Cattle, within the 3km protection zone set up around the farm where the first outbreak occurred, are being culled as a precaution. Chief veterinary officer Debby Reynolds said they had found something "suspect" and the animals were being culled to "minimise any chance of spread".

A report, due on Tuesday, will establish if it is another outbreak. The BBC understands the new foot-and-mouth cull will affect between 50 and 100 cattle. Dr Reynolds said the second potential outbreak site was a "small number of kilometres" from Wolford Farm, near Guildford, the first infected premises.

Vets identified clinical signs of the disease in a herd on one of their regular visits to farms in the protection zone.

Fear of a bank run spread throughout the United States. The young country fell into a 7 year depression. How could two decades of prosperity end so suddenly? According to America: A Narrative History: "monetary inflation had fuelled an era of speculation in real estate, canals, and railroad stocks."

Cracks in the dam were visible much earlier, as the stock market peaked in inflation-adjusted value three years prior. According to Rolf Nef, debt levels in the private sector rose to 150% of GDP. In late 1836, the Bank of England concerned with inflation raised interest rates. As rates rose in England, credit tightened, and U.S. asset prices began to fall.

On May 10, investors panicked and scrambled for cash. "By the fall of 1837 one third of the work force was jobless, and those still fortunate to have jobs saw their wages fall 30-50% within 2 years. At the same time, prices for food and clothing soared."

WE CAN EXPECT A SIMILAR SCENARIO IN THE VERY NEAR FUTURE. As Edward Chancellor, author of "Devil Take the Hindmost: A History of Financial Speculation" says: "The growth of credit has created an illusory prosperity while producing profound imbalances" in the American economy." At some point the system will have to adjust "to face a new reality. The process of adjustment is likely to be painful. It may well end in either an extraordinary deflation...or an extraordinary inflation."

Get ready. The credit boom is coming to an end.

"The markets are just responding to the growth in the money supply which is in double-digits just about everywhere around the world. When there are more dollars chasing the same number of assets---stocks go up. It's just that simple. What we're seeing isn't the result of investor confidence or industrial output. Heck no! Stocks are rising because our $800 billion current account deficit is recycling into the stock market. WHAT WE ARE REALLY SEEING IS THE FIRST SIGNS OF INFLATION--- GALLOPING INFLATION WHICH WILL SOON SPILL OVER INTO THE BROADER ECONOMY."

"Currently, THE US GOBBLES UP TWO-THIRDS OF THE WORLD'S CREDIT EACH YEAR WITH NO CONCEIVABLE WAY OF PAYING IT BACK. That won't last much longer. Central banks around the world are increasingly hesitant to accept our flaccid greenbacks and the Chinese are the only ones who are still buying our Treasuries. That's mainly because it gives them power over political decision-making in Washington. THE TRUTH IS THE CHINESE ARE PLANNING TO SEND THE US INTO RECEIVERSHIP AND TAKE OVER AS THE WORLD'S BANK. With dollar-backed reserves of $1.3 trillion, their plan appears to be going "full-steam ahead".

"THE BOTTOM LINE IS THAT WE ARE BURIED BENEATH A $9 TRILLION MOUNTAIN OF DEBT AND THERE'S NO WAY TO DIG OUT. If there's a break in the liquidity-flows to our stock market---stocks will crash, unemployment will soar, and we'll be pulled into a deflationary downspin."

Consider these comments from Princeton University economist Alan Blinder, who recently attended the business summit at Davos, Switzerland: (summarized by Rep. Ron Paul)

"WORD HAS IT THAT THERE MAY BE PLANS YET AGAIN TO "OUTSOURCE" HIGHLY SKILLED AMERICAN JOBS TO OTHER COUNTRIES. Approximately 40-million American jobs could be at stake and yet US workers have not been told or consulted about it, until now. Just to put the number of 40 million into perspective, that is more than twice the amount of people that are employed in manufacturing." According to Alan Blinder, "The 'choice' jobs of skilled Americans could be lost and given to foreign countries within the next decade or two." 40 MILLION HIGH-PAYING US JOBS WILL BE OUTSOURCED TO LOWER-WAGE COUNTRIES WITHIN THE DECADE?!? THIS IS A BLUEPRINT FOR THE ECONOMIC DESTRUCTION OF AMERICA!

