According to Friends of Earth-Middle East (FoEME), a regional environmental organization of Jordanians, Israelis and Palestinians, "90 PERCENT OF THE JORDAN RIVER'S NATURAL WATER FLOW HAS BEEN DIVERTED BY ISRAEL, JORDAN AND SYRIA FOR DOMESTIC AND AGRICULTURAL USE, WITH SEWAGE FLOWING IN ITS PLACE. The region's current policies treat the river as a backyard dumping ground, resulting in its ecological devastation."

Government water and sewage authority spokesperson Uri Schor said the government shared concerns for the southern Jordan River. "However, we have to take into account the current water crisis in Israel and the region," he said. "WE ARE ON THE HEELS OF A TWO-YEAR DROUGHT AND WE DON'T KNOW WHAT NEXT YEAR WILL BE LIKE. Schor said that any solutions would have to be dealt with on the highest levels as part of a regional agreement between Israel and its neighbors.

Last month, Scotland's most senior Roman Catholic, Cardinal Keith O'Brien, launched a fierce attack on pro-abortion Catholic politicians, saying they should consider their stance on receiving Communion. Urging them to renounce what he called an unspeakable crime, he said the abortion rate in Scotland was the equivalent of two Dunblane school massacres a day.

Then, last week, MPs at Westminster voted down a proposal by Conservative Ann Winterton that women seeking an abortion be required to have counselling first. Winterton said the suicide rate among women who had had abortions was six times higher than among women who gave birth the previous year, citing a 2005 Finnish study. "An increasing number of doctors are becoming seriously concerned about the possible effects of abortion on women involved in this destructive form of medicine," she said.

Anne Quesney, director of pro-choice group Abortion Rights, said Winterton's bill was "part of a concerted campaign in Parliament to misrepresent the abortion issue with the aim of winning successive restrictions in women's rights and ultimately a complete ban."

The number of women in England and Wales choosing to end their pregnancy has been rising steadily since abortion was legalised in 1967, with 186,416 terminations conducted in 2005. The BMA's medical ethics committee says that women should be able to decide for themselves whether to have a termination in the first three months, with no need for medical permission, as is the case in many other countries. It says that the current legislation already in effect amounts to abortion on demand for pregnancies of less than 13 weeks.

However, as many as one in four GPs refuse to sign abortion consent forms, according to a survey last month by medical weekly Pulse.

Officials and witnesses said the deaths were caused mostly by landslides and the collapse of ramshackle dwellings in the city of nearly 5 million.The flooding was so extensive that survivors were having difficulty finding dry ground to bury the dead, officials said.

"It looks like we are living in a ghost city," one rescuer said on Monday night. "Never before in my life have I confronted such a calamity," said another.Elsewhere in the country, rain and flash floods killed at least 15 people, disaster management officials said.

Millions living on the banks of other rivers were also threatened and the prospect for relief looked bleak with more rain forecast across the country -- particularly in hardest-hit Chittagong and other hilly areas. Most Chittagong roads were under water on Tuesday while trains and flights to and from the city were suspended for a second day. Port business was also hampered."The disaster caught us unawares," said Mokhlesur Rahman, Chittagong's divisional commissioner.

Meteorological officials said the rain marked the onset of the annual monsoon season -- which lasts until mid-September -- but was unusually heavy because of the influence of a storm in the Bay of Bengal.

Peres, a secularist, in the past has made a number of statements to media some charge are anti-religious. Last weekend, Peres gave an interview to a major Israeli religious newspaper repeatedly crediting God for his political career and using the terms "the Holy One Blessed be He" and "Master of the Universe" an unusually large number of times. But a sampling of Peres' other recent interviews and hundreds of previous interviews to nonreligious newspapers found the veteran politician doesn't refer to God at all.

Uri Orbach, a commentator for Israel's leading Yediot Aharonot newspaper, charged in a column last weekend, "Peres was attempting to create the impression among the religious readers that he and the Holy One are on friendly terms. All these words were spoken hypocritically, and were intended only to be pleasing to the religious MKs so that they would support him."

