White Christians and ethnic Catholics. Though two-thirds of the US population then, they had dropped to one-fourth of the student body. Comes now a more scientific study from Princeton sociologists Thomas Espenshade and Alexandria Radford to confirm that a deep bias against the white conservative and Christian young of America is pervasive at America's elite colleges and Ivy League schools.

Wake up! This is the reality of what Christian students face in the secular world of academia.

China clinched the top slot more quickly than had been expected because the US has over the past decade far outpaced China in using energy more efficiently. On a per capita basis, the US still uses far more energy than China and remains less efficient than Europe.

Fatih Birol, the IEA's chief economist, said: "In 2000, the US consumed twice as much energy as China, now China consumes more than the US." He noted that the US had improved the efficiency with which it uses energy by 2.5 per cent annually during that time, while China managed only a 1.7 per cent annual improvement.

"On the one hand, the US has come to a certain saturation of energy use, but there have also been lots of efforts, especially since 2005, to use energy more efficiently," he said.

Raytheon said the solid state fibre laser produces a 50 kilowatt beam and can be used against UAV, mortar, rockets and small surface ships. The idea of using lasers as weapons has been around almost as long as the laser itself, invented in 1960. Peter Felstead, editor of Jane's Defence Weekly, told BBC News that CIWS was the start of real world applications for military solid state lasers.

"OK, so a UAV isn't armoured, nor is it flying fast, but as you can see from the video they shot it down in flames," he said. "That's the very beginnings of what we can expect to see as firms miniaturise their technology and make them more effective." Speaking to BBC News, Raytheon Missile Systems' vice president, Mike Booen, said that the tests, performed in a maritime environment, were a big step forward for laser technology.

In May, the firm knocked out a number of UAVs at the US Navy test range on San Nicolas Island off the coast of California. Although Raytheon would not give details of the height, speed and range of the UAVs, saying that data is "sensitive", it did say that the Navy wanted tests to be as realistic as possible, suggesting that the aircraft were behaving in the way military planners would expect them to. "This is the first time a UAV threat has been targeted and neutralised in a marine environment," said Mr Booen.

The Syrian campaign is backed by Heron (Eitan) spy drones Israel sold to Turkey, made accessible on the personal say-so of Prime Minister Tayyip Recep Erdogan. Turkey therefore becomes the first NATO member to make advanced Western military technology available for the use of a strong ally of radical Iran and an active sponsor of terrorists. Following intense exchanges between Jerusalem and Washington, the NATO command was urged to put Ankara on the carpet - with no response as yet.

The drones are being used to track Kurds in flight across Syria's borders, mainly into Lebanon, where Hezbollah is helping Syria hunt the refugees down. The accessibility to Damascus of the unmanned aerial vehicles is in direct breach of the Israel-Turkish sales contracts which barred their use - and the use of other Israeli high-tech items sold to Turkey during years of close military collaboration - in the service of hostile states or entities.

In his first major speech on the theme of the "Big Society" since winning the election, the Prime Minister will announce the "biggest redistribution of power from elites in Whitehall to the man and woman on the street". Mr Cameron - who is keen to present his administration as offering optimistics new policies that are not just about cuts - will say that the "liberation" of volunteers and activists to help their own communities is the vision which drives his premiership.

As part of his drive to roll back the reach of the public sector, the Prime Minister will attack the previous Labour government for turning state employees into "disillusioned, weary puppets" and communities into "dull, soulless clones". He will announce that four areas in diverse parts of the country have been chosen to form a "vanguard" in realising his dream of "people power" in which individuals rather than the state come together voluntarily to solve their problems.

The four - the greater London borough of Sutton and Cheam, the leafy Berkshire council of Windsor and Maidenhead, rural Eden Valley in Penrith, Cumbria, and the metropolitan city of Liverpool - were chosen after they petitioned Downing Street to start their own projects. They will be the first to be invited to submit applications to the Big Society Bank, a fund which will allocate the proceeds of dormant bank accounts worth hundreds of millions of pounds to help set up volunteer schemes to improve communities.

