Bad weather in key grain growing areas such as Canada and parts of Europe has limited supplies as demand has risen, sparking fears of a supply shortfall. While it will mean higher bread prices, it could also trigger an increase in meat and dairy prices as farmers battle to pass on rising feed costs.

Global wheat stockpiles will slip to their lowest levels in 26 years as a result, official US figures predicted earlier this month. The dire forecast came as Canadian officials said the country expected its harvest to be slashed by a fifth as a result of drought.

Meanwhile, its rival Australia - the world's third-largest wheat exporter and a key supplier to Asian regions and South America - has also warned harvests may be reduced by warmer-than-expected temperatures experienced in the spring.

Crops in the Black Sea area of Europe, however, have been ruined by bad weather, while Chinese production is expected to fall by 10% as a result of both flooding and droughts.

And as supplies fall, demand from emerging economies such as India is increasing - factors which helped push prices to record highs of $7.44 a bushel on the benchmark Chicago Board of Trade market in the US on Thursday.

In the UK, prices have also soared, with bread-making wheat now fetching about £200 per tonne - double last year's level.

I am increasingly troubled at the inconsistencies in the official narrative of 9/11. It's not just the obvious non sequiturs: where are the aircraft parts (engines, etc) from the attack on the Pentagon? Why have the officials involved in the United 93 flight (which crashed in Pennsylvania) been muzzled? Why did flight 93's debris spread over miles when it was supposed to have crashed in one piece in a field?

If it is true, for example, that kerosene burns at 820C under optimum conditions, how come the steel beams of the twin towers - whose melting point is supposed to be about 1,480C - would snap through at the same time? (They collapsed in 8.1 and 10 seconds.) What about the third tower - the so-called World Trade Centre Building 7 (or the Salmon Brothers Building) - which collapsed in 6.6 seconds in its own footprint at 5.20pm on 11 September? Why did it so neatly fall to the ground when no aircraft had hit it? The American National Institute of Standards and Technology was instructed to analyse the cause of the destruction of all three buildings. They have not yet reported on WTC 7. Two prominent American professors of mechanical engineering - very definitely not in the "raver" bracket - are now legally challenging the terms of reference of this final report on the grounds that it could be "fraudulent or deceptive".

Journalistically, there were many odd things about 9/11. Initial reports of reporters that they heard "explosions" in the towers - which could well have been the beams cracking - are easy to dismiss. Less so the report that the body of a female air crew member was found in a Manhattan street with her hands bound. OK, so let's claim that was just hearsay reporting at the time, just as the CIA's list of Arab suicide-hijackers, which included three men who were - and still are - very much alive and living in the Middle East, was an initial intelligence error.

Let me repeat. I am not a conspiracy theorist. Spare me the ravers. Spare me the plots. But like everyone else, I would like to know the full story of 9/11, not least because it was the trigger for the whole lunatic, meretricious "war on terror" which has led us to disaster in Iraq and Afghanistan and in much of the Middle East. Bush's happily departed adviser Karl Rove once said that "we're an empire now - we create our own reality". True? At least tell us. It would stop people kicking over chairs.

Six bodies were found near the town of Areopolis, about 120 miles south-west of Athens, including two French tourists and two firefighters, the fire brigade and police said. Dozens of other Greek villages asked for help, from the west coast of the Peloponnese to the region of Mani, some 50 miles further east, as the fires were spread by strong winds.

Across the country, more than 150 fires were burning. Aircraft and helicopters were being deployed against the flames, but at times the wind reached gale force and prevented the firefighting planes from taking off. The government announced a state of emergency in Lakonia and Messinia provinces and asked for help from the European Union. Acting Interior Minister Spyros Flogaitis said Greece was appealing to EU member states to "send any help they can" to fight the fires.

But Greece was not alone in its alarm at the damaging heatwave. Italy's Civil Protection Authority said Thursday had been the worst day for forest fires in the country's history. By 9am on Friday, it had already received 36 requests for help.

In south-eastern Bosnia, the temperature hit 42 Celsius (108 F) this week. Firefighters and villagers were battling several forest fires fanned by strong winds yesterday.

Even in Portugal, which like neighbouring Spain has been spared the worst of the fires because of an unusually cool, damp summer in western Europe, 300 firefighters had to be mobilised on Thursday to put out a blaze near the historic town of Sintra

One of the biggest worries for those looking at global health is the sudden rise of a new and deadly illness. Air travel and a worldwide market in live animals means that a virus could sweep across continents in just a few months.

SARS - In 2003, the SARS virus caused an unprecedented panic: A contagious illness, with a week's delay before the emergence of symptoms, and a very high death rate - potentially a very dangerous cocktail. Fortunately for the world, SARS proved to be less infectious than first feared, and the virus was contained within just a few months, not before killing several hundred people.