Addressing Peres directly, Orbach charged, "A MAN OF YOUR AGE WITH YOUR STATUS WHO USES THE NAME OF GOD SO SUDDENLY AND SO FREQUENTLY FOR EARTHLY, PERSONAL NEEDS, WOULD APPEAR TO BE SINNING BY TAKING THE NAME OF THE LORD IN VAIN."

Rabbi Joseph Garlitsky, chief rabbi of Center Tel Aviv, told WND, "Peres' relationship with God is something that is personal to him. But until he repents, until he comes out and says he made major mistakes with the Oslo Accords and with upholding PLO Leader Yasser Arafat as a partner for peace, and with urging withdrawals and land giveaways, bringing massive bloodshed to the Jewish state, he is not allowed to be president."

The hearing is over the alleged connection, on which WND has reported, between a MERCURY-BASED VACCINE PRESERVATIVE CALLED THIMEROSAL and the radical upswing in the number of autism cases in the U.S. If the 4,800 families with claims pending prevail, they would be entitled to compensation from a multi-billion dollar trust fund that has been set up.

David Kirby, a veteran journalist, has written "Evidence of Harm: Mercury in Vaccines and The Autism Epidemic, A Medical Controversy," which describes the possible connection between the injection of vaccines containing the preservative thimerosal, a neurotoxic mercury, and the neurotoxic effects in a number of children.

The allegation is, according to Kirby, that the mercury in the vaccines, given to children at birth, and several times through the first year of their lives, is so toxic that there is a percentage of children whose small bodies are unable to get rid of it, so that it damages brain or other functions.

There also is a claim that the thimerosal affected some childrens' immune system, so that when they later got the vaccination of measles, mumps and rubella, they actually were infected by the shot. Kirby said the larger picture is how contemporary U.S. society treats, and requires, vaccinations. "WE NOW GIVE 31 IMMUNIZATIONS BEFORE 18 MONTHS OF AGE," he said. "We're the only country to do that. And nobody's ever really studied the cumulative effects of so many immunizations all at once."

"This [vaccination program] was required. These parents were mandated to do this. It's not like they were out there feeding them cheeseburgers," he said. "They wanted the very best for their children, and they did what they were told," he said. "What I do know is that there is compelling scientific evidence that supports the allegation that the injection of neurotoxic mercury did in fact cause a neurotoxic effect in a small subset of children," he said.

Reported autism cases among American children began increasing in the 1990s, from about ONE IN 10,000 IN 1987 TO A "SHOCKING" ONE IN 166 TODAY, A RISE APPARENTLY IN ACCOMPANIMENT TO THE RISING USE OF THE PRESERVATIVE IN VACCINES.

Today, perhaps 15 years later, her family's life largely revolves around taking care of the now-teenage girl, confined to a wheelchair, unable to speak, her life decimated by a "required" vaccine shot. INDEED, THE NATIONAL VACCINE INJURY COMPENSATION PROGRAM, PART OF THE FEDERAL DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES, WAS SET UP YEARS AGO TO PAY FOR THE CARE OF JUST SUCH VACCINE-INJURED AMERICANS.

If you or your child suffers from anaphylactic shock or brachial neuritis as a result of getting any tetanus-toxoid-containing vaccine, you're eligible. Develop encephalopathy - literally, disease of the brain - from pertussis antigen-containing vaccines, or from measles, mumps and rubella virus-containing vaccines, and you qualify. What about chronic arthritis from rubella virus-containing vaccines, or a vaccine-strain measles viral infection from a measles virus-containing vaccine?

What about contracting paralytic polio or vaccine-strain polio viral infection from a polio live virus-containing vaccine, or intussusception (prolapsed intestine) from vaccines containing live, oral, rhesus-based rotavirus?
These are just some of the vaccine-caused injuries suffered by Americans, CONDITIONS QUIETLY BEING CARED FOR WITH FEDERAL DOLLARS.

