Council staff will then be tasked with overseeing the installation of safety devices in homes, including smoke alarms, stair gates, hot water temperature restrictors, oven guards and window and door locks. The draft guidance by a committee at the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (Nice) has been criticised as intrusive and further evidence of the "creeping nanny state".

Until now, councils have made only a limited number of home inspections to check on building work and in extreme cases where the state of a house is thought to pose a serious risk to public health. Nice also recommends the creation of a new government database to allow GPs, midwives and other officials who visit homes to log health and safety concerns they spot.

The guidance aims to "encourage all practitioners who visit families and carers with children and young people aged under 15 to provide home safety advice and, where necessary, conduct a home risk assessment". It continues: "If possible, they should supply and install home safety equipment."

Matthew Elliott, of the TaxPayers' Alliance, said: "It is a huge intervention into family life which will be counter-productive. Good parents will feel the intrusion of the state in their homes and bad parents will now have someone else to blame if they don't bring up their children in a sensible, safe environment."

While losing 200,000 jobs per month is better than the 700,000 jobs lost in January, current job losses still average more than the per month rate of 150,000 during the last recession. Also, remember: The last recession ended in November 2001, but job losses continued for more than a year and half until June of 2003; ditto for the 1990-91 recession. So we can expect that job losses will continue until the end of 2010 at the earliest. In other words, if you are unemployed and looking for work and just waiting for the economy to turn the corner, you had better hunker down. All the economic numbers suggest this will take a while. THE JOBS JUST ARE NOT COMING BACK.

The long-term picture for workers and families is even worse than current job loss numbers alone would suggest. Now as a way of sharing the pain, many firms are telling their workers to cut hours, take furloughs and accept lower wages. Specifically, that fall in hours worked is equivalent to another 3 million full time jobs lost on top of the 7.5 million jobs formally lost.

This is very bad news but we must face facts. Many of the lost jobs are gone forever, including construction jobs, finance jobs and manufacturing jobs. Recent studies suggest that a quarter of US jobs are fully out-sourceable over time to other countries.

"WE HONESTLY DON'T KNOW WHY THERE HAS BEEN THIS INCREASE," said Amy Branum, health statistician at the National Center for Health Statistics and the study's lead author. Analyzing doctors' records as well as surveys taken by parents, Branum determined that 4 percent of all US children now have food-related allergies. Furthermore, the number of doctor and hospital visits made by children seeking treatment for food allergy issues has tripled since 1992.

Interestingly, when the NCHS expanded its scope to include nonfood allergies, it found that respiratory ailments such as asthma have not increased all that much over the same period, and cases of hay fever actually went down. Eczema, however, had risen 13 percent. Eczema is often triggered by food allergies. Branum said there is no definitive explanation as to what might be causing the rise in reported child food allergies.

A forthcoming federally funded study by the National Institutes of Heath will attempt to identify causal reasons for the increase in food allergies in children by looking at several factors, including breast-feeding, diet and exposure to pets, Branum said. "I don't want to scare anybody, BUT I DO THINK WE'RE SEEING INCREASES IN SOMETHING WE SHOULD START TAKING SERIOUSLY."

The agents, working in Asia to monitor the latest exchange of gunfire between North Korean and South Korean warships, have reported such AN ATTACK WOULD HAVE A DISASTROUS EFFECT ON LONDON'S SHIPPING INSURANCE MARKET – WITH THE POTENTIAL OF BEING FAR LARGER THAN THE LOSSES IN LAST YEAR'S MARKET CRASH.

The fleet, larger than the combined navies of the US and Britain, is anchored in one of the world's least accessible waterways: the remote Johor Coast at the southern tip of Malaysia. Fifty miles east of Singapore, it also is close to Indonesia, the launching point, MI6 agents say, for the next attack by al-Qaida terrorists.

THE VALUE OF THE FLEET IS IN THE BILLIONS OF DOLLARS. But in their equatorial backwater they generally are guarded by only a handful of sailors, often armed with no more than a pistol or rifle to ward off any attack. The fleet consists largely of container ships and tankers. They have been anchored there by their owners and on the advice of the economists of the world's governments because of the global recession. Usually rented out as the camels of the high seas, transporting anything from crude oil to Christmas gifts, the recession has left them out of work.

It said that many nations were now arming to defend themselves in a cyber war and readying forces to conduct their own attacks. While definitions of what constitutes cyber war are not shared, it was clear that many nations were preparing for a future in which conflict was partly conducted via the net. "There are at least five countries known to be arming themselves for this kind of conflict," said Greg Day, primary analyst for security at McAfee Europe.

