Increased garden bird feeding by people is also fuelling the migration, said the British Trust for Ornithology. A survey by 16,500 householders found wood pigeons in 46% of London gardens, compared to just 27% for the more familiar feral pigeon. The BTO said it was "amazing" how quickly the wood pigeon had adapted.

It says that a decade ago the wood pigeon did not appear in the list, but now it is the fourth most common species identified. The BTO put the shift down to changes in farming practices, such as sowing cereals in autumn which leaves the birds without areas of crop stubble to feed on over the winter.

The blood-sucking nocturnal creatures have infested a Park Ave. penthouse, an artist's colony in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, a $25 million Central Park West duplex and a theater on Broadway, according to victims, exterminators and elected officials. Once linked to flophouses and fleabags, bedbug outbreaks victimize the rich and poor alike and are spreading panic in some of the city's hottest neighborhoods.

"In the last six months, I've treated maternity wards, five-star hotels, movie theaters, taxi garages, investment banks, private schools, white-shoe law firms, Brooklyn apartments in Greenpoint, DUMBO and Cobble Hill, even the chambers of a federal judge," said Jeff Eisenberg, owner of Pest Away Exterminating on the upper West Side. The numbers are off the charts: In 2004, New Yorkers placed 537 calls to 311 about bedbugs in their homes; the city slapped 82 landlords with bedbug violations, data show.

In the fiscal year that ended in June, 6,889 infestation complaints were logged and 2,008 building owners were hit with summonses. Bedbugs come out of the woodwork at night to feed on human blood, biting people in their sleep and leaving large, itchy skin welts that can be painful. They are not believed to carry or transmit diseases.

In the past three years, more than 900 inmates at the prison have contracted the fever, a fungal infection that has been both widespread and lethal. At least a dozen inmates here in Central California have died from the disease, which is on the rise in other Western states, including Arizona, where the health department declared an epidemic after more than 5,500 cases were reported in 2006, including 33 deaths.

Endemic to parts of the Southwest, valley fever has been reported in recent years in a widening belt from South Texas to Northern California. The disease has infected archaeologists digging at the Dinosaur National Monument in Utah and dogs that have inhaled the spores while sniffing for illegal drugs along the Mexican border.

In most cases, the infection starts in the lungs and is usually handled by the body without permanent damage. But serious complications can arise, including meningitis; and, at Pleasant Valley, the scope of the outbreak has left some inmates permanently disabled, confined to wheelchairs and interned in expensive long-term hospital stays. About 80 prison employees have also contracted the fever, Pleasant Valley officials say, including a corrections officer who died of the disease in 2005.

What makes the disease all the more troubling is that its cause is literally underfoot: the spores that cause the infection reside in the region's soil. When that soil is disturbed, something that happens regularly where houses are being built, crops are being sown and a steady wind churns, those spores are inhaled. The spores can also be kicked up by Mother Nature including earthquakes and dust storms.

The Conservative leader told the Daily Mail he will "not let matters rest" if Gordon Brown succeeds in forcing the controversial treaty through Parliament and into law. His intervention ratchets up the pressure on Mr Brown over the document which is likely to dominate debate at Westminster in the New Year. Ministers are hoping to bore voters into submission by allowing weeks of lengthy discussion on the treaty.

But Conservative MPs and a band of Labour rebels are promising the biggest parliamentary showdown over Europe since the Maastricht Treaty plunged John Major's government into turmoil in the 1990s. Mr Brown plans to use Labour's Commons majority to push the treaty into British law despite a manifesto promise at the last election to ask for voters' approval in a referendum. The Prime Minister insists that the constitutional element of the treaty has been abandoned, making a vote unnecessary.

But most other EU leaders admit that it is virtually the same as the original version, which was rejected by voters in France and the Netherlands in 2005. It will still create the first full-time EU president and foreign affairs chief, give the EU its own legal personality like a nation state, and do away with Britain's right to reject EU proposals in more than 40 policy areas. Labour ministers will seize on Mr Cameron's remarks as evidence that he is prepared to renegotiate Britain's entire relationship with the EU. His commitment to unpick the treaty after it has been implemented could even lead to Britain being forced to leave the EU altogether, they will claim.