To report journalistically on vaccination controversies is a real challenge. On one side you have the medical establishment, including the federal government's Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which endlessly repeats the mantra that vaccines are safe and effective and everybody should get them. TO QUESTION THEIR WISDOM MAKES YOU A PARANOID CONSPIRACY THEORIST.

On the other hand, you have a substantial and growing movement of skeptics, including many medical professionals, who openly question vaccines. They consider each vaccine individually on its merits as well as its known and suspected negatives - and still come out holding up a big "caution" sign. AT FIRST, THE NEW VACCINES ARE JUST "SUGGESTED," THEN THEY BECAME "RECOMMENDED" BY PEDIATRICIANS, AND BEFORE LONG THEY'RE "REQUIRED" BEFORE ENTERING PUBLIC SCHOOL.

An unfortunate mindset permeates the medical world (and elsewhere) with the message that citizens are either too ignorant, uneducated or just plain dumb to do their own research and come to their own conclusions. Yet this is one area where each of us must do just that. If you have young children, you need to research for yourself the subject of vaccines and look at each on its merits.

For instance, many will tell you the vaccine to regard with the most suspicion would be pertussis, due to the disastrous outcome that sometimes results. On the other end of the spectrum, tetanus seems to evoke the least concern about side effects, and to confer the most tangible benefits, especially if you live in a farm area and work with animals.

IT'S CRITICAL TO UNDERSTAND CLEARLY THAT MOST "HEALTH OFFICIALS" CONCERNED WITH IMMUNOLOGY ARE NOT FOCUSED ON WHAT IS BEST FOR YOU AND YOUR INDIVIDUAL CHILD, BUT ON WHAT THEY PERCEIVE TO BE THE BEST INTERESTS OF THE POPULATION AS A WHOLE. And from that macro viewpoint, they strive to maintain what they call the "HERD IMMUNITY."

In other words, if large numbers of people opt out of vaccination, even for the most wholesome and sensible of reasons, the medical establishment will oppose it out of fear that once-eradicated (like smallpox) or near-eradicated (like polio) diseases will come back.

And yet, because there are real dangers to vaccines, we owe it to our children, to ourselves and to God to become informed, and then make our decisions based on what is truly right for us, not on other people's notions of what they think serves the collective good. They might well be wrong.

REMEMBER, DESPITE THE MEDICAL ESTABLISHMENT'S PARAMOUNT CONCERN OVER "HERD IMMUNITY," WE ARE NOT CATTLE.

Full article:- http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=56090

The Medical Defence Union, a doctors' insurance body, has told its members to stay vigilant for possible cases of Lyme disease. In recent times it has dealt with a number of complaints alleging a delay in diagnosis of the condition.

Lyme disease can be difficult to spot as it has a variety of symptoms, and easily be mistaken for something else. It is caused by the bacterium Borrelia burgdorferi and is transmitted to humans by the bite of infected ticks. The most common symptom is a slowly expanding rash which spreads out from a tick bite, usually after about five to 14 days. Typical symptoms also include fever, headache, fatigue, and a characteristic skin rash called erythema migrans. Most cases of Lyme disease can be treated successfully with a few weeks of antibiotics. But if left untreated, infection can spread to joints, the heart, and the nervous system.

Sue O Connell, of the Health Protection Agency, said the MDU was right to highlight the issue, especially now when people were going off on holiday and spending more time outside. She said: "Areas where infection has been acquired in the UK include popular holiday destinations such as Exmoor, the New Forest, the South Downs, parts of Wiltshire and Berkshire, Thetford Forest , the Lake District, the Yorkshire moors and the Scottish Highlands, but the infection can occur in other areas where ticks are present."

A doubling in the price of wholesale milk over the past year is creating havoc among food manufacturers, prompting warnings about food price inflation in the UK. Aid organisations have also raised concerns about the depletion of government stockpiles of milk powder. In the UK, the price of cream has risen 23 per cent over the past year and dairy organisations say that cheese prices will have to rise this summer.

