ONLY 21% OF THE WHEAT HARVEST HAS BEEN GATHERED SO FAR, making it the latest harvest for 10 years. Meanwhile, the annual harvest of peas is expected to be 20% short of the target, with some farmers in eastern England abandoning their crops. ONE FARMER ON THE BANKS OF THE RIVER HUMBER HAS LOST OVER 100 HECTARES OF PEAS BECAUSE OF THE WEATHER, Radio 4's Farming Today reported.

Paul Temple from the National Farmers Union said: "There's very little you can do about the weather, you just have to work with it. But it's been particularly difficult this year because we've had a very wet July and very wet August. For a lot of the crops, it's just impossible to harvest them," he told BBC News24. "We're just not getting any dry periods in between the seemingly constant rain."

Small areas were able to be harvested during brief dry spells, but the resulting harvest was damp, resulting in an expensive drying process using expensive fuel, Mr Temple said. In north-east England, BETWEEN 40-50% OF THE OIL RAPESEED WOULD BE LOST THIS YEAR, and the wheat crop was "hanging in the balance," he added.

Damage had already been done to the quality of the grain, so harvest originally destined for milling into flour would now be used for feed instead. In Scotland, farmers have suffered the worst harvest in almost 20 years after torrential rain ruined some fields. Much of the oil seed rape crop has already failed and farmers are now hoping to save their wheat and barley. Many fields have been flattened by the summer deluges and in others the grain is ready but the machines cannot get to them.

Hanna, the eighth tropical storm of the Atlantic hurricane season, closed in on the US east coast on the verge of hurricane strength after leaving "catastrophic" conditions in Haiti, which it battered with strong winds and torrential rain for several days. As five metres of muddy floodwaters drained from the port city of Gonaives and the first international aid began to arrive, Haitian police said they found the bodies of 495 storm victims. That brought the Haitian death toll from Hanna, the third deadly storm to strike the impoverished Caribbean nation in less than a month, to at least 529. With more people missing, the toll was expected to rise, Ernst Dorfeuille, the town's police commissioner, said.

As Hanna neared the US, a few hundred people in the most vulnerable regions headed to shelters and authorities declared states of emergency and placed several North Carolina beach communities under evacuation orders. Hard on Hanna's heels, however, was a more worrying weather system: Hurricane Ike, a powerful category three storm currently tracing a similar path to Hurricane Andrew, the category five storm that devastated south Florida in 1992.

Forecasters said it was on course to pass over the Florida Keys island chain as a destructive category four hurricane before heading into the Gulf of Mexico, where around 4,000 offshore platforms produce a quarter of US crude oil and 15 percent of natural gas.

Greenspan says Congress needs to give the government new powers to handle troubled companies to minimize any potential losses to American taxpayers. A self-described libertarian Republican, Greenspan has a reputation for being wary of giving the government extra powers. However, in crisis situations, there needs to be a clear process for handling bailouts, rather than depending on the Fed to do so, he reckons. A high-level panel of financial officials should be given broad authority to quickly determine whether a failing company poses a sufficient threat to the entire US economy, he recommends. If so, the company would be shut down.

Critics in Congress, in academia and elsewhere worry that the Fed's unprecedented actions - including financial backing in March for JPMorgan Chase & Co (JPM)'s takeover of Bear Stearns - ARE PUTTING TAXPAYERS ON THE HOOK FOR BILLIONS OF DOLLARS OF POTENTIAL LOSSES. They also say it encourages "moral hazard," that is, allowing financial companies to gamble more recklessly in the future.

Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke, who took the helm after Greenspan, has repeatedly defended the Fed's actions, saying they were necessary to avert a meltdown of the entire financial system, which would have devastated the US economy.

Greenspan calls the current crisis "one of those rare, once in a century or half-century events." THE FULL CLOSURE ON THIS CRISIS IS "A WAY OFF," he says. The US economy, he observes, appears to be "on the brink of recession." And, WORLDWIDE INFLATION, HE WARNS, IS CREEPING, which will pose a challenge to central bankers, he says.

A Fed report released Thursday said commercial banks averaged $18.98 billion in daily borrowing over the past week. That compared with a daily average of $18.47 billion in the previous week.

In the broadest use of the central bank's lending power since the 1930s, the Fed in March scrambled to avert a market meltdown by giving investment houses a place to go for emergency overnight loans. The Fed has since extended those loan privileges into next year. Originally they were supposed to last through mid-September.

More recently, the Fed has said troubled mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac could draw emergency loans from the central bank if they needed.

New foreclosures increased to 1.19 percent, rising above 1 percent for the first time in the survey's 29 years, the Mortgage Bankers Association said in a report today. The total inventory of homes in foreclosure reached 2.75 percent, almost tripling since the five-year housing boom ended in 2005. The share of loans with one or more payments overdue rose to a seasonally adjusted 6.41 percent of all mortgages, an all-time high, from 6.35 percent in the first quarter.