Dr Rowan Williams said that those who discard rubbish and materials too easily are likely to do the same to people and relationships. In a New Year message filmed in Canterbury Cathedral and at a nearby recycling centre, the Archbishop stressed his concern for the environment and the moral necessity of protecting it. He said that short-term exploitation of the earth's resources which produces fantastic quantities of waste has implications for other areas of life.

"In a society where we think of so many things as disposable - where we expect to be constantly discarding last year's gadget and replacing it with this year's model - do we end up tempted to think of people and relationships as disposable?" Dr Williams asked. The Archbishop adds in his message that God "does not do waste" and does not regard human life as disposable.

"He doesn't regard anyone as a 'waste of space', as not worth his time - from the very beginnings of life to its end, whether they are successful, articulate, productive or not," Dr Williams said.

Ministers could announce the new atomic age as early as next week, when MPs return to the Commons after their Christmas break. The Prime Minister indicated in his New Year message to the country that the Government was prepared to take the "difficult decision" of upgrading nuclear power plants. He believes nuclear power is an effective way of helping Britain meet its energy needs - amid concerns over oil and gas supplies from Russia and the Middle East - while tackling climate change.

The announcement will follow a five-month public consultation which has already been branded a farce by opponents. They are preparing a legal challenge to any pro-nuclear findings. Senior sources in the Department for Business and Enterprise insisted: "Dozens of individuals and organisations have contributed to the consultation and we have taken account of everything they said. "Given the circumstances we will be facing, it is inconceivable that we should prevent nuclear from being part of our energy mix."

Professor Gordon MacKerron of Sussex University, who recently headed a government advisory committee on radioactive waste, admitted he had "serious misgivings about the legitimacy of the consultation process" and called Ministers' position on the economics of nuclear power "overly optimistic.

A lethal mix of binge drinking and unprotected casual sex will also mean a sharp increase in sexually-transmitted diseases. The warning from the Marie Stopes International organisation, which carries out around one in three UK abortions, comes as Ministers admit their £138million drive to reduce teenage pregnancies is failing.

There are fears that some girls see a termination as just another form of contraception. Abortion in Britain has already reached record levels, with more than 200,000 each year. Nearly one in five are on girls under 18. Labour's liberal licensing laws, which made alcohol widely available into the early hours, are further fuelling casual sex.

The Marie Stopes group said it carried out 6,000 abortions last February, the peak month for young women who become pregnant over Christmas and New Year. The figure was 13 per cent up on 2006, and a similar increase is expected this year. Spokesman Steve Kerridge said: "When alcohol is involved inhibitions come down. It's not just unplanned pregnancies but rampant rates of sexually transmitted infections. It's very difficult to get that message out there."

The number of abortions has risen steadily every year since it was legalised in 1968. Just 23,641 abortions were carried out in that year. In 2006, the most recent year for which figures are available, there were 201,173, up from 194,353 the previous year.

The warnings were followed up by the release this weekend of a new audiotape in which al-Qaida chief Osama bin Laden made an unusually sharp threat of attacks against Israel. According to Israeli security officials, Israel several times received general warnings indicating al-Qaida was attempting to fly operatives into the Jewish state's international airport disguised as tourists carrying foreign passports. The latest warning was received a few months ago and indicated the passports may be from Britain, Australia and the United States.

The security officials said al-Qaida has come to the conclusion Palestinian terror groups operating in the Gaza Strip and West Bank have had great difficulty infiltrating Israel due to the country's security barrier and antiterror measures and that Palestinians who do successfully infiltrate are not capable of carrying out large-scale attacks inside the country.

The Israeli security officials said the latest warning, which was shared with Palestinian intelligence agencies, indicated al-Qaida has made a strategic decision to attempt to send foreign cells into the Jewish state instead of relying on Palestinian militants.

Both Britain and the United States fell into the lowest-performing group of "endemic surveillance societies."

"The general trend is that privacy is being extinguished in country after country," said Simon Davies, director of Privacy International. "Even those countries where we expected ongoing strong privacy protection, like Germany and Canada, are sinking into the mire."