Thorsten Polleit of the Mises Institute explains it like this in his article "The Dark Side of the Credit Boom":

"Today's government-controlled paper-money systems have decoupled credit expansion from the economies' productive capacities: 'circulation credit' feeds a "credit boom" that is doomed to end in severe economic, social and political crisis. Austrian economists of the Mises Institute fear that the collapse of the credit boom will lead to the destruction of the currency through a deliberate policy of (hyper-) inflation, destroying the free-market order."

"DESTRUCTION OF THE CURRENCY"; IS THAT TOO STRONG? NO. IN FACT, THE UNITED NATIONS ISSUED THIS GLOOMY STATEMENT JUST LAST WEEK: "THE UNITED STATES DOLLAR IS FACING IMMINENT COLLAPSE IN THE FACE OF AN UNSUSTAINABLE DEBT".

America's current account deficit is now a matter of international concern.

Mr Gates said on NBC's Meet the Press there was a possibility that the US could begin to withdraw forces by the end of this year. But he also made clear that any decision would depend on the outcome of a progress report by General David Petraeus, the senior military commander in Iraq, and Ryan Crocker, the US ambassador, which is to be released to Congress in September.

The US defence secretary reiterated that he was disappointed with the resignation of Sunnis from the Iraqi cabinet last week and admitted that the administration had underestimated the deep mistrust between Iraq's sectarian factions.

But Mr Gates said that he disagreed with the recommendation by the bipartisan Iraq Study Group last year that the US reduce military and economic support for the Iraqi government if it failed to make substantial progress towards national reconciliation.

Both sides have suggested they are ready to try to sketch at least a partial outline for a peace deal. Palestinian officials said such an outline could be presented to the international conference, which is likely to be held in November. During a recent trip to the Middle East, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice sought to gauge the support of moderate Arab states for a conference, and was told it must yield concrete results. She has assured Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas that the gathering would have substance.

The Monday meeting will take place in the West Bank town of Jericho, said Abbas aide Nabil Amr. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's office said Saturday night that he would be meeting Abbas soon but staffers would not give a time or place. A meeting in Jericho would mark the first time Olmert visits a Palestinian town as prime minister. Abbas and Olmert have met periodically in recent months, to improve relations soured by seven years of fighting and to explore ways of resuming peace talks.

In the past week, Olmert said he is ready to discuss issues of substance, signaling a softening of positions. Israel had long insisted that Abbas rein in militants before peace talks resume. Since the radical Islamic Hamas group seized control of Gaza in June, Olmert has faced international pressure to help shore up Abbas and his West Bank-based government of moderates.

By the weekend, it had left at least 7.5 million people and 5 million head of livestock short of drinking water, according to figures from the Office of the State Flood Control and Drought Relief Headquarters (SFDH).

The figures also show the sustained drought has affected 11 million hectares of arable land, 1.7 million more than the same period of last year. Among the affected, about 9.8 million hectares, or 89 percent, are crop fields.

Enemies of the state are interrogated, a sex scandal engulfs the church and freak weather tests the nation's endurance. Such were the issues of the day - 320 years ago.

A diary discovered in a London research library has provided a fascinating insight into life in the late-17th century. And while the cast of characters - and the language used to describe them - has changed, it shows that the topics in the news were remarkably similar to today. Such is the detail in the 1,500-page memoir by Roger Morrice, it has been compared to the diaries of Samuel Pepys, who wrote at around the same time.

Historians at Cambridge University revealed extracts from the diary yesterday after spending seven years cracking the shorthand code in which much of it was written. One entry by Morrice, a Puritan priest who became a political reporter after being persecuted under Charles II, describes the arrest of suspected plotters against the King in October 1684.

In a scene bearing striking similarities to the alleged treatment of modern-day terrorist suspects, soldiers were ordered to keep one victim "from sleeping, which they did without intermission for nine or ten days". Writing of the winter of 1683-4, when the Thames froze over, Morrice writes: "Whole street on the Thames and booths set up.

"There were several bear-baitings and a whole ox was roasted. The king came to eat some of it." There is also the London sheriff's decision on hangman Jack Ketch's expenses claim for 'quartering of traitors, boiling their bodies'. "The sheriff thought it was very exorbitant and refused to pay it," he records.

The un-Christian behaviour of one of the country's most senior clergymen is exposed in the line: "The Bishop of London has lain in a bawdy house."

