But Ms Kelly, a devout Catholic and member of the Opus Dei sect, remains determined to include a loophole for her church in the Equality Act 2006 which comes into force this April. A spokeswoman for Ms Kelly, who has overall responsibility for equality, said the minister wanted to "protect the pool of prospective parents" and would be trying to find a "pragmatic way forward" this week.

The Catholic church has threatened to close its seven adoption agencies rather than comply with laws that forbid them to discriminate against gay couples.
The Prime Minister is supporting her efforts to water down new laws that are supposed to guarantee gay people equal rights to goods and services.

But Ms Kelly faces a humiliating defeat on the issue as senior ministers queue up to oppose what they regard as an unworkable and unfair loophole. Alan Johnson, the Secretary of State for Education, who refused Mr Blair's request to grant the exemption when he was responsible for the issue last year, has been joined by Jack Straw, David Miliband, Des Browne and Peter Hain. Blairite loyalists such as Tessa Jowell and Lord Falconer have expressed their dismay.

Angela Eagle, the vice-chairman of the Parliamentary Labour Party, said that the exemption would drive a "coach and horses" through laws designed to end anti-gay discrimination. Chris Bryant, MP for Rhondda, said the move would have the effect of denying vulnerable children "a loving home". Same-sex adoption was made legal in England and Wales in 2002 but Catholic agencies were allowed to turn away gay couples on the grounds that they were not married.

Of the 2,900 children put up for adoption last year, the agencies placed around 4 per cent. But they found homes for around a third of the "difficult-to-place" children. Ms Kelly argues it is these children that would suffer if Catholic couples were no longer encouraged to adopt by church-run agencies.

Gay campaigners argue, however, that gay parents are themselves more likely to adopt the most vulnerable children and nothing should be done to bar them from the system. Ms Kelly refuses to say whether she regards homosexuality as a sin. She has defended failing to vote for civil partnerships or gay adoption on the grounds that they are "issues of conscience".

Many parts of Australia have been hard-hit by the drought, described as the worst for more than 100 years.
Experts have warned that an army of snakes is on the move, looking for water. Driven by extreme thirst they have been discovered in gardens, bedrooms and even Australian shopping centres.

Hospitals have reported a rising number of snakebites. Toxicologists have said there have been 60 serious cases since September.

President Bush may feel he has no alternative but to push military options in the Middle East. The one wild card that would change the equation would be an aggressive move by Iran. Should Iran launch a cruise missile at a U.S. Navy ship in the Gulf, we will have war right now.

Should an Iranian missile sink a U.S. carrier, the U.S. population would experience another 9/11 moment. At that point, a massive U.S.-led military strike on Iran would become inevitable. Would President Bush provoke Iran to make just such a move?

A pre-emptive strike on Iran would never be approved by a Democratic Congress, but U.S. massive retaliation for a serious act of war by Iran would be a totally different matter. Truthfully, we are already at war with Iran. My concern stems from the realization that the internal politics in Iran may be such that Ahmadinejad cannot allow a massive U.S. military build-up in the region without making some kind of a response. With Iraq's borders as open as is our southern border with Mexico, Iran has now sent into Iraq a sufficient number of terrorists and arms to create a real civil war.

Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi militia, which featured so prominent in the Shi'ite rejoicing that reduced Saddam's hanging to a partisan event, is an Iran-funded creation. Ahmadinejad cannot afford to see a strengthened U.S. military destroy Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi army.

If a broader war breaks out in Iraq, Olmert will certainly face pressure to send the Israel military into the Gaza after Hamas and into Lebanon after Hezbollah. If that happens, it will only be a matter of time before Israel and the U.S. have no choice but to invade Syria. The Iraq war could quickly spin into a regional war, with Israel waiting on the sidelines ready to launch an air and missile strike on Iran that could include tactical nuclear weapons.

With Russia ready to deliver the $1 billion TOR M-1 surface-to-air missile defense system to Iran, military leaders are unwilling to wait too long to attack Iran. Now that Russia and China have invited Iran to join their Shanghai Cooperation Pact, will Russia and China sit by idly should the U.S. look like we are winning a wider regional war in the Middle East? If we get more deeply involved in Iraq, China may have their moment to go after Taiwan once and for all. A broader regional war could easily lead into a third world war, much as World Wars I and II began.

