"There will be legislation along the lines of the Strategic Oil Stocks Directive in October or November," said an official. BRITAIN CURRENTLY HAS NO STATUTORY GAS STORAGE CAPACITY, AND MAINTAINS AROUND 14 DAYS' GAS SUPPLY IN STORAGE. The Commission proposal is likely to mean bringing UK gas storage requirements into line with those of countries such as France and Germany which both have 80 day reserves. THE COST OF CREATING 80 DAYS OF GAS STORAGE IN BRITAIN IS ESTIMATED AT LEAST £16 BILLION, A BURDEN THAT WOULD BE PASSED ON TO CONSUMERS VIA HIGHER ENERGY BILLS.

Neil O'Brien, Director of Open Europe, is quoted as saying: "We must avoid ending up with an artificially high storage target from the EU which would impose huge costs on consumers, and not benefit anyone. This is a bad time for the EU to make a proposal which would jack up energy bills even further." The UK Government is opposed to such measures. A spokesman said: "At the moment, we continue to believe that well-functioning markets are the most effective mechanism for ensuring adequate investment in gas."

UNDER THE CURRENT RULES, THE UK WOULD HAVE A VETO ON THIS KIND OF LEGISLATION, BUT IF THE LISBON TREATY WERE IN FORCE, IT WOULD BE DECIDED BY QUALIFIED MAJORITY VOTING.

After strongly denying any prospect of a second Irish referendum on the Lisbon Treaty back in July, the Irish Europe Minister Dick Roche has now publicly announced that a second vote would be "appropriate". Prime Minister Brian Cowen also admitted that a second referendum will be considered. However, it was suggested that PEOPLE MIGHT ONLY BE ALLOWED A SECOND VOTE ON PARTS OF THE TREATY, WITH MUCH OF THE TEXT JUST BEING PUSHED THROUGH THE IRISH PARLIAMENT.

A report in the Irish Independent stated that: "IT IS POSSIBLE FOR THE DAIL TO PASS SOME PARTS OF THE TREATY WITHOUT A PUBLIC VOTE, and it is understood that Mr Cowen sees this course of action as an option." Meanwhile, according to the Irish Times, Irish officials met with their Danish counterparts last month to get advice on how Ireland could opt out of crucial aspects of the Lisbon Treaty - like the opt outs the Danes adopted following the "no" to the Maastricht Treaty in a referendum.

Meanwhile, the European Commission has been rolling the pitch for a return to the Treaty. The Commission's office in Dublin last week issued a briefing to journalists blaming the "British media" for the Irish no vote, and complaining that it could not control "anti-establishment" bloggers. IN A SEPARATE REPORT THIS WEEK THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT CALLED FOR EU REGULATION OF BLOGS

Rather than question the safety and efficacy of vaccines, most physicians and parents blindly "immunize" children. Rarely do they ask the lifesaving question of, "WILL A VACCINE PROTECT MY CHILD?" As a pharmaceutical chemist and parent, I researched that question six years ago. The answer was an astounding no.

Vaccines are purported to work by triggering immunity. Experts think that by exposing our immune system to weak or dead infectious agents, such as measles or a flu virus, that it creates the appropriate immune defense. This logic has been used to defend the use of every vaccine to date. At best, vaccines only temporarily boost our defenses, WHICH HARDLY COMPENSATES FOR THE MYRIAD OF POTENTIAL SIDE EFFECTS. Few people are aware of – or willing to accept - these cold, hard facts.

POLIO IS THE MOST FEARED CHILDHOOD ILLNESS. It has caused paralysis and death for much of human history. The world experienced a dramatic increase in polio cases beginning in 1910. Frequent epidemics became regular events. They were the impetus for a "Great Race" towards the development of a polio vaccine. It was developed in 1953 and an oral version soon after. Yet, unbeknownst to most, POLIO INFECTION PLUMMETED BEFORE THE VACCINES WERE INTRODUCED – THANKS TO BETTER SANITATION AND NUTRITION. Good thing, because both forms were a total failure. In addition to causing the very same infection they were supposed to prevent – polio – they can also lead to sudden death and cancer.

From its inception to now, the flu vaccine has proven just as worthless. In 2007, The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported that the flu vaccine had "no or low effectiveness" against influenza or influenza-like illness. The analysis of data showed that the vaccine protected from zero to fourteen percent of vaccine participants. Considering the overt failure of vaccination, the idea of main lining an ineffective and dangerous vaccine into our vulnerable children is chilling. Regardless, Big Pharma is hell bent on pushing more. Be forewarned, each and every vaccine will follow the same ineffective trend simply because they work against our immune system, not with it.

