"There are no seasons in the American supermarket", a voice intones in the opening scene as a camera swept past supermarket shelves groaning with plump-breasted chickens, perfect cuts of meat and bountiful fruit, vegetables and grains.

THE DOCUMENTARY CLAIMS COWS ARE FATTENED UP ON HEAVILY SUBSIDISED CORN, EVEN THOUGH THEY CANNOT DIGEST THE GRAIN PROPERLY AND THEIR GUTS BECOME BREEDING GROUNDS FOR DEADLY E. COLI STRAINS AS A RESULT. It also says chickens with oversized breasts are grown to maturity and are ready to be slaughtered twice as quickly as they would be naturally, thanks to chemicals in their feed. There is also stomach-churning footage of conveyer belts packed with little yellow chicks being pushed around like mechanical parts; a cow, barely alive, being dragged around by a forklift; and herds of squealing pigs being forced onto a factory "kill floor".

Food Inc is being released as AMERICA IS FINALLY STARTING TO WAKE UP TO THE PUBLIC HEALTH CRISIS FUELLED BY ITS EATING HABITS AND FOOD INDUSTRY. Organic food stores are booming in affluent urban neighbourhoods and even some mainstream supermarkets are responding to demands for healthier food – most notably, Wal-Mart recently began carrying organic options and stopped selling milk containing growth hormone. But America remains far behind Europe in terms of regulation of the food industry and consumer demand for organic produce.

Eric Schlosser, the author of Fast Food Nation one of the driving forces behind the movie, said: "There is this deliberate veil, this curtain that's drawn between us and where our food is coming from. The industry doesn't want you to know the truth about what you're eating because if you knew, you might not want to eat it. WE'VE NEVER HAD FOOD COMPANIES THIS BIG AND THIS POWERFUL IN OUR HISTORY."

Yossi Altman said Koogle, a play on the names of a Jewish noodle pudding and the ubiquitous Google, appears to meet the standards of Orthodox rabbis, who restrict use of the Web to ensure followers avoid viewing sexually explicit material. The site, at www.koogle.co.il, omits religiously objectionable material, such as most photographs of women which Orthodox rabbis view as immodest, Altman said.

Its links to Israeli news and shopping sites also filter out items most ultra-Orthodox Israelis are forbidden by rabbis to have in their homes, such as television sets. "This is a kosher alternative for ultra-Orthodox Jews so that they may surf the Internet," Altman said by telephone.

The site was developed in part at the encouragement of rabbis who sought a solution to the needs of ultra-Orthodox Jews to browse the Web particularly for vital services, he said. NOTHING CAN BE POSTED ON THE JEWISH SABBATH, WHEN RELIGIOUS LAW BANS ALL TYPES OF WORK AND BUSINESS, ALTMAN SAID. "IF YOU TRY TO BUY SOMETHING ON THE SABBATH, IT GETS STUCK AND WON'T LET YOU."

Asked by the liberal Haaretz newspaper whether the Jewish state was looking at a "head-on collision" with the United States if it doesn't comply with Washington's demands, Carter said "Yes." The former president, who brokered the historic peace treaty between Israel and Egypt in 1979, said Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank were the biggest hurdle in the hobbled Middle East peace process, saying THEY WERE "ILLEGAL AND (AN) OBSTACLE TO PEACE."

The administration of US President Barack Obama has repeatedly called on Israel to halt all settlement activity in the occupied West Bank, which is viewed as one of the key obstacles in the stalled Middle East peace process. Carter on Sunday made a rare visit to a settlement, saying he went to Neve Daniel "to make sure they (the settlers) understand my own attitude towards Israel, the Jewish population across the world and the Jewish settlements." He was speaking at the start of a meeting with Shaul Goldstein, the head of the regional council of Gush Etzion, a large settlement bloc south of Jerusalem that Israel hopes to keep in any future peace deal.