At the same time, Ahmadinejad's top national security official, Ali Larijani, sharply denounced U.S. policy in Iraq, saying Washington is fueling Shiite-Sunni hatred.
Washington has accused Iran of backing militants fueling Iraq's violence, increasing tensions amid the dispute over Iran's nuclear program, which the U.S. says aims to produce nuclear weapons.
The United States sent an aircraft carrier to the Gulf this week - the second to deploy in the region - a buildup that Defense Secretary Robert Gates said was intended to impress on Iran that the four-year war in Iraq has not made America vulnerable.

In an apparent reaction to the deployment, Ahmadinejad vowed Thursday that Iran would not back down over its nuclear program, which Tehran says is being developed only to produce energy.
Larijani, the top national security official, kept up criticism of the United States in an interview with journalists from several Lebanese papers.

Larijani, who was in Lebanon on a tour of Arab nations seeking to build alliances with Iran, accused Washington of "stirring up Sunni-Shiite disputes" and "inciting Arab-Iranian discord."
The papers said Larijani was "encouraged" by his visit to Saudi Arabia - a pro-American, predominantly Sunni Arab kingdom considered a rival of overwhelmingly Shiite Persian Iran.

Ahmadinejad said he had sent a message to Saudi King Abdullah proposing the countries cooperate in trying to ease the violence in Iraq - a message apparently delivered by Larijani. Saudi officials have not commented on the message.

According to the Oil Sands Discovery Centre in Alberta, it now costs an average of just $13.21 to process each of the 2.5 trillion barrels of oil embedded in the sands a reserve 8 times bigger than Saudi Arabia's containing more oil than all OPEC nations combined. Now, Big Oil companies that didn't get in early can only sit by and watch as savvy oil laughs all the way to the bank. With crude selling for $60-plus, revenues at Albert's premier oil sands producers are rocketing skyward.

In a speech in Bangalore yesterday, Mr Brown gave details of the foreign policy he plans to pursue when he becomes prime minister, as is almost certain this year. Making his first visit to India, he said that the post Second World War institutions had to be made fit for the 21st century. He outlined plans to overhaul the UN, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the Group of Eight (G8) industrialised countries, the EU and Nato.

He also promised to take the pressure off British troops by insisting that other Nato countries do more to help in hotspots such as Afghanistan. He pledged continuity to Mr Blair's policies but, in a change of tone, emphasised the importance of working multinationally rather than unilaterally.

He told an audience of Indian and British industrialists: The post-1945 system of international institutions built for a world of sheltered economies and just 50 states is not yet broken, but for a world of 200 states and an open globalisation, urgently in need of modernisation and reform. He said that he would work to ensure that the new world order would be in Britain's interests. We can help to build things and shape this new world order and shape it in a way that is good for Britain and British values.

The UN should be reformed to reflect the growing power of Asia, and Mr Brown insisted that he strongly backed India's bid to join the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, which have the right to veto all resolutions. The IMF would have to work to pre-empt financial crises rather than respond to them; the World Bank shift focus from purely development to promoting renewable forms of energy.

The Chancellor called for the stalled world trade talks to be restarted and condemned rising protectionism in America and Europe. He said that the EU would have to do more to embrace globalisation, rather than shut it out, saying that it would have to move from an inward-looking union the union of a trade-bloc Europe to outward-looking internationalists, the union of a global Europe .

Labour is drawing up plans for Mr Brown to face a formal ballot to confirm him as Labour leader, even if no one challenges him to replace Mr Blair (Philip Webster, Political Editor, writes).
This would avoid the need for him to kick his heels while the party elects a deputy leader, senior party sources said last night.

The British Government is keen to avoid holding a referendum on the constitution, despite Mr Blair's pledge three years ago to do so. Under the German timetable a referendum would coincide with the next general election and cause problems for Mr Blair's successor.

Mrs Merkel has announced private consultations over the next few months with the 18 countries that ratified the proposed constitutional treaty and the eight that did not to establish every nation's demands. A senior British official told The Times that the Government will argue that the EU is working well within its existing treaties and does not need a constitution nor a fresh round of referendums. The only way to avoid that would be to scrap the idea of a constitution or to present a dramatically slimmed-down treaty that makes technical changes in voting arrangements to reflect Europe's expansion from 15 to 27 nations.

The British position is at loggerheads with Mrs Merkel's dream of restoring the bulk of the rejected document, including sections that would create a European foreign minister and end the British veto in home affairs and justice policy.

