hamas official, Mahmoud Zahar, said no deal was done with the kidnappers to secure Mr Johnston's release. He added that Hamas did not work towards the release "to receive favours from the British government". "We did this because of humanitarian concern, and to achieve a government aim to extend security to all without fear."

A Hamas leader living in exile in Syria, Khaled Meshaal, told the Reuters news agency Mr Johnston's release revealed the failings of the preceding Fatah administration. "It showed the difference between the era in which a group used to encourage and commit security anarchy... and the current situation in which Hamas is seeking to stabilise security," Mr Meshaal was quoted as saying.

"This is reminiscent of the warnings and intelligence we were getting in the summer of 2001," the official told ABCNews.com.

U.S. officials have kept the information secret, and Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said today on ABC News' "This Week with George Stephanopoulos" that the United States did not have "have any specific credible evidence that there's an attack focused on the United States at this point."

As ABCNews.com reported, U.S. law enforcement officials received intelligence reports two weeks ago warning of terror attacks in Glasgow and Prague, the Czech Republic, against "airport infrastructure and aircraft." The warnings apparently never reached officials in Scotland, who said this weekend they had received "no advance intelligence" that Glasgow might be a target.

Homeland Security Secretary Chertoff declined to comment specifically on on the report today, but said "everything that we get is shared virtually instantaneously with our counterparts in Britain and vice versa." Unlike the United States, officials in Germany have publicly warned that the country could face a major attack this summer, also comparing the situation to the pre-9/11 summer of 2001.

That wannabe martyr - his 72 expectant virgins currently tapping their fingers impatiently in Paradise - had a head wreathed in fire and a Molotov cocktail in his hand. The Bishop of Carlisle is a diocesan bishop in the Church of England, not a sect commonly associated with acts of terror, while the as-yet-unnamed jihadi is, one guesses, an adherent of Wahabi Islam, a sect which very much is. And yet, on a spiritual level, it seems that they do share one thing. THEY BOTH BELIEVE IN A VINDICTIVE GOD.

We already know how this belief was translated into action in the case of that young man at Glasgow Airport. He was prepared to incinerate young children and women and Muslims - anybody, frankly, who was unlucky enough to be on the other side of the entrance doors when he crashed through them.

The Bishop of Carlisle's expression of retribution took a much milder form: HE EXPRESSED THE VIEW THAT THE RECENT FLOODS IN THE NORTH OF ENGLAND WERE A SIGN OF GOD'S DISPLEASURE, NOT ONLY AT OUR ENVIRONMENTAL FECKLESSNESS BUT ALSO AT OUR WILFUL REFUSAL, AS A SOCIETY, TO DISCRIMINATE AGAINST HOMOSEXUALS. "This is a strong and definite judgement because the world has been arrogant in going its own way," he said. "WE ARE REAPING THE CONSEQUENCES OF OUR MORAL DEGRADATION."

The logic of this seems to suggest that God is prepared to kill innocent people in order to get his message across. And if the Bishop is right, it isn't just us that God is disappointed with. He's furious with the people of Pakistan, where serious flooding has left 900,000 homeless, and Afghanistan, where 80 have died in recent storms, and Kansas and Texas, too, where floods have devastated communities and left people homeless. Then again, with a killer this "indiscriminate" about collateral damage, only a bishop could be sure what the message is.

Of course, there are important differences between the bishop and the Glasgow attacker. The bishop restricts himself to condoning the actions of a terrorist God, while the human fireball appointed himself as a direct tool of divine wrath. It's hardly a distinction to be sneezed at in these dangerous times. BUT IT'S NOT QUITE ENOUGH TO QUELL THE SENSE THAT THE BISHOP FINDS HIMSELF IN A DISTANT INTELLECTUAL KINSHIP WITH THE SUICIDE BOMBER - BOTH WORSHIPPERS OF A GOD WHO COMMUNICATES THROUGH THE DEATHS OF INNOCENTS.

The murder on June 24 of Hesham Saymary in Ahvaz, the centre of Iran's oil-producing province in the south, was a blow to a regime that is already under pressure because of international condemnation of its nuclear program and the prospect of economic meltdown.

There have been other assassinations in Iran, notably in the Kurdish area, in the west near the Iraq border, but the Government is far more concerned about Saymary's death because stability in the province is crucial for its oil revenues. He may have been targeted because he was a prominent supporter of the regime. Protests that followed shortly afterwards over the rationing of petrol convulsed Iran and its increasingly discontented citizens.

The rationing is particularly damaging to Mr Ahmadinejad because those worst affected are the constituency that elected him, the poor and disenfranchised. During his campaign he adopted the slogan: "Oil money must be seen on the table of the people." He increased Iran's public spending budget, and promised dams, streets, stadiums, schools and hospitals. Few have been built. His biggest headache is that Iran, awash with crude oil but desperately short of refining capacity, has to import 40per cent of its petrol. Faced with UN sanctions and pariah status over its nuclear ambitions, the regime lacks the foreign investment it needs to build more refineries.

Little noticed in the media, but keenly watched in Tehran, is the Bush administration's donation of $52 million to Iranian opposition groups. The worry now is that the regime will crack down on domestic freedoms to distract attention from its problems.