In the United States, the administration of President George W. Bush has come under fire from civil liberties groups for its domestic wiretapping program, which allows monitoring, without a warrant, of international phone calls and e-mail messages involving people suspected of having terrorist links.

"The last five years has seen a litany of surveillance initiatives," Davies said. He said little had changed since the Democrats took control of Congress a year ago."We would expect the cancellation of some programs, the review of others, but this hasn't occurred," Davies said. Britain was criticized for its plans for national identity cards, a lack of government accountability and the world's largest network of surveillance cameras. Davies said the loss earlier this year of computer disks containing personal information and bank details on 25 million people in Britain highlighted the risks of centralizing information on huge government databases.

Mwai Kibaki was sworn in for a second term as Kenyan president on Sunday after being officially declared the winner, but was quickly forced to order a media blackout as allegations of vote-rigging fuelled widespread riots. Police shot dead seven people as furious opposition supporters went on the rampage in major cities, bringing to 20 the number of people to have died in poll-related violence since Thursday's election.

Odinga, a flamboyant 62-year-old former political prisoner who led pre-election polls, flatly rejected the result, which had been delayed several times, and called on his supporters to turn out at Monday's rally. EU monitors questioned the credibility of the vote count, which saw Kibaki overtake his rival's early lead, despite many of his government's ministers losing their seats in parliamentary elections also held on Thursday.

Odinga's party showed no sign of conceding the election. "We know that the people of Kenya elected Raila Amolo Odinga as their legitimate president and they are ready to see him serve democratically in the capacity," said an ODM statement urging supporters to turn out at Monday's rally. Kenyan police warned Odinga he would face arrest if he went ahead with the demonstration.

A senior official from the Kenyan Television Network said it had been ordered to stop live broadcasts as rioters went on the rampage. Kenyan television had earlier broadcast an address from the chairman of the electoral commission announcing that Kibaki had narrowly defeated Raila Odinga, of the opposition Orange Democratic Movement, winning by slightly more than 231,000 votes of the more than 8.9 million votes cast.

A top media executive said on condition of anonymity that the decision to suspend broadcasts had "taken the democratic process back by 15 years." Police denied there had been violence following the announcement of the result, which was contested by Odinga's party who accused the government of "doctoring" the count.

But a CNN crew witnessed plumes of smoke rising over the Kibari slum, a stronghold of support for the opposition and the scene of pitched battles between rioters and police on Saturday.

Latest - (CNN) -- At least 124 people have reportedly been killed in violence sparked by allegations of vote-rigging in Kenya's disputed presidential elections. "We have been rigged out, we are not going to accept defeat," 24-year-old James Onyango, who lives in Nairobi's Kibera slum, told AP. "We are ready to die and we're ready for serious killings."

With police and troops patrolling, this southern city appeared quiet for the first time since Benazir Bhutto's assassination Thursday sparked a wave of angry rioting. The previous three days of clashes and looting left at least 40 people dead across Sindh Province, where Karachi is located, provincial Home Minister Akhtar Zemin told The Associated Press. Hundreds of bank branches were destroyed and 950 vehicles burned.

The normally bustling port city remained a virtual ghost town, shocked by Bhutto's death. Nearly all shops were closed and streets normally packed with traffic were empty, save for boys playing cricket. Mohammed Umar, 60, a retired government official, left his apartment to buy flatbread at one of only two shops open in a main market area. He said his wife normally bakes bread at home, but they had run out of flour, sugar and milk.

The night before, Umar said he had watched looters cutting locks off shops and questioned why authorities were not taking more aggressive steps to stop the chaos. Police with assault rifles were stationed on street corners across Karachi, and military patrols in armored vehicles rode through the rougher parts of the city, such as the notorious Lyari slums that have seen the most unrest.

Most of the 56-minute tape dealt with Iraq, apparently al-Qaida's latest attempt to keep supporters in Iraq unified at a time when the U.S. military claims to have al-Qaida's Iraq branch on the run.

The tape did not mention Pakistan or the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, though Pakistan's government has blamed al-Qaida and the Taliban for her death on Thursday. That suggested the tape was made before the assassination.

