The US Geological Survey said the quake, initially reported as a magnitude 7.7, was 20.6 miles (33 km) deep and was centred 160 miles (260 km) north of Port Blair in the Andaman Islands, in the Indian Ocean.

Doctors are urged to be vigilent for a new bug that has arrived in Britain with patients who have travelled to India and Pakistan for cosmetic surgery or organ transplants and is now circulating here. So far there have been 22 cases in 17 hospitals Britain and the Health Protection Agency has said its emergence here is a 'major concern'.

The HPA has found the enzyme that destroys antibiotics in patients with infections caused by E.coli and other bacteria. The enzyme, called New Delhi Metallo-1, has so far been found attached to bacteria that has caused urinary tract infections and respiratory infections. It is of particular concern because it can jump from one strain of bacteria to another meaning it could attach itself to more dangerous infections that can cause severe illnesses and blood poisoning making them almost impossible to treat.

The NDM-1 enzyme destroys a group of antibiotics called carbapenems which are mainly used in Britain for severe infections and are tightly controlled because they are one of the few groups of antibiotics that remain useful against bacteria that have already developed resistance to the commonly used drugs.

Researchers found that PEOPLE WHO LEAD A HEALTHY LIFESTYLE by meeting these standards REDUCE THE CHANCES OF DEVELOPING COMMON CHRONIC DISEASES BY NEARLY 80 PER CENT. People who followed the formula were 93 per cent less likely to develop diabetes than those who adhered to none of the four factors, according to the findings. They were also 81 per cent less likely to have a heart attack, 50 per cent less likely to have a stroke and their chance of developing cancer was reduced by 36 per cent.

To meet the criteria for staying fit, people had to exercise for at least three and a half hours a week, which is equivalent to just half an hour a day. They also had to have a BMI lower than 30, above which they are considered obese. Eating a diet high in fruit, vegetables and whole grain as well as being low in red meat was also a requirement. Finally, to maximise the chances of living a long life people must never have taken up smoking cigarettes.

Overall, the researchers found that making the correct lifestyle choices by following all four rules could cut the risk of developing the conditions looked at by 78 per cent. The team who carried out the research believe that their findings, published in the Archives of Internal Medicine journal, suggest that some cases of chronic disease can be preventable through healthy living. The study looked at 23,513 adults aged between 35 and 65.

US Army General Stanley McChrystal, who will soon present an assessment of the war, said the resurgent Taliban have forced a change of tactics on foreign forces and warned that record casualty figures would remain high for some months. "It's a very aggressive enemy right now," McChrystal told The Wall Street Journal newspaper in an interview in Kabul. "We've got to stop their momentum, stop their initiative. It's hard work."

Violence across Afghanistan this year had already reached its worst levels since the Taliban were ousted by US-led Afghan forces in 2001 and escalated dramatically after major offensives were launched in southern Helmand province in July. Attacks have also become increasingly brazen, with suicide bombers and gunmen attacking government buildings, as well as Afghan and foreign and military targets, in the east and south in the past month.

THERE ARE NOW ABOUT 101,000 FOREIGN TROOPS IN AFGHANISTAN, WITH US NUMBERS AT ABOUT 62,000. Washington has been pouring in thousands of extra troops this year, in part to help secure August 20 presidential and provincial council elections.

The attack, the latest in a series of assaults before the August 20 presidential poll, came after US commanders said the war in Afghanistan had not reached a crisis point even though the Taliban had gained momentum. Deen Mohammad Darwish, a spokesman for the governor of Logar province, about an hour's drive south of the capital, Kabul, said one Taliban attacker was also killed along with the police and civilians. Witnesses said gunbattles lasted several hours.

The Taliban last month vowed to disrupt the election, calling on Afghans to boycott the vote. There has been a spate of ambushes on candidates, campaign workers and election officials before and after that warning. With UN officials saying that violence and poor security had hampered election preparations in some areas, residents in Pul-e-Alam feared it would deteriorate further.

"Things will only get worse with the election," shopkeeper Faizal Ahmad said. "We will have no security in the future." President Hamid Karzai is the front-runner to retain power over a field of 35 challengers but poor security in the south, his traditional ethnic Pashtun power base, looms as a potential problem if it results in poor voter turnout, analysts have said.

The 11-day trip is to highlight the supports of US President Barack Obama's administration for the continent's democracy, economic growth and conflict resolution. It is learnt that officers from the US Intelligence Unit who have been in the country for days were at their best to ensure that adequate security would be provided for Clinton.