Tumbling home prices are making it difficult for even the most creditworthy owners with adjustable-rate mortgages to sell or get a new loan as their financing costs rise, said Jay Brinkmann, MBA's chief economist. PRIME ARMS ACCOUNTED FOR 23 PERCENT OF NEW FORECLOSURES and subprime ARMs were 36 percent, he said.

A blizzard of pink slips propelled the jobless rate from 5.7 percent in July to 6.1 percent in August, the Labor Department reported Friday. Such a sharp increase is usually a strong recession warning, and it dashed investors' hopes for a late-year recovery. Worried about the economy and their own business prospects, employers cut payrolls by 84,000 in August, marking the eighth straight month of losses.

So far this year, a staggering 605,000 jobs have vanished - slightly less than the population of Alaska. The economy needs to generate more than 100,000 new jobs a month for employment to remain stable. Richard Yamarone, economist at Argus Research, feared that the jobless rate would cause consumers and businesses to "MOVE FROM A MODERATELY CONCERNED STAGE TO OUTRIGHT FEAR" and reduce their spending even more.

The unemployment increase means many companies will feel pressure to reduce their business investments - either in capital projects or hiring - for the rest of the year. "Mix business caution with consumer exhaustion and you have a recipe for a real recession," said Terry Connelly, dean of Golden Gate University's Ageno School of Business.

The plan is expected to involve putting the two companies into the conservatorship of their regulator, the Federal Housing Finance Agency, said several people familiar with the matter. That would mean the government would take the reins of the companies, at least temporarily. It is also expected to involve the government injecting capital into Fannie and Freddie. That could happen gradually on a quarter-by-quarter basis, rather than in a single move.

In addition, Treasury's plan includes a top-level management shakeup at both companies. Daniel H. Mudd, chief executive of FANNIE MAE, and Richard Syron, his counterpart at FREDDIE MAC, are expected to step down from their posts eventually.

The woes of Fannie and Freddie mark a remarkable comedown for two of Washington's most powerful and feared institutions, known for their financial clout and no-holds-barred lobbying prowess. Fannie and Freddie shares, which were up during the regular session Friday, dropped 25% and nearly 20% respectively in the after-hours session.

"Fannie Mae" = The Federal National Mortgage Association (FNMA)
"Freddie Mac" = The Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation (FHLMC)

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp was appointed receiver of the bank, located in Henderson, Nevada. It had $2 billion in assets and $1.7 billion in deposits as of June 30. The FDIC said Friday the bank's insured deposits will be assumed by Nevada State Bank of Las Vegas. Its branches will reopen Monday as offices of Nevada State Bank in Nevada and National Bank of Arizona in Arizona.

The agency said depositors of Silver State Bank will continue to have full access to their deposits. The 11 failures so far this year compare with three for all of 2007, and federal banking officials have said that more banks are in danger of collapse. The FDIC estimated its resolution will cost the deposit insurance fund between $450 million and $550 million. Of the 8,500 or so FDIC-insured banks in the country, 117 WERE CONSIDERED TO BE IN TROUBLE IN THE SECOND QUARTER.

On September 10, scientists at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) laboratory in Geneva, Switzerland, will switch on the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) - a $6 billion particle accelerator that will send beams of protons careening around a 17-mile underground ring, crash them into each other to re-create the immediate after effects of the Big Bang, and then monitor the debris in the hope of learning more about the origins and workings of the universe.

Critics of the LHC say the high-energy experiment might create a mini black hole that could expand to dangerous, Earth-eating proportions. On August 26, Professor Otto Rossler, a German chemist at the Eberhard Karis University of Tubingen, filed a lawsuit against CERN with the European Court of Human Rights that argued, with no understatement, that such a scenario would violate the right to life of European citizens and pose a threat to the rule of law.

Last March, two American environmentalists filed a lawsuit in Federal District Court in Honolulu seeking to force the U.S. government to withdraw its participation in the experiment. The lawsuits have in turn spawned several websites, chat rooms and petitions - and led to alarming headlines around the world.

The Met Office has also issued a "severe and extreme" weather warning for the South West and North East of England, with almost a month's worth of rain expected in a matter of hours today (FRI). Two flood warnings have been issued by the Environment Agency for the Peterston-super-Ely and St Fagans areas of Cardiff, as the first Atlantic storm of the autumn takes hold. A further 12 areas across Devon, Cornwall, Wales, Buckinghamshire, Northamptonshire and Gloucestershire are advised to stay on the alert, with flooding of low-lying land and roads deemed likely.