Does this change of language indicate a change of policy? As Catholics, this is an area where we must remain vigilant. These small changes can be used to change our perception of rights and freedoms. The change in language was barely noticeable to the average citizen but political observers are raising red flags at the use of a new term "freedom of worship" by President Obama and Secretary Clinton as a replacement for the term freedom of religion. This shift happened between the President's speech in Cairo where he showcased America's freedom of religion and his appearance in November at a memorial for the victims of Fort Hood, where he specifically used the term "freedom of worship." From that point on, it has become the term of choice for the president and Clinton.

In her article for "First Things" magazine, Ashley Samelson, International Programs Director for the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, stated, "To anyone who closely follows prominent discussion of religious freedom in the diplomatic and political arena, this linguistic shift is troubling: The reason is simple. Any person of faith knows that religious exercise is about a lot more than freedom of worship. It's about the right to dress according to one's religious dictates, to preach openly, to evangelize, to engage in the public square. Everyone knows that religious Jews keep kosher, religious Quakers don't go to war, and religious Muslim women wear headscarves - yet "freedom of worship" would protect none of these acts of faith."

In the Second Vatican Council's Declaration of Religious Freedom entitled "Dignitatis Humanae", the Church summarizes this right: "Religious freedom, in turn, which men demand as necessary to fulfill their duty to worship God, has to do with immunity from coercion in civil society. Therefore it leaves untouched traditional Catholic doctrine on the moral duty of men and societies toward the true religion and toward the one Church of Christ."

As we can see, the practice of religion permeates the very fabric of our lives. It cannot and should not be separated into approved and non-approved expressions. Unfortunately, such limits are being instituted across the globe. Samelson writes, "The effort to squash religion into the private sphere is on the rise around the world. And it's not just confined to totalitarian regimes like Saudi Arabia. In France, students at public schools cannot wear headscarves, yarmulkes, or large crucifixes. The European Court of Human Rights has banned crucifixes from the walls of Italian schools."

The list of countries and limits is growing constantly.

Pilloried for nearly three months as it tried repeatedly to stop the leak, BP PLC capped the nearly mile-deep well Thursday and wants to keep it that way. The government's plan, however, is to eventually pipe oil to the surface, which would ease pressure on the fragile well but would require up to three more days of oil spilling into the Gulf.

"No one associated with this whole activity... wants to see any more oil flow into the Gulf of Mexico," Doug Suttles, BP's chief operating officer, said Sunday. "Right now we don't have a target to return the well to flow." An administration official familiar with the spill oversight, however, told The Associated Press that a seep and possible methane were found near the busted oil well. The official spoke on condition of anonymity Sunday because an announcement about the next steps had not been made yet.

The concern all along - since pressure readings on the cap weren't as high as expected - was a leak elsewhere in the wellbore, meaning the cap may have to be reopened to prevent the environmental disaster from becoming even worse and harder to fix. The official, who would not clarify what is seeping near the well, also said BP is not complying with the government's demand for more monitoring.

Authorised overdrafts are charging an average of 32% interest, despite advertised rates of around 19%. In response to the findings, Mr Cable said: "When we talk about restructuring the banks what's going to come out of this is a more competitive system where the customers are not ripped off."

He said customers are paying the price for a lack of healthy competition in a banking marketplace dominated by a few big players. "One of the negative side effects of this crisis is that our banking system that was already very concentrated is now even more concentrated so there's less competition, less choice and bigger temptation for banks to earn margins at the expense of their customers," he said.

Christine Ross, head of financial planning at SG Hambros which examined the true cost of overdrafts, urged consumers to read the fine print on their account details. Mr Cable also issued a renewed attack on the morality of the City over bonus payments: "I think the bonus culture which continues is unacceptable". According to the Office of Fair Trading, in 2006, Britain's banks earned 2.6 billion pounds in profit from penalty charges.

There were exceptions: June was cooler than average across Scandinavia, southeastern China, and the northwestern USA, according to NOAA's report.

