The flu shot is a good match for only about 40 percent of this year's flu viruses, officials at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Friday. The situation has even deteriorated since last week when the CDC said the vaccine was protective against roughly half the circulating strains. In good years, the vaccine can fend off 70 to 90 percent of flu bugs.

Infections from an unexpected strain have been booming, and now are the main agent behind most of the nation's lab-confirmed flu cases, said Dr. Joe Bresee, the CDC's chief of influenza epidemiology. It's too soon to know whether this will prove to be a bad flu season overall, but it's fair to say a lot of people are suffering at the moment. "Every area of the country is experiencing lots of flu right now," Bresee said.

The biggest surprise has been how poorly the vaccine has performed. Each winter, experts try to predict which strains of flu will circulate so they can develop an appropriate vaccine for the following season. They choose three strains - two from the Type A family of influenza, and one from Type B. Of all flu samples tested this year, 4.6 percent have been resistant to antiviral medications. That's up from fewer than 1 percent last year. "This represents a real increase in resistance," Bresee said.

Ivan brought 1-minute maximum sustained winds to the region of around 212 km/h (132 mph). Wind gusts in the area may have been considerably higher. According to the Saffir-Simpson damage scale the potential property damage and flooding from a storm of Ivan's strength (category 4) at landfall includes:

Storm surge generally 4.0-5.5 metres (13-18 feet) above normal.
Curtainwall failures with some complete roof structure failures on small residences.
Shrubs, trees, and all signs are blown down.
Complete destruction of mobile homes.
Extensive damage to doors and windows.
Low-lying escape routes may be cut by rising water 3-5 hours before arrival of the centre of the storm.
Major damage to lower floors of structures near the shore.
Terrain lower than 3 metres (10 feet) above sea level may be flooded requiring massive evacuation of residential areas as far inland as 10 km (6 miles).

There is also the potential for flooding further inland due to heavy rain.

More than 316,000 cattle had perished since the onset of winter in mid December, Noor Padshah Kohistani of the National Disaster Management Commission said. "The figure for human losses stands at 926 today. It could go higher, for roads have been reopened and we will find unreported fatalities," he said.

Nearly half of the victims came from western areas and where more than 90 people have had their fingers or toes amputated because of frostbite. A special hospital is dealing with frostbite victims in the western city of Heart. Apart from human losses, the deaths of cattle are regarded as a huge loss for Afghanistan, an agricultural country that largely relies on foreign aid.

The festivities follow a statement by Prime Minister Hashim Thaci that Sunday would be a big day for "implementing the will of the citizens of Kosovo". But correspondents say the potential for trouble between Kosovo's Serbs and ethnic Albanians is enormous.

Posters have been stuck on the walls of buildings expressing thanks to the US, Britain and the EU for supporting Kosovan independence. In Belgrade, meanwhile, about 1,000 Serb demonstrators protested against the loss of territory they consider their heartland. On Saturday, the EU approved sending a police and justice mission to Kosovo. The 2,000-strong mission, known as Eulex, will begin deploying from next week and is expected to take over from the United Nations by early June.

Serbia has threatened to use diplomatic and economic measures against Kosovo, though it has ruled out using force. Russia's foreign ministry has indicated that Western recognition of an independent Kosovo could have implications for the Georgian breakaway provinces of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. The UN has administered Kosovo since a Nato bombing campaign in 1999 drove out Serb forces.

Statistics show that only 38,680 Poles signed up to the Government's register of migrant workers in the third quarter of 2007, a slump of 18 per cent from the previous year. Polish officials also back these figures by saying that those leaving Britain outnumber those coming in.

Since Poland joined the EU in 2004, a total of 274,065 Poles have signed up for work permits in Britain. They make up 66 per cent of all applications from Eastern European countries. But a combination of tightening economic conditions in this country, a comparatively weak pound and an unprecedented surge in the Polish economy has made it unattractive for Poles to remain.

Krzysztof Trepczynski, the minister for economic development at the Polish embassy in London believes the end of 2007 marked the 'tipping point'. "It's a real change," he told The Times. "There are now definitely more Poles going back to Poland."

In China, officials are dealing with a different dilemma: keeping growth solid and inflation contained by slowly allowing the yuan to strengthen. Government data there shows that consumer inflation remains near an 11-year high. With continuing solid growth in the global economy, hardly any region in the world has not encountered higher prices on everything from cooking oil and gasoline to education and health care.