IN TOTAL, A RECORD 18,619 UNDER-18S HAD TERMINATIONS - despite a multimillion-pound Government campaign to bring down the numbers. ONE 18-YEAR-OLD HAD HER SIXTH ABORTION IN 2006. Another 135 girls under 14 terminated their pregnancies. The statistics - released by the Department of Health after a freedom of information request - show the number of teenage abortions has increased by more than 2,500 each year since Labour came to power.

Critics say they prove the Government's strategy, which focuses on sex education and easy access to morningafter pills, is failing. A spokesman for anti-abortion charity Alive and Kicking said: "THESE FIGURES ARE THE RESULT OF THE MODERN ATTITUDE TO SEXUALITY - THAT SEX IS JUST A RECREATIONAL ACTIVITY. The Government never addresses the problem at its roots; it just has the sticking plaster attitude of making abortions easy. ITS SEX EDUCATION CLASSES ARE CLEARLY NOT ENCOURAGING RESPONSIBILITY."

Professor David Paton of Nottingham University Business School said the figures were particularly disappointing "considering the millions that have been spent by the Government over the past few years on their teenage pregnancy strategy".

Reassuring because if the multinational firm Merial Animal Health Labs was responsible for the outbreak, then scientists will know exactly which strain of the virus is responsible and will have a vaccine readily available - indeed, the cause of the outbreak would have been the very foot and mouth vaccines that the scientists are producing in huge quantities. What's more, it will be known exactly where the outbreak began, and when.

Thanks to the prompt action by Surrey organic beef farmer Roger Pride (who should receive a medal for his vigilance), the source of the outbreak has been pinpointed immediately, reducing massively the chance of a nationwide epidemic. We might yet avoid a repeat of the terrible scenes of six years ago. But the news is also worrying because it highlights the fact that huge quantities of viruses and bacteria are held in laboratories all over Britain which we have been led to believe are safe. They include germs which have the potential to cause economic devastation and much worse.

According to Professor John Oxford, one of Britain's leading virus experts, outbreaks from labs are extremely unlikely. His own biosecure laboratory at Queen Mary College in London contains samples of the SARS virus (which killed several hundred people in Asia five years ago) and also the H5N1 bird flu virus which some scientists say has the potential to mutate into a virulent, infectious strain which could kill millions of humans worldwide.

What would be the chances of, say, an animal rights extremist or Islamist terrorist getting a job as a lab assistant or even researcher in the laboratory, smuggling out avian flu or something equally nasty, and causing havoc? "The rules are extremely strict," Professor Oxford says. "I would never allow a student into my lab. I have only three members of staff who are experienced enough to go in there, and they are all personally known to me."

We must assume, and hope, that similar rules are in place at other research establishments where such micro-organisms are kept. It is tempting to say that we should simply close these labs and that the risk they pose is too great. But, of course, such a proposal would leave us in far, far more danger. "You have got to grapple with infectious diseases," says John Oxford. "You can't grapple with them on the Moon, you have to do it on Earth."

The Prime Minister feared a public backlash if too many migrants were allowed to settle, and believed the country was storing up problems for the future. The papers, released yesterday by the National Archives in Kew, west London, show that the debate over what has become one of the nation's hottest political issues actually began half a century ago. At the time, large numbers of immigrants from Commonwealth countries such as the West Indies, India and Pakistan were heading to Britain to find work as the country struggled with the the post-war labour shortage.

Churchill's Cabinet papers gave a figure of 40,000 immigrants living in Britain in 1954, compared with 7,000 before the Second World War. Today, around 6million people living in Britain were born overseas, or one in ten. They include more than 600,000 migrants from Eastern Europe alone. On February 3, 1954, under the Cabinet agenda item 'Coloured Workers', Churchill is quoted as saying: "Problems will arise if many coloured people settle here.

"Are we to saddle ourselves with colour problems in UK? Attracted by Welfare State. Public opinion in UK won't tolerate it once it gets beyond certain limits." Mr Maxwell-Fyfe raised the possibility of immigration control.

The Call To Prayer copied by ten-year-olds at Newlands Primary School in Wakefield, West Yorkshire, included the lines "Allah is the greatest" and "there is no god but Allah". Angry parent Hayley Clayton told the Sun: "The explanation was that the children were learning about Islam in RE.

"But this was like taking an oath. A Muslim child would never be asked to write a Bible passage." Her stepson Billy Darbyshire was one of the classmates told by his teacher, deputy head Helen Green, to copy the prayer. "Why didn't she choose a passage from a normal story book to teach handwriting?"

