From today, all petrol and diesel sold on forecourts in the UK must contain at least 2.5 percent biofuel. Last year, EU leaders agreed to source 10 PERCENT OF ALL TRANSPORT FUEL from biofuels by 2020.

THERE IS WIDESPREAD COVERAGE OF THE LINKS BETWEEN BIOFUELS AND RECENT SHARP RISES IN GLOBAL FOOD PRICES. UN Special Rapporteur for the Right to Food Jean Ziegler told German radio yesterday that the production of biofuels is "A CRIME AGAINST HUMANITY". Ziegler also appeared on BBC Newsnight last night calling for the EU to suspend targets for biofuels. This follows similar demands from the European Environment Agency (which gives scientific advice to the EU Commission), the World Bank, the IMF, the OECD, the FAO and the UNHCR, as well as a large number of NGOs and academics. HOWEVER, THE NATIONAL FARMERS UNION HAS WELCOMED TARGETS FOR BIOFUELS.

TRADE ECONOMIST PAUL COLLIER NOTES IN THE TIMES THAT ONE SUV TANK OF BIOFUEL USES ENOUGH GRAIN TO FEED AN AFRICAN FAMILY FOR A YEAR. The IHT notes that work by the International Food Policy Research Institute in Washington suggests that biofuel production accounts for a quarter to a third of the recent increase in global commodity prices.

Prof. C. Ford Runge, an economist at the University of Minnesota, whilst accepting that other factors were also driving food price rises, said "Ethanol is the one thing we can do something about. It's about the only lever we have to pull, but NONE OF THE POLITICIANS HAVE THE COURAGE TO PULL THE LEVER."

The front page of the Mail reports that FOOD PRICES ARE RISING AT THEIR FASTEST RATE IN 17 YEARS.

The memo also reveals that the Irish government has picked 29 May as the date to hold a referendum, not June 12 as widely predicted. It was noted that the Irish "WILL DELAY AN ANNOUNCEMENT TO KEEP THE NO CAMP GUESSING." The Taoiseach and (Dermot) Ahern saw a slight advantage in keeping the No camp guessing." The memo also says that ministers ruled out an October referendum, which would have been better procedurally, out of fear of "UNHELPFUL DEVELOPMENTS DURING THE FRENCH PRESIDENCY - PARTICULARLY RELATED TO EU DEFENCE" and described French President Sarkozy as "COMPLETELY UNPREDICTABLE." It also warned that a WTO deal could turn Irish farmers groups against the Treaty.

In addition, the memo claimed that Foreign Minister Dermot Ahern has been personally assured by Margot Wallstrom that the EU Commission will "TONE DOWN OR DELAY" any announcement from Brussels "THAT MIGHT BE UNHELPFUL."

Meanwhile, Deutsche Welle reports that German Chancellor Angela Merkel yesterday visited Dublin, in a bid to persuade the Irish to vote 'yes' to the Lisbon Treaty. In a speech to the National Forum of Europe she said, "To the sceptics, I can only say that if everything remains as it is now, your concerns will definitely not be better addressed." A poll published in the Irish Sun found that 28 percent of the Irish have decided to vote 'Yes' to the Treaty, 12 percent will vote 'No' and 60 PERCENT ARE STILL TO MAKE UP THEIR MINDS.

Credit-card numbers can now go for as little as 40 cents each. A matching name, Social Security number, address, and date of birth cost just $2.00, according to security experts. Even as the incidences of identity theft reach record highs, the government and private institutions continue to collect record amounts of personal, private data. And despite all of the rules, regulations, and software innovations in place to ensure that information doesn't fall into the wrong hands, it does, and regularly.

In just the past month, State Department employees were disciplined for snooping through presidential candidates' passport files, and hospital workers have been charged with selling the personal information of tens of thousands of patients as well as rifling through the patient records of top stars. And in Hollywood a private detective to the stars is accused of bribing police and telephone company officials so he could scour their confidential databases.

Then there's the Internal Revenue Service. A week before tax day, its inspector general warned that the computer systems that contain the private tax returns of every taxpayer in America are vulnerable to disgruntled employees and hackers. The problem, say security experts, is that the world's ability to collect data has far outstripped its ability to protect it.

But Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal did offer Israel a 10-year truce if it withdraws from all lands it seized in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war. Carter met twice with Mashaal over the weekend. The former president also said Monday that he would never sit down with Al Qaeda because the terror network has no "redeeming features."

"Al Qaeda are not involved in any sort of a fruitful process. They are not recognized by their own people," Carter told FOX News in an interview Monday. "On the other hand, you have to remember Hamas in an honest and open and fair and transparent election were elected the leaders of the Palestinian government."