The continuing drought in Australia, which has crippled the country's dairy output, has raised the wholesale price of skimmed milk powder by 60 per cent in six months. Over the past year, the cost of skimmed milk powder, used widely by the food processing industry, has soared from $2,000 per tonne to $4,800 per tonne.

Butter is also becoming much dearer, rising from $1,800 per tonne to $2,550 per tonne, according to figures from the Milk Development Council. So rapid has been the escalation in demand that the EU's milk surplus has dried up and the butter mountain has been flattened. Historically, the European Commission has given European producers subsidies to sell dairy products into the world market.

"The markets have been so strong there is no amount [of milk and butter] in intervention," Ms Suarez said. "For skimmed milk powder the EU has been able to export without subsidies for a year."

While the disappearance of EU food mountains may be welcomed, aid agencies have given warning of the impact on the world's poor. Much of the world's stock of milk powder is sold to poorer countries.

In the very last days of his term as Prime Minister, Mr Blair will try to sign Britain up to a stripped-down form of the European Constitution that was emphatically rejected by French and Dutch voters in 2004.

The British government has promised that any constitution would be put to UK voters in a referendum. But Mr Blair will argue that the new treaty will not have constitutional implications, merely consolidating and amending existing European rules and not fundamentally altering Britain's relationship with the EU. Mr Blair is due to discuss the new treaty in Brussels on 21 and 22 June. Mr Brown will be formally declared Labour's new leader on 24 June, and sworn in as prime minister on 27 June.

The Conservatives have now served notice that they will demand a referendum from Mr Brown once he is in No 10. "Any treaty that is about the transfer of powers to the EU must be put to the country in a referendum," David Cameron, the Conservative leader, said yesterday.

While the original constitution would have established the EU as a legal entity in its own right, the new draft treaty, being prepared by the German presidency of the union, focuses tightly on reforming the Brussels-based machinery of the EU.

The key changes are:

- To reflect the EU's expansion to 27 members, more decisions would be taken by "qualified majority voting" instead of unanimous agreement.

- The jobs of the existing two EU foreign-policy figures - the external affairs commissioner, Benita Ferrero-Waldner, and representative Javier Solana - would be merged to create a new "union minister of foreign affairs".

- Instead of the presidency of the EU being passed on to a new country every six months, a permanent president would be created, to chair summits of EU leaders.
Some Labour MPs agree with Mr Cameron that those changes justify a referendum.

John McDonnell, the only Labour MP who challenged Mr Brown as leader, has tabled a Commons motion saying ministers must "not sign any treaty or agreement that affects the constitutional relationship between Great Britain and the EU... without consulting the British people by means of a referendum".

"Electing Peres will be upholding the policies he has been promoting, like withdrawals from Judea and Samaria (West Bank), Jerusalem and the Temple Mount. Peres is a major existential danger to the state of Israel," read a statement by the Rabbinical Congress for Peace, a coalition of more than 350 Israeli rabbinic leaders and pulpit rabbis.

"We witnessed the destruction and terror brought to our doorsteps from the evacuations Peres previously urged, including Israel's disastrous retreat from Gaza and Lebanon and Peres' brainchild, the Oslo accords, which offered PLO leader Yasser Arafat territory bordering Jewish cities," said the statement.

The Peres Peace Center, headed by the former prime minister, advocates the division of Jerusalem and Israeli withdrawals from the strategic West Bank and Golan Heights. The West Bank borders Jerusalem while the Heights looks down on Israeli population centers and twice was used by Syria to mount ground invasions into the Jewish state.

Peres repeatedly has come under fire by critics for policies and plans many say would greatly undermine Israel's security. Peres has multiple times been accused of making anti-religious statements. A list of purported anti-Jewish quotes made by Peres to the media were recently plastered around religious communities by a group calling itself the Committee for Jewish Holiness.

Among the documented Peres statements listed were:

"What King David did was not Jewish."

"The rabbis are deceivers."

