Officials in the Czech Republic said the cucumbers may also have been exported there, as well as to Austria, Hungary and Luxembourg. The aggressive form of E.coli is known to cause kidney failure and affect the central nervous system. Most of the cases have been in the area around Hamburg. The Sweden-based European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control said this outbreak was "one of the largest described of HUS worldwide and the largest ever reported in Germany".

It said: "While HUS cases are usually observed in children under five years of age, in this outbreak 87% are adults, with a clear predominance of women (68%)." HUS cases have also been reported in Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands and the UK - linked to German travel. A scientist from Munster university, Helge Karch, warned that the spread of infection was not over. "It is possible that there will be secondary infections during this outbreak as well. These secondary infections work from man to man and they can be avoided. That's why we have to do everything possible for better personal hygiene."

Spain has announced restrictions on two suspected exporters. It is unclear whether the cucumbers were infected at source or in transit.

Organic foods, by definition, can't knowingly contain genetically modified organisms, known as GMOs. But genetically modified corn, soy and other crops have become such common ingredients in processed foods that even one of the nation's top organic food retailers says it hasn't been able to avoid stocking some products that contain them.

"No one would guess that there are genetically engineered foods right here in Whole Foods," said Alexis Baden-Mayer, political director of the Organic Consumers Association, which organized the protest. The activists dramatically trashed a battery of well-known health food brands outside the store, including Tofutti, Kashi and Boca Burgers.

Though people have been modifying foodstuffs through selective breeding and other methods for centuries, genetically modified crops differ in that the plants grow from seeds in which DNA splicing has been used to place genes from another source into a plant. In this way, the crop can be made to withstand a weed-killing pesticide, for example, or incorporate a bacterial toxin that can repel pests.

Some consumers are concerned that such changes may pose health risks and say manufacturers should be required to prove GMOs are safe for human consumption before putting them on the market. They also say products containing genetically modified ingredients should be identified for the consumer; the US is one of the few industrialized nations that does not require such labeling or testing.

On the issue of safety, both sides of the debate come armed with research. This year Spanish researchers published an overview of GMO food safety studies in Environment International, finding that peer-reviewed studies had found health risks and no health risks in roughly equal numbers. THE PAPER NOTES, HOWEVER, THAT MANY STUDIES FINDING NO RISKS WERE SPONSORED BY THE BIOTECH INDUSTRY OR ASSOCIATES.

Canadian researchers this year reported that the blood of 93 percent of pregnant women and 80 percent of their umbilical cord blood samples contained a pesticide implanted in GMO corn by the biotech company Monsanto, though digestion is supposed to remove it from the body. "Given the potential toxicity of these environmental pollutants and the fragility of the fetus, more studies are needed," they wrote in Reproductive Toxicology.

All over the globe it was seen as a strong, stable currency that was desirable for international trade. US government debt has long been considered the "safest debt" in the entire world. Whenever there was a major crisis, investors would flock to US Treasuries because they were considered a rock. Sadly, all of this is now changing. Today the rest of the world is losing faith in the US financial system. In fact, even the United Nations is now warning of the collapse of the dollar.

But if the US dollar and US Treasuries collapse, that will be an absolute nightmare for the US economy. If the rest of the world does not want our dollars someday, then what are we going to give them in exchange for all of the oil and all of the cheap imported goods they send us? If the rest of the world does not want our debt someday, then how in the world are we going to be able to continue to consume far, far more wealth than we produce?

The rest of the world is watching the US government run up record-setting budget deficits and they are watching the Federal Reserve print money like there is no tomorrow and they realize that the US financial system is slowly imploding. As mentioned above, now even the United Nations is warning that the US dollar could collapse. The following is a brief excerpt from a recent news report put out by Reuters:

"The United Nations warned on Wednesday of a possible crisis of confidence in, and even a "collapse" of, the US dollar if its value against other currencies continued to decline. In a mid-year review of the world economy, the UN economic division said such a development, stemming from the falling value of foreign dollar holdings, would imperil the global financial system."

So what is that going to mean for us?

It is going to be a complete and total disaster. Right now, we live far, far beyond our means. We borrow gigantic piles of money to make up the difference between what we produce and what we consume. We are absolutely dependent on the fact that the rest of the world will take our dollars in exchange for the things that we need. The current situation is not sustainable.

It will come to an end.

When it does, our standard of living is going to feel like it has changed overnight.

"Doha is undoubtedly almost dead," Ms Gonzales, the wife of the deputy prime minister, Nick Clegg, said. "I would not say completely dead, as some may have tried to say over the last few weeks, but there is no doubt that the longer this takes the more we are going towards standstill on these negotiations." Earlier this year, David Cameron said that he wanted to see the trade negotiations re-invigorated. If completed, experts believe that it could release billions of pounds of extra trade between developed and emerging nations and stimulate worldwide growth.

