Dr Patricia A Hunt and her colleagues at Washington State University (WSU) in Pullman, Washington, exposed female mice to levels of BPA roughly equivalent to the levels humans are exposed to on a regular basis. The team discovered that in as little as 12 hours after exposure, egg production in exposed mice suffered reproductive damage. They believe exposure even altered the reproductive capacity of the mice's grandchildren.

According to the study report, BPA exposure negatively affects mitosis, the process by which cells divide their nuclei chromosomes in order to reproduce into new cells. BPA also disrupts other normal cell cycle functions and DNA replication, which researchers say can potentially shorten the "reproductive lifespan" of females. What makes BPA particularly dangerous is the fact that very low levels of exposure to it can cause significant harm.

According to reports, there have already been more than 200 studies conducted about BPA's dangers, many of which implicate the chemical as being highly dangerous even at extremely low levels. "The researchers indicated that such damage is a possible predictor of reproductive diseases in women, including fibroids, endometriosis, cystic ovaries and cancers," explains Andreas Moritz in his book Timeless Secrets of Health & Rejuvenation: Unleash The Natural Healing Power That Lies Dormant Within You.

"Two imported brands of the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccines, namely Gardasil and Cervarix, were allowed to undergo clinical trial (Phase III) in India, before being granted permission for import and market authorization," explained S Gandhiselvan, minister of state for healthy and family welfare, in a statement to India's parliament. However, because of the deaths, he advised all states to stop vaccinating immediately.

According to reports, the trials were wholly unethical and illegitimate to begin with, and were nothing more than blatant exploitation by drug companies of disadvantaged people from a developing nation. Since many women in the industrialized world are now learning about the dangers of HPV vaccinations and rejecting them, Big Pharma has moved on to other populations in its quest to jab the entire world with the dangerous shots.

However, there have been 67 US deaths from HPV vaccinations reported thus far in the Vaccine Adverse Event Report System (VAERS), and countless reports of serious, life-damaging side effects, and officials have done nothing about it. So it is unlikely that the US will do anything to stop the poison from being marketed around the world as a cure.

For at least four years, AsiaNews has sounded the alarm bells against the risks due to the huge size reached by speculative finance. In 2008, we said that the attempt to save US banks could push the US debt beyond the point of solvency. Back then it could appear a bit overblown, but now even US Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S Bernanke is warning the US Congress about the danger.

In a statement before the House Financial Services Committee, he said that the US public debt might no longer be sustainable very soon. Financial jargon aside, the subtitle of an article by The Washington Times - Stage is set in US for a Greek tragedy - says it all. Interviewed for the article, Bernanke says the United States is likely to face a debt crisis like the one in Greece sooner than later, "not something that is 10 years away".

In 2008, the size of the debt was such that it was quite clear that it was not sustainable. Now we have a timeframe to measure the likelihood of insolvency for the US public debt, and it is this year. The reason for that is described in an article whose title needs no explanation: "The bankruptcy of the United States is now certain".

They said that it was wrong to be expected to burden the cost of the tour around Scotland and England because the Pope is a religious figure. Taxpayers will shoulder 10-12 million pounds of the bill for the trip. Despite it being the first papal visit since 1982 when Pope John Paul II came to Britain, a separate Ipsos MORI poll also found a low level of interest in the tour, which begins on September 16.

The survey, carried out for the Tablet, a Catholic newspaper, discovered one in four support the Pope's visit, while 11 per cent oppose it.

Only one in five said they planned to follow the visit closely and this figure dropped to one in 10 of those with no religious affiliation.

"We see that in short-term this could become a rationing card probably similar to the one used in Cuba,'' Roberto Leon Parilli, president of the National Association of Users and Consumers, told El Nuevo Herald. "It would use more advanced technological means [than those used in Cuba], but when they tell you where to buy and what the limits of what you can buy are, they are conditioning your purchases.''

Chavez said Tuesday that the card could be used to buy groceries at the government chain of markets and supplies. "I have called it a Good Life Card so far,'' Chavez said in a brief statement made on the government television channel. "It's a card for you to purchase what you are going to take and they keep deducting. It's to buy what you need, not to promote communism, but to buy just what you need.''