Goldstein briefed the 85-year-old former president on joint Israeli-Palestinian projects in the region and on the history of the Jewish community in the Gush Etzion before the creation of the Jewish state in 1948. "This is our homeland but we recognise that there are other people living next to us," Goldstein told Carter. "We believe in human rights and we suffer when they (Palestinians) suffer." OBAMA'S EFFORTS TO PUSH FORWARD THE PEACE PROCESS HAS RAISED FEARS IN ISRAEL THAT WASHINGTON MAY EASE ITS SUPPORT OF THE JEWISH STATE as it tries to improve relations with the Muslim world. Carter is also due to visit the Hamas-run Gaza Strip on Tuesday as part of a regional visit.

In many parts of the world recently the weather has not been too brilliant for farmers. After a fearsomely cold winter, June brought heavy snowfall across large parts of western CANADA and the NORTHERN STATES OF THE AMERICAN MIDWEST. In MANITOBA last week, it was -4ºC. NORTH DAKOTA had its first June snow for 60 years. There was midsummer snow not just in NORWAY AND THE CAIRNGORMS, but even in SAUDI ARABIA. At least in the southern hemisphere it is winter, but snowfalls in NEW ZEALAND AND AUSTRALIA have been abnormal. There have been frosts in BRAZIL, elsewhere in SOUTH AMERICA they have had prolonged droughts, while in CHINA they have had to cope with abnormal rain and freak hailstorms, which in one province killed 20 people.

None of this has given much cheer to farmers. In CANADA AND NORTHERN AMERICA summer planting of corn and soybeans has been way behind schedule, with the prospect of reduced yields and lower quality. Grain stocks are predicted to be down 15 per cent next year. US reserves of soya – used in animal feed and in many processed foods – are expected to fall to a 32-year low.

In CHINA, the world's largest wheat grower, they have been battling against the atrocious weather to bring in the harvest (in one province they even fired chemical shells into the clouds to turn freezing hailstones into rain). In north-west China drought has devastated crops with a plague of pests and blight. In countries such as ARGENTINA AND BRAZIL droughts have caused such havoc that a veteran US grain expert said last week: "In 43 years I've never seen anything like the DECLINE WE'RE LOOKING AT IN SOUTH AMERICA."

In EUROPE, the weather has been a factor in well-below average predicted crop yields in EASTERN EUROPE AND UKRAINE. IN BRITAIN this year's oilseed rape crop is likely to be 30 per cent below its 2008 level. And although it may be too early to predict a repeat of last year's food shortage, which provoked riots from WEST AFRICA TO EGYPT AND YEMEN, it seems possible that world food stocks may next year again be under severe strain, threatening to repeat the steep rises which, in 2008, saw prices double what they had been two years before.

It is now more than 200 years since the great astronomer William Herschel observed a correlation between wheat prices and sunspots. When the latter were few in number, he noted, the climate turned colder and drier, crop yields fell and wheat prices rose. In the past two years, sunspot activity has dropped to its lowest point for a century. One of our biggest worries is that our politicians are so fixated on the idea that CO2 is causing global warming that most of them haven't noticed that the problem may be that the world is not warming but cooling, with all the implications that has for whether we get enough to eat.

It is appropriate that another contributory factor to the world's food shortage should be the millions of acres of farmland now being switched from food crops to biofuels, to stop the world warming. Last year even the experts of the European Commission admitted that, TO MEET THE EU'S BIOFUEL TARGETS, WE WILL EVENTUALLY NEED ALMOST ALL THE FOOD-GROWING LAND IN EUROPE. But that didn't persuade them to change their policy. THEY WOULD RATHER WE STARVED THAN DID THAT. And the EU, we must always remember, is now our government – the one most of us didn't vote for last week.

Mr Netanyahu's speech, laying out his plans for regional peace, came a month after US President Barack Obama urged him to accept a two-state solution. The BBC's Paul Wood says Mr Netanyahu broke ground by accepting the principle of a demilitarised Palestinian state, albeit with conditions, and this will be what the White House is looking for.

But our correspondent says the question is whether this will be enough to make up for the lack of movement on the issue of Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank. Mr Obama has stressed that he wants all settlement activity to stop. But in his speech Mr Netanyahu said settlers were not "enemies of peace" and did not move from his position of backing "natural growth" in existing settlements.

