According to the source, Israel will give an "unofficial" acceptance to agreement only after "the Palestinian factions announce that they accept the deal. After we announce the cease-fire in Cairo, the sides will be obligated to it," the official told the paper. "In addition, Israel will open the border crossings to Gaza in order to allow the transfer of commercial shipments, medicine, fuel, and food."

On Sunday, Asharq al-Awsat reported that HAMAS HAD THREATENED AN "UNPRECEDENTED ESCALATION" AGAINST ISRAEL IF IT DID NOT AGREE SOON TO THE CEASE-FIRE. Hamas spokesman Ayman Taha told the paper that Egyptian Intelligence chief Omar Suleiman was expected to arrive in Israel on Monday to convey Hamas's offer, which was agreed upon by twelve Palestinian factions last week.

Another spokesman for the group, Sami Abu Zuhri, said the organization was waiting to receive an official response through Egypt in the coming days. He said Hamas was ready to deal with one of two possibilities: PACIFICATION OR ESCALATION. "All options are open. The ball is in the Israeli court," Abu Zuhri said, adding that IF ISRAEL CONTINUES ITS PROCRASTINATION, AGGRESSION AND BLOCKADE OF GAZA, "IT MAY LEAD TO UNPRECEDENTED ESCALATION."

It is certainly a storm that has hit with little warning and has plunged an extra 100 million people into poverty. The crisis has triggered riots in Haiti, Cameroon, Indonesia and Egypt and is deemed a dangerous threat to stability. IT IS NOT SO MUCH FAMINE THAT IS THE WORRY, IT IS WIDESPREAD MISERY AND MALNUTRITION. The WFP's biggest concern is for the people living on 50 cents a day who have nothing to fall back on.

SO WHY HAVE FOOD PRICES SOARED? The rises are due to a lethal combination of HIGH FUEL COSTS, BAD WEATHER IN KEY FOOD PRODUCING COUNTRIES, THE INCREASE IN LAND ALLOCATED TO BIO-FUELS, AND A SURGE IN DEMAND - MUCH OF IT FROM THE RISING MIDDLE CLASSES OF CHINA AND INDIA. The problem is that once the price of rice or wheat has risen, other factors kick in which make things worse. THERE IS PANIC AND PEOPLE START HOARDING, SPECULATORS BUY UP SUPPLY, and food producing countries impose export controls to try and preserve food for their own people. This then means less is available to be exported to countries which rely on food imports.

WFP head Josette Sheeran said it was not going to be a quick fix. She used the example of KENYA'S RIFT VALLEY WHERE FARMERS EVEN NOW ARE PLANTING A THIRD LESS OF THE LAND THAN LAST YEAR. THIS IS BECAUSE FERTILISER HAS MORE THAN DOUBLED IN PRICE.

Corn up 31%. Rice up 74%. Soya up 87%. Wheat up 130%.

Rising oil prices and fears over climate change have seen a massive rise in the use of maize to make bio-fuels, pushing up food prices. In the last 3 years Ethanol production has risen from 11 billion litres to 36 billion litres.

There will be billions more mouths to feed by 2050, making an increased demand for food a long-term trend. World population is rising: 1952 - 2.5bn, 1975 - 4.1bn, 2000 - 6.1bn, 2025 - 8bn, 2050 - 9.2bn.

Changing eating habits - meat consumption in China per capita: 1980 - 20kg, 2007 - 50kg.

Pressure on resources: it takes 1000-2000 litres of water to produce 1kg of wheat. It takes 10,000-13,000 litres of water to produce 1kg of beef.

The Unesco study recommends better safeguards to protect resources and more sustainable farming practices, SUCH AS PRODUCING FOOD LOCALLY. MORE NATURAL AND ECOLOGICAL FARMING TECHNIQUES SHOULD BE USED, IT SAYS. A group of 400 EXPERTS SPENT THREE YEARS RESEARCHING the report, which was unveiled on Tuesday at Unesco in Paris.