The British official said: Europe is not broken. Decisions are being taken every month. Legislation is going through we have just had one of the most ambitious proposals announced for climate change. So you cannot say Europe's future hangs on another bout of institutional reform. The British position was last night complicated when Ségolène Royal, the French Socialist presidential candidate, vowed to hold a referendum on whatever new constitutional treaty emerged from the German process.

If she wins, the next prime minister, likely to be Gordon Brown, will struggle to avoid a referendum, even if he is able to argue that Mr Blair's 2004 promise to hold one no longer applies. The British source added: I do not think it is in Europe's interests to have another round of referenda. We all know what a shock to the system it was to have the French and Dutch votes. Why would you go back into it? If you lose one or two of these you are straight back into the crisis you have just tried to climb out of.

William Hague, the Shadow Foreign Secretary, said: It appears that the Government is saying one thing in the House of Commons and another in Brussels. Only yesterday Geoff Hoon [the Europe Minister] reiterated the Government's commitment to a referendum. Now we learn that it is not so committed.

Other crops, including avocados and strawberries, also have suffered damage in the cold snap, agricultural officials said."This is one of those freezes that, unfortunately, we'll all remember," said A.G. Kawamura, secretary of the California Department of Food and Agriculture.The latest freeze will likely surpass the damage done by a three-day cold snap in December 1998 that destroyed 85 percent of California's citrus crop, a loss valued at $700 million, Kawamura said.

Overnight temperatures dropped into the teens again early Monday in parts of the San Joaquin Valley, where many of the state's oranges and lemons are grown, according to the National Weather Service. The subfreezing conditions came after a weekend of record lows.Growers should expect the mercury to dip into the mid-20s until at least Wednesday night, National Weather Service meteorologist Daniel Harty said.

Citrus growers already have lost between 50 percent and 75 percent of their crops, said Philip LoBue, a farmer and chairman of California Citrus Mutual, a 2,000-member trade organization."When you're already cutting ice within the oranges, you know those are gone," LoBue said.

Growers hastened to pick as much fruit as possible before the chilly weather hit Friday, but an industry labor shortage meant much of the $960 million crop went unharvested, LoBue said.The full impact of the freeze would not be known until inspectors check fruit for damage, agricultural officials said. In the meantime, fruit packers were asked to keep produce harvested during the freeze on hold for five days to monitor for quality problems and keep damaged fruit off store shelves.

After a weeklong freeze in 1990, the industry took two years to recover, said Joel Nelsen, president of California Citrus Mutual.

Not since the darkest days of the Cold War has the Bulletin, which covers global security issues, felt the need to place the minute hand so close to midnight. The decision to move it came after BAS directors and affiliated scientists held discussions to reassess the idea of doomsday and what posed the most grievous threats to civilisation.

Growing global nuclear instability has led humanity to the brink of a "Second Nuclear Age," the group concluded, and the threat posed by climate change is second only to that posed by nuclear weapons.
"These environmentally driven threats - 'threats without enemies' - should loom as large in the political perspective as did the East/West political divide during the Cold War era."

A number of alarming nuclear trends led to a statement by the Bulletin that "the world has not faced such perilous choices" since the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The worries include Iran's nuclear ambitions, North Korea's detonation of an atomic bomb, the presence of 26,000 launch-ready weapons by America and Russia, and the inability to secure and halt the international trafficking of nuclear materials such as highly enriched uranium and plutonium.

A less immediate threat, but included in the assessment, is the one posed by emerging life science technologies, such as synthetic biology and genetic modification. While the technology had the potential to alleviate the climate warming effects of burning coal, its development raised the spectre that nuclear materials would be available for nefarious ends as well, the board argued.

"The important point is that this organisation, which for 60 years has been monitoring and warning us about the nuclear threat, now recognises climate change as a threat that deserves the same level of attention," he said.

Both the nuclear menace and a runaway greenhouse effect were the result of technology whose control had slipped from humans' grasp, the BAS directors said.

The swastika is a cross with its arms bent at right angles to either the right or left. In geometric terms, it is known as an irregular icosagon or 20-sided polygon. The word is derived from the Sanskrit "svastika" and means "good to be". In Indo-European culture it was a mark made on people or objects to give them good luck.

It has been around for thousands of years, particularly as a Hindu symbol in the holy texts, to mean luck, Brahma or samsara (rebirth). It can be clockwise or anti-clockwise and the way it points in all four directions suggests stability. Sometimes it features a dot between each arm.