Pandemic Influenza - Scientists believe that an outbreak of pandemic influenza, a new strain jumping from animals into humans, could be a far greater threat, and governments across the world have been asked to plan for its arrival. Normal seasonal influenza in the UK can kill, but generally only those who are weakened by age or other illness. A completely new strain of pandemic flu, however, is likely to be far more virulent because humans do not have any resistance to it.

Haemorrhagic fevers - In the 1990s, these were the nightmare illnesses, predicted by some to be capable of spreading like wildfire due to modern travel habits. Viruses such as Marburg and Ebola have some of the highest fatality rates of all, and can kill within just a few days. Tropical Africa is the hotbed for haemorrhagic fevers, and victims develop a high temperature, diarrhoea, and then severe bleeding, and are highly contagious. In the 21st Century, an outbreak in Angola claimed more than 200 lives, with nine out of ten of those diagnosed with the illness dying.

Malaria - A million people die from malaria every year worldwide, and the WHO says that not enough is being spent to stop this number increasing. This means that malaria is emerging in new areas, or coming back in areas where it was thought to be eradicated. The parasite that causes the disease is becoming more resistant to some of the most common treatments.

Cholera - Cholera has made a comeback in the last 25 years, says the WHO, which wants to see renewed efforts to control it. War, conflict and natural disaster all play their part in its return, as poor sanitation and unclean drinking water are the root cause of outbreaks. In the aftermath of the Rwandan crisis of 1994, up to 800,000 people crossed the border to refugee camps near the city of Goma in DR Congo. In the first month after their arrival, an estimated 50,000 died from cholera and dysentery, as Vibrio cholerae contaminated Lake Kivu, the only source of drinking water.

Tuberculosis - Tuberculosis, one of the major killers of people with AIDS, accounts for approximately 1.5 million deaths worldwide a year. Antibiotic therapies do exist, although many patients do not have access to them. A major concern for the WHO is the increasing resistance of the bacterium which causes TB to these antibiotics.

It said confidential details of more than 1.3 million people, mainly Americans, were stolen by malicious hackers who carried out the attack. It said that servers in the Ukraine and hijacked home computers were used to mount the attack.

The thieves got away with names, addresses, phone numbers and e-mail addresses of Monster.com users. The job site said that the thieves did not get any useful financial information such as bank account details in the attack. Monster told the Reuters news agency that it first heard about the attack on 17 August thanks to security firm Symantec.

The jobs portal said it managed to shut down the rogue servers used in the attack on 21 August after contacting the Ukranian company hosting them. The vast majority of those affected by the attack are based in the US. Monster estimates that less than 5,000 people outside the US had their details pinched in the attack.

Monster said it had more than 73 million CVs in its database.

Temperatures are soaring into the 100's in certain locations. The temperature hit 101 degrees in Greece, yet the hottest spot was 107 in Turkey. The reason for this all this excessive heat is because of the Scirocco winds off of the Sahara Desert.

Closer to home, we are still expecting to see temperatures reach into the 90's over the weekend over much of the East. High temperatures this month across the Southeast have been averaging between 5 and 10 degrees above normal. In contrast, Philadelphia, Pa., tied its previous coolest high temperature record from 1965 with a high of 69 degrees.

It also marked the third consecutive day that the high failed to reach the 70s, (first time since 1940 that has happened in August). In the midwest, several northern Ohio counties are under states of emergency. Rising flood waters have inundated the area and caused catastrophic damage. It's the worst flooding in a century. In other news - in the west, many wildfires are burning throughout Nevada, Oregon, Washington and Montana.

"Not only has no one ever found a void this big, but we never even expected to find one this size," said astronomy professor Lawrence Rudnick. Writing in the Astrophysical Journal, Rudnick and colleagues Shea Brown and Liliya Williams said they were examining a cold spot using the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe satellite, and found the giant hole.

"We already knew there was something different about this spot in the sky," Rudnick said. The region stood out as being colder in a survey of the Cosmic Microwave Background -- the faint radio buzz left over from the Big Bang that gave birth to the Universe.

"What we've found is not normal, based on either observational studies or on computer simulations of the large-scale evolution of the Universe," Williams said in a statement. The astronomers said the region even appeared to lack dark matter, which cannot be seen directly but is usually detected by measuring gravitational forces.

The void is in a region of sky in the constellation Eridanus, southwest of Orion.

With billions of people moving around the planet every year, the U.N. agency said in its annual World Health Report: "An outbreak or epidemic in one part of the world is only a few hours away from becoming an imminent threat somewhere else."

WHO director-general Margaret Chan said mass travel could facilitate the rapid spread of infectious diseases.