The authors found that progress in agriculture has reaped very unequal benefits and has come at a high social and environmental cost. Food producers should TRY USING "NATURAL PROCESSES" LIKE CROP ROTATION AND USE OF ORGANIC FERTILISERS. The distance between the produce and consumer should also be reduced

The BBC's Nick Miles says that with food prices at the top of the international political agenda, this is effectively a blueprint for the future of global agriculture. The report said rising oil prices had made transport and farm production more expensive and had led to more crops being grown to make biofuels for vehicles. IT ALSO WARNED LARGE SWATHS OF CENTRAL AND WESTERN ASIA AND AFRICA WERE RUNNING OUT OF WATER. Farming was responsible for more than A THIRD OF THE WORLD'S MOST DEGRADED LAND, it said.

THE WORLD BANK SAYS THAT 100 MILLION MORE PEOPLE ARE FACING SEVERE HUNGER. Yet some of the world's richest food companies are making record profits. MONSANTO last month reported that its net income for the three months up to the end of February this year had more than doubled over the same period in 2007, from $543m to $1.12bn. ITS PROFITS INCREASED FROM $1.44BN TO $2.22BN.

Cargill's net earnings soared by 86 per cent FROM $553M TO $1.030BN over the same three months. And Archer Daniels Midland, one of the world's largest agricultural processors of soy, corn and wheat, increased its net earnings by 42 per cent in the first three months of this year FROM $363M TO $517M. The operating profit of its grains merchandising and handling operations jumped 16-fold FROM $21M TO $341M.

Similarly, the Mosaic Company, one of the world's largest fertiliser companies, saw its income for the three months ending 29 February RISE MORE THAN 12-FOLD, FROM $42.2M TO $520.8M, on the back of a shortage of fertiliser. The revelations are bound to increase outrage over multinational companies following last week's disclosure that SHELL AND BP BETWEEN THEM RECORDED PROFITS OF £14BN in the first three months of the year

World leaders are to meet next month at a special summit on the food crisis, and it will be high on the agenda of the G8 summit of the world's richest countries in Hokkaido, Japan, in July.

The meeting comes less than two months after the Vatican's top officials for relations with Islam criticised Williams as mistaken and naive for suggesting that some aspects of Sharia law in Britain were unavoidable.

The spiritual leader for the world's 77 million Anglicans, Williams - who sparked a political storm with the Sharia comments - last held talks with the Pope in November 2006.

Ties between the two churches have been strained over the past decade over the issue of women priests and homosexual bishops in the Anglican Church, which both leaders have acknowledged as obstacles to unity.

The Vatican doesn't want to have a bishop donning the presidential sash "mixing the priesthood with politics" but it also believes that once a bishop always a bishop, since ordination is a lifelong sacarament. The Vatican is dropping signals that it wants to find a non-controversial solution, and pundits doubt it will return the "bishop of the poor" to a lay state.

But there is no modern precedent to guide the Holy See. One Italian media outlet turned back to Talleyrand, the French bishop-turned foreign minister under Napoleon, even though the case bears no resemblance to modern Paraguay. The Vatican already suspended Lugo from his priestly duties after his entry into politics, and the Vatican envoy to Paraguay Orlando Antonini was quoted by Vatican Radio saying the next move was up to the pope.

Antonini added, perhaps tellingly, that Lugo wanted to remain within the Church, even though the Paraguayan leader has been quoted saying he was willing to be reduced to the lay state. He abandoned his duties as a bishop three years ago, saying he felt powerless to help Paraguay's poor. While the Vatican is acting cautiously, other Christians have expressed their delight in Lugo's landmark election to a country where corruption and poverty are endemic.

The Vatican promptly denied any health problems and veteran vaticanisti poured cold water on the story. The same day, John Allen of the National Catholic Reporter said, "The fact that the pope is 81 cannot help but stimulate that corner of the Catholic brain given to pondering the future, even if no one seriously believes that a transition is anywhere on the horizon," he wrote. "For those looking around to see who might have the "right stuff" to be a future pope, a Vatican press conference this week regarding next October's Synod of Bishops on the Bible took on a whole new level of significance.