The Israeli leader offered to talk to the Palestinians immediately and with "no preconditions. We want to live with you in peace as good neighbours," he said. Mr Netanyahu also said he was willing to go to Damascus, Riyadh and Beirut in pursuit of a Middle East peace deal. He said Israel would "be prepared for a true peace agreement [and] to reach a solution of a demilitarised Palestinian state alongside the Jewish state". But only if "WE RECEIVE THIS GUARANTEE FOR DEMILITARISATION AND THE SECURITY ARRANGEMENTS REQUIRED BY ISRAEL, AND IF THE PALESTINIANS RECOGNISE ISRAEL AS THE NATION OF THE JEWISH PEOPLE".

The regime of the ailing dictator Kim Jong-il said it was now in the "EARLY PHASE OF ALL-OUT CONFRONTATION WITH THE US" as it sought to raise tensions on the Korean Peninsular to dangerous new levels. On Friday the Security Council ordered an almost-total arms embargo and a raft of strict financial sanctions against the North in punishment for its testing of a second nuclear device last month.

In a bellicose statement, Pyongyang described the sanctions as the "vile product" of US policy in the region, adding that it would also begin work enriching uranium as it sought to build up stocks of fissile material for its nuclear weapons programme. The North is thought to have approximately 8,000 spent plutonium fuel rods which, if reprocessed, could yield 6-8kg of high-grade plutonium, or enough to make at least one more nuclear bomb.

The sanctions have also authorised UN member-states to stop and search North Korean vessels on the high seas if they suspect they are carrying banned nuclear or missile components, a measure that has drawn particular ire from Pyongyang. NORTH KOREA REPLIED THAT ANY ATTEMPT TO BLOCKADE ITS SHIPS WOULD BE REGARDED "AS AN ACT OF WAR AND MET WITH A DECISIVE MILITARY RESPONSE", AND PROMISED TO MEET ANY CONFRONTATION WITH "ALL-OUT CONFRONTATION".

The result and its violent aftermath raised fresh questions about the direction of Iranian policies at a time when US President Barack Obama wants to improve relations with Iran. SUPREME LEADER AYATOLLAH ALI KHAMENEI TOLD IRANIANS TO RESPECT AHMADINEJAD'S VICTORY, which upset expectations that reformist candidate Mirhossein Mousavi might win the race.

Interior Minister Sadeq Mahsouli, an Ahmadinejad ally, declared the president had been re-elected with 62.6 percent of the vote, against 33.7 percent for Mousavi. Mousavi complained of violations and vote-rigging - allegations rejected by Interior Ministry officials. "I'm warning I will not surrender to this dangerous charade. The result of such performance by some officials will jeopardize the pillars of the Islamic Republic and will establish tyranny," Mousavi said in a statement made available to Reuters.

After the result was announced, thousands of his supporters took to the streets, some chanting, "What happened to our vote?" Others shouted anti-Ahmadinejad slogans. "We are Iranians too," and "Mousavi is our president," they shouted. Ahmadinejad draws most of his support from rural areas and poorer big city neighborhoods. Mousavi enjoys strong backing in wealthier urban centers, especially among women and the young.

Mr Hajj Hassan is one of Hezbollah's 11 members of parliament, following recent elections which were won by a rival Western-backed alliance. HEZBOLLAH IS REGARDED BY THE UNITED STATES AS A TERRORIST GROUP. The EU has previously rejected public contacts with Hezbollah, which also controls Lebanon's most powerful military force. But Mr Solana said: "HEZBOLLAH IS PART OF POLITICAL LIFE IN LEBANON AND IS REPRESENTED IN THE LEBANESE PARLIAMENT."

Mr Hajj Hassan described the meeting with Mr Solana as a "GOODWILL GESTURE FROM THE EUROPEAN UNION TOWARDS HEZBOLLAH." He said it was an attempt by the EU to "get to know" Hezbollah. Britain said earlier this year it favoured re-establishing links with Hezbollah's political wing.