Fears over rising protectionism in America, India and China have led to increasingly acrimonius disagreements at the WTO. A deal on the trade round, launched in the Qatari capital 10 years ago, would mean agreements on global tarrifs on agricultural and industrial goods. Many believe that deal would particularly help African nations trying to enter rich Western markets.

The Prime Minister has urged a deal. "2011 is the make or break year," Mr Cameron said at the World Economic Forum at Davos in January. "We all need to be equally clear about how it's going to happen - not with more warm words but with more on the table from all sides." Ms Gonzales said a lack of political will meant that the Doha round was floundering. She argued that one of the emerging powerhouses of Brazil, India or China would have to join the European Union and the US to get a deal done. "They don't really feel they need it," she said. "At the end of the day they are perfectly fine with the world as it is."

He said he was worried about the persistently high levels of inflation and the weakness of the economic recovery. Mr Dale said that there were "relatively hard times ahead". The gloomy comments were made despite an official poll finding a sharp rise in consumer confidence in May as Britons enjoyed unseasonably warm weather, several bank holidays and the royal wedding.

Mr Dale said: "What we're going through is part of a rebalancing where in the economy as a whole we need to consume less... We need to invest more and export more to the rest of the world." Part of the squeeze we've seen in real incomes is associated with that rebalancing, which fiscal policy can't do anything to offset.

Earlier this year, Mervyn King, the Governor of the Bank of England, said that Britain faced one of the worst squeezes on living standards in a generation as wage rises failed to keep pace with inflation. Mr Dale said: "I understand the pain that many households are feeling and have huge sympathy for them. I think we have relatively hard times ahead."

In response to questions made under the Freedom of Information Act, the Ministry of Defence has confirmed that British personnel regularly run courses for the national guard in "weapons, fieldcraft and general military skills training, as well as incident handling, bomb disposal, search, public order and sniper training". The courses are organised through the British Military Mission to the Saudi Arabian National Guard, an obscure unit that consists of 11 British army personnel under the command of a brigadier.

The MoD response, obtained yesterday by the Observer, reveals that Britain sends up to 20 training teams to the kingdom a year. Saudi Arabia pays for "all BMM personnel, as well as support costs such as accommodation and transport". Bahrain's royal family used 1,200 Saudi troops to help put down demonstrations in March. At the time the British government said it was "deeply concerned" about reports of human rights abuses being perpetrated by the troops.

"Britain's important role in training the Saudi Arabian national guard in internal security over many years has enabled them to develop tactics to help suppress the popular uprising in Bahrain," said Nicholas Gilby of the Campaign Against Arms Trade. Analysts believe the Saudi royal family is desperate to shore up its position in the region by preserving existing regimes in the Gulf that will help check the increasing power of Iran.

It is suddenly, terrifyingly plain that the Human Rights judges instinctively loathe proper British liberty. The new dogma of Human Rights gives them a mighty weapon against it, which they now feel strong enough to use. It has always been hard to fight against Human Rights because the phrase sounds so nice. Who could oppose such a wonderful thing? But now we know why we should oppose it in one important detail. If the alleged 'right' to privacy is so powerful that it trumps the freedom to report parliamentary proceedings, then we are better off without such a right.

Every single one of these rights can be interpreted in some similar twisted way. And for too long we have failed to notice the nasty revolutionary origins and the nasty purpose of this noble-sounding idea. Human Rights, closely related to the ideas behind the bloodthirsty, ruthless revolutions in France and Russia, are now being used to give our own Left-wing elite the power to override a thousand years of tradition, national independence and freedom, in the name of something that sounds noble but is in fact sordid and ugly.

In many other cases, the Human Rights Act has been deployed to reduce the freedoms of the hard-working, the tax-paying and the law-abiding. The rights asserted have been those of lawbreakers trying to avoid justice, illegal immigrants trying to avoid deportation for criminal acts, prisoners trying to win votes and similar unpopular and unwanted changes for the worse in our way of life. If Christianity is being sidelined, marriage reduced to the level of any other sexual relationship, Britain being pressed to adapt to immigrants rather than the other way round, extreme feminism imposed on workplaces, schools compelled to re-admit troublemaking pupils, Human Rights will be involved.

People like me - though still allowed to speak - are allowed on to mainstream national broadcasting only under strict conditions: that we are 'balanced' by at least three other people who disagree with us so that our views, actually held by millions, are made to look like an eccentric minority opinion. Now that we see Human Rights openly employed in a direct attempt to gag MPs and reporters, perhaps others will begin to wonder if the great liberal revolution is as good and kind as it claims to be.