The UK, Germany, France, China and North Korea are known to be developing their own capabilities. The US is known to have an operating manual governing the rules and procedures of how it can use cyber warfare tactics. It is known to have used hack attacks alongside ground operations during the Iraq war and has continued to use this cyber capability while policing the nation.

Mr Day said there was evidence of a growing number of attacks that could be classed as "reconaissance" in advance of a future conflict. The ease with which the tools of such attacks can be gathered and used was worrying, said Mr Day. "To go to physical war requires billions of dollars," he said. "To go to cyber war most people can easily find the resources that could be used in these kind of attacks." THE TARGETS OF SUCH FUTURE CONFLICTS WERE LIKELY TO BE A NATION'S INFRASTRUCTURE, SAID MR DAY, BECAUSE NETWORKS OF ALL KINDS WERE NOW SO EMBEDDED IN PEOPLES' LIVES.

"WHEN THEY WITHHOLD INFORMATION, YOU ALWAYS START ASKING QUESTIONS," Hoekstra told Fox News. "That's what raises red flags. WHAT DO THEY KNOW THAT THEY DON'T WANT US TO KNOW?" Hoekstra linked President Barack Obama's handling of Fort Hood to a chain of other GOP criticisms of the president, including the administration's treatment of detainees and an investigation into possible CIA abuse.

"IT IS A POLITICAL CORRECTNESS THAT IS MAKING IT IMPOSSIBLE FOR US TO IDENTIFY THE REAL THREAT OF HOMEGROWN TERRORISM," he alleged. Hoekstra warned that "we have similar Hasans" in the country. The Michigan Republican has called for his committee to investigate the incident. Chairman Silvestre Reyes (Democrat for Texas) has so far declined, preferring to wait for the conclusion of the joint FBI-Army investigation. Obama has ordered a review of all intelligence on Hasan.

NEWSWITHVIEWS:- A former New York City Detective and Marine put Representative Hoekstra's message more bluntly: "This is another example of the US government being asleep at the wheel. Our President and his minions are doing more to take attention away from the terrorism aspect of this mass-murder than they are to identify the kinks in our armor in this war on terrorism."

"I wouldn't put it past those leaders to 'lose' or 'misplace' evidence of terrorism in this Fort Hood tragedy," he said. "This is a White House that's returned us to the days of Bill Clinton when THE PRESIDENT REPEATEDLY IGNORED THE CULPRITS INVOLVED IN MULTIPLE TERRORIST ATTACKS."

Reading between the lines of Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke's speech Monday, it's clear the Fed will utterly fail on the second part of its directive for years to come. In other words, WE'RE IN FOR THE MOTHER OF ALL JOBLESS RECOVERIES. Indeed, the best thing Bernanke could say about the unemployment situation is that it "MAY BE GETTING WORSE MORE SLOWLY."

Give the Fed chief this, however: He is remarkably consistent. That's not a knock on the guy - no one wants a bipolar central banker - but the more Bernanke makes the same points again and again, THE MORE IT'S CLEAR US WORKERS ARE DOOMED FOR A GOOD LONG WHILE.

Here are some of the distressing points Bernanke made again Monday at The Economic Club of New York: The official unemployment rate stands at 10.2%. (IT'S MORE LIKE 17.5%, BY THE WAY, IF YOU COUNT THE PEOPLE WHO'VE GIVEN UP LOOKING FOR WORK.) About 8 million folks have seen their jobs in the private sector go poof in the last two years. And worst of all, gross domestic product needs to grow 2.5% a year just to absorb the 100,000 people entering the job market every month.

Now put that in the context of this forecast: Economists, on average, expect GDP to grow just 2.9% in all of 2010, according to The Wall Street Journal's economic forecasting survey. That's what Bernanke means when he says growth looks to be "moderate" next year. It seems the New Normal is also rewriting the dictionary. "MODEST" NOW SERVES AS A SYNONYM FOR "NEAR HOPELESS," TOO.

Three of the 22 banks make no small business loans at all. Of the remaining 19 banks, 15 have reduced their small business loan balance since April, when the Treasury department began requiring the biggest banks receiving Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) funding to report monthly on their small business lending.

Over the six months that the reporting requirement has been in effect, the banks have cut their collective small business lending by 4%. Their cumulative balance stood at $258.7 billion as of September 30, according to a Treasury Department report.

Some banks are unapologetic about their cutbacks. SMALL BUSINESS DEFAULTS ARE SOARING, and banks are under pressure to shore up their balance sheets and reduce their exposure to risky loans. Two key small business lenders, CIT Group and Advanta, filed for bankruptcy this month.

While Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said programs such as food stamps softened the impact of an economic recession, anti-hunger groups pointed to the huge increase from the preceding year when 36.2 million people had trouble getting enough food and a third of them occasionally went hungry. "The survey suggested that things could be much worse but for the fact that we have extensive food assistance programs," Vilsack told reporters. "This is a great opportunity to put a spotlight on this problem."

ABOUT 14.6 PERCENT OF US HOUSEHOLDS, EQUAL TO 49.1 MILLION PEOPLE, "HAD DIFFICULTY OBTAINING FOOD FOR ALL THEIR MEMBERS DUE TO A LACK OF RESOURCES" DURING 2008, up 3.5 percentage points from 2007 when 11.1 percent of households were classified as food insecure. About 5.7 percent of households, or 17.3 million people, had "very low food security," meaning some members of the household had to eat less. Typically, food runs short in those households for a few days in seven or eight months of the year, USDA said.

President Barack Obama called the USDA report "unsettling" and vowed to reverse the trend of rising hunger. "Our children's ability to grow, learn, and meet their full potential - and therefore our future competitiveness as a nation - depends on regular access to healthy meals," Obama said in a statement.

The machine packs more than 70,000 chips and can compute 563 trillion calculations per second (teraflops). It is used for petroleum exploration and engineering tasks such as simulating aircraft designs.

However, the fastest machine is the US-owned Jaguar supercomputer, which now boasts a speed of 1.759 petaflops. One petaflop is the equivalent of 1,000 trillion calculations per second. The Cray computer has more than 220,000 chips and is owned by the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee. It is used to conduct research in climate science, materials science and nuclear energy amongst other areas.

Europe has 153 systems on the list, including the world's fourth most powerful machine. The IBM BlueGene/P supercomputer at the Forschungszentrum Juelich (FZJ) in Germany is the fastest machine outside the US and is able to run at more than 800 teraflops. The UK has the largest number of European machines on the list, with 44 systems.

Welcome to the 2009 bull market — or so many people think. They're buying up shares of everything from Google Inc to Bank of America Corp at a pace not seen since the 1930s. Since March, the Dow Jones industrial average has jumped 57 percent and the Standard & Poor's 500 index has gained 62 percent. Investors are betting on a strong economic recovery. But here's the problem: GOOD NEWS AHEAD COULD BE BAD NEWS FOR THE BULL.

To understand why, consider the very thing that has boosted the market. The US government has spent nearly $1 trillion to stimulate the economy and the Federal Reserve has maintained a policy of keeping interest rates near zero. Those will disappear as the economy's health improves, potentially HALTING THE BULL MARKET BY TAKING AWAY WHAT HAS BEEN ITS CRUTCH — SOURCES OF CHEAP AND PLENTIFUL MONEY.

"Pretty soon the easy money phase could be behind us," said Hugh Johnson, chairman and chief investment officer of Johnson Illington Advisors, an investment firm in Albany, New York. Investors still should heed the potential danger signs of today's market, before their exuberance gets the better of them.

Some doctors have likened the symptoms to those seen in many of the victims of the Spanish flu which caused millions of deaths world-wide after World War One. An unnamed doctor in western Ukraine told of the alarming effects of the virus. He said: 'We have carried out post mortems on two victims and found THEIR LUNGS ARE AS BLACK AS CHARCOAL. THEY LOOK LIKE THEY HAVE BEEN BURNED. It's terrifying.' Neighbouring Poland has called on the EU to take action, fearing the mystery virus may spread westwards.

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk has written to European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso and the Swedish Prime Minister, Fredrik Reinfeldt, who holds the EU presidency. The letter said: 'THE CHARACTER OF THIS THREAT DEMANDS THAT RAPID ACTION BE UNDERTAKEN AT THE EUROPEAN UNION LEVEL.' Russia, Slovakia, Poland, Hungary and Romania have already launched health checks on Ukrainians entering their territory. Slovakia has closed two of five border crossings.

Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko has called in the World Health Organisation. A team of specialists are carrying out tests in Kiev and Lviv in an effort to identify the virus. President Yushchenko said: 'PEOPLE ARE DYING. THE EPIDEMIC IS KILLING DOCTORS. THIS IS ABSOLUTELY INCONCEIVABLE IN THE 21ST CENTURY.'

In a TV interview, the President added: 'Unlike similar epidemics in other countries, three causes of serious viral infections came together simultaneously in Ukraine: two seasonal flus and the Californian flu. Virologists conclude that this combination of infections may produce an EVEN MORE AGGRESSIVE NEW VIRUS AS A RESULT OF MUTATION.'