More than 20 of the state's 83 counties have reverted deteriorating paved roads to gravel in the last few years, according to the County Road Association of Michigan. THE COUNTIES ARE STRUGGLING WITH THEIR BUDGETS BECAUSE TAX REVENUES HAVE DECLINED IN THE LINGERING RECESSION.

Montcalm County converted nearly 10 miles of primary road to gravel this spring. The county estimates it takes about $10,000 to grind up a mile of pavement and put down gravel. It takes more than $100,000 to repave a mile of road. Reverting to gravel has happened in a few other states but it is most typical in Michigan. At least 50 miles have been reverted in the state in the past three years.

The government is looking at expanding a pioneering scheme in Flint, one of the poorest US cities, which involves razing entire districts and returning the land to nature. Local politicians believe THE CITY MUST CONTRACT BY AS MUCH AS 40 PER CENT, CONCENTRATING THE DWINDLING POPULATION AND LOCAL SERVICES INTO A MORE VIABLE AREA. The radical experiment is the brainchild of Dan Kildee, treasurer of Genesee County, which includes Flint. Having outlined his strategy to Barack Obama during the election campaign, Mr Kildee has now been approached by the US government and a group of charities who want him to apply what he has learnt to the rest of the country.

MR KILDEE SAID HE WILL CONCENTRATE ON 50 CITIES, identified in a recent study by the Brookings Institution, an influential Washington think-tank, as potentially needing to shrink substantially to cope with their declining fortunes. Most are former industrial cities in the "rust belt" of America's Mid-West and North East. They include Detroit, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Baltimore and Memphis.

In Detroit, shattered by the woes of the US car industry, there are already plans to split it into a collection of small urban centres separated from each other by countryside. "The real question is not whether these cities shrink – we're all shrinking – but whether we let it happen in a destructive or sustainable way," said Mr Kildee. "Decline is a fact of life in Flint. Resisting it is like resisting gravity."

But Mr Kildee, who has lived there nearly all his life, said he had first to overcome a DEEPLY INGRAINED AMERICAN CULTURAL MINDSET THAT "BIG IS GOOD" AND THAT CITIES SHOULD SPRAWL – FLINT COVERS 34 SQUARE MILES. He said: "The obsession with growth is sadly a very American thing. Across the US, there's an assumption that all development is good, that if communities are growing they are successful. If they're shrinking, they're failing." But some Flint dustcarts are collecting just one rubbish bag a week, roads are decaying, police are very understaffed and there are simply too few people to pay for services, he said. IF THE CITY DOESN'T DOWNSIZE IT WILL EVENTUALLY GO BANKRUPT, he added.

It can be used for special forces stealth operations, for crawling through Hamas tunnels or into Hizbullah bunkers. In addition, it could be used for locating survivors inside collapsed buildings after natural disasters or terror attacks.

The six-foot long snake can also be fitted with explosives and detonated inside enemy positions - a capability dubbed as 'suicide.' The snake is currently in the prototype stage of development and has no price tag yet, but the Defense Ministry plans to begin production on a large scale soon. According to a report on Channel 2, the snake can crawl into enemy positions through sewage pipes, under buildings and through forests. It is operated by one person with a laptop computer.

Mr Soros, the Hungarian-born US fund manager, said that the swaps were 'truly toxic', grossly distorting risk, encouraging speculation and with the potential to bring ruin on financial institutions and companies. Citing the recent bankruptcy of General Motors in America, Mr Soros said that some bondholders had stood to gain more from bankruptcy than re-organisation as a result of their CDS positions. "IT'S LIKE BUYING LIFE INSURANCE ON SOMEONE ELSE'S LIFE AND OWNING A LICENCE TO KILL HIM," he said of THE SWAPS, WHICH PAY THE BUYER FACE VALUE IF A BORROWER DEFAULTS, in exchange for the underlying securities or the cash equivalent.

In remarks to a meeting of international bankers and financiers in Beijing, Mr Soros set out his vision for a new regulatory system for global finance that would require regulators to intervene to stop the kind of credit and asset bubbles which precipitated last year's banking crisis.