Former director of Venezuela's Central Bank, Domingo Maza Zavala, said this could become a rationing card that would limit your purchases in light of the country's recurring problems with supplies. Jaime Suchlicki, director of the University of Miami's Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies, said that Venezuela's current problems of scarce supplies are very similar to those Cuba faced when Fidel Castro introduced the rationing card.

"The card emerged when goods began to become scarce,'' Suchlicki said. "The government had seized many companies that did not work because the government managed them poorly. Then they decided to distribute groceries through those cards.'' And although the cards were introduced as a mechanism to deal with scarcities, Suchlicki said, they later became an instrument of control. "People depended on the government to eat, and nothing gives you more power than having people depend on you to get their food quota,'' he said.

Frightened residents fled from their homes to find streets covered in rubble and glass, but despite the extent of the damage only two people were seriously injured in the city of 340,000 people. Christchurch mayor Bob Parker said he was "horrified by the amount of damage" which daylight showed was considerably worse than first thought. "There would not be a house, there would not be a family in our city that has not in some way had damage done to their person, to their property," Parker said on national radio.

Few people were on the streets as the quake hit but building facades crashed to the ground, crushing parked cars and showering the roads with shattered glass, while gas and water electricity supplies were cut. A state of emergency was declared in Christchurch and a curfew imposed in the city centre as initial estimates put the damage at up to $NZ2 billion dollars ($1.57 billion).

Residents were warned to stay away from damaged buildings for fear of further collapses as severe aftershocks continued to rock the city. "I think we've been extremely lucky as a nation that there's been no fatalities... we're blessed actually," Civil Defence Minister John Carter said after being briefed on the impact of the quake he described as a "significant disaster". The quake, initially recorded at a magnitude of 7.4, struck at 4:35am at a depth of five kilometres (three miles) some 45 kilometres west of Christchurch, the US Geological Survey said.

New Zealand sits on the so-called "Ring of Fire", the boundary of the Australian and Pacific tectonic plates, and experiences up to 15,000 tremors a year. It averages at least one a day that is magnitude 4.0 or stronger. Meanwhile, as residents took stock of the quake damage they also had an eye on looming bad weather with destructive gale-force winds up to 130 kilometres (80 miles) an hour predicted to arrive tomorrow.

"Winds of that speed can be damaging and with many buildings extensively damaged (by the earthquake) it could cause a major headache for emergency services," a weather service spokesman said.

"That has significant implications clearly for where we may choose to headquarter our institution. I want to be crystal clear. Our preference is to be headquartered in the UK," added Mr Gulliver. Mr Gulliver, whose bank did not receive any direct government support during the financial crisis, made his comments in response to an audience question at an industry conference in London.

He said it would be "very very regrettable" if the commission came to a decision "that causes the banks that actually didn't take any money from any government anywhere in the world to have to move their headquarters." He also noted that no other country was looking at breaking up banks in response to the 2008 financial crisis.

Many economists and policymakers concluded in the wake of the 2008 collapse of Lehman Brothers that the large international banks had become "too big to fail". If a bank is so big that its collapse would bring down the entire financial system, governments would always be forced to rescue them. The concern is that if banks know that governments will always come to their rescue, they may be encouraged to take on too much risk.

HSBC moved its headquarters from Hong Kong to London in 1991 after its acquisition of Midland Bank. It currently occupies one of the largest tower blocks in Canary Wharf.

A Vatican communique reported, "Concerning the renewal of direct contacts between Israelis and Palestinians, scheduled for today in Washington, the hope was expressed that this may assist in reaching an agreement that is respectful of the legitimate aspirations of the two peoples and capable of bringing lasting peace to the Holy Land and to the entire region." In Washington DC, the first direct peace talks between Israeli and Palestinian leaders in nearly two years took place today.

Other topics of the "cordial" discussion included the Holy Father's pilgrimage to the Holy Land in May, 2009, as well as interreligious dialogue and the international situation. The Vatican reported that "the discussions also permitted the examination of the relations between the State of Israel and the Holy See and those of the state authorities with the local Catholic communities."

