They were still breathing as their bodies were covered with rocks and mud, according media reports and human rights activists. The incident occurred in Baba Kot, a remote village in Jafferabad district, after the women decided to defy tribal elders and arrange marriages in a civil court, according to the Asian Human Rights Commission.

They were said to have been abducted at gunpoint by six men, forced into a vehicle and taken to a remote field, where they were beaten, shot and then buried alive, it said, accusing local authorities of trying to hush up the killings.

A Pakistani lawmaker provoked outrage by defending men from the Baluch tribe who had carried out the killings. Israr Ullah Zehri told stunned members of Pakistan's parliament: 'These are centuries-old traditions and I will continue to defend them, only those who indulge in immoral acts should be afraid.' He claimed the tribal traditions helped stop obscenity - and then asked fellow lawmakers not to make a big fuss about it.

There had been fears of catastrophic damage and loss of life, a repeat of the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina just three years ago. Some two million residents had evacuated the region, leaving the city a ghost town but in fact Gustav eventually stormed the U.S. 85 miles to the west. New Orleans breathed a sigh of relief as it received only a glancing blow that did little more than send water sloshing harmlessly over its rebuilt floodwalls.

The all-important levees surrounding the city held against storm surges whipped up by 100mph winds. It was their first test since Katrina, and they passed it easily. Gustav first crashed ashore as a Category 2 hurricane with 110mph winds but by last night it had been downgraded to a tropical storm with winds of around 60mph. It was hoped New Orleans could be open for business again within days. Mayor Ray Nagin said residents' homecoming was 'only days away, not weeks'.

Despite the sense of relief, the state had still not come through the storm unscathed. Officials had to scramble to shore up a levee in the south-eastern part of Louisiana. Roofs were also torn from houses, trees were ripped up and roads flooded as Gustav roared through the region. A ferry was sunk and more than one million homes in total were left without power. The extent of any damage to the oil and gas industry is still unclear.

By the end of September, there will hardly be a Year Eight girl (aged 12-13) in the country who doesn't know that, barring an opt-out, she is shortly to receive three injections of the drug Cervarix, which will offer her 70 per cent protection against cervical cancer. Later in the year, another 300,000 girls aged 17 and 18 will be vaccinated before they leave school. By 2012, most girls over the age of 12 should have received the vaccine.

Made by pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmith-Kline, Cervarix works by creating an immunity against the two strains of the human papillomavirus (HPV), numbers 16 and 18, responsible for 70 per cent of all cervical cancers. For the Government, the programme - reputed to have cost tens of millions of pounds - has been seen as little short of a community medicine triumph.

But look more closely and it is not hard to see why many British experts are uneasy about the rush to vaccinate all our young girls. Cervical cancer may be a nasty disease, but it is also, thanks to our world-class screening programme, very rare in the UK.

Last month, an article in the New England Journal Of Medicine claimed that serious questions regarding the overall effectiveness of the vaccine remained unanswered. It pointed out that studies into the vaccine were carried out on girls aged 15 to 24 so there is no way of knowing how the drug will affect pre-pubescent girls, how long it will last and whether there was the potential for interference with the body's natural defence against other HPV strains.

So parents are being faced with an agonising decision. Do they say no to the vaccine and risk their child contracting a dreadful disease. Or do they put their trust in a drug for which evidence of safety and efficacy is probably insufficient and at worst may do harm?

The report claimed that the Dutch operation had been "extremely successful," and had been stopped because the US military was planning to hit targets that were "connected with the Dutch espionage action." The impending air-strike on Iran was to be carried out by unmanned aircraft "within weeks," the report claimed, quoting "well placed" sources. According to the report, information gleaned from the AIVD's operation in Iran has provided several of the targets that are to be attacked in the strike, including "parts for missiles and launching equipment. Information from the AIVD operation has been shared in recent years with the CIA," the report said.

On Saturday, Iran's Deputy Chief of Staff General Masoud Jazayeri warned that should the United States or Israel attack Iran, it would be the start of another World War. On Friday, Ma'ariv reported that Israel had made a strategic decision to deny Iran military nuclear capability and would not hesitate "to take whatever means necessary" to prevent Teheran from achieving its nuclear goals.

According to the report, whether the United States and Western countries succeed in thwarting the Islamic Republic's nuclear ambitions diplomatically, through sanctions, or whether a US strike on Iran is eventually decided upon, Jerusalem has begun preparing for a separate, independent military strike.

Asked to explain his expression of delight when the treaty was rejected in Ireland, Klaus said, "Such a document [i.e. like Lisbon] is unnecessary for the standard functioning of the EU (including further enlargements) and is detrimental to freedom and democracy in Europe in the future."

Asked what he would put in a new treaty, Klaus replied, "The most important issue would be the return to intergovernmentalism and unanimity of decision-making. The return from 'Union' to 'Community'".

This site covers the whole USA. This is in retaliation for the American decision to install anti-missile radars and launchers in the Czech Republic and Poland or Lithuania. The electronic surveillance facility, which used to be near Havana, was shut down in October 2001 in a friendly gesture by Moscow towards the West in the wake of the 9-11 attacks.

