In the past fortnight, the bug has been suspected in 34 hospitals. Laboratory tests confirmed 19 to be norovirus. Wards have closed at 23 hospitals with visiting hours restricted due to the virus which also causes diarrhoea. A Health Protection Agency spokesman said: “It is believed to be connected with cold weather – that is why it is called the winter vomiting bug. The numbers this year are a little lower than normal – but this could change in the weeks ahead.”

The North-east and the South-west have been worst hit by the virus although experts fear the cold weather could spark a nationwide outbreak. Around a million people each year are affected by the virus which can spread rapidly in hospitals, residential care homes and schools. HPA advice is to wash hands regularly and thoroughly, particularly after using the toilet and before eating. Forecasters warned freezing temperatures could last for weeks with parts of Britain braced for more snow today.

The mercury was expected to plunge to -13C (9F) overnight, the coldest so far this winter. Daytime highs are not expected to rise above 2C. London, Kent and the East Coast are on alert for snow today and tomorrow as a block of freezing air from Russia continues to be wedged over the UK. The Met Office last night issued a severe weather warning for the area and extended a level-3 Cold Weather Alert until Friday.

"Even though our American and Chinese competitors have an interest in the survival of the single currency, the euro is condemned to an uncontrollable explosion sooner or late" (A nice twist that one, inverting the false and widely believed conspiracy theory that the US is trying to destroy the euro).

"National currencies should be recreated in each eurozone country". There will be a short transition period of dual notes as old euros are stamped by country ('U' for France) until new francs etc are printed (This is what happened when the Austro-Hungarian monetary union fell apart in 1919).

The new exchange rates will be determined by a formula that takes into account the accumulated inflation differential and trade balances since the launch of EMU. The devaluations/revaluations will be set against a new unit of account reflecting the average weighting of the old euro (not anchored on the new D-Mark).

"The public debt of each state will be converted into the corresponding national currency, whoever the creditors may be. By contrast, the external debt of private entities will be converted into the European accounting unit. Even though this helps the stronger countries and penalizes the weak, it is the only feasible way to uphold preceding contracts."

"All governments will declare a bank holiday for a limited period. They will temporarily close banks to determine which are viable and which will need to apply to the central bank." The central banks will lose their independence, returning to their pre-1970s status.

MPs have threatened similar action before, but failed to follow through. The summons will be sent to Mr Ahmadinejad in the next two days. He must appear in parliament within a month according to Iran's constitution. That means he could appear after legislative elections on 2 March - the first national elections since the disputed presidential poll in 2009.

James Reynolds, BBC Iran correspondent reports: "Iran's president and parliament are fighting a lengthy battle for power. Now, parliament has decided to take what may be a dramatic public step. The summons for Mahmoud Ahmadinejad comes at a critical moment for the country's divided conservative establishment. Parliamentary elections are set to be held at the start of next month. The ruling conservatives came together in 2009 to defeat the opposition Green Movement. But since then, conservatives have fought among themselves.

Mr Ahmadinejad and his supporters want to reduce the influence of the country's ruling clerics. But the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and his allies in parliament and the powerful Revolutionary Guards have fought back.

This is a president, whose repression apparatus had used torture to prepare prisoners for interrogations by German officials and is currently held responsible for large-scale massacres. What remains uncertain is to what extent pro-western countries are furnishing weapons to the armed contingents of Syrian rebels, who, according to reports, are responsible for a massacre of dozens of Christians in the city of Homs. The civil war in Syria that seems inevitable falls in line with western geostrategic plans aimed at isolating Iran.

This has been confirmed by reports from correspondents in Israel. The Syrian conflict provides a good example of how Berlin uses the issue of human rights arbitrarily, but very effectively. Even though the German government is posing as the protector of the Syrian opposition, whose oppression it had facilitated over the decades through its cooperation with the Syrian secret services, Berlin is still deporting Syrian refugees.

The civil war escalating between the Assad regime, until early 2011 a close western cooperation partner, and the insurgents, the current western partners, falls in line with the West's geo-strategic plans against Iran. According to a press report from Israel, the Lebanese Hezbollah and the Palestinian Hamas are clearly distancing themselves from Iran, and Syria, "Tehran's last Arab ally," weakened by the insurgency against Assad, is now too preoccupied with itself.