The Holy See is currently in negotiations with Israel over the terms of the 1993 Fundamental Agreement. The Fundamental Agreement established diplomatic relationships between the Holy See and Israel. Since then, the two sides have been negotiating the particulars of tax exemptions and property rights for the Church, in particular for the holy sites. The next plenary session of the commission will take place December 6 at the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Peres also met with the Pontiff's secretary of state, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, and the secretary for relations with states, Archbishop Dominique Mamberti.

Peres met Wednesday with Gilad Shalit's parents, Noam and Aviva, in advance of his meeting with the Pope. "We must never lose hope, we must continue to fight for Gilad's return," he said. Shalit's parents have led a campaign to bring their son home even at the expense of releasing many hundreds of convicted terrorists, including those responsible for multiple murders.

Peres praised the two for their struggle, saying, "I am proud of the noble way in which you are struggling to bring back your son Gilad, and I am proud of the Israeli public for standing at your side." Shalit's parents asked the president to use his influence to push for Gilad's release. After meeting with the Pope, Peres plans to remain in Italy over the weekend to attend an economic and diplomatic conference and to defend Israel in the media.

The Chinese government's currency reserves, the world's largest such stockpile at $2.45 trillion, are held roughly in line with what was described as the global average: 65 percent in dollars, 26 percent in euros, 5 percent in pounds and 3 percent in yen. The report in the China Securities Journal, an official newspaper, cited unnamed reserve managers. The allocation of Chinese foreign exchange reserves is considered to be a state secret, but analysts have long estimated that about two-thirds are invested in dollar assets.

Separately, Hu Xiaolian, a vice governor with the People's Bank of China, warned that depreciation loomed as a risk for foreign exchange reserves held by developing counties."Once a reserve currency's value becomes unstable, there will be quite large depreciation risks for assets," she wrote in an article that appeared in the latest issue of China Finance, a Chinese-language magazine published under the central bank. She reiterated China's long-standing discomfort with a global financial system dominated by a single currency in the dollar.

"The outbreak and spread of the global financial crisis has highlighted the inherent deficiencies and systemic risks in the current international currency system," she said. "A diversified international currency system will be more conducive to international economic and financial stability," she added. To that end, developing countries must speed up reform of their financial markets, and China would work to promote greater cross-border use of the yuan, she said.

A hurricane warning was expanded Thursday night to include part coastlines from Massachusetts to Maine as Hurricane Earl barreled toward the Eastern Seaboard. Earlier the National Hurricane Center in Miami had issued a tropical storm warning along the Connecticut and Rhode Island coasts into Massachusetts.

"Hurricane and tropical storm conditions will be expected in these areas over the next 48 hours," said Bill Read, director of the National Hurricane Center. A slow winding down was expected to continue as the storm moved into cooler waters, but forecasters warned the size of the storm's wind field was increasing, similar to what happened when Hurricane Katrina approached the Gulf Coast five years ago.

Read said Thursday that Earl is undergoing a change and its powerful winds are going to extend farther out from the eyewall. He said forecasters expect the eyewall to change but said they are not able to say how far inland the winds will reach, adding that strong winds could topple trees and knock out power to thousands of people.

North Carolina Governor Beverly Perdue on Thursday warned residents to take Earl "very seriously," and said state emergency officials are "as prepared as we can be." Forecasters also were trying to figure out whether the storm would stay off the Northeast coast or bring hurricane-force winds to Long Island, the Boston metropolitan area and Cape Cod. "I would not downplay the potential threat to New England," Read told Fox News.

Red Cross officials in New York prepared to open as many as 50 shelters on Long Island that could house up to 60,000 people in an emergency. Emergency officials on Cape Cod braced for their first major storm since Hurricane Bob brought winds of up to 100 mph to coastal New England in August 1991.

For two decades, the IPCC has spearheaded efforts to convince the world's governments that man-made carbon emissions pose a threat to the global temperature equilibrium - and to civilization itself. IPCC reports, collated from the work of hundreds of climate scientists and bureaucrats, are widely cited as evidence for the urgent need for drastic action to "save the planet."

But the prestigious InterAcademy Council, an independent association of "the best scientists and engineers worldwide" (as the group's own website puts it) formed in 2000 to give "high-quality advice to international bodies," has finished a thorough review of IPCC practices - and found them badly wanting. For example, the IPCC's much-vaunted Fourth Assessment Report claimed in 2007 that Himalayan glaciers were rapidly melting, and would possibly be gone by the year 2035. The claim was actually false - yet the IPCC cited it as proof of man-made global warming.