The intense weather front crossing the country on Friday is predicted to see more than 50mm (1.96 inches) of rain fall in some areas and will be followed by thunder and lightning. The torrential downpour will be accompanied by wind speeds of up to 50 miles per hour. Ken Hunt, a spokesman for the Environment Agency, warned people in areas most at risk to regularly check local broadcasts. "The ground is already wet from the recent bad weather so we are expecting to issue further flood warnings and watches as this weather system arrives," he said.

Western powers accuse Iran of seeking the atom bomb under the cover of a civilian nuclear program but Tehran denies the charge, insisting it only wants to master atomic technology in order to generate electricity. THE UNITED STATES AND ISRAEL HAVE NOT RULED OUT MILITARY ACTION IF THE DISPUTE CANNOT BE SETTLED THROUGH DIPLOMACY. "Iran is taking a major risk in continuing the process to obtain a military nuclear capacity," Sarkozy told a meeting in Damascus with the leaders of Syria, Turkey and Qatar.

"One day, whatever the Israeli government, we could find one morning that Israel has struck," Sarkozy added. "The question is not whether it would be legitimate, whether it would be intelligent. What will we do at that moment? It would be a catastrophe. We must avoid that catastrophe," Sarkozy told the meeting in comments broadcast on television.

Speculation about a possible attack on Iran's nuclear facilities has risen since Israel staged an air force exercise in June which was reported to be a simulation of a strike against Iran.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued its report on vaccination rates for ages 1-1/2 through 3, a day after another study came out showing no link between autism and the vaccine given to guard against measles, mumps and rubella. A record 77.4 percent of children in this age group received the full recommended series of vaccinations, the CDC said. Ninety percent of children got all but one of the six individual vaccines in the series, the CDC said.

The one exception was the four doses of diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis or whooping cough vaccine, received by 84.5 percent of toddlers, the CDC said. The CDC report, based on data on 17,017 children, found that fewer than 1 percent got no vaccines. "THE IMMUNIZATION PROGRAM'S SUCCESS HINGES ON PARENTS' TRUST IN VACCINE SAFETY," CDC Director Dr. Julie Gerberding said.

But public health officials have expressed concern in recent years that some parents fearful about vaccine safety were declining to get their children vaccinated, making them more apt to catch and spread preventable diseases. "We really recognize that ultimately our program is dependent on trust - trust of moms and dads, trust of caretakers and trust of the clinicians, pediatricians (and) family practice professionals who take care of our children," Gerberding told reporters in a conference call.

In May, cbs2chicago.com began tracking city shootings and posting them on Google maps. Information compiled from our reporters, wire service reports and the Chicago Police Major Incidents log indicated that 123 people were shot and killed throughout the city between the start of Memorial Day weekend on May 26, and the end of Labor Day on Sept. 1.

According to the Defense Department, 65 soldiers were killed in combat in Iraq. About the same number were killed in Afghanistan over that same period. In the same time period, an estimated 245 people were shot and wounded in the city.

Schwarzenegger in June declared the most populous U.S. state to officially be in drought and declared nine counties in its farm-rich Central Valley to be in a state of emergency because water supplies were so low after two years of below-average rainfall. California's water shortages have been compounded by a federal court order to limit pumping water from the state's San Joaquin-Sacramento River Delta to protect a species of fish.

The delta area east of San Francisco is the state's fresh water hub. Its water is conveyed across the state, including as far away as Southern California. California's 2009 Drought Water Bank will buy water primarily from local water agencies and farmers upstream of the delta and make it available for sale to public and private water systems expecting to run short of water next year.

The last time California's Department of Water Resources set up a water bank was in the early 1990s and the agency plans much more strict guidelines for its new effort, said Wendy Martin, the statewide drought coordinator for the agency. "CALIFORNIA'S DROUGHT IS IMPACTING OUR ECONOMY, OUR AGRICULTURE AND OUR FAMILIES, AND AN END TO THESE DRY CONDITIONS IS NOWHERE IN SIGHT."

Meat and fish registered the biggest price increases in the survey, compiled on behalf of the BBC by leading retail analysts Verdict Research. The figures come amid growing concern about the high cost of food, which is exceeding the official inflation rate. The figures show price rises of nearly 50% for some food items. The index, which Verdict has been compiling since January this year, is designed to track the cost of a typical trolley of UK food items.

It divides household supermarket purchases into 13 categories, including frozen foods, fresh fruit and vegetables, ready meals and dairy goods. The index showed that during the eight months from January to August, meat and fish prices went up by 22.9%, making them the fastest-rising category. General store-cupboard items, such as tinned foods, were the next most inflation-busting sector, registering a 15% increase, while fresh fruit and vegetables went up by 14.7%. Seven items in the survey were found to have gone up in price by more than 40%.

The figures produced for the BBC are in line with other recently-published research showing the impact of food price rises on UK household budgets. On Wednesday, the British Retail Consortium (BRC) said that food price inflation over the past year amounted to 10% - more than twice the official Consumer Prices Index (CPI) inflation rate of 4.4%.