The vote came after the White House announced that President George W Bush had dropped his threat to veto it. The bill will now be passed to the Senate for approval before being signed into law. MORE THAN A MILLION AMERICANS HAVE LOST THEIR HOMES IN THE WORST HOUSING CRISIS SINCE THE GREAT DEPRESSION.

President Bush's change of heart came despite his objection to a provision for $3.9bn (£1.95bn) in community grants to buy up and repair repossessed homes. Under the rescue plan, hundreds of thousands of homeowners trapped in mortgages they cannot afford on homes that have fallen in value would be able to refinance their mortgages with more affordable, fixed-rate loans backed by the Federal Housing Administration.

The bill would set up the first national licensing system for mortgage brokers and other loan officers. It also includes a tax break of as much as $7,500 for first time home buyers, as well as help for troubled mortgage finance providers Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Obama, who has flown into Israel, faces a packed schedule of meetings with Israeli and Palestinian leaders. After arriving in Jerusalem a day earlier, Obama said he hoped his administration would strengthen the historic special relationship between the United States and Israel. He also vowed that Israel was a valued ally with the United States. 'That policy is not going to change,' he said.

But he added: 'What I think can change is the ability of the United States government and a United States president to be actively engaged with the peace process and to be concerned and recognise the legitimate difficulties that the Palestinian people are experiencing right now.' But he cautioned it was unrealistic to expect that a U.S. president alone can suddenly 'snap his fingers and bring about peace in this region.'

Netanyahu said: 'The senator and I agreed that the primacy of preventing Iran from becoming a nuclear power is clear, and this should guide our mutual policies.' Many Israelis fear Obama - a first-term U.S. senator with little foreign policy experience - would push Israel too hard in negotiations with the Palestinians. His family's Muslim roots have added to the unease, even though Obama was raised as a Christian and remains a practising Christian.

But will it work in Kent? Yesterday the Archbishop of Canterbury invited hundreds of feuding bishops to an Anglicised version of the indaba, to talk not about stolen cattle and territorial disputes but about sexuality. The early signs were not good. "IF INDABA IS SUCH A GREAT IDEA, WHY IS AFRICA SUCH A MESS?" ONE BISHOP SAID.

Dr Rowan Williams invited 650 bishops attending the ten-yearly Lambeth Conference at Canterbury to choose from one of several indaba groups, a key part of the next fortnight's agenda. These meetings, named after a Zulu word meaning a gathering for purposeful discussion, had several themes: sexuality, heresy, Judaeo-Christian relations, ecumenicism, shared mission in Europe.

Some bishops opted out from the start, preferring to go shopping in Canterbury, but even among those prepared to give them a try, the muttering soon began. Indaba groups need time. Hours of it. This is not what the bishops at Lambeth have. They have clocks that have to be watched, meetings to get to, lunches to eat, sermons to preach and schisms to prevent. Indaba groups also need both sides in a dispute to be present: a quarter of Anglican bishops, overwhelmingly conservatives from the developing countries, have boycotted Lambeth.

The human body may be mostly water, but you can have too much of a good thing. In the most serious cases, "water intoxication" can kill, and there is, say experts, scant evidence that drinking even slightly more water than usual can improve your health.

The current popularity of detox diets which recommend drinking many litres of water a day, and drinking even when not thirsty, could cause problems if taken to extremes, they say. The claim is that drinking more than usual can do everything from improving your skin tone to "flushing out" toxins from your body. Ursula Arens, a dietician, said, "The evidence supporting the whole "hydration industry" is flawed. It's just a great marketing opportunity, nothing more."

If vast quantities of water are taken, salt in the blood gets too dilute, he explained. When the salt solution in the blood is weaker than the solution in the cells and organs it supplies, water passes into those cells and organs. In extreme cases, this causes organs such as the brain to swell up, and can stop it working properly, putting the drinker in serious danger.

Minutes of the July 9-10 policy meeting on Wednesday showed that hawk Timothy Besley wanted an immediate quarter percentage point increase to 5.25 percent, while dove David Blanchflower argued that a cut was needed to prevent a recession.

This produced the first three-way split on the direction of rates since May 2006 and the decision was "a difficult one" for all nine policymakers as inflation was likely to turn out higher and growth lower than the Bank had thought in May.