Marc Morano, a global-warming skeptic who edits the Climate Depot website, says the government "is playing the climate fear card by hyping predictions and cherry-picking data." Joe D'Aleo, a meteorologist who co-founded The Weather Channel, disagrees, too. He says oceans are entering a cooling cycle that will lower temperatures.

He says too many of the weather stations NOAA uses are in warmer urban areas. "The only reliable data set right now is satellite," D'Aleo says. He says NASA satellite data shows the average temperature in June was 0.43 degrees higher than normal. NOAA says it was 1.22 degrees higher.

In a statement, Admiral Allen said: "Based on the data and pressure readings compiled to date, the test has provided us with valuable information which will inform the procedure to kill the well and a better understanding of options for temporary shut-in during a hurricane. "As we continue to see success in the temporary halt of oil from the leak, the US government and BP have agreed to allow the well integrity test to continue another 24 hours."

Correspondents say this switch-over will see crude oil flowing into the Gulf once again, on temporary basis, as pressure is relieved. BP is drilling relief wells which aim to intercept the leaking one at the end of July, enabling it to be sealed by mid-August. Admiral Allen's statement concluded: "Progress also continues on the two relief wells the federal government has required BP to drill. The relief well remains the ultimate step in stopping the BP oil leak for good." The spill has been described as the worst environmental disaster the US has ever seen

That, they say, resulted in shareholders losing millions. The court now needs to give its approval before payments can be made. A first payment of $175 million is scheduled within days of the court's approval, however, while AIG is expected to raise the further $550 million through the issuing of new shares.

AIG is now 80% owned by the US government following a massive bailout of the company at the height of the financial crisis. Ohio Attorney General Richard Cordray, who represented the Ohio funds, said total payouts from AIG to shareholders would now total $1 billion, including previous settlements. AIG said it was "pleased to have resolved this matter", adding that it could now focus on paying back taxpayers the $182 billion used to rescue it.

Not understood by the American people about the worst environmental catastrophe in their history is that it falls under the responsibility of NATO and not the US government due to the recently adopted provisions of the "Alliance Reborn: An Atlantic Compact for the 21st Century" major policy report outlining the responses of Member Nations in the event of natural disasters and other such catastrophes.

Curiously, this report continues, President Obama continues his fight to retain control over this historic catastrophe for his intelligence services instead of his military forces, chief among them the United States Coast Guard which is the defacto naval force for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) who he has placed in charge of this disaster with BP, both of whom this past week threatened journalists with felony arrests and $40,000 fines for reporting on the truth of what is happening.

Interesting to note is that Obama's stance in refusing to allow his military forces to use their vast power against this catastrophe has put him at odds with former President Bill Clinton, who just this past week called for the US Navy to be put in charge so they can blow up the leaking well and avert an even greater disaster than what is now unfolding.

Though Clinton called for the use of conventional explosives to stop this oil leak, other experts, especially Russian scientists, (who are the only people in the World to have actually sealed these types of deep oil wells once they blew out) state that only nuclear weapons can be used as the Gulf of Mexico seafloor is now so fractured only this most radical of solutions should even be considered.

Spurring Admiral Di Paola into action, this report continues, was Obama's statements about this catastrophe made to other World leaders at the recent G8 summit where he warned that "millions, perhaps tens of millions" could die due to this disaster while at the same time he had ordered his government to refuse all International aid. This information is critical to know as new reports arrive to us every day of new toxic oil rains falling across this devastated region, and as we had warned would happen in our May 23rd report titled "Toxic Oil Spill Rains Warned Could Destroy North America".

Making this dire situation even worse are reports stating that the water temperature of the Gulf of Mexico have risen by as much as 7 degrees making the likelihood of a major hurricane a virtual certainty, and as evidenced by Hurricane Alex, that was this region's first June hurricane storm since 1995 and described by Mexico's Notimex News Service as "an extraordinary phenomenon that has never been seen before".