The crisis had forced governments to put the global banking system on 'life support' in a crisis whose nearest parallel was the Great Depression of the 1930s, he told the Institute of International Finance, an association representing 370 international financial institutions.

The appointment raised fears that LIVESTOCK FARMERS' VIEWS WILL FALL ON UNSYMPATHETIC EARS. There are also concerns THE FORMER MINISTER FOR LONDON HAS LITTLE KNOWLEDGE OF RURAL AFFAIRS. Mr Fitzpatrick already faced an uphill battle as his predecessor Jane Kennedy, who quit last week in protest at Gordon Brown's leadership style, was hugely popular with farmers.

One pressing issue facing Mr Fitzpatrick is the menace of bovine TB, which could require a controversial badger cull. Former BBC presenter Robin Page, of the Countryside Restoration Trust pressure group, said: 'NEW LABOUR HAS SHOWN NO INTEREST IN THE COUNTRYSIDE and this appointment seems to confirm this. We want people who understand farming and the importance of the livestock industry and who know that Britain needs to produce more of its own food.'

Devon beef farmer Richard Haddock, formerly a delegate to the National Farmers' Union, said: 'There is concern that he will not be sympathetic to the decline of the UK meat industry.'

He appeared at odds with Gordon Brown after declaring it was an 'important objective' for Britain to sign up. It is the first time for years that any senior minister has enthused openly about the benefits of euro entry. His remarks caused consternation, COMING JUST DAYS AFTER 60 PER CENT OF VOTERS BACKED PARTIES HOSTILE TO THE EU IN EUROPEAN ELECTIONS.

CRITICS ALSO QUESTIONED LORD MANDELSON'S MOTIVES, since he is not allowed to criticise the EU if he wants to keep his £31,000-a-year pension as a former European commissioner. Lord Mandelson, on a trip to Berlin, said: 'Does it remain an important objective for Britain to find itself in the same currency as that single market in which it interacts? Obviously yes.'

He insisted such a decision was for 'the future' and had to be made on the 'right terms in the right circumstances'. However, he added: 'IT IS PERFECTLY CLEAR THAT THE EURO HAS BEEN A GREAT SUCCESS in anchoring its eurozone members during the financial crisis. 'I hope people will recognise this represents a major vindication for the single currency.'

"THE EXPRESSION PALESTINIAN STATE SHOULD NOT BE USED," Likud MP Miri Regev said on Thursday, echoing the sentiment of several other members of Netanyahu's right-wing Likud party ahead of Sunday's speech. To date, the hawkish prime minister has not endorsed the concept of a Palestinian state and has defied US pressure to freeze construction activity in West Bank settlements that are home to more than 280,000 Israelis.

Netanyahu hopes that his landmark speech will help ease the mounting tension in relations with the United States, Israel's prime ally. But he faces a delicate balancing act if he is to avoid infuriating his partners in the governing centre-right coalition, which is divided between those who reject a two-state solution, and those, like Defence Minister and Labour chief Ehud Barak, who support it.

Regev insisted that US President Barack Obama cannot force decisions upon the Israeli government. "The US pressure is mainly psychological; one should not forget that the president is not the only one in the United States, there's the Congress and the Senate, which support Israel," she said. Also among those pressing Netanyahu to steer clear of the concept of a Palestinian state is Benny Begin, a minister without portfolio and son of former premier Menachem Begin. "IF THE ONLY SOLUTION IS TWO STATES FOR TWO PEOPLES, THEN THERE IS NO SOLUTION," he said.

Begin insisted that the Palestinians were not after a two-state solution but wanted a "TWO-STAGE SOLUTION AT THE END OF WHICH THERE WOULD BE A SINGLE PLO-HAMAS STATE." Infrastructure Minister Uzi Landau from the far-right Israel Beitenu party insisted that in any case Israel "HAS NO PALESTINIAN PARTNER WITH WHOM TO NEGOTIATE. In the Gaza Strip, there is some kind of a terrorist state in the hands of Hamas, while (Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas) does not control the Arabs in the occupied West Bank," Landau said.