Israel and the U.S. State Department consider Hamas to be a terrorist group. Israeli officials had shunned Carter during his visit because of his meetings with Mashaal, and other group leaders. Syria harbors Hamas' exiled leadership in its capital, Damascus, and supports the Lebanese Hezbollah guerrillas who warred with Israel in 2006.

"Pope of Hope" read a headline in New York's Daily News. El Diario, a tabloid for the Spanish-speaking minority that makes up a growing part of the U.S. Catholic Church, hailed the "Ola de Paz" (Wave of Peace). The impression Benedict made surprised even American Catholics who study Benedict's role as head of the 1.1-billion-strong Church."This was a very successful trip, and I didn't fully anticipate that," said Chester Gillis, theology professor at Georgetown University in Washington.

"Instead of being the distant theologian breathing the rarefied air of the Vatican, he came down to the ground and was warm and charming and sensitive in what he said." Thomas Noble, a papal historian at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana, said: "There's obviously a human dimension and a pastoral dimension there that hasn't always been in evidence."

Dmitry Pankin, Deputy Finance Minister, said that there was hot political debate about how the fund should be invested. Russia is awash with cash largely because of soaring revenues from its oil and gas. But the country is also struggling with inflation as the economy grows rapidly. The year-on-year rise in inflation in the middle of this month stood at 13.8 per cent. Inflation is being driven by high food prices, which are ratcheting the rate up despite a slowdown in import price inflation.

For that reason, it is now having to limit government spending on infrastructure even though much of its transport network and other parts of its national framework badly needs to be upgraded.

A sharp increase in the cost of imported cattle feed and a decline in milk imports, both of which are typically provided in large part by Australia, have prevented dairy farmers from keeping pace with demand. While soaring food prices have triggered rioting among the starving millions of the third world, in wealthy Japan they have forced a pampered population to contemplate the shocking possibility of a long-term - perhaps permanent - reduction in the quality and quantity of its food.

Last week, as the prices of wheat and barley continued their relentless climb, the Japanese Government discovered it had exhausted its ¥230 billion ($A2.37 billion) budget for the grains with two months remaining. It was forced to call on an emergency ¥55 billion reserve to ensure it could continue feeding the nation. "This was the first time the Government has had to take such drastic action since the war," said Akio Shibata, an expert on food imports, who warned the Agriculture Ministry two years ago that Japan would have to cut back drastically on its sophisticated diet if it did not become more self-sufficient.

In view of recent predictions by Goldman Sachs analysts that commodities could experience "explosive rallies" in the next two years, many are wondering if Japan could become an example to other rich nations that have relied too much on foreign supplies to put food on their tables.

That's one of the reasons why Royal Bank of Scotland has decided to raise a record-breaking £12bn of new cash from its shareholders in a rights issue. Or to put it another way, the climate for banks has changed in a fundamental way. It seems only yesterday it was all about growth and opportunities.

Today bankers have remembered - some would say belatedly - that there are risks associated with lending. So Royal Bank has also announced that, on a permanent basis, it will retain more capital in its balance sheet to meet the risks of default by borrowers than it had been doing.

Speaking at a youth rally in New York, he said his teenage years had been "marred by a sinister regime". The Pope was a Hitler Youth member as a teen, usual for young Germans at the time, and was conscripted by the German army near the end of World War II. Earlier, during a Mass at St Patrick's Cathedral in Manhattan he again condemned paedophile Catholic priests. More than 4,000 US Catholic clergy have been accused of sexually abusing minors since 1950. The Church has paid out more than $2bn (£1bn) in compensation and legal fees, most of it since the scandal erupted in 2002.

Pope Benedict's tour of the US is his first visit to the country since being elected head of the Catholic Church - it was the third anniversary of his elevation to the papacy on Saturday and the event was formally commemorated with the Mass at St Patrick's. The Pope told the crowd his own years as a teenager had been "marred by a sinister regime that thought it had all the answers".

"Its influence grew, infiltrating schools and civic bodies, as well as politics and even religion, before it was fully recognised for the monster it was," he said. "It banished God and thus became impervious to anything true and good. Let us thank God that so many people of your generation are able to enjoy the liberties which have arisen from the extension of democracy and respect for human rights."

In a major speech to the U.N. General Assembly, the pope also said the international community sometimes had the duty to intervene when a country could not protect its own people from "grave and sustained violations of human rights." The pope, who arrived from Washington on the second leg of a six-day U.S. trip, was only the third pontiff in history to address the General Assembly.

Speaking in French and English from the Assembly's green marble podium, he gave a wide-ranging address on issues such as globalization, human rights and the environment. The international community must be "capable of responding to the demands of the human family through binding international rules," said the 81-year-old pope, who spoke after meeting privately with U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.