At the weekend, the temperature was forecast by the state weather centre to hit 37 degrees in central Russia. An emergency drought situation has been declared in 19 of Russia's 83 regions with crops dying on an estimated 9.6 million hectares of fields. The drought-struck areas were suffering "colossal destruction," Agriculture Minister Yelena Skrynnik said Tuesday at a meeting with President Dmitry Medvedev.

The coldest place on earth in winter, Oimyakon in the Sakha region, was forecast to swelter at 32 degrees centigrade on Friday, the ITAR-TASS news agency reported. In Moscow, people paddled in fountains to escape the heat and bought record amounts of ice cream. Alexei Lyakhov, the head of the Moscow and Moscow region weather centre, said in televised comments on Friday that temperatures would hit 36 degrees in Moscow on Saturday and no rain was expected over the next five days.

Known as the "polio of agriculture," wheat rust is a devastating fungus that attacks the stem of wheat. Like polio, we thought we had this disease licked. Half a century ago and after a decade of research, agronomist Norman Borlaug isolated a gene, Sr31, that rendered wheat immune to wheat rust. As a bonus, the gene also increased crop yield. Farmers were eager to plant these resistant and bountiful wheat varieties, and they became so widespread and ubiquitous that by the 1970s it was thought that wheat rust was extinct.

Unfortunately, the disease was merely in hiding. In 1999, a new strain of wheat rust, one that's immune to the Sr31 gene, was discovered in wheat fields in Uganda. In the mere decade since it was discovered, this new strain, dubbed Ug99, has spread alarmingly quickly to several countries throughout Northern Africa and the Middle East. After infecting Iran, the disease is now poised to invade Punjab, one of the world's top wheat-growing areas. It was also discovered in South Africa, where scientists fear trade winds may carry spores to Australia, the fifth largest wheat-growing nation in the world.

Wheat provides a full one-fifth of the world's food calories, and a large global infestation could result in the starvation of millions. Scientists say that mere luck and uncommonly dry conditions are all that have prevented true disaster from striking already, and that will inevitably run out. Fungicides can help to lessen crop loss, but they are a temporary solution, and most of the world's poor farmers, like those currently affected, just can't afford them.

To make matters worse, a less devastating form of the disease known as "stripe rust" has remained a threat, and now we are realizing that the extent of the current outbreak is far more serious than we realized. Unlike wheat rust, stripe rust is a problem in the US already, and it's getting worse. If wheat rust also manages to make its way through our borders, as it is likely to do eventually, the combo of wheat rust and stripe rust could spell disaster.

We have no knockout gene for this new variety, and the types of mild resistance found in the wheat gene pool merely slow the fungus down. But it is thought that a variety containing several of these smaller barriers will be able to stop the disease. In addition, relying on a whole arsenal instead of a single gene means that the disease is far less likely to be able to mutate its way out of trouble this time. A single gene will always be overcome eventually, but diverse defenses are more likely to keep a plant healthy. GM crop supporters, please re-read this paragraph several times over.

Until the end, the bill was the source of bitter battles on Capitol Hill, with Democrats urging action to protect the economy and rein in Wall Street, and Republicans portraying the measure as a massive government intrusion on the private sector. The GOP is hoping that its message of big government over-reach proves more attractive to voters this fall than Democrats' appeal to popular anger at Wall Street.

The final vote was 60-39, with every Democrat voting for the bill except Senator Russ Feingold (Democrat for Wisconsin) who has maintained that it doesn't go far enough to crack down on Wall Street firms. President Obama is expected to sign the bill when it reaches his desk. The 2,300 page financial reform bill is designed to prevent future financial meltdowns like the one that doomed Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers and AIG while plunging the economy into a deep recession. The measure would give federal regulators the power to seize failing financial institutions that post a "systemic risk" to the economy.

The bill would also give regulators tighter control of hedge funds and private equity firms, as well as the complex financial derivatives at the heart of the sub-prime mortgage debacle. And it would create a new consumer protection agency designed to combat lending abuses. Republicans blasted the bill as a big government jobs killer. "We're going to be driving jobs and business overseas with this massive piece of legislation," said Senator Saxby Chambliss (Republican for Georgia).