On July 11, 2000, at the Lome Summit in Togo, the states constituting the Organization of African Unity, signed a declaration to form the 53-nation African Union.

While the African Union professes to respect the sovereignty of the individual countries constituting the group, it still has created executive, legislative, and judicial bodies required for regional government, including an African Union Executive Council, a Pan-African Parliament and an African Union Court of Justice. And while the AU is still in a formative state, it's already officially designated by an emblem, a flag, an anthem, a central bank, and unified continental military force.

The goal of the African Central Bank is to create an African Single Currency. African Union planners are currently calling the African continental currency the "Gold Mandela." The United Nations has strongly supported the African Union as a major solution for the war, poverty, famine, and disease which have plagued the continent for decades.

Prof. Adebayo Adedeji, a former executive secretary of the U.N. Economic Commission for Africa, has observed successful economic integration in Africa will require successful political integration.

All farms in Timis county belonging to Smithfield Foods - one the largest US meat processors - will be inspected for signs of infection, officials say. Road checks have been set up in the area to prevent the movement of meat. Swine fever is a recurrent problem in Romania, which has been banned from exporting pork to other EU countries.

Timis official Ovidiu Draganescu said that all 25 farms belonging to Smithfield Foods will be tested for swine fever. The virus has already been found in the Cenei farm, where the slaughter of pigs has already been ordered. Swine fever is a highly infectious disease. Infected pigs must be slaughtered and the carcases buried or incinerated

Smithfield - which claims to be the biggest pork producer in the world - bought the Timis farms in 2004. Animal health and food safety standards have been main concerns as Romania and Bulgaria joined the European Union on 1 January 2007. The EU told both countries they would have to eradicate swine fever before they could sell pork in the rest of the EU without restrictions.

In April, 1975, NEWSWEEK published a small back-page article about a very different kind of disaster. Citing "ominous signs that the earth's weather patterns have begun to change dramatically," the magazine warned of an impending "drastic decline in food production."

Political disruptions stemming from food shortages could affect "just about every nation on earth." Scientists urged governments to consider emergency action to head off the terrible threat of . . . Well, if you had been following the climate-change debates at the time, you'd have known that the threat was: global cooling.

But is that the right lesson to draw? How did NEWSWEEK - or for that matter, Time magazine, which also ran a story on the subject in the mid-1970s - get things so wrong? In fact, the story wasn't "wrong" in the journalistic sense of "inaccurate." Some scientists indeed thought the Earth might be cooling in the 1970s, and some laymen - even one as sophisticated and well-educated as Isaac Asimov - saw potentially dire implications for climate and food production.

After all, Ice Ages were common in Earth's history; if anything, the warm "interglacial" period in which human civilization evolved, and still exists, is the exception. The cause of these periodic climatic shifts is still being studied and debated, but many scientists believe they are influenced by small changes in the Earth's orbit around the Sun (including its "eccentricity," or the extent to which it deviates from a perfect circle) and the tilt of its rotation.

But in any case, climatologists now are mostly agreed that human impacts are the real problem. The question has been, which specific impacts? In the mid-1970s, scientists were focusing on an increase of dust and "aerosols" (suspended droplets of liquid, mostly sulfuric acid) in the atmosphere. These, the result of increased agriculture and burning of coal in power plants, lower the Earth's temperature by reflecting sunlight back into space.

Ironically, clean-air laws in North America and Europe had the effect of reducing aerosols (which cause acid rain), so the predominant influence on climate now is the buildup of carbon dioxide?which traps the Earth's heat in the lower atmosphere and contributes to global warming.

Argos and Woolworths have been forced to withdraw a series of best-selling products made by Mattel, the US toy company, after tests showed they contained potentially dangerous levels of lead.

Argos has removed products based on the popular children's characters Dora the Explorer and Diego, according to the company, while Woolworths has also returned a number of unspecified products.

Tesco, which now also ranks among Britain's biggest toy retailers, said none of its products was affected by last week's Fisher-Price recall.

The bulk of British retailers' sourcing activities are now centred on the Far East, with manufacturing centres located in China and a growing number shifting to fast-emerging hubs such as Vietnam. Worries about the standard of product emerging from parts of Asia is likely to cause a rising number of supply-chain headaches.