If anything, members of the Monetary Policy Committee appeared more inclined to raise rates to defend their reputation as guardians of price stability, but were also worried about the economic costs of such a move. "The minutes are certainly more hawkish than we expected," said Philip Shaw, chief economist at Investec. "The committee gave serious consideration to tightening policy this time round. The outlook for interest rates looks more uncertain."

The US authorities want the 50-year-old to face trial on charges which include providing support to al-Qaeda. The Egypt-born preacher is currently serving a seven-year jail term in the UK for inciting murder and race hate. The Court of Appeal ruling comes after Home Secretary Jacqui Smith formally approved the extradition in February.

Lawyers for Abu Hamza, from west London, have been fighting his extradition since the request was first filed in May 2004, arguing he could not receive a fair trial. In February 2006, an Old Bailey jury convicted him of 11 out of 15 charges.

Extradition proceedings began in May 2007 and a district judge later approved the request. In May this year, the High Court rejected his appeal against the extradition.

UK foreign secretary David Miliband said following the meeting: "We are 100 percent focussed on a diplomatic resolution to the Iranian issue." The EU's foreign policy chief, Javier Solana, said there was "no other route" apart from diplomacy.

"The position of the European Union is clear," said Mr Solana according to the AP. "We want to find a diplomatic solution to this, in particular to clarify to the fullest the nature of their nuclear programme." Mr Solana outlined for the ministers the results of a meeting on Saturday between Iran and diplomats from the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, China, and Russia, where Tehran was encouraged to halt its uranium enrichment in return for a package of economic and political carrots.

With the US for the first time sending a high-ranking diplomat to the meeting, expectations were high that better relations between the two main antagonists would bear fruit. However, Iran maintained that its nuclear programme had only peaceful purposes.

The upgraded device, called the Beijing Electron-Positron Collider II (BEPCII), was retooled at the Institute of High Energy Physics under the CAS. The project started in January 2004 and cost 640 million yuan ($93.8 million). The Beijing Electron-Positron Collider (BEPC), the BEPCII's predecessor, was originally built in 1988. It was previously the world's eighth largest high-energy accelerator experiment center.

Institute director Chen Hesheng revealed the upgrade would help the BEPC attain its forward status as one of the most advanced ideal colliding experiment facilities of its kind; it would maintain the leading forward role of China in the field of global high-energy physics.

To add a new storage ring to the existing ring of the collider to spur the electron and positron beams' movement and collision in the colliding zone, the retooled collider BEPCII had 93 pairs of electron beams against the original's one pair. Its luminosity, a leading parameter, was 100 times stronger than that of the original BEPC.

I count six such episodes since August 2007. In the early days, the Federal Reserve Board did all the work and usually made its big announcement on a Friday. Since then, Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson has moved to the fore, and he picked a Sunday afternoon to float his proposal for bolstering beleaguered mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The basic pattern, though, remains the same: FINANCIAL TIZZY. DRAMATIC GOVERNMENT ACTION. PERIOD OF REDUCED TIZZY. REPEAT.

IS THIS CYCLE EVER GOING TO END? It has to someday, although at this point only a fool or a psychic would dare predict when. The more important question may be, What does it all mean for people without Bloomberg terminals and subscriptions to the Financial Times?

Washington's response has so far shielded the economy from the worst of the catastrophe in financial markets. BUT IT HASN'T FIXED THE PROBLEM THAT STARTED THE CRISIS: THE FACT THAT A FEW MILLION AMERICANS GOT HOME LOANS THEY CAN NEVER PAY BACK. The resulting foreclosures have been driving housing prices down and forcing lenders to retrench. The result is less credit for heavily indebted American consumers. The likeliest next step, while not the Great Depression, is a recession that even Gramm will have to concede is more than just mental. Which could lead to a few more emergency meetings of the men in dark suits.

Rep. James Oberstar, a Minnesota Democrat who chairs the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, said a stimulus package could include "accelerating" payouts of $9.5 billion from the federal trust fund assigned to road construction and maintenance. "You can have 700,000 people working in three months. We should have done it this spring," Oberstar told Reuters in an interview.