He said the notion of multilateral consensus was "in crisis because it is still subordinated to the decisions of a few, whereas the world's problems call for interventions in the form of collective action by the international community." While Benedict did not mention any country, this appeared to refer to the United States, which led the 2003 invasion of Iraq despite a Security Council refusal to approve it. The Vatican strongly opposed the recourse to war.

Over the weekend, protesters waving Chinese flags have rallied in front of the French Embassy in Beijing and at outlets of French retailer Carrefour in nine cities across the country. They have threatened boycotts of the retailer, whom they accuse of supporting the Dalai Lama, Tibet's exiled spiritual leader - a charge Carrefour denies. A front-page editorial in the People's Daily newspaper, the official mouthpiece for the Chinese Communist Party, called for calm, urging people to cherish patriotism "while expressing it in a rational way."

"As citizens, we have the responsibility to express our patriotic enthusiasm calmly and rationally and express patriotic aspiration in an orderly and legal manner," the commentary said. The editorial seemed to reflect concern among China's leaders about a growing anti-Western backlash, fueled by anger over the demonstrations in Paris, London and San Francisco during the Olympic torch relay. The relay has become a magnet for protests against China's rule in Tibet and its human rights record.

Anger also has been channeled against Western media organizations, including CNN, for so-called "distorted" coverage of recent unrest in Tibet and neighboring provinces. Foreign journalists have received threatening phone calls and e-mails. Several thousand ethnic Chinese marched outside CNN's office in Hollywood Saturday to demand the firing of a commentator who recently compared China's leaders to a "bunch of goons and thugs." CNN insists its coverage has been impartial and has said it refutes allegations that it "distorts its coverage of the events in Tibet to portray either side in a more favorable light."

At the conference, "Mecca, the Center of the Earth, Theory and Practice," Muslim scientists and clerics called for the change, arguing that the holy city in Saudi Arabia is the center of the Earth and should be the reference point for world time, not Greenwich, England. One geologist at the Qatar conference said Mecca's longitude is perfectly aligned with magnetic north and should therefore replace the English city, which has been measuring time zones since 1884.

Attendees of the conference also reviewed the "Mecca Watch," an invention by a French Muslim which reportedly rotates counter-clockwise and displays Mecca's direction from any point in the world, the BBC said. The conference is part of a trend called "Ijaz al-Koran" or "miraculous nature of the holy text," which tries to find precedents for modern science from passages in the Koran. But its critics say Ijaz al-Koran confuses spiritual truth - which depends on constant faith - with empirical truth, which depends on ever-changing science, the BBC said.

As baby boomers retire, the same pattern will emerge across the country, the Los Angeles Times reported Sunday. Demographers estimate that by 2025 most of the growth in the workforce will be from immigrants. Ernesto Cortes Jr., Southwest regional director of the Industrial Areas Foundation, said Los Angeles is at a crossroads.

"The question is: Are we going to be a 21st century city with shared prosperity, or a Third World city with an elite group on top and the majority at poverty or near poverty wages?" he asked. "Right now we're headed toward becoming a Third World city.

At its peak, the storm dumped 2.5 cm of snow at the Vancouver International Airport, with 8 cm at Lynn Valley and 30 cm at Mount Seymour. Vancouver Island recorded 6.4 cm of snow at Victoria International Airport by 11am Saturday - more than any on an April day since 1940. But the big record dump came in Nanaimo, where the city hadn't seen measurable snow on April 19 since 1947. As of 11am, 24 cm covered the ground at the airport.

In Japan and South Korea, some manufacturers for the first time have begun buying genetically engineered corn for use in soft drinks, snacks and other foods. Until now, to avoid consumer backlash, the companies have paid extra to buy conventionally grown corn. But with prices having tripled in two years, it has become too expensive to be so finicky. "We cannot afford it," said a corn buyer at Kato Kagaku, a Japanese maker of corn starch and corn syrup.

In the United States, wheat growers and marketers, once hesitant about adopting biotechnology because they feared losing export sales, are now warming to it as a way to bolster supplies. Genetically modified crops contain genes from other organisms to make the plants resistant to insects, herbicides or disease. Opponents continue to worry that such crops have not been studied enough and that they might pose risks to health and the environment.

"I think it's pretty clear that price and supply concerns have people thinking a little bit differently today," said Steve Mercer, a spokesman for U.S. Wheat Associates, a federally supported cooperative that promotes American wheat abroad. Biotechnology still certainly faces obstacles. Polls in Europe do not yet show a decisive shift in consumer sentiment, and the industry has had some recent setbacks. Since the beginning of the year France has banned the planting of genetically modified corn while Germany has enacted a law allowing for foods to be labeled as "GM free."