NATURALNEWS REPORTS - The mainstream media is blaming Ukraine's poor health care system for the relatively high rates of hospitalization and death, BUT THEY REFUSE TO MENTION (YET AGAIN) THE VITAMIN D DEFICIENCY FOUND ACROSS THIS POPULATION LIVING AT HIGH LATITUDE IN THE WINTER, where sunlight is relatively scarce. One possible scenario that could unfold with all this is that the Ukraine strain might spread around the world, WIPING OUT THOSE WHO GOT VACCINATED AGAINST H1N1 because their immune systems suffer from a suppressed ability to naturally generate antibodies to a new strain.

Meanwhile, drug companies will try to scramble and create a whole new batch of "super flu" vaccines, but they're always too little, too late. Theoretically, millions of people could die around the world while waiting in line for yet another vaccine shot. All they really need is vitamin D3, some herbal anti-virals, a healthy diet and plenty of rest, but no one is telling them that.

EVEN THE UKRAINE SUPER FLU IS NO MATCH FOR A HEALTHY IMMUNE SYSTEM. Remember: Out of 65,000+ hospitalizations, fewer than 300 people have died so far. That's still a very low mortality rate, even if the spread of the viral infection seems aggressive.

WILLIAM STROEGER, AN ASTROPHYSICIST AT THE VATICAN OBSERVATORY RESEARCH GROUP AND A JESUIT PRIEST, pointed out that the Catechism introduced after the second Vatican council states that there can be no conflict between science and religion. "If there's a contradiction it means that we haven't understood or interpreted one of them correctly," he said.

This may be the case, but I agree with Davies that this isn't a trivial issue for theologists. Giggle factor aside, the question of whether Jesus would save aliens goes right to the heart of Christian beliefs. If you believe that "intelligent life" equals having a soul, then you have to ask where you'd draw the line. If scientists found dolphins on a distant planet, they would be mad with excitement at having found something so smart. But what would theologians make of them?

Stroeger conceded that the discovery of intelligent life elsewhere in the Universe would pose a challenge, but said that it would not be insurmountable. "There are some difficult issues to resolve, such as whether Jesus as saviour is the one who saves everyone in the Universe or if there are other equivalent salvation events that take place elsewhere in the Universe," he said.

British power plants are already shipping wood from Canada, Brazil, Scandinavia and South Korea. Just one of the new biomass plants at Port Talbot, South Wales, will consume THREE MILLION TONNES OF WOOD PER YEAR — equivalent to 30 per cent of the UK's domestic annual wood harvest of ten million tonnes.

But the plant, which is due to open in 2012, will generate only 300 megawatt hours of electricity, or about 0.4 per cent of the UK's current power-generating capacity. At least four more 300-megawatt plants are planned, including three in Yorkshire that have been proposed by Drax, operator of Britain's largest coal-fired power station. Another company, MGT, plans to build one on Teesside.

A spokesman for Prenergy, which is behind the Port Talbot plant, said 90 per cent of its wood supplies would be imported, although he insisted that all of it would be sourced from proven sustainable sources. Nevertheless, environmental campaigners have raised concerns about the carbon emissions involved in shipping the wood such large distances, while to meet UK pest control laws the timber will need to be baked before it can be shipped to the UK.

Natural fuel Facts - 1% The amount of UK energy consumption from biomass

744 sq miles - The size of forest needed for UK wood-fuelled power station growth in next three years

50% The rise in carbon discharges caused by long-distance transport and burning of wood over burning coal

30 years The time new trees need to absorb the equivalent amount of carbon released by cutting down and burning wood for fuel

Researchers tested urine samples from mothers in the 28th week of pregnancy for traces of phthalates, chemicals which can mimic the female sex hormone oestrogen. The women, who gave birth to 74 boys and 71 girls were contacted again when their children were aged between four and seven and were asked about their personalities, the toys they played with and the activities they liked.

The study, by the University of Rochester in New York State, found that TWO TYPES OF PHTHALATE – DEHP AND DBP – WERE STRONGLY LINKED WITH THE MORE FEMININE PLAY IN THE BOYS but had no impact on girls. Boys with higher doses were less likely to play with cars, trains and guns and preferred "GENDER NEUTRAL" activities such as sports, according to the research published in the International Journal of Andrology.

The research adds to growing evidence that HORMONE-DISRUPTING CHEMICALS IN THOUSANDS OF HOUSEHOLD PRODUCTS are interfering with the development of children. Although the plastics industry says phthalates are safe, the EU has banned many of them from cosmetics, teething rings and children's toys. However, pregnant women are still exposed to the chemicals, which are USED TO SOFTEN PLASTICS, in household items such as plastic furniture, shoes and PVC flooring.