The definition of GM-free food was relaxed last night as European ministers decided to allow a greater proportion of genetically-modified material into products that could still be labelled "GM free".

EU agriculture ministers decided that food could include up to 0.9 per cent of genetically-modified organisms (GMOs) instead of the 0.1 per cent currently used as the gold standard by leading supermarkets. Ministers also agreed a Europe-wide system for labelling foods as organic so long as they contained at least 95 per cent organically-produced material - the same threshold already in use in Britain.

The 0.1 per cent figure for GMOs represents the lowest trace detectable and green campaigners believe that it forces producers to do all they can to keep their food "pure".

Although it will remain prohibited to use GMOs knowingly in organic farming, adopting a 0.9 per cent threshold for labelling food "GM free" will encourage lower standards in keeping produce truly organic, they argued.

Mariann Fischer Boel, the EU Agriculture Commissioner, said that it would be too costly for farmers to achieve higher purity in their organic produce.

Every member state will also be granted access to millions of fingerprints, as well as vehicle and driver registrations. A two-year agreement on cross-border co- operation between seven EU countries now becomes law involving all 27 nations.

The Tories said the so-called "Prum Convention" was a "sell-out", as many of the controversial proposals were salvaged from the wreckage of the EU constitution. They added that the deal - signed by Home Office Minister Joan Ryan in Luxembourg - also paves the way for police from different EU states to set-up joint patrols. London MEP Syed Kamall said: "WE ARE SLEEPWALKING INTO A BIG BROTHER EUROPE WHILE OUR GOVERNMENT STANDS IDLY BY."

Britain receives by far the worst deal of the member states. More than 4.2million people are contained on our database, or 7 per cent of the population. It includes a million innocent people, who were arrested but never charged and 100,000 children. The database is 50 times the size of its French equivalent. In Austria, less than 1 per cent of the population is included.

Tory European Parliament spokesman Philip Bradbourn said that much of what had been agreed was originally part of the EU constitution. He added: "Mr Blair has started the constitution sell-out today. Now everyone's personal details can be sent to police throughout Europe because Britain did not wield the veto.
"This Prum treaty fundamentally goes against the rules of data protection and civil liberties that we have come to expect in Europe."

Shadow Home Secretary David Davis added: "This is a serious development which we strongly object to. It is typical of incompetent Home Office Ministers to give away powers like this without thinking through the consequences." The Luxembourg meeting also rubber-stamped a deal to set-up a common database for visa applicants' pictures and fingerprints.

Ian Wilmut, who made history when he cloned Dolly the sheep in 1996, is now calling on scientists to inject human DNA into animal egg cells as a workaround to ethical and legal roadblocks. His commentary appears in Nature Reports Stem Cells, an online stem cell resource created by the journal Nature.

Wilmut proposes that scientists take a DNA-packed nucleus from a diseased person's cell, then slip it into an animal egg from which the nucleus has been removed. About one times out of eight, a clump of human embryonic stem cells should grow. Once the clump is large enough, medical researchers could test experimental drugs on the cells without destroying a single human embryo.

Kevin Eggan, an embryonic stem cell researcher at Harvard University, said that Wilmut is onto something important. "I think that this is critical set of experiments that should go forward," he told LiveScience. The proposed process, Wilmut wrote, would be an improvement over the current approach testing experimental drugs on mice.

These experiments can take years to complete. Embryonic stem cells, however, need only a few days to grow up to a drug-testable point. "In a single year," he wrote, "thousands of compounds" could be screened in the same time and at the same cost it takes to test a "handful" of drugs with mice experiments.

Although the ethical issue is not completely resolved, as human tissue would be growing in an animal egg, Wilmut is confident about the proposed procedure's advantages. "Although barriers to producing embryos and embryonic stem cells (with this process) could be large," Wilmut wrote, "so too are the lessons that could be learned."

For some time now economists have been engaged in the mother of all debates: whether the US dollar would collapse by as much as 40% when compared to other currencies or whether there would be an orderly devaluation, that is, a gradual revaluation of other currencies vis-à-vis the US dollar. IN EFFECT, THE QUESTION THAT IS CONFRONTING US IS NOT "WHETHER" BUT "WHEN" AND BY "HOW MUCH."

This global imbalance can be understood in economic terms by simply examining the massive size of America's twin deficits, trade and budgetary. Put modestly, AMERICANS HAVE BEEN LIVING WAY BEYOND THEIR MEANS, CONSUMING MUCH MORE THAN WHAT THEY COULD POSSIBLY AFFORD AND, IN THE PROCESS, BORROWING FAR BEYOND THEIR CAPACITY FOR TOO LONG. By mid-May 2007, the US National Debt stood at approximately at mind-boggling $8.85 trillion

WHAT IS BIZARRE TO NOTE HERE IS THAT DESPITE THE FACT THAT CRUDE IS PRODUCED MAINLY IN THE MIDDLE EAST; OFFICIALLY IT CAN BE PURCHASED IN DOLLAR TERMS FROM ONE OF THE TWO OIL EXCHANGES SITUATED IN NEW YORK AND LONDON. Obviously, should Iran carry out the threat to commence oil trade in Euros or better still an oil exchange, the US dollar would come under tremendous pressure.