Inflation is at 16-year highs in Saudi Arabia, a 14-year high in Switzerland, a 25-year high in Singapore. And the list goes on and on. Australia's central bank bluntly warned Monday that it would need to raise interest rates further to contain inflation, even though it had lowered its outlook for economic growth.

The dilemma for the European Central Bank is difficult. The euro-zone economy has shown signs of slowing, and many fear it that will get worse if the United States falls into recession. But with inflation at 14-year highs, the European Central Bank's ability to follow the Fed's lead and slash interest rates aggressively is limited.

"Once the authorities give in to growth concerns, the euro will probably head even lower, and that will push inflation up even more," said Schultz, the executive at Allegiant Asset Management. "The biggest loser is going to be the Europeans."

The scientists at the Laurel, Md., institution were reporting this week on data collected from NASA's Cassini probe. "Several hundred lakes or seas have been discovered, of which dozens are estimated to contain more hydrocarbon liquid than the entire known oil and gas reserves on Earth," wrote lead scientist Ralph Lorenz of the university's Applied Physics Laboratory in the Jan. 29 issue of the Geophysical Research Letters.

Lorenz also reported dark dunes running along the equator cover 20 percent of Titan's surface, comprising a volume of hydrocarbon material several hundred times larger than Earth's coal reserves. "Titan is just covered in carbon-bearing material - it's a giant factory of organic chemicals," Lorenz wrote.

Lorenz used the term "organic chemicals" in the sense that hydrocarbons are traditionally included within the study of "organic chemistry," not to imply any of the hydrocarbons discovered on Titan are of biological origin.

The announcement is another setback for the Archbishop of Canterbury, leader of the world's 77 million Anglicans, who is struggling to heal divisions between liberals and traditionalists. "We are not attending the forthcoming Lambeth (Conference)," Nzimbi told local broadcaster NTV. "We are not pulling out of the Anglican communion." Bishops in neighboring Uganda said on Thursday that they would not be attending the meeting, being held in July in Canterbury, southern England.

The consecration of openly gay U.S. Bishop Gene Robinson in 2003 has split the 400-year-old church and set a liberal minority against a conservative majority, mostly from Africa, Asia and Latin America. One of Australia's most powerful Anglican leaders has said bishops from Sydney will also miss the Lambeth Conference, a meeting of senior figures which is held every 10 years to discuss church governance and policy.

Some conservative Anglicans have announced plans to hold an alternative summit in Jerusalem in June.

The mission was formally endorsed at midnight on Saturday (11:00 p.m. British time on Friday) after none of the EU's 27 member states objected to an operation plan for the mission before an agreed deadline, a diplomatic source said. "The silent procedure was not broken," the source said, referring to the low-profile method used to push through the legal documents authorizing the mission.

After leaders of the overwhelmingly ethnic Albanian majority declare independence, the EU will take over police, judicial and civil administration tasks from the current U.N. mission after a 120-day transition period.

He will meet Benin's President Thomas Yayia to discuss a US-funded plan to supply mosquito nets to tackle malaria. Mr Bush's six-day, five-nation visit is expected to focus on democratic reform, economic and military assistance, and the fight against HIV/Aids. The US president also wants to allay concerns about a new military command he wants to base in Africa. He will also try to rally leaders on the current crises in Kenya and Darfur.

In a BBC interview prior to his tour, the US president defended his stance on the Sudanese region of Darfur, where at least 200,000 people have died and two million been displaced in a five-year conflict. Despite what he called a genocide taking place there, he said he had not wanted to send US troops into another Muslim country. He said the US had instead imposed sanctions on Sudanese leaders and companies, and that he would remind the president of China "that he can do more to relieve the suffering in Darfur".

Officials at Cheshire County Council are writing to the Government and European Union chiefs to challenge the rules governing great crested newts. Councillor Barrie Hardern, who has written to Hilary Benn, the Secretary of State for the Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs, said the newts had to be given a new habitat as a part of a planning application for building work at Fallibroome High School in Macclesfield. He said: "Around £15,000 per newt seems a ludicrous sum of money to me."

"They are a legally protected species under EU regulations because there are parts of Europe where they are quite rare. However, in Cheshire we have in the order of 16,000 ponds and newts are widespread and locally abundant. The EU regulations together with UK legislation carry substantial fines if we do not protect the newts as part of planning applications. I am very concerned about taxpayers' money being used in this way."