Overall, the IAC slammed the IPCC for reporting "high confidence in some statements for which there is little evidence. Furthermore, by making vague statements that were difficult to refute, authors were able to attach 'high confidence' to the statements." The critics note "many such statements that are not supported sufficiently in the literature, not put into perspective or not expressed clearly.

What does the best evidence now tell us? That man-made global warming is a mere hypothesis that has been inflated by both exaggeration and downright malfeasance, fueled by the awarding of fat grants and salaries to any scientist who'll produce the "right" results. The warming "scientific" community, the Climategate emails reveal, is a tight clique of like-minded scientists and bureaucrats who give each other jobs, publish each other's papers - and conspire to shut out any point of view that threatens to derail their gravy train.

Such behavior is perhaps to be expected from politicians and government functionaries. From scientists, it's a travesty. In the end, grievous harm will have been done not just to individual scientists' reputations, but to the once-sterling reputation of science itself. For that, we will all suffer.

The temperature was 58 degrees at LAX, tying a record set in 1951, the National Weather Service said. Oceanside dropped to 66 degrees, tying a record that has stood since 1914.

And in Kentucky...

"The picture that was sent look like a bunch of popped corn, it's yellow. It's not white popcorn looking but corn literally did pop in the field. It was that hot," says Dr Lee. Dr Lee explains that the kernels formed during a time of high heat, then it rained and kernels began filling again. "It kept filling until it actually ruptured the seed coat and caused it to pop open," says Dr Lee.

Exploding kernels are very uncommon and something most agriculture agents have never seen before with this kind of corn. The E-town farmer along with many others across the Bluegrass are fighting crop disease and pests. Now that it's time to harvest, farmers are finding that the lack of rain and high heat are causing the corn to suffer. That in the end may cut into their profits. Dr Lee says, "We're seeing maybe a 20% drop in corn from what we had last year and very erratic conditions."

The announcement by Vladimir Putin came as the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation called an emergency meeting to discuss the wheat shortage, and riots in Mozambique left seven dead. The unrest in Maputo, in which 280 people were also injured, followed the government's decision to raise bread prices by 30 per cent. Police opened fire on demonstrators after thousands turned out to protest against the price hikes, burning tyres and looting food warehouses.

Although agricultural officials and traders insist that wheat and other crop supplies are more abundant than in 2007-08, officials fear the deadly Mozambique riots could be replicated. The 2007-08 food shortages, the most severe in 30 years, set off riots in countries from Bangladesh to Mexico, and helped to trigger the collapse of governments in Haiti and Madagascar.

The FAO said that "the concern about a possible repeat of the 2007-08 food crisis" had resulted in "an enormous number" of inquiries from member countries. "The purpose of holding this meeting is for exporting and importing countries to engage." Russia is traditionally the world's fourth-largest wheat exporter, and the export ban has already forced importers in the Middle East and North Africa, the biggest buyers, to seek supplies in Europe and the US.

European wheat prices on Thursday hit 231.5 euros a tonne, just shy of last month's two-year high of 236 euros. Wheat prices have surged nearly 70 per cent since January, and analysts forecast further rises after Russia's decision and concerns about weather damage to Australia's crop.

The platform, which caught fire, was not producing oil or gas, the Department of Homeland Security said. The blast occurred around 130km (80 miles) south of Vermilion Bay along the central Louisiana coast. Helicopters, boats and aircraft were sent to the site.

All 13 workers who fell into the Gulf are accounted for and have been transported to another platform by an oil support vessel, the Coast Guard said. One person is reportedly injured. Before being rescued by the support boats, all 13 workers were given special immersion suits to protect them from the water, said Coast Guard chief petty officer John Edwards.

The federal government was prepared to respond to the situation if there had been reports of pollution, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said. Mr Gibbs added that President Barack Obama was in a national security meeting, and he was unaware if the president was informed of the blast.

The platform is owned by Mariner Energy and is located in shallow water, approximately 340ft (105m) from the floor of the Gulf. "Right now we're focused on search and rescue and then, ultimately, as this thing progresses we're going to be looking into the cause," Mr Edwards said.