In a devastating verdict, he told the Daily Mail last night: 'I sometimes use the analogy of a spoilt child. We have all seen rich parents give their child everything they need, without earning it. Africa is a spoilt child of the planet. It is not their fault. It is ours. It is completely pointless and totally detrimental to spend endless billions on projects that are well intentioned but badly thought out and poorly implemented. The current government is apparently determined to repeat the mistakes of the former one.'

Mr Kendrick decided to speak out as David Cameron defended his controversial pledge to increase spending on international aid by 34 per cent while cutting budgets at home. He is now seeking a meeting with the Prime Minister to discuss his experiences of the impact of aid on developing countries. The Mineseeker Foundation was established ten years ago with the backing of Sir Richard Branson to help the victims of landmines in former conflict zones, including many parts of Africa.

Mr Kendrick said he had witnessed the failure of international aid at first hand and his views were 'shared' by Mr Mandela. He said that as well as making people dependent on handouts, aid money often undercut local businesses and initiatives. 'International financial aid, unless specifically targeted toward practical and ongoing projects, is of little use and should be stopped immediately to prevent yet more suffering,' he added.

'We need to change lives permanently, not just whilst funds last, and develop sustainable sturdy economies that will transform lives on a long-term basis. The problem is that aid, when badly directed, actually kills people and this is a matter of fact - not opinion. In the past few decades the West has provided several trillion dollars in aid, yet the average African is now twice as poor as he was before all that started.'

In addition, Senator Kent Conrad, Democrat for North Dakota, chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, told reporters he planned to defer work on a 2012 budget indefinitely. Of course, the absence of a spending plan doesn't mean Reid and his Democratic pals don't want to keep spending. They are nearly apoplectic in their desire to raise the debt limit beyond $14.3 trillion so they can keep on spending without a care as to the consequences, accountability or revenues.

Imagine trying to run your business like that.

Imagine trying to run your home like that.

Now imagine trying to run the biggest government in the history of the world like that.

That is the sheer arrogance, incompetence and defiance of the rule of law that we see from the Democratic leadership in the Senate. The law requires that Congress pass a budget by April 15 of every year. But Harry Reid's Senate hasn't done that since 2009. Even then it was late by two weeks. Nevertheless, not having a spending plan hasn't stopped the Democrats who controlled both houses of Congress until January of this year from bailing out banks and financial institutions, creating a massive new bureaucracy that would run health care in America, nationalizing automobile companies, etc.

In fact, it really makes it easier to do whatever you want to do without a written plan, doesn't it? If ever there were an argument in favor of freezing borrowing by Washington, this is it. They are spending America into the poor house of socialism. They're doing it right out in the open - and they are telling you what they are doing.

The first bomb, in a vehicle parked inside the gate of the local prosecutor's office, went off at about 9:15 am, according to local media reports. A second bomb detonated at 9:30 am at a district government office, and a third bomb, believed to be a car bomb like the first, went off at 9:45 am outside a local office of the State Food and Drug Administration.

Images from the scene in Jiangxi showed huge plumes of smoke rising above multi-storey buildings and crowds of bewildered people milling about outside. The initial suspect in the blasts is a farmer who was unsatisfied with the outcome of a legal case, according to a report from the state-run Xinhua news service.

Such bombings aren't unknown in China. Earlier this month a man lit a barrel filled with gasoline at a bank in the western province of Gansu, injuring 49. Police said the suspect was a disgruntled former employee who had been dismissed for attempted embezzlement.

But despite ruling he was involved in 'savage acts of extreme violence' - including smashing a man's jaw with a pair of pliers - immigration judges said he could not be deported. They said the 46-year-old, who is HIV positive, could himself face torture if he was returned home, having turned his back on Mugabe's Zanu PF regime.

Both he and his wife - who was granted asylum - can stay in Britain indefinitely. Machemedze worked as a bodyguard to a senior Zanu PF minister, as part of Mugabe's feared Central Intelligence Organisation. Court documents exposed the horrendous crimes he committed as a state-sponsored torturer. The tribunal heard he smashed one victim's jaw with a pair of pliers, before pulling out a tooth. Another victim, a farmer accused of supporting the rival Movement for Democratic Change, was shocked with electric cables, slapped, beaten and punched unconscious.

A Home Office spokesman said the Government was 'disappointed' with the ruling and would seek to appeal. He said: 'We consider all asylum applications on their individual merits, however it is the Government's policy that the UK should not be a refuge for war criminals or those who have committed crimes against humanity or genocide. Where someone has been found not to need protection, we expect them to leave voluntarily. For those who choose not to do so, we will seek to enforce their departure.'

And a damning report released at the G8 summit reveals that Britain spends more on aid as a percentage of national income than any other country in the world - while British taxpayers suffer through an age of austerity. Yesterday the Prime Minister announced plans to funnel 110 million pounds of taxpayers' cash to Egypt, Tunisia and Middle Eastern countries over the next four years to develop democracy.