That gesture has never been reciprocated and the West has only become ever more anti-Russian since. Pikayev said, "Cuba is a unique place to gather intelligence on the United States. I believe that the reopening of this station is both possible and necessary amid the threat that the Americans are creating for Russia. Russia has every right to respond."

The facility covered 28 square miles and employed over one thousand Russian technicians and engineers; it enabled Russia to monitor communications in the US and between the US and Europe.

A leader in the FT argues that "The old EU members should show more solidarity with the new members who are threatened. One way would be to beef up energy security. Intensifying work on alternative energy to oil and gas, and finding new sources of supply is one thing. Building cross-border links and storage facilities inside the EU to guarantee that no member can be threatened by a Russian gas cut is most urgent. All EU members should work harder to reduce reliance on Russian supplies." It also asks "why has Russia not been suspended from the Council of Europe, an organisation based on respect for human rights?"

In the Sun Trevor Kavanagh argues, "There will be plenty of hot air at today's talks but Britain will pay dearly for any outcome which involves a common energy policy. Unity may mean strength, but UK dependence on the joint goodwill of 26 other member states would mean a final surrender of our sovereignty over defence, foreign and eventually economic affairs."

In a letter to Saturday's Telegraph, Roland Rudd, Chairman of Business for New Europe, argued that "In our relations with Russia, this is a classic area where Britain can amplify its weight by working not only bilaterally, but also through the EU."

A leader in the paper argued: "IRELAND DID NOT TURN ITS BACK ON EUROPE, IT REJECTED A POORLY CONSTRUCTED TREATY. It had better be improved before Mr Cowen thinks about asking for a second vote, because otherwise he risks making it his last vote."

The leader also argued, "Opinion polls show that a very large number of Europeans would have rejected Lisbon, if given an opportunity to do so. A number of states, too, would have had majorities opposed to the treaty, yet none of those views were represented in the parliaments that ratified the treaty."

"THE FEARS OF ORDINARY PEOPLE WERE DISMISSED AS IRRELEVANT OR AS MISINFORMED BY THE VERY PEOPLE WHO ARE MEANT TO REPRESENT THEM. In Ireland, the gap between citizen and politician on Europe is worryingly wide... In seeking to press ahead with ratification anyway, they [European leaders] have risked a situation where Ireland would be isolated by its democratic decision."

The Pope affirmed this today after he prayed the midday Angelus with crowds gathered at the summer papal residence at Castel Gandolfo. The [Pontiff] did not refer to any particular conflicts, but seemed to allude to tensions between Russia and the West, following the former's brief war with Georgia.

"We must note, with bitterness, the threat of A PROGRESSIVE DETERIORATION IN THE CLIMATE OF CONFIDENCE AND COOPERATION THAT SHOULD CHARACTERIZE RELATIONS BETWEEN NATIONS," the Pontiff said. And he lamented the difficulty "with which humanity strives to form that common awareness of being the 'family of nations' that John Paul II indicated as the ideal to the general assembly of the United Nations."

WAR NOT ALWAYS WRONG - A response to: Benedict XVI Laments Growing World Tensions –

"As unfortunate as they are, war between nations is not something that is necessarily wrong or to be avoided. That's why we have the "just war" principle, which declares that wars waged by legitimate governments for legitimate ends - defense of borders and population, defense of another or to prevent greater harm - and waged with appropriate force - without targeting non-combatants - is not wrong. I SOMETIMES WORRY THAT THE HOLY FATHER'S FREQUENT WORDS ON THE SUBJECT ARE TAKEN OUT OF THIS CONTEXT. Peace cannot exist without justice. Sometimes, it takes a war to establish that justice." (Philip Moore)

In 1997, the chief Moslem cleric of the Palestinian Authority, Mufti Ikrama Sabri, stated, "THE CLAIM OF THE JEWS TO THE RIGHT OVER [JERUSALEM] IS FALSE, and we recognize nothing but an entirely Islamic Jerusalem under Islamic supervision…"

Thus began a campaign to convince the world that the millennia-old natural association between Jerusalem and Jews was untrue. As Islamic Movement chief Raed Salah stated in 2006, "We remind, for the 1,000th time, that the entire Al-Aqsa mosque [on the Temple Mount], including all of its area and alleys above the ground and under it, is exclusive and absolute Moslem property, and no one else has any rights to even one grain of earth in it."

However, it is now known that this "absolute" Moslem claim is actually not as absolute as claimed. In fact, back in 1925, THE SUPREME MOSLEM COUNCIL - ALSO KNOWN AS THE WAQF, which has overseen Temple Mount activities on behalf of the Moslem religion for hundreds of years - BOASTED PROUDLY THAT THE SITE WAS NONE OTHER THAN THAT OF SOLOMON'S TEMPLE.