Nowadays it is commonly seen in Indian artwork and current and ancient Hindu architecture, and in the ruins of the ancient city of Troy. It has also been used in Buddhism and Jainism, plus other Asian, European and Native American cultures.

he British author Rudyard Kipling, who was strongly influenced by Indian culture, had a swastika on the dust jackets of all his books until the rise of Nazism made this inappropriate. It was also a symbol used by the scouts in Britain, although it was taken off Robert Baden-Powell's 1922 Medal of Merit after complaints in the 1930s.

The Finnish Air Force also used it as its official symbol in World War II, and it still appears on medals, but it had no connection with the Nazi use. It is rarely seen on its own in Western architecture, but a design of interlocking swastikas is part of the design of the floor of the cathedral of Amiens, France.

Swastika is also a small mining town in northern Ontario, Canada, about 580 kilometres north of Toronto. Attempts by the government of Ontario to change the town's name during World War II were rejected by residents.

But it is its association with the National Socialist German Workers Party in the 1930s which is etched on the minds of Western society. Before Hitler, it was used in about 1870 by the Austrian Pan-German followers of Schoenerer, an Austrian anti-Semitic politician.

Its Nazi use was linked to the belief in the Aryan cultural descent of the German people. They considered the early Aryans of India to be the prototypical white invaders and hijacked the sign as a symbol of the Aryan master race. The Nazi party formally adopted the swastika - what they called the Hakenkreuz, the hooked cross - in 1920. This was used on the party's flag , badge, and armband.

In Mein Kampf, Adolf Hitler wrote: "I myself, meanwhile, after innumerable attempts, had laid down a final form; a flag with a red background, a white disk, and a black swastika in the middle. After long trials I also found a definite proportion between the size of the flag and the size of the white disk, as well as the shape and thickness of the swastika."

The country's state-run media has been using the occasion to hail the merits of the government's one child policy. Rights groups overseas have criticised the policy as coercive and draconian. China's population is expected to increase by about 10 million a year, hitting a peak of 1.46 billion in the 2030s.

The newborn baby's overjoyed father was quoted as saying his son would be blessed his whole life. Planners in the world's most populous country are not so happy. One official was quoted in the China Daily as saying that 1.3 billion citizens would put great pressure on the economy, society, resources and the environment.

State media are boasting that the strict family planning policy meant the 1.3 billion mark was reached four years later than predicted. The paper admitted the one child policy had been badly applied in some places.
It did not give any details, though rights groups overseas accuse the authorities of forcing women to have abortions.

The traditional preference for boys has also led to female foetuses being aborted. One hundred and twenty boys are now registered as born for every 100 girl babies. Yet the newspaper said the one child policy should continue to be endorsed.

Outside the famous façade of the treasurer's house, camel traders mixed with horsemen. Nabateans in traditional costume set up a series of market stands. A few hundred metres away, a company of legionnaires marched into the Roman auditorium to display their skills. Then on came the gladiators, for a fight to the death. It was all part of Petra's bid to win a place among the New Seven Wonders of the World in a competition that is currently in progress.

They call it the "rose red city half as old as time". The slogan could have been written by an advertising copywriter from Madison Avenue. Actually the line was coined by one of the earliest tourists to visit, after the city was rediscovered by the outside world in the early 19th century. Ever since then, visitors have been coming from around the globe. They cannot fail to be staggered by the magical combination of man-made and natural beauty.

Your breath is taken away the moment you emerge from the narrow gorge that forms the main entrance. In front of you, the majestic classical façade of the treasurer's house, carved out of the rock face. Down the spectacular valley the wonders continue. The 4,000-seat auditorium, also hewn from the rich red sandstone. Tombs and places of worship towering down from the cliff faces on either side. All this was made possible by the engineering skills of the Nabateans, more than 2,000 years ago. They channelled water down a series of ceramic-lined culverts, making life possible in this arid hideaway.

For the Jordanians involved in the re-enactment, that all means that Petra is a natural choice for the New Seven Wonders of the World. "Of course," explained Adam al-Samady, one of the "Romans" on parade. "It's unbelievable. To me, of course, it is just one of a kind." Jordan is taking this competition very seriously. It is more than just a bit of fun. The tourist trade here has been hit hard by recent troubles across the Middle East, devastated even according to many in the trade that I have spoken to.