The former Mossad chief Efraim Halevy is quoted referring to Syria as "Iran's Achilles heel" and demanding a reduction of Iranian influence in that country. A weakened Iran would open "enormous opportunities" for the West. The complete overthrow of the Assad regime possibly would not even be necessary. Its international isolation, through supporting one party to the civil war, may suffice. This objective has already been attained.

Defence sources have revealed that the Americans only relented and allowed a Royal Navy frigate to join the mission following an intervention from Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president. The revelation that US defence chiefs saw little military value in UK participation will raise new questions about Britain’s international clout after Coalition defence cuts. Amid rising tensions in the region, the Royal Navy last month deployed HMS Argyll, a Type 23 frigate, to the Gulf.

The ship accompanied a US carrier strike group made up of an aircraft carrier with a full complement of fighters, a heavy cruiser and several destroyers. A French frigate, the La Motte-Picquet, was also part of the flotilla which sailed through the Straits of Hormuz. Iran has staged wargames in the area and threatened to block the straits, a vital supply route for oil exports. The US also has another carrier strike group in the Gulf and a third heading for the region.

A diplomatic source revealed that US commanders originally planned for an all-American naval operation, and only relented after protests from European leaders. The source said: “The Americans originally planned to do it alone. They were clear that they saw no military advantage in having European ships taking part. But after the President insisted that France had to be represented, ministers decided that “Britain must participate too, regardless of the military importance.”

The irony is GM seeds have not been effective in India and the consequences are not as rosy as what Monsanto had promised to deliver. Scathing reports of mass suicides of the Indian farmers broke out as recently as three years ago when scores of farmers took their own lives in order to escape the burden of high price and failure of Monsanto's GM seeds. Monsanto offered its GM seeds to the farmers of India with hopes of reaping plentiful crops. Plain and mostly uneducated farmers thought Monsanto had come to provide a "magic" formula that would transform their lives. They had no idea what was coming.

Monsanto's seeds in India did not produce what the company had promised and farmers hoped. The expensive seeds piled up debts and destroyed farming fields. In many instances, the crops simply failed to materialize. The farmers were not aware that the GM seeds required more water than the traditional seeds. And lack of rain in many parts of India exacerbated the crop failure.

With no harvest, the farmers could not pay back the lenders. Burdened with debts and humiliation, the farmers simply took their own lives, some by swallowing poisonous pesticides in front of their families. To date, an estimated 200,000 farmers have committed suicide all over India. To add to the misery, wives inherited the debts along with the fear of losing their homes and lands. With no money coming in, they also had to pull their kids from the schools. The mass suicide among the Indian farmers is known as the "GM genocide."

''The most urgent needs now are water, tents and food,'' he said. The quake hit 70km north of Dumaguete city on Negros island. The 6.7 magnitude earthquake struck at 11:49 (03:49 GMT) at a depth of 20km, according to the US Geological Survey. As of 08:00 local time, an official report put the death toll at 15 confirmed dead, 44 reported missing and 52 injured.

One local report on Monday put the number of dead at 43, including many people killed in a landslide in the badly-hit coastal area of Guihulngan. But this report has not yet been confirmed by the central authorities. Telecommunications have been cut in many areas. A series of aftershocks followed the initial quake, one of them registered a magnitude of 6.2 at the epicentre. Damaged roads and bridges added to challenges faced by rescue workers and the transport of aid and supplies.

In the town of Guihulngan, about 90 km north of Dumaguete, reports said some houses had been completely buried by landslides, and the market and court house were also damaged. The town's 42-strong police force, joined by army personnel and volunteers, had been searching for survivors and clearing debris, said Inspector Alvin Futalan, police chief of Guihulngan. "The army (troops) had to walk about 50 km from the last stop reachable by vehicle to reach us," he told the Agence France Presse news agency. Nine bridges were damaged in Negros Oriental, with four no longer passable, said Governor Roel Degamo.

The map, referring to Florida shores as "The Treasure Coast," depicts nine countries, two of which – Garnet and North Garnet are identified as fundamentalist Islamic theocracies suspected of supporting terror groups. The drill map also depicts a 56 km (35 miles) wide strait located some 320 km (200 miles) from the coast. The mock strait’s shape and width is identical to the Strait of Hormuz – the key oil shipping route, part of which is controlled by Iran.