The STRICT SECURITY BEING PUT IN PLACE AND COORDINATED BY THE US EMBASSY IN ABUJA has taken the security agencies to many points which Clinton is to visit, including the Nnamdi Azikiwe Airport, Abuja, where she is expected to arrive at 8:35 pm local time (1935 GMT) tentatively, on Tuesday.

During the visit, the former first lady is expected to hold discussions with Nigerian President Umaru Yar' Adua on a number of issues affecting both countries. On Wednesday, the US secretary of state is expected to be hosted at a breakfast meeting by Minister of Foreign Affairs Ojo Maduekwe at the minister's residence. A town hall meeting has also been scheduled to take place at the Yar'Adua's Center on Thursday.

"To stay within those limits, coal-power stations will have to fit expensive scrubbing equipment. Because the facilities are comparatively old, many owners will not bother. Unscrubbed stations are allowed to operate for only a limited number of hours, and must close in any case by 2015."

The leader argues in favour of a carbon tax, saying that "carbon must be taxed if firms are to invest in long-term, expensive, technology-heavy projects such as nuclear plants, cleaning up coal and taming renewable sources of power. Carbon is already assigned a price through the European cap-and-trade mechanism, but the system is focused on the short term, vulnerable to gaming and plagued by hugely fluctuating prices."

Meanwhile, an article in Business Week, looking at the EU's carbon emissions trading scheme, argues that if the US launches its own cap and trade scheme it must learn from the EU's mistake of handing out too many permits to pollute for free.

Head of CSU's national committee, Peter Ramsauer, said that a compromise should mean that the German Parliament's voice in EU decisions should be strengthened while at the same time "the government's room for manoeuvre at EU level should be sufficiently guaranteed". Several papers interpret this to mean that the German Parliament will not have a general veto right over EU decisions, as was originally envisioned by the CSU.

However, Ramsauer said that the government would have to provide a justification in case it decides to go against the recommendations by the Parliament. Furthermore, he said that an amendment of the German Constitution is not necessary. According to press reports, this increases the likelihood of the Lisbon Treaty being ratified before German Parliament elections on 27 September, five days before the Irish referendum.

Meanwhile, in an interview with the Tagesspiegel, former Constitutional Court Judge Dieter Grimm stressed that "if competences move to Brussels, they are lost in the national parliaments. Therefore this must not happen without a debate and decision in the Bundestag. That means more work, but it is worthwhile".

Aside from the dangerous ingredients many people already know about (like squalene or thimerosal), one of the key ingredients used in flu vaccines (including the vaccines being prepared for the swine flu pandemic) is the diseased flesh of African Green Monkeys. This is revealed in US patent Number 5911998 - Method of producing a virus vaccine from an African green monkey kidney cell line (http://www.patentstorm.us/patents/5911998.html).

As this patent readily explains, ingredients used in the vaccine are derived from the kidneys of African Green Monkeys who are first infected with the virus, then allowed to fester the disease, and then are killed so that their diseased organs can be used to make vaccine ingredients. This is done in a cruel, inhumane "flesh factory" environment where the monkeys are subjected to a process that includes "incubating said inoculated cell line to permit proliferation of said virus." Then: "harvesting the virus result... and... preparing a vaccine from the harvested virus."

The strained relationship, according to diplomatic sources, developed as a result of a number of reasons, all of which drive strength in the diplomatic parlance that "in foreign policy there is no permanent friend, only permanent interest".

The US action, it is gathered, is informed by its "fear" that it is losing clout in Nigeria to its former cold war foe; Russia, evident in the burgeoning trade relationship between the two oil exporting countries. The current Russian/Nigerian honeymoon was signed, sealed and delivered during the June visit to Nigeria by the Russian President Dmitry Medvedev. During the visit, billions of dollars worth of oil and gas deal was signed between Nigeria's NNPC and its Russian counterpart; GAZPROM.

Even the current African tour by the US Secretary of State, Mrs. Hillary Clinton, which State Department officials said was aimed at "supporting strong and sustainable democratic governments", is viewed in that context by our sources, who assert that Nigeria is the principal reason for the eleven-day, seven-nation tour, with the other six countries simply added as an "afterthought".

HER IMPENDING VISIT TO NIGERIA, ON THURSDAY THIS WEEK "has everything to do with the not-so-rosy state of affairs between Nigeria and her country, given the strategic importance of Nigeria to the US", a source said.