Great crested newts (Triturus cristatus) are Britain's largest newt species, they can live for 27 years and grow up to 17cm long. They are black with orange or yellow bellies with black blotches, and can be found across northern Europe. There are estimated to be 400,000 great crested newts in the UK in 18,000 breeding sites.

On the morning of 9 February 2004, The New York Times carried an exclusive and alarming story. The paper's Baghdad correspondent, Dexter Filkins, reported that US officials had obtained a 17-page letter, believed to have been written by the notorious terrorist Abu Musab al Zarqawi to the "inner circle" of al-Qa'ida's leadership, urging them to accept that the best way to beat US forces in Iraq was effectively to start a civil war. The letter argued that al-Qa'ida, which is a Sunni network, should attack the Shia population of Iraq: "It is the only way to prolong the duration of the fight between the infidels and us. If we succeed in dragging them into a sectarian war, this will awaken the sleepy Sunnis."

Later that day, at a regular US press briefing in Baghdad, US General Mark Kimmitt dealt with a string of questions about The New York Times report: "We believe the report and the document is credible, and we take the report seriously. It is clearly a plan on the part of outsiders to come in to this country and spark civil war, create sectarian violence, try to expose fissures in this society." The story went on to news agency wires and, within 24 hours, it was running around the world.

There is very good reason to believe that that letter was a fake - and a significant one because there is equally good reason to believe that it was one product among many from a new machinery of propaganda which has been created by the United States and its allies since the terrorist attacks of September 2001.

FOR THE FIRST TIME IN HUMAN HISTORY, THERE IS A CONCERTED STRATEGY TO MANIPULATE GLOBAL PERCEPTION. And the mass media are operating as its compliant assistants, failing both to resist it and to expose it.

White House spokesman Scott Stanzel said the president and the pope would continue discussions they began during Bush's trip to the Vatican in June 2007 on the importance of faith and reason in reaching shared goals.

Stanzel said the goals include advancing peace throughout the Middle East and other troubled regions, promoting interfaith understanding and strengthening human rights and freedom. The pope was also expected to address the United Nations, visit ground zero in New York and celebrate Mass in New York and Washington during his April 15-20 trip.

The appeal follows public condemnation by the bishops of an explicit sex scene in Caos Calmo, starring the Italian actor and director Nanni Moretti, which has just been released. In the film, directed by Antonello Grimaldi, Moretti plays a television executive who experiences a mid-life crisis, after the death of his wife, in the course of which he has a torrid affair with a woman he saves from drowning.

Father Nicolò Anselmi, head of the youth section of the Italian Bishops Conference, said that Moretti was normally noted for his "idealistic and sensitive" films. But the "gratuitous" sex scene with Isabella Ferrari, his co-star, would have an undesirable effect on the "impressionable young" since it was shown without any context involving love or tenderness.

Franco Zeffirelli, the film and opera director, said: "The Church is full of pedants who have lost all sense of proportion." It was a "fourth-rate" film that did not merit the publicity generated by the bishops' intervention.

Investigators working on the fraud probe into Saudi arms deals were told they faced "another 7/7" and the "loss of British lives on British streets" if they continued the inquiry, secret papers reveal. SAUDI ARABIA'S RULERS THREATENED TO MAKE IT EASIER FOR TERRORISTS TO ATTACK LONDON unless the corruption investigation by the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) was stopped, according to documents shown to the High Court.

The previously secret files reveal the warning by the Saudis that they would go ahead and cut off intelligence links with the UK about potential terror strikes and suicide bombers. It was alleged in court that Prince Bandar, the head of the Saudi national security council, was behind the threats to withold information.

During the hearing, he was accused of flying to Britain in December 2006 and issuing the warning which forced Tony Blair to call for an end to the investigation into alleged bribery and corruption involving deals between British arms firm BAE Systems and Saudi Arabia. Lord Justice Moses said yesterday that the Government appeared to have simply "rolled over in the face of" Saudi threats that they would pull out of lucrative arms contracts if the bribery investigation went ahead.

He also attacked Mr Blair for "holding a gun" to a prosecutor's head to make sure he dropped the probe. The former Prime Minister was singled out for criticism during the case in which two pressure groups are challenging the decision by the director of the SFO to drop the investigation. Dinah Rose QC, for the groups, also accused him of overstepping the mark by applying "irresistible pressure" to ensure the probe was halted.