If approved, the funding would go to more than 2,600 projects, he said. States would receive full federal funding and then have a few years to pay back any matching funds. Oberstar gave a list of spending possibilities to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi last week, who "likes the idea."

Democrats are considering supporting another economic stimulus measure to revive the economy after Congress approved a $152 billion measure in February, which taxpayers received in the form of checks during the spring and early summer.

The UN World Food Programme says it urgently needs $400m (£200m) to prevent starvation in the east African region. Ethiopia is worst hit, with 10 million people - some 12% of the population - in need of extra food supplies. Somalia, Eritrea and Djibouti are also affected, along with northern parts of Kenya and Uganda.

Economic events outside Africa - which are driving up food and fuel prices - are exacerbating the crisis caused by a lack of water in the region. Ethiopia has nearly exhausted its food reserves, the government having used stocks already in the hope that food prices would fall, making it cheaper to replenish its stores. Instead, costs have risen further.

More expensive fuel means the costs of transporting and distributing food have soared, and the WPF says the local price of grain is nearly three times higher than it was a year ago. It says the current food shortages are worse than two years ago, when 11m people needed food aid.

More than half a million requests for highly personal communications data, such as records of private telephone calls and e-mails, were also lodged by councils and law enforcement agencies. Snooping by local authorities has now become so widespread that a Government watchdog has threatened to strip councils of their powers to spy on people, and Gordon Brown has ordered an inquiry into the rapid increase in the use of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (Ripa).

It is the latest in a string of controversies surrounding Ripa, which in one case earlier this year was used by a council to mount a covert surveillance operation on a family who had been wrongly accused of breaking rules on school catchment areas. Opposition MPs said the new figures showed evidence of a "CREEPING ORWELLIAN STATE", while the Chief Surveillance Commissioner, Sir Christopher Rose, said some councils were guilty of using Ripa in a "disproportionate" way.

Ripa was originally brought in to help police and the security services combat serious crime and terrorism, but in recent years nearly 800 public bodies have been added to the list of organisations allowed to use the Act to carry out covert surveillance and intercept personal communications.

"Both are in very serious shape and the markets reflect that," Altman, the creator of the Z-score mathematical formula that measures bankruptcy risk, said in an interview with Bloomberg Television. The model shows that these companies are "on the verge of bankruptcy," he said.

The Z-scores for GM and Ford give both a bond rating equivalent to a CCC ranking, though GM is in slightly worse condition than Ford, Altman said. GM reported a $38.7 billion loss in 2007, the biggest in its 100-year history, and hasn't posted a profit since 2004. The scores are based on the companies' finances at the end of the first quarter.

"He should resign for the sake of the church," Archbishop Daniel Deng Bul told reporters at a once-in-a-decade summit of Anglican leaders. "GOD IS NOT MAKING A MISTAKE CREATING ADAM AND EVE. HE WOULD HAVE CREATED TWO ADAMS IF HE WANTED," HE SAID.

A quarter of the world's Anglican bishops have boycotted the Lambeth Conference in an angry war of words between conservatives and liberals over the ordination of Robinson, the first openly gay bishop in the 450-year-old church's history.

"We are for the Anglican world and we want the Anglican world to remain united," the Sudanese archbishop said. "Over 300 bishops have stayed away from this conference because of Gene Robinson," he added. "The norms of the Anglican communion have been violated."

Companies including Sara Lee, Kraft Foods, and Kellogg's will be passing price increases along, according to the report which said that Sara Lee, maker of Jimmy Dean sausages, could push meat prices up by as much as 20% later this year.

Kraft Foods said it will raise prices by 12-13%, and that cheese could go up by as much as 25%, according to the report. KELLOGG'S SAID THAT PRICES ON ENERGY AND GRAIN WERE DRIVING ITS PRICES UP. If Kraft Foods, ConAgra, Tyson and Kellogg's raised prices, it would only contribute to inflation in the U.S. Following flooding in the Midwest, crop prices have soared and supply has become a major concern.

Food prices have increased more than 5% since June 2007, according to the Department of Labor. The increase in food prices in the month from May to June was 0.8%, almost three times as much as the increase from April to May, which was 0.3%. Prices on meat soared to a 22-year high in June. This is attributed to rising prices for corn, oil and soybeans.