THE US DOLLAR IS AKIN TO THE PROMISSORY NOTE OF A DEFUNCT FINANCE COMPANY. It is common knowledge that a currency, when not backed by anything precious is just a piece of paper. When US abandoned the Gold Standard in early 70s, countries habituated by then to the US dollar under the Bretton Woods arrangement continued to accept the US dollar as an international currency without demur as the world was not prepared for any other alternative. Else, the global economy would have collapsed by 1971.

But the diplomatic silence did not solve the problem. It merely postponed it and it has come back to haunt us.
While every central banker is conscious of this fact and thereby seeks to postpone the inevitable while nervously looking for his counterpart in any other country to break ranks and thereby trigger the collapse.

Surely, the emperor is without any clothes. There are only two possibilities from here on: EITHER WE ARE WITNESS A GLOBAL MELTDOWN OF THE US DOLLAR, OR ALLOW CONTROLLED US DOLLAR DEVALUATION.

If it is a global meltdown the global economy is doomed, if is an orderly devaluation, it is damned.

In its annual report on military forces around the globe, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute also said the rising number of nations with nuclear weapons is raising the risk such arms could be used. "THE CONCERN IS THAT COUNTRIES ARE STARTING TO SEE THESE WEAPONS AS USEABLE, WHEREAS DURING THE COLD WAR THEY WERE SEEN AS A DETERRENT," said Ian Anthony, a nuclear expert at the institute. The US, Russia, China, France, Britain, Pakistan and India are known to have nuclear weapons, while Israel is thought by most experts to have them.

The report estimated those nations had 11,530 warheads available for delivery by missile or aircraft at the start of 2007, with Russia and the United States accounting for more than 90 percent - 5,614 in Russia and 5,045 in US. Both countries are reducing their stockpiles as part of bilateral treaties, but are developing new weapons as they modernize their forces. Britain and France also plan to deploy new nuclear weapons, the institute said.

India, Pakistan and Israel each have dozens of warheads, but their stockpiles are believed to be only partly deployed, the institute said. "India and Pakistan are both thought to be expanding their nuclear strike capabilities, while Israel seems to be waiting to see how the situation in Iran develops," it said.

The United States remained the world's biggest military spender last year, devoting about $529 billion to its military forces,the report said. US military spending grew from $505 billion in 2005 mainly because of the "costly military operations" in Iraq and Afghanistan, SIPRI said. "This massive increase in US military spending has been one of the factors contributing to the deterioration of the US economy since 2001," it said.

The US was followed by Britain and France in military spending. Russia, which spent $34.7 billion on arms, has used its energy wealth to revive national pride, to restore its influence "in surrounding countries and to maximize its geopolitical power," SIPRI said.

He said a fresh effort was needed to contain the current violence, or energetic diplomacy to try to bring peace."The picture which emerges is very dark, and apparently getting darker," he said. "So there are reasons for real concerns in the international community."

Roed-Larsen, the current UN envoy for Lebanon-Syria issues who for many years was the top UN Mideast envoy, said "the geopolitical landscape of the Middle East has changed fundamentally over a few years".

"A few years ago, as it had been over many, many decades, the centre of gravity for all the conflicts were the Israeli-Arab conflicts," he said. "Now, there seems to be four epicentres of conflict in the region with their own dynamics, THE IRAQI ISSUES, THE IRANIAN ISSUES, THE SYRIAN-LEBANESE ISSUES, AND OF COURSE THE HEART OF HEARTS, THE TRADITIONAL CONFLICT, THE PALESTINIAN-ISRAELI ISSUE."

While Israel Aerospace Industries and the Defense Ministry made the last-minute preparations for the launch on Sunday, a diplomat with the International Atomic Energy Commission in Vienna revealed that Iran was operating an additional 300 centrifuges each week at its enrichment center in Natanz. At the same time, Israel is debating whether to renew peace talks or go to war with Syria, which is beefing up forces along the Golan Heights.

But beyond the contribution the new satellite will make to IDF operations and to the work being done at Military Intelligence, it also PLACES ISRAEL AT THE FOREFRONT OF GLOBAL SATELLITE DEVELOPMENT. Israel is one of seven countries with independent satellite launch capabilities and is part of an exclusive club that includes the United States, France, Japan, China, India and Russia.

The launching also comes at a time when there is a "race to space" taking place in the Middle East. IRAN recently tried launching a satellite into space and EGYPT is working on following Israel's suit. In February, IAF chief Maj.-Gen. Elazar Shkedy warned that Israel will be facing a possible threat to its vital space-based assets within the coming decade for which it has to start preparing immediately.

The consequences are clear: While Iran already purchases images of Israel from civilian satellite companies, A SUCCESSFUL INDEPENDENT LAUNCH BY TEHERAN COULD SPELL EVEN MORE DANGER FOR THE MIDDLE EAST and would mean that they have the ability to launch ballistic rockets into space and POTENTIALLY INTERCEPT WESTERN SATELLITES.

Israel's space program began in the 1980s and since then, despite a number of failures and setbacks, the country has succeeded in launching close to 10 satellites into space, with an outrageously-small annual budget of around $50 million. In comparison, the US annually invests $50 billion in its space programs.

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."