According to US government sources, this shift will reflect in the series of town-hall style meetings, which Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is now undertaking in her seven-nation tour of Africa that started last Wednesday in Kenya. Later this week in Nigeria, Clinton is also going to be meeting with Nigerian civil groups and NGOs after meetings with the Foreign Affairs Minister, Ojo Maduekwe, and President Umaru Yar'Adua IN ABUJA.

State Department sources confirmed to The Guardian that the town hall-style meeting, which started last Thursday at the University of Nairobi in Kenya, between Hillary Clinton and the people of Kenya, will be repeated in Nigeria. But the venue of the Nigerian version of the meeting is said to be THE YAR'ADUA INTERNATIONAL CENTRE IN ABUJA.

A town hall-style meeting between the top US diplomat and Nigerian NGOs in Abuja is, therefore, seen as a major avenue for the Obama administration to demonstrate its support for electoral reforms and anti-corruption issues in Nigeria. Secretary Clinton in Kenya asked specifically to talk to a wide variety of Kenyan groups including youths, women and people from different ethnic groups. A similar planning is said to be in place for HER OPEN TOWN HALL MEETING EXPECTED IN ABUJA, (Thursday) according to planners of Clinton schedules on her tour of Africa.

That is one of the main problems facing Clinton on A SEVEN-NATION JAUNT MEANT VARIOUSLY TO SPREAD WASHINGTON'S GOOD GOVERNANCE MESSAGE and shore up relationships with its key oil suppliers on the continent. US officials are keen to trumpet a 28 percent jump in 2008 in trade with sub-Saharan Africa to $104 billion, even if the increase is attributable mainly to the high price of oil, which accounts for more than 80 percent of US imports from Africa.

However, there is another statistic that says more about the direction of development on the poorest continent: THIS DECADE'S TENFOLD INCREASE IN TRADE WITH CHINA TO $107 BILLION LAST YEAR, NARROWLY ECLIPSING THE UNITED STATES.

The financial and then economic crisis that has pushed US and European economies into recession and forced their companies to crimp overseas expansion is only likely to accelerate the trend, analysts say, despite the regional goodwill toward US President Barack Obama, whose father was Kenyan.

Producers, supermarkets and consumers are being encouraged to submit their ideas on how a secure food system in the UK should look in 2030. Some of the findings are expected to be published in the autumn. As well as launching the consultation process, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) has published a scorecard-style assessment of the current state of the UK's food supply.

"It is to stimulate a debate within the UK on what a food policy should be, and how do we define and look at food security more broadly," said Defra's chief scientific adviser Professor Robert Watson. "Food is absolutely essential, and over the past few years we did see a food price increase - not only in the UK, but across the globe," he told BBC News.

"We think it is time to have a debate with consumers, farmers, the private sector... on what the food policy should be for the UK. We are clearly food secure in the UK today," he observed. "We produce about 60-65% of our own food [and] import about 20% from Europe. So the [test] for us will be, as the Earth's climate changes, what will be the challenges not only in the UK but throughout the world?"

While the Bank of England expanded its quantitative easing plan to £175 billion on Thursday, comments from Fed officials suggest the US central bank's $300-billion program to buy longer-dated Treasuries is likely to expire on schedule in September. Investors are already pricing in a chance of an interest rate hike as early as December with some arguing that the Fed's efforts to mend credit markets have sown seeds for inflation.

The Federal Reserve meets on Tuesday and Wednesday to review the outlook for growth. The Fed is seen opting not to prolong Treasury buying, while officials are expected to reinforce their message of no imminent exit from bold policy steps to end the US recession.

But the authors warn that such attempts to control the climate could also cause major changes in precipitation. They want the effect on rainfall to be assessed before any action is taken.

Gabriele Hegerl of the Grant Institute at University of Edinburgh and Susan Solomon of National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) at Boulder, Colorado, write that "if geo-engineering studies focus too heavily on warming, critical risks associated with such possible "cures" will not be evaluated appropriately". They argue that climate change is about much more than changes in temperature. So using temperature alone to monitor the effects of geo-engineering could be dangerous.

They cite the powerful effects on rainfall of volcanic eruptions which also prevent solar radiation reaching the Earth's surface, albeit by throwing up dust rather than reflecting the radiation back into space. For example in 1991, the eruption of Mount Pinatubo not only reduced global temperatures but also led to increases in drought. The pair correlated 20th Century weather records with data for the increase in greenhouse gases and dates for major volcanic eruptions.