Among the presenters at the press conference was a man who strikes many church-watchers as a rising star: Archbishop Gianfranco Ravasi, president of the Pontifical Council for Culture.

Parts of the Irrawaddy region were hit particularly badly, with three out of four buildings reportedly blown down in one district. Burma has declared Irrawaddy and four other regions, including the main city Rangoon, to be disaster areas. Rangoon has been without power and water, its streets full of debris.

Winds of about 190km/h (120mph) battered the Irrawaddy, Rangoon, Bago, Karen and Mon regions. The latest death toll of 351 includes at least 109 people who lived on Haing-gyi island, off the south-west coast, officials say. About 20,000 homes have been destroyed and 90,000 people made homeless on the island alone, a government official said.

The death toll is expected to rise further, as the situation in remote areas becomes clear. Cyclone Nargis has since moved towards Thailand where storm warnings have been issued. However, it appears to be lessening in force. In Rangoon, internet and phone connections have been down since the storm drew near, making it difficult to confirm the extent of the damage.

He did so by speaking frankly and forcefully of his "deep shame" during his meeting with victims of the Church's sex-abuse scandal. By demonstrating that he "gets" this most visceral of issues, the pontiff may have successfully mollified a good many alienated believers ? and in the process, NEUTRALIZED THE LAST GREAT RALLYING POINT FOR WHAT WAS ONCE A FEISTY AND OPTIMISTIC STYLE OF PROGRESSIVISM.

THE LIBERAL REBELLION IN AMERICAN CATHOLICISM has dogged Benedict and his predecessors since the Second Vatican Council of 1962-65. "Vatican II," which overhauled much of Catholic teaching and ritual, had a revolutionary impact on the Church as a whole. It enabled people to hear the Mass in their own languages; embraced the principle of religious freedom; rejected anti-semitism; and permitted Catholic scholars to grapple with modernity.

But Vatican II meant even more to a generation of devout but restless young people in the U.S. rather than a course correction. THEY DISCERNED IN THE COUNCIL A CALL TO GREATER CHURCH DEMOCRACY, AND AN ASSERTION OF INDIVIDUAL CONSCIENCE THAT COULD STAND UP TO THE AUTHORITY OF EVEN THE POPE. So, they battled the Vatican's birth-control ban, its rejection of female priests and insistence on celibacy, and its authoritarianism.

Then, the movement received a monstrous reprieve. The priest sex abuse scandal implicated not only the predators, but the superiors who shielded them. John Paul remained mostly silent. A new reform group, Voice of the Faithful, arose; the old anger returned, crystallizing around the battle-cry "THEY JUST DON'T GET IT."

BENEDICT'S VISIT, HOWEVER, CHANGED THE DYNAMIC. And that's a problem for progressives. Says Fr. Thomas Reese, a senior fellow at Georgetown University's Woodstock Theological Center whom Benedict famously removed from his previous job as editor of America, "REFORM MOVEMENTS NEED AN ENEMY TO ORGANIZE AGAINST. As most bishops have gotten their acts together on sex abuse, they have looked less like the enemy and more like part of the solution. ENTHUSIASM FOR REFORM DECLINED. WITH THE POPE'S FORTHRIGHT RESPONSE, IT WILL DECLINE EVEN MORE."

And so, unless Benedict contradicts in Rome what he said in New York, THE CHURCH MAY HAVE REACHED A TIPPING POINT.

BRITISH DEFENCE GIANT BAE SYSTEMS IS CREATING A SERIES OF TINY ELECTRONIC SPIDERS, INSECTS AND SNAKES THAT COULD BECOME THE EYES AND EARS OF SOLDIERS ON THE BATTLEFIELD, helping to save thousands of lives. Prototypes could be on the front line by the end of the year, scuttling into potential danger areas such as booby-trapped buildings or enemy hideouts to relay images back to troops safely positioned nearby. THEN THEY WOULD SWARM INTO THE BUILDING AND RELAY IMAGES BACK TO THE SOLDIERS' HAND-HELD OR WRIST-MOUNTED COMPUTERS, WARNING THEM OF ANY THREATS INSIDE.