"No country can shield itself from invasion by a pathogen incubating in an airline passenger or an insect hiding in a cargo hold," Chan told reporters.

The U.N. agency warned that there was a good possibility of another major scourge like AIDS, SARS or Ebola fever with the potential of killing millions appearing in the coming years. "Infectious diseases are now spreading geographically much faster than at any time in history," the WHO said. It said it was vital to keep watch for new threats like the emergence in 2003 of SARS, or Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, which spread from China to 30 countries and killed 800 people. "It would be extremely naïve and complacent to assume that there will not be another disease like AIDS, another Ebola, or another SARS, sooner or later," the report warned.

Since the 1970s, the WHO said, new threats have been identified at an "unprecedented rate" of one or more every year, meaning that nearly 40 diseases exist today which were unknown just over a generation ago.
Over the last five years alone, WHO experts had verified more than 1,100 epidemics of different diseases. It was therefore vital for countries to share information on outbreaks so risks can be assessed and mitigated, Chan said.

The prophet, Daniel, recorded his visions in the book that bears his name. Daniel's vision outlined the rise and fall of four successive world empires; the fall of Babylon to the Medo-Persians, which later fell to Alexander the Great's Greek Empire, which then fell to Rome. Daniel foretold Rome's collapse, and its subsequent revival, concurrently with the restoration of Israel, at some point in future history.

But when Daniel was given the vision of events in the last days, the prophet was staggered at what he witnessed. Imagine, for a moment, being someone living in the fifth century before Christ and being given a peek at the world as it exists today. Then, having seen the unimaginable, Daniel was instructed to write down what he saw.

When Daniel emerged from the vision, the angel instructed him, "But you, Daniel, shut up the words, and seal the book until the time of the end; many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall increase."

Daniel was dumbfounded. "Although I heard, I did not understand. Then I said, 'My Lord, what shall be the end of these things?'" For the second time in the same chapter, the angel told Daniel, "The words are closed up and sealed till the time of the end" (Daniel 12:8-9 NKJV).

The prophecies of Daniel were indeed "sealed" for centuries following the Reformation. The early Reformation leaders like Luther and Calvin gave Daniel little attention, pronouncing both Daniel and Revelation either symbolic or allegorical. But in this generation, the prophecies of both books are unsealed. Daniel's vision of a global government headed by a prince of a revived Roman Empire is all but fulfilled in this generation.

For the first time in 1,600 years, there exists a modern version of the old Roman Empire, although, as Daniel predicted, "partly strong and partly weak," compared to the iron of Imperial Rome. There exists, for the first time since before the prophet Daniel was born, a geopolitical entity called "Israel." Neither existed until this generation. Israel was reborn in 1948. The Benelux Treaty that kicked off the unification of Europe was signed in 1948. That same year, Bell Labs introduced the transistor, whose invention marked the birth of the Computer Age.

The angel told Daniel his vision would be unintelligible to generations other than the one to whom it was addressed, a generation whose hallmark would be that of ever-increasing knowledge. Thanks to Bell Labs' 1948 invention, Moore's Law of Computer says that today's computers get twice as smart every 18 months to two years. That means we get twice as smart.

The angel also identified the generation of the time of the end as one in which "many would go to and fro" - the generation that witnessed the birth of rapid mass transportation. According to World Health Organization Director-General Margaret Chan, "An outbreak or epidemic in one part of the world is only a few hours away from becoming an imminent threat somewhere else." Chan specifically identified mass travel as facilitating the rapid spread of infectious diseases. "No country can shield itself from invasion by a pathogen incubating in an airline passenger or an insect hiding in a cargo hold," Chan told Reuters.

She also warned that there was a good possibility of another major scourge like AIDS, SARS or Ebola fever with the potential of killing millions appearing in the coming years. "Infectious diseases are now spreading geographically much faster than at any time in history," Reuters quoted the World Health Organization as saying. "Faster than at any time in history," is the assessment of the most advanced medical technology the world has ever known, caused by our ability to "go to and fro" from one continent to the next - for the FIRST time in history.

"But you, Daniel, shut up the words, and seal the book until the time of the end; many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall increase."

Many run "to and fro," knowledge is increasing at an exponential rate, and more books have been written about the prophet Daniel in this generation than in the last 2,500 years combined.

What is that telling you?

Dry weather has caused droughts in 22 of China's 31 provinces, among them major grain production bases, resulting in a loss of grain that was "greater than in previous years", the Ministry of Agriculture said. About 11 million hectares of arable land have been struck by drought so far this year, 1.7 million hectares more than last year, said ministry figures.

Meanwhile, floods have submerged about 8 million hectares, pushing the total amount of disaster-hit land to about a fifth of the country's 100 million hectares of arable land. Song Tingmin, vice-president of the China National Association of Grain, estimates the autumn harvest will be 10 percent smaller than normal due to the weather.