Although US military officials deny the maneuvers are connected with escalated tensions around Iran saying strike group is "training for all the mission areas." However, Rear Admiral Dennis Fitzpatrick, commander of Strike Force Training Atlantic told The Navy Times: "there obviously is an emphasis on where we think the ship will go."

The 50-year-old aircraft carrier Enterprise, leading the naval exercise, is to join two other US strike groups in the Persian Gulf by March. This will be the final deployment for the oldest carrier in Washington's fleet. Meanwhile, Tehran has also launched ground drills near the Strait of Hormuz, which is used to transmit nearly a third of global oil exports. The Iranian military says the drill is preparing for a military conflict.

The magazine,which last week published a scenario of how Israel will attack Iran if it decides to do so, featured on its website on Monday an article by Professor Niall Ferguson. He pooh-poohed five arguments why Israel should not stage a military strike on Iran: Iranian retaliation, new Arab Spring rebellion, a recession caused by doubling of the price of crude oil, boomerang support for Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad within Iran, and the ability to live with a nuclear Iran.

Professor Ferguson maintains that whether he likes it or not, President Barack Obama will comes to Israel’s defense if it attacks Iran in an attempt to slow down its nuclear development, if not destroy its nuclear facilities altogether. “The Iranians will very likely be facing not one, not two, but three US aircraft carriers,” the professor wrote. “Two are already in the Persian Gulf: CVN 72 Abraham Lincoln and CVN 70 Carl Vinson. A third, CVN 77 George HW Bush, is said to be on its way from Norfolk, Virginia”

The reasons are practical, he said – the probability of the price of oil at $200 a barrel if Iran were to close the Strait of Hormuz, and the political backlash for not backing Israel. As for an “eruption of the entire Muslim world, all the crocodiles of Africa could not equal the fake tears that will be shed by the Sunni powers of the region if Iran’s nuclear ambitions are checked,” according to the professor.

Mr Ahmadinejad, the Iranian leader, has said several times that Israel is a “cancer” and should be “wiped off the map. War is an evil,” Professor Ferguson wrote. “But sometimes a preventive war can be a lesser evil than a policy of appeasement. The people who don’t yet know that are the ones still in denial about what a nuclear-armed Iran would end up costing us all. It feels like the eve of some creative destruction.”

“It is a blow to a freedom that you have fought to defend and for which you have seen your buddies fall in battle,” the archbishop wrote. Another line in his letter said: “We cannot — we will not — comply with this unjust law.”

The message from the archbishop touched off a controversy both in and outside the military when the Army's Office of the Chief of Chaplains told the service's senior chaplains that Catholic priests serving as Army chaplains should be told not to read the archbishop's letter from the pulpit. The Archdiocese for the Military Services has described that move as a violation of the archbishop's First Amendment rights as well as the First Amendment rights of the Catholic chaplains involved and their congregations.

Because the Catholic Church teaches that sterilization, artificial contraception, and abortion are morally wrong and that Catholics cannot be involved in them, and because the Obamacare law requires that all individuals purchase health insurance and that larger employers provide health insurance to their workers or face a penalty, the regulation would force Catholics to act against the teachings of their faith and against their consciences.

Hundreds of thousands of Catholics attended mass across the country Sunday, and many were told about the new healthcare mandate that religious leaders believe is a violation of the church's beliefs. "It's a core issue of freedom of religion and freedom of conscience, Bishops all across the country are responding in the same way because we feel as if our freedom of religion, our ability to live out the church teachings are being compromised by this regulation that's come out of the department of human services," Bishop Paul Swain with the Sioux Falls Catholic Diocese said.

The new mandate requires all employers that provide health insurance, including faith-based ones, to provide and pay for all forms of contraception, including birth control. Swain says the mandate strikes at the very core of the country's rights. "We have the freedom to exercise individually and as church what we believe free from the interference of government at any level I mean that's what the first amendment was all about," Swain said.

The Catholic Church has one year to comply with the new mandate, which goes into effect in January 2013. South Dakota senator John Thune and Representative Kristi Noem have both signed on to different challenges to the mandate.

According to this week’s The Hill Poll, 49 percent said military force should be used to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, while 31 percent said it should not. Twenty percent were not sure. Sixty-two percent of likely voters said they were somewhat or very concerned about the possibility Iran would carry out a terrorist strike on the US, while 37 percent said they were not very concerned or not at all concerned about it.