The Temple Institute's Rabbi Chaim Richman writes that the pamphlet provides proof that the Waqf's current position is a departure from traditional Muslim belief. "In recent years," he writes, "the Moslem Waqf has come to deny the historic existence of the Holy Temple, claiming that the Temple Mount belongs solely to the Moslem nation, and that there exists no connection between the Jewish nation and the Temple Mount. IT IS CLEAR FROM THIS PAMPHLET THAT THE REVISED WAQF POSITION STRAYS FROM TRADITIONAL MOSLEM ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF THE MOUNT'S JEWISH ANTECEDENTS."

"The current denial of historical reality is merely one tool in the war being waged by Moslems against the G-d of Israel and the entire 'infidel' world," Richman declares.

The flurry of storms was the latest evidence that predictions for a busier than normal season were on the mark, and was WORRISOME NEWS FOR U.S. OIL AND NATURAL GAS PRODUCERS IN THE GULF OF MEXICO, millions living in the Caribbean and on U.S. coasts, and farmers fearing flooded fields.

At 5 p.m. EDT, Hurricane Hanna was packing maximum sustained winds of 80 miles per hour (130 kph) and intensifying near Mayaguana Island in the southeastern Bahamas, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said. Hanna, which had meandered for days bewildering hurricane forecasters, was expected to churn northwest through the Bahamas before striking the U.S. East Coast between north Florida and the Carolinas.

In addition to Hanna - and eventually posing perhaps a bigger menace - TROPICAL STORM IKE formed on Monday midway between Africa and the Caribbean and was expected to strengthen rapidly into a hurricane. IKE IS EXPECTED TO BECOME A HURRICANE. Behind Ike, a tropical wave was coming off the coast of West Africa and could develop into a tropical depression, the precursors to tropical storms and hurricanes.

In addition to HURRICANE GUSTAV, the Federal Emergency Management Agency is also dealing with TROPICAL STORM HANNA, more than A DOZEN MAJOR UNCONTROLLED FIRES ACROSS THE COUNTRY, FLOODING IN EASTERN AND NORTHERN FLORIDA and heavy precipitation predicted later this week over the panhandle and southern coast of Alaska.

Chertoff said Monday the same agency that was castigated in 2005 for bungling its response to Hurricane Katrina is, so far, showing it can handle all these simultaneous new challenges.

Anbar province began a transformation in 2006 as former insurgents turned against al-Qaeda and became US allies. More than a quarter of all US soldiers killed in Iraq have died in Anbar, which is Iraq's biggest province. With Anbar's transfer Iraqi forces will control security in 11 of the country's 18 provinces.

The government headquarters in Ramadi was draped with tribal flags for the handover ceremony, which was presided over by US, Iraqi and tribal officials. US President George W Bush hailed it as a major achievement for US and Iraqi troops as well as "the brave tribes and other civilians from Anbar who worked alongside them".

"Today, Anbar is no longer lost to al-Qaeda - it is al-Qaeda that lost Anbar," he said in a statement. "Anbar has been transformed and reclaimed by the Iraqi people."

The then French President Jacques Chirac publicly chided the countries of the former Soviet bloc for being "badly brought up" and "losing an opportunity to shut up" because they supported America's tough line on Iraq. This time, "old Europe" and "new Europe" have overcome their divisions to agree on a tough line on Russia - at least for now.

After a summit lasting just four hours, Nicolas Sarkozy - Mr Chirac's successor and currently in charge of the EU rotating presidency - ANNOUNCED THAT EUROPE WAS UNITED. Over four pages, the summit conclusions strongly condemn Russia's "disproportionate reaction" in Georgia, describe as "unacceptable" its recognition of the independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia and call on other states "not to recognise this proclaimed independence".

The EU decided to postpone the next negotiations on a new wide-ranging partnership agreement with Russia, scheduled for 16 September, until Russian troops withdraw from Georgia to their pre-conflict line. It is what Poland and other former communist nations, backed by the UK, had been pushing for. The postponement is mainly symbolic, but a strong signal that "business as usual" was no longer possible while Russian soldiers and tanks remained deep inside Georgian territory.

The event is significant as many climatologists now believe solar magnetic activity – which determines the number of sunspots - IS AN INFLUENCING FACTOR FOR CLIMATE ON EARTH. According to data from Mount Wilson Observatory, UCLA, more than an entire month has passed without a spot. The last time such an event occurred was June of 1913. Sunspot data has been collected since 1749. When the sun is active, it's not uncommon to see sunspot numbers of 100 or more in a single month. Every 11 years, activity slows, and numbers briefly drop to near-zero.

Normally sunspots return very quickly, as a new cycle begins. But this year - which corresponds to the start of Solar Cycle 24 - has been extraordinarily long and quiet, with the first seven months averaging a sunspot number of only 3. August followed with none at all. The astonishing rapid drop of the past year has defied predictions, and caught nearly all astronomers by surprise.

IN THE PAST 1000 YEARS, THREE PREVIOUS SUCH EVENTS - THE DALTON, MAUNDER, AND SPÖRER MINIMUMS, HAVE ALL LED TO RAPID COOLING. One was large enough to be called a "mini ice age". For a society dependent on agriculture, cold is more damaging than heat. THE GROWING SEASON SHORTENS, YIELDS DROP, AND THE OCCURRENCE OF CROP-DESTROYING FROSTS INCREASES.