Bin Laden's comments offered an unusually direct attack on Israel, stepping up al-Qaida's attempts to use the Israeli-Arab conflict to rally supporters. Israel has warned of growing al-Qaida activity in Palestinian territory, though terror network is not believed to have taken a strong role there so far. "We intend to liberate Palestine, the whole of Palestine from the (Jordan) river to the sea," he said, threatening "blood for blood, destruction for destruction."

"We will not recognize even one inch for Jews in the land of Palestine as other Muslim leaders have," bin Laden said.

Vatican chiefs are concerned at what they see as an increased interest in the occult. They have introduced courses for priests to combat what they call the most extreme form of "Godlessness." Each bishop is to be told to have in his diocese a number of priests trained to fight demonic possession. The initiative was revealed by 82-year-old Father Gabriele Amorth, the Vatican "exorcist-in-chief," to the online Catholic news service Petrus. "Thanks be to God, we have a Pope who has decided to fight the Devil head-on," he said.

"Too many bishops are not taking this seriously and are not delegating their priests in the fight against the Devil. You have to hunt high and low for a properly trained exorcist. Thankfully, Benedict XVI believes in the existence and danger of evil - going back to the time he was in charge of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith." The CDF is the oldest Vatican department and was headed by Benedict from 1982, when he was Cardinal Ratzinger, until he became Pope in 2005.

Father Amorth said that during his time at the department Benedict had not lost the chance to warn humanity of the risk from the Devil. He said the Pope wants to restore a prayer seen as protection against evil that was traditionally recited at the end of Catholic Masses. The prayer, to St Michael the Archangel, was dropped in the 1960s by Pope John XXIII.

In theory, under the Catholic Church's Canon Law 1172, all priests can perform exorcisms. But in reality only a select few are assigned the task. Under the law, practitioners must have "piety, knowledge, prudence, and integrity of life." The rite of exorcism involves a series of gestures and prayers to invoke the power of God and stop the "demon" influencing its victim.

Bhutto's aides also said they doubted the militant commander Baitullah Mehsud was behind the attack and accused the government of a cover-up. THE DISPUTE AND CONFLICTING REPORTS ABOUT BHUTTO'S EXACT CAUSE OF DEATH was expected to further enflame the violence wracking this nuclear-armed nation two days after the popular former prime minister was killed in a suicide attack.

Interior Ministry spokesman Javed Iqbal Cheema described Mehsud as an al-Qaida leader who was also behind the Karachi bomb blast in October against Bhutto that killed more than 140 people. But a spokesman for Mehsud, Maulana Mohammed Umer, denied the militant was involved in the attack and dismissed the allegations as 'government propaganda'. "WE STRONGLY DENY IT. BAITULLAH MEHSUD IS NOT INVOLVED IN THE KILLING OF BENAZIR BHUTTO," he said in a telephone call he made to The Associated Press from the tribal region of South Waziristan. "The fact is that we are only against America, and we don't consider political leaders of Pakistan our enemy," he said, adding he was speaking on instructions from Mehsud.

Mehsud heads Tehrik-i-Taliban, a newly formed coalition of Islamic militants committed to waging holy war against the government, which is a key US ally in its war on terror. Bhutto's Pakistan Peoples Party accused the government of trying to frame Mehsud, saying the militant - through emissaries - had previously told Bhutto he was not involved in the Karachi bombing. "The story that al-Qaida or Baitullah Mehsud did it appears to us to be a planted story, an incorrect story, because they want to divert the attention," said Farhatullah Babar, a spokesman for Bhutto's party.

AFTER THE KARACHI ATTACK, BHUTTO ACCUSED ELEMENTS IN THE RULING PRO-MUSHARRAF PARTY OF PLOTTING TO KILL HER. The government denied the claims. Babar said Bhutto's allegations were never investigated. Bhutto was killed Thursday evening when a suicide attacker shot at her and then blew himself up as she left a rally in the garrison city of Rawalpindi near Islamabad. The attack killed about 20 others as well. Authorities initially said she died from bullet wounds, and a surgeon who treated her said the impact from shrapnel on her skull killed her.