BAE Systems has just signed a £19million contract to develop the robots for the US Army. Plans for a creature that can crawl like a spider are said to be well developed, and researchers eventually hope to be able to create creatures that can slither like a snake or fly like a dragonfly. While some of the creatures will be fitted with small cameras, others will be equipped with sensors that will be able to detect the presence of chemical, biological or radioactive weapons.

"The five-year programme has just started but we could have them with soldiers within six months, and then continue to develop the concept as the project goes along." Despite the high-tech gadgetry involved, BAE Systems insists once production is in full swing, EACH BUG WILL COST NO MORE THAN £100 TO PRODUCE.

But a brighter world, it is becoming increasingly clear, has its drawbacks. A study released last month finding that breast cancer is nearly twice as common in brightly lit communities as in dark ones only added to a growing body of evidence that artificial light threatens not just stargazing but also public health, wildlife, and possibly even safety.

Those findings are all the more troubling considering that an estimated 30 percent of outdoor lighting ?plus even some indoor lighting ? is wasted. ILL-CONCEIVED, INEFFECTIVE, AND INEFFICIENT LIGHTING COSTS THE NATION ABOUT $10.4 BILLION A YEAR, according to Bob Gent of the International Dark-Sky Association, a nonprofit organisation that aims to curtail light pollution, and it generates 38 million tons of carbon dioxide a year.

People who are working while others are stargazing may face the greatest risks. Hormonal disturbances triggered by night time exposure to white or bluish light can disrupt circadian rhythms and fuel the growth of tumors, experiments show. Two decades of research indicate that women who work night shifts have unusually high rates of breast cancer, and some data suggest a parallel effect on male workers' prostate cancer rates. Last December, a unit of the World Health Organization deemed shift work a probable human carcinogen.

Yet light and cancer may be even more fundamentally linked. In last month's study, a team that included Richard Stevens, the University of Connecticut Health Center epidemiologist who first proposed the connection, compared satellite images of Israel at night with maps showing where cancers are most common. Its analysis suggests that 73 percent more breast cancers occur in the country's brightest communities than in its darkest.

SINCE THE MID-1980S, THE U.S. GOVERNMENT, in an attempt to reduce the environmental fallout from large-scale farming, HAS BEEN PAYING FARMERS TO SET ASIDE LESS-THAN-IDEAL LAND FOR CONSERVATION. The results have been overwhelmingly positive: Soil erosion has been reduced; chemical and fertilizer runoff has eased; habitats for game birds and endangered species have been created and enlarged. The pushback to climate change has been equally noteworthy: In 2007, the lands trapped 50 million metric tons of carbon dioxide, making the Conservation Reserve Program the most effective government-funded defense against greenhouse gases on private lands.

"We use this program for everything," said John Johnson, a U.S. Department of Agriculture deputy administrator. "We protect New York City's drinking water with it. We preserve groundwater with it. We protect the salmon habitat in the Pacific Northwest with it. It's a wonderful program."

BUT WITH CROP PRICES SO HIGH - CORN, FOR INSTANCE, CLOSED AT $5.56 A BUSHEL ON WEDNESDAY, COMPARED WITH $2.20 IN 2006 - THE STAKES ARE GETTING HIGHER. Most farmers in the program are committed to 10-or-15-year contracts; when their contracts expire, they can renew or opt out. So if crop prices stay high - as estimates suggest - the lure of productive land will be something with which each wave of farmers in the program will be grappling.

Bush was expected soon to sign the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act, which lawmakers and advocates called "the first major civil rights act of the 21st century." Federal law already bans discrimination by race and gender. "Your skin color, your gender, all of those are part of your DNA," said Francis Collins, head of the National Human Genome Research Institute. "Shouldn't the rest of your DNA also fall under that protective umbrella?"