The Rasmussen polling agency found that 48 percent of likely voters said that if Israel attacks Iran, the US should help Israel. “Voters nationwide remain firmly convinced that Iran is likely to develop a nuclear weapon in the near future, and if so, will use it against Israel,” said Rasmussen. “At the same time, most also think an Israeli attack on Iran is likely to happen within the next year.”

But in a statement issued by the diocese of Harrisburg, Bishop Joseph McFadden did not retract comments he made during an interview on January 24 with WHTM-TV, the ABC affiliate in Harrisburg. The bishop made a comparison between the interests of the public school system and totalitarianism, while discussing what he sees as a lack of school choice in Pennsylvania.

“In the totalitarian government, they would love our system,” McFadden said. “This is what Hitler and Mussolini and all them tried to establish - a monolith; so all the children would be educated in one set of beliefs and one way of doing things.”

“The reference to dictators and totalitarian governments of the 20th century which I made in an interview on the topic of school choice was to make a dramatic illustration of how these unchecked monolithic governments of the past used schools to curtail the primary responsibility of the parent in the education of their children,” he said. “Today many parents in our state experience the same lack of freedom in choosing an education that bests suits their child as those parents oppressed by dictators of the past.”

How so? In 2009, Microsoft purchased a key piece of technology from the drug company Merck, the world's largest maker of vaccines (which Bill Gates says can help "reduce the global population" by 10 to 15 percent). That technology, as you'll see below, can conceivably be used to develop eugenics vaccines that target specific races and nationalities with infertility-inducing pharmaceuticals - something that is entirely consistent with Bill Gates' openly-admitted goal of reducing world population through the use of vaccines.

This gene-targeting vaccine research technology purchased by Microsoft was developed by the company known as Rosetta Biosciences, formerly owned by Merck. Their software is described as a way to "figure out how genes interact with each other, analyze peptides and metabolites, and determine how they relate to gene expression."

An announcement on the Rosetta Biosoftware web site explains, "The deal allows Microsoft to incorporate genetic, genomic, metabolomic and proteomics data management software into the Microsoft Amalga Life Sciences platform for enhanced translational research capabilities." This same announcement goes on to say that vaccine maker Merck will "provide strategic input to Microsoft" as a part of the deal. Merck's strategy, of course, is to make money by pimping vaccines and pharmaceuticals, including the now-infamous Gardasil vaccine.

Rupert Vessey, the vice president of Merck Research Laboratories, openly admits this deal puts Microsoft in the role of being a drug developer. He says, "We look forward to collaborating with Microsoft to develop new bioinformatic solutions to enable and expedite drug discovery and development..."

This is a key statement to understand, because the term "bioinformatic" can only mean one thing. What stores information in biology? There is only one digital storage system in human biology, and that system is, of course, DNA. Therefore, the idea of developing "bioinformatic solutions" really means to develop "gene-targeting drugs and vaccines." This is fully consistent with Bill Gates' admitted agenda of reducing world population with the help of drug company technologies. At a TED conference, he announced in front of a live audience: "...if we do a really great job on new vaccines, health care, reproductive health services, we could lower [global population] by perhaps 10 or 15 percent."

The 6.8-magnitude quake, in a narrow strait just off Negros Island, caused a landslide in Guihulngan, a city of about 180,000 people in Negros Oriental province. As many as 30 houses were buried and at least 29 people were missing, Mayor Ernesto Reyes said.

"Their situation is bad because if you are covered by landslide for one hour, two hours, how can you breathe?" he said. "But we just hope for the best, that there are still survivors." Rescuers were using picks and shovels to dig for survivors, he said. At least 10 people were confirmed dead, including students at a college and an elementary school and others in a town market that collapsed, Reyes said. About 100 were injured.

The quake, which hit at 11:49 am, triggered another landslide in the mountain village of Solongon in La Libertad town, also in Negros Oriental. An unknown number of people were trapped, said La Libertad police chief inspector Eric Arrol Besario. Philippine seismologists briefly issued a tsunami alert for the central islands. Five bamboo and wooden cottages were washed out from a beach resort in La Libertad by huge waves, but there were no reports of injuries, said police Superintendent Ernesto Tagle. Elsewhere along the coast, people rushed out of schools, malls and offices.