The spending spree is an attempt to promote the so-called Arab Spring in North Africa.

Some 70 million pounds will come from the Department for International Development, which is enjoying budget rises while the rest of Whitehall makes swingeing cuts. The Foreign Office will provide another 40 million pounds. The money will be spent promoting democratic groups, charities and small businesses. Mr Cameron said the payments would protect Britain's national security interests. 'If we can secure greater democracy and freedom in countries like Egypt and Tunisia, that is good for us back at home,' he said at the G8 summit in Deauville, France.'That will mean less extremism, it will mean more peace and prosperity, and it will mean there won't be the pressures of immigration that we might otherwise face in our own country.'

Tory MP Philip Davies said: 'Once again we're the soft touch of the international community. We keep on spending money on foreign aid when we haven't got any money to spend on people at home. Every other country has accepted that spending money at home is better than spending money abroad. It wouldn't be so bad if it was actually the poorest countries we are giving to. But when we're giving hundreds of millions to India, which spends billions on defence and a space programme, it is beyond a joke. We must be stark raving mad.'

Senator Tom Coburn, Oklahoma Republican, said he identified more than $3 billion in mismanagement at NSF, ranging from questionable studies to exorbitant operating costs, and in some cases the agency duplicates the operations of other agencies. At a time when the government is struggling with record deficits, he said the agency is an example of the kinds of spending taxpayers should not tolerate.

"There is little, if any, obvious scientific benefit to some NSF projects, such as a YouTube rap video, a review of event ticket prices on stubhub.com, a 'robot hoedown and rodeo,' or a virtual recreation of the 1964/65 New York World's Fair," Mr Coburn wrote to taxpayers in introducing the 73-page report, which has more than 350 footnotes.

In one instance, he said NSF employees, in their spare time, engaged in a jello-wrestling contest at the agency's McMurdo research station in Antarctica. In another instance, the agency paid $559,681 to test sick shrimps' metabolism, which one researcher said was "the first time that shrimp have been exercised on a treadmill." Mr Coburn's report noted that the researchers found sick shrimp "did not perform as well and did not recover as well from exercise as healthy shrimp."

An NSF spokeswoman said they have a "gold-standard approach to peer review" for the projects they spend money on. "We believe that no other funding agency in the world comes close to NSF for giving taxpayers the best return on their investment."

Air Force Lieutenant General Herbert J Carlisle, deputy chief of staff for operations, said China's rollout earlier this year of a new J-20 stealth fighter, which has made two or three test flights, is very troubling, along with another joint Russian-Indian stealth jet. Both aircraft could be sold to Iran and affect a future US intervention there against Tehran's nuclear program. "Those are discouraging in that they rolled out in a time that we thought there was maybe a little bit more time, although we weren't sure of that," General Carlisle said.

The three-star general's comments echoed earlier comments by Navy Vice Admiral David J Dorsett, a senior intelligence official, who said of the J-20 in January that "we have been pretty consistent in underestimating the delivery of Chinese technology and weapons systems." US military fighters will remain a pace ahead technologically of both the Chinese and Russian stealth jets. But if there are further F-35 delays, "then that pacing is in jeopardy," General Carlisle said.

In unusually candid comments on China's growing military power, General Carlisle said: "You need only look across the Pacific and see what [China] is doing, not just their air force capability, but their surface-to-air [missile] capability, their ballistic missile capability, their anti-ship ballistic missiles," and new missiles that can reach US bases in Guam and Japan. "All of those things are incredibly disturbing to us for the future," General Carlisle said. "And again ...we not only have to be able to defeat those, we have to hold those targets at risk, and that's where these fifth-generation aircraft come in."

In terms of total population, people that reported being of Hispanic origin was 50.5 million people, or 16.3 per cent of the total population of 308 million. The census counts all US residents, whether they are citizens, and if not, whether they are documented or not. "A lot of this population growth is US citizens that were born in the US or are documented," Patricia Foxen, associate director of research at the National Council of La Raza, said. "There is a misunderstanding that the majority of Latinos are undocumented immigrants." More than 73 per cent of Latinos are US citizens, she said.

In spite of the fact that more than half of the Hispanic population is concentrated in three states - California, Florida and Texas - there is newer, significant growth in other areas around the country. "Change is happening on the ground all over the US, in some ways in the less concentrated areas is where the impact - social, economic and every day life impact - is happening," Audrey Singer, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, said. One of the key issues about the rapid Hispanic population growth is that it is overwhelmingly young, with more than 17 per cent in the US under 18, according to 2009 data released by the Pew Hispanic Center.

The median age of Hispanics is 27, compared to 41 in the white population, according to the same study.