Researchers supported the bill because Americans have been refusing to take genetic tests or have been using false names and paying cash because they didn't want the information used against them by their employer or insurance company, Collins said. THE BILL WOULD PROHIBIT HEALTH INSURANCE COMPANIES FROM USING GENETIC INFORMATION TO SET PREMIUMS OR DETERMINE ENROLLMENT ELIGIBILITY. Similarly, employers could not use genetic information in hiring, firing or promotion decisions.

According to National Human Genome Research Institute, 41 states already have enacted legislation related to genetic discrimination in health insurance and 31 states adopted laws regarding genetic discrimination in the workplace.

The rest of the country was both appalled and fascinated after Texas authorities raided the Yearning for Zion (YFZ) ranch in Eldorado, Texas, on April 3, gawking at the sight of women seemingly dressed for Little House on the Prairie, whose modest appearance was jarring with their sexually aberrant lifestyle.

First came the jokes, then some hard realities sank in. HUNDREDS OF CHILDREN WERE BEING SEPARATED FROM THE ONLY FAMILIES THEY EVER KNEW. Shuttled from one temporary facility to another, they are now being dispersed throughout Texas' already overtaxed foster-care system, from the Panhandle all the way to Houston. Why? Because an anonymous call from inside the ranch alleged that the kids were in danger of physical and emotional abuse, given the ranch culture of young girls, older men and arranged marriages.

This is the latest scene in a long saga. In the late 19th century, the U.S. government told the Latter-Day Saints that the price of admission to a rich American future was the renunciation of polygamy. The official church and the vast majority of Mormons were happy to come along, but not these few. All these years later, words fail. MODERNITY COMES SPEAKING THE LANGUAGE OF WOMEN'S RIGHTS, OF THE DIGNITY AND SELF-DETERMINATION OF CHILDREN, OF LIMITS ON THE AUTHORITY OF FATHERS - AND EVEN ON THE AUTHORITY OF PROPHETS. For people who have chosen to sit the last century out, this doesn't compute. Nor does the state of Texas seem to understand, entirely, what it's dealing with.

They are insular and suspicious. Williams did manage to get that much across in his meeting with the media. "What honorable father and parent would not give their all TO PRESERVE THEIR CHILDREN FROM A TRAUMATIC, HOSTILE TO THEM, EVEN ABHORRENT SOCIETY?" he asked. "What honorable father and parent would not give their all to protect the innocence of their children?"

IN 1953 authorities tried to root out the fathers and rescue the children, but after a couple of years of costly court cases and A TIDE OF PUBLIC OPINION IN FAVOR OF KEEPING FAMILIES TOGETHER - NO MATTER HOW UNCONVENTIONAL - the two worlds essentially agreed to ignore each other.

All they desire, one site explains, is "the privilege of worshiping God as guaranteed by the Constitution." Secrets are getting out. And those alleged secrets - which range from child abuse and welfare fraud to tax evasion - have become too numerous to overlook any longer. It's hard to find a place anymore where the law will ignore you while you blatantly ignore the law.

The government calls it a matter of child welfare; the sect calls it religious persecution. Caught in the middle is Texas judge Barbara Walther, who was asked to weigh requests from the parents to hold twice-daily prayer meetings with the children and to reunite nursing mothers with the 77 kids who are under age 2. For the nursing mothers, THE JUDGE OFFERED A LESSON IN CONTEMPORARY FEMINISM: "Every day in this country there are thousands of mothers who, after six weeks' maternity leave, must go back to work - and they deal with this issue."

WRECKAGE FROM THIS COLLISION WON'T BE TIDIED UP ANYTIME SOON. Until investigators determine what did take place on the ranch, the judge will be left in the same troubled place where she began: with a lot of mothers who love their babies, and children who miss their homes, ALL CAUGHT BETWEEN A WORLD THEY FEAR AND A WORLD THAT IS UNRAVELLING.