"There is nothing to be proud of in Jewish history."

Wei Chao'an, vice minister of Agriculture, said agriculture accounted for 64 percent of the country's total water consumption and is key to water conservation for the whole of society. "It is therefore a pressing task to promote the use of water saving techniques in agriculture and improve the water consumption efficiency," Wei said at a meeting on farmland water conservation held in Changzhi city, northern Shanxi Province.

He said that China is short of another 30 billion cubic meters of water to irrigate its 121.8 million hectares of farmland. The Chinese government has in recent years invested more than 700 million yuan (91.3 million U.S. dollars) to equip 666,700 hectares of land with water saving technologies, the vice minister said.

The initiative has helped to absorb 2.7 billion cubic meters of rain water per year and save 1,260 cubic meters of water per hectare, he said.

More than 130,000 homes remain without electricity around Newcastle and in Sydney. A severe weather warning remains in place, with winds gusting up to 90km/h (60mph), Australian weather officials said.

On Sunday, some 5,000 residents in the Hunter Valley were ordered to leave their homes amid fears that the Hunter River would breach its levee within hours. In the Newcastle suburb of Wallsend, where 200mm of rain fell in a few hours, state premier Morris Iemma warned that the risk was not yet over.

Relentless rainfall is now in its fourth successive day in central Hunan Province, affecting more than one million people in 11 cities and counties, sources with the provincial government said at a flood control meeting on Saturday.

The rain has left three people dead, one missing and 158,000 homeless, the Ministry of Civil Affairs reported on Friday. Jingzhou county in the city of Huaihua, one of the worst hit areas, received 146.4 millimeters of rainfall on Friday and Saturday, local authorities said.

The whole province is on alert as the upper reaches of the Xiangjiang River swelled to 106.6 meters on Friday, 4.6 meters above the warning level and the highest in 20 years.

In his last foreign engagement, just days before he leaves Downing Street for the final time, the Prime Minister will visit Pope Benedict XVI in what officials say will be a "highly significant" personal mission.
Cherie have often surfaced during Mr Blair's decade in office.

The claims were supported by revelations that he has already discussed not only converting to Rome, but also taking a formal lay position within the Church. Deacons are just below priests in the Catholic hierarchy and have the right to administer certain sacraments and wear a special white robe known as a dalmatic.

Mr Blair discussed the idea of his taking such a role with Canon Timothy Russ, priest at the Immaculate Heart of Mary near the Prime Minister's official country residence, Chequers. It is understood that Mr Blair will be accompanied by Cherie at the audience with the Pope in the papal apartments a week on Saturday. The couple are expected to spend the weekend in Rome before returning for their last 72 hours in Downing Street.

It will be Mr Blair's third visit to the Vatican in four years and a source said: "The fact that he will meet the [Pope] for his last official overseas engagement is highly significant and must raise speculation over his conversion to Catholicism." As a deacon, he could help priests administer Mass, preside over baptisms and read the gospel in Church services. Unlike priests, deacons are not required to take a vow of chastity.

Mr Blair, whose children have been brought up as Catholics, regularly attends Mass at Westminster Cathedral and has become close to the leader of Catholics in England and Wales, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor.
The Prime Minister's first meeting with the present Pope took place last June, but he had an audience with Pope John Paul II in February 2003, shortly before the US and British-led invasion of Iraq.

It later emerged that the Prime Minister had received Holy Communion from the Polish-born pontiff at a private service for the Blair family in the Vatican.

The move comes as China itself faces international criticism, especially in the United States, over a series of scandals that have plagued Chinese food, drugs and other products from poisoned cough syrup to tainted toothpaste and pet food.

Inspectors in the ports of Ningbo and Shenzhen found bacteria and sulfur dioxide in products shipped by three American companies, the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine said.

"The products failed to meet the sanitary standards of China," the agency said in a brief notice posted on its Web site. No details were given on when or how the inspections were conducted.

The agency said it was asking "all local departments to increase quarantine examinations of foods imported from the United States."