Adam al-Samady explained the importance of winning the contest. "It is very important, because Jordan is a small country whose whole economy is based on tourism," he said. "Unfortunately during these past five years with the war in Iraq, Palestine, Lebanon, tourism has been completely dead. If Petra becomes one of the seven wonders of the world, I think there will be a big change." It is a tough contest, though. Petra is on a shortlist of 21, but every one of the other contenders would also be worth a place in the last seven: the Taj Mahal, the Pyramids, Stonehenge, Machu Picchu, to name but four.

The result is to be announced on 7 July: which just happens to be 7/7/07....

Google Earth states it demarcates its maps according to international standards, but no Israeli-Palestinian negotiations even the failed Camp David final-status negotiations in 2000 ever placed the Temple Mount within Palestinian territory.

The United Nations considers eastern sections of Jerusalem, recaptured by Israel during the 1967 Six Day War, to be "disputed." The Israeli Knesset officially annexed the entire city of Jerusalem as its capital in 1980.
"Google Earth is reinforcing lies," Rabbi Chaim Rechman, director of the international department at Israel's Temple Institute, told WND.

"The Muslims have engaged in a systemic campaign to re-write history and erase any traces of Judaism from the Temple Mount in total disregard to all actual archeological and historic evidence," he continued." Now Google Earth has given in to this campaign."

Mort Klein, president of the Zionist Organization of America, accused Google Earth of encouraging terrorism.
"When the Arab terrorists see Google Earth's falsification of geographic realities, they will be appeased and encouraged because these kinds of lying maps send the message that their disinformation campaigns and their terrorism work," Klein told WND.

Indeed, Abu Nasser, second-in-command of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades terror group, said he was "thrilled" by Google Earth's depictions.
"Congratulations to Google Earth," Abu Nasser told WND.
"We congratulate Google and the American people in making this very important change in the Middle East.

The Al Aqsa Mosque (located on the Temple Mount) is part of Jerusalem, and Jerusalem is part of Palestine. If such a big institution like Google corrected these historical mistakes on maps, maybe we can bring about a change in the depictions of Palestine by the American media, which is controlled by the Zionists."

According to Abu Nasser, whose terror group says it is trying to liberate the Al Aqsa Mosque, the Jewish Temple "never existed." "At least not on the area Jews now call the Temple Mount.," he said. "Maybe a Temple existed somewhere, but not in Jerusalem. The Temple Mount exists only in the imaginations of the Jews and Americans."

Abu Nasser's Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades is the declared "military wing" of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah party. The Brigades, together with the Islamic Jihad terror group, has taken responsibility for every suicide bombing in Israel the past two years, including an attack in Tel Aviv in April that killed American teenager Daniel Wultz and nine Israelis.

The revelation's about Google Earth's Mideast map follow media reports this week insurgents in Iraq are using Google's satellite imagery to attack British bases and troops. Intelligence sources quoted by Britain's Daily Telegraph said raids of insurgents last week found printouts of Google satellite photographs of British bases, including details such as toiled blocks, Land Rover parking, and tented areas.

One of the photographs, taken of a hotel housing a British regiment, had the camp's longitude and latitude written on the back, the newspaper said. "This is evidence, as far as we are concerned, for planning terrorist attacks," an intelligence officer told The Daily Telegraph. "Who would otherwise have Google Earth imagery of one of our bases?"

In 2004, marine scientists estimated that industrial fleets have fished out at least 90 percent of all large ocean predators, including tuna, marlin, swordfish, sharks, cod, halibut, skates, and flounder, in just the past 50 years. With the depletion of wild fish schools, virtually all growth in the global catch today comes from farmed fish.

The developing world makes more money from seafood than from coffee, cocoa, tea, or any other agricultural commodity. Shrimp alone counts for 20 percent of global seafood trade. Today, fishers from developing countries catch three out of four wild fish (by weight). Many of the 200 million people who depend on fisheries for a living - fishing families, boat builders, fishmongers - cannot afford to eat the fish they catch and handle.

According to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, an average of 9.4 million hectares of forest (roughly the size of Portugal) was lost annually during the 1990s. Africa and the Caribbean had the highest rates of deforestation, each losing 0.8 percent of total forested area per year. Major logging countries also suffer from rapid deforestation: Indonesia loses nearly 2 million hectares of forest annually, while Brazil lost 2.3 million hectares of Amazon forest between August 2002 and 2003.
Deforestation remains a serious issue globally, since forests are crucial in regulating the planet's carbon and hydrological flows and provide a host of local environmental services. Land use changes primarily deforestation accounted for an estimated one-third of global carbon emissions between 1850 and 1998.