VACCINES WILL NEVER BE THE PANACEA THEY ARE MARKETED AS. Fortunately, as long as a child has proper eating and sanitation, their immune system can ward off biological threats. And in the rare case it doesn't, emergency medicine can tackle the infection. This is health made simple. But, IN A SOCIETY HELL-BENT ON TRADING HEALTH FOR WEALTH, it is often over looked; just like the logic that teaches, "Vaccines don't protect children."

Turks and Caicos premier Michael Misick said Ike damaged 80 percent of the homes on the main island and that hundreds lost their roofs as the hurricane made a near-direct hit. People have been cowering in closets and under stairwells and "just holding on for life. They got hit really, really bad," he told The Associated Press Sunday morning.

With 135 mph (215 kph) winds, Ike was swirling on from the tiny British territory to the Bahamas' Great Inagua Island, where about 85 people inside a community center shelter huddled around a radio. The U.S. National Hurricane Center said Ike was moving west at about 15 mph (24 kph). Hurricane warnings also were in effect for Cuba, where Ike was expected to arrive late Monday after passing through the southeastern Bahamas on a track that will likely take it into the Gulf of Mexico.

The approach of the hurricane also raised alarm in Haiti, where officials issued a tropical storm warning and feared it could worsen deadly flooding. Hundreds of people fled the waterlogged city of Gonaives as Ike approached, and international aid groups were struggling to reach people with little or no access to food or water since Tropical Storm Hanna deluged the city.

Hundreds of factories have closed, thousands of people have taken to the streets to protest at soy prices and at least one soy vendor killed himself after falling into debt. Soy has long been a staple in Indonesia. But in the 1990s, farmers complained that it was too expensive to grow because the government did not provide cheap seed or low-interest loans.

At the same time, they could not compete with cheaper, better soy from countries like the United States, where farmers had advanced technology and government subsidies. But Indonesia is now dependent on the soy fields of the U.S. And it paid the price when the Mississippi River flooded in June, leaving thousands of acres of soybeans waterlogged.

The Indonesian government has responded by providing subsidized cooking oil and rice to 19 million households and offering subsidized soybeans to more than 100,000 small tofu and Tempeh producers. They remember how protests over food prices sparked the overthrow of the Suharto regime more than a decade ago.

Quoting Venezuela's naval intelligence director, Salbarore Cammarata, the newspaper Vea said four Russian boats would visit Venezuelan waters from November 10 to 14. Plans for the naval operations come at a time of HEIGHTENED DIPLOMATIC TENSION AND COLD WAR-STYLE RHETORIC BETWEEN MOSCOW AND THE UNITED STATES over the recent war in Georgia and plans for a U.S. missile defense system in the Czech Republic and Poland.

Cammarata said it would be the first time Russia's navy carried out such exercises in Latin America. He said the Venezuelan air force would also take part. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, an outspoken critic of Washington, has said in recent weeks that Russian ships and planes are welcome to visit the South American country. "If the Russian long-distance planes that fly around the world need to land at some Venezuelan landing strip, they are welcome, we have no problems," he said on his weekly television show last week.

Chavez, who buys billions of dollars of weapons from Russia, has criticized this year's reactivation of the U.S. Navy's Fourth Fleet, which will patrol Latin America for the first time in over 50 years. The socialist Chavez says he fears the United States will invade oil-rich Venezuela and HE SUPPORTS RUSSIA'S GROWING GEOPOLITICAL PRESENCE AS A COUNTERBALANCE TO U.S. POWER.

The densely populated Miami-Fort Lauderdale area in south Florida was not out of the line of fire from Ike, a "major" Category 3 hurricane, and visitors were ordered to flee the vulnerable Florida Keys island chain from Saturday. "We're not out of the woods by any stretch of the imagination," Miami-Dade County Mayor Carlos Alvarez said.

Computer models indicated Ike was likely to target Cuba as a Category 3 hurricane on the five-step Saffir-Simpson intensity scale, presenting a severe threat to the crumbling colonial buildings of Havana and tourist hotels at Varadero. The storm might then curve into the Gulf of Mexico in the wake of this week's Hurricane Gustav, plowing toward an area that produces a quarter of domestic US oil, and slamming ashore near New Orleans, which was swamped and traumatized by Hurricane Katrina three years ago.

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.