The autumn harvest usually accounts for 70 percent of the annual grain production.

Norway is concerned that its national animal, the moose, is harming the climate by emitting an estimated 2,100 kilos of carbon dioxide a year through its belching and farting. Norwegian newspapers, citing research from Norway's technical university, said a motorist would have to drive 13,000 kilometers in a car to emit as much CO2 as a moose does in a year.

Much like cows, bacteria in a moose's stomach create methane gas which is considered even more destructive to the environment than carbon gas. Cows pose the same problem. Norway has some 120,000 moose but an estimated 35,000 are expected to be killed in this year's moose hunting season, which starts on September 25, Norwegian newspaper VG reported.

NEW YORK Don't forget to bundle up if you're headed out in New York City today. After all, it is August 21.

The city along with the rest of the tri-state region is feeling the chilly effect of a cold front sweeping through the region, accompanied by cool rain showers.

Tuesday's high temperature in Central Park was just 59 degrees. The normal high for today is 82 degrees. The normal low is 67. "This unusual blast of cold air smashed our previous record for the coldest high temperature on August 21, which is 64 degrees, set back in 1999," CBS 2 meteorologist Jason Cali told wcbstv.com.

In fact, the 59-degree high tied the record for the coldest high temperature ever for the month of August in New York City, when it reached just 59 degrees in 1911. Today's highs are more common in the city for the final days of October, when the average high ranges from 59 degrees to 61 degrees.

The unusually cold air mass has come down from Canada, colliding with the moisture from the remnants of Tropical Storm Erin.

The rain moved into Ohio, where roads flooded, schools canceled classes and residents were rescued from flooded homes by boats.

The death toll from the two storm systems - one in the Upper Midwest and the remnants of Tropical Storm Erin in Texas and Oklahoma - climbed to 22 when searchers found the body of a man tangled in a tree about four miles from his wrecked, upside-down car near a creek south of Lewiston, Minn. Firefighters used boats to rescue families from flooded homes in Bucyrus after nearly 9 inches of rain fell, and the Upper Sandusky school district in north-central Ohio canceled the first day of school.

In Wisconsin and Minnesota, thousands of homes were damaged. A preliminary survey by the American Red Cross in Minnesota identified about 4,200 affected homes, including 256 complete losses, 338 with major damage and 475 that are still inaccessible, said Kris Eide, the state's director of homeland security and emergency management.

Preliminary damage reports in Wisconsin topped $38 million Tuesday and were expected to keep rising. Gov. Jim Doyle declared a state of emergency in five counties and began the process for requesting federal disaster assistance. In Oklahoma, which recorded a gust of 82 mph and rainfall of 11 inches, about 300 homes and businesses were damaged in the Kingfisher area and in Caddo County in southwestern Oklahoma, officials said.

Numerous flood warnings remained in effect through Wednesday and Thursday, and Gov. Brad Henry declared a state of emergency in 24 counties.

Elmar Brok, a centre-Right MEP and close ally of German chancellor Angela Merkel, effectively told Britain to sign up to the so-called reforming treaty or consider pulling out of the EU.

He insisted that the new draft was substantially different from the "old" constitution and that Britain had "got what it wanted" with a series of opt-outs and "red lines".

"Gordon Brown's government has said there is no justification for a referendum and the UK should stick to this commitment," said Brok, the European parliament's representative on inter-governmental negotiations on the treaty.

"It would be very unfair of the UK if, having more or less got what it wanted in the new treaty, it would then turn round and put this to a popular vote."

Brok, a member of the European convention that drafted the old constitution, asked: "The UK got its various opt-outs so what's the problem? How would it seem to other EU member states if Britain were now to hold a referendum? For me, that would undermine the negotiations on the treaty and even go as far as to question Britain's credibility as an EU member.

"Britain is a valued member of the EU but we should perhaps remember that the treaty contains an article which gives any member state the right to leave the EU if it so wishes." He added: "The chapter is closed. We should be able to have a new treaty as soon as possible. We have a commitment from all to meet these requirements."

Nigel Farage, leader of the UK Independence Party, criticised Brok's intervention, saying: "For an arrogant, bullying German politician to be telling the British what they should or should not do is, I would have thought, likely to help the pro-referendum case.

"I would be delighted if he agreed to visit every major British city and repeat his comments."

Reid Bryson, founding chairman of the Department of Meteorology at the University of Wisconsin said, " the temperature of the earth is increasing, but that it's got nothing to do with what man is doing. Of course it's going up. It has gone up since the early 1800s, before the Industrial Revolution, because we're coming out of the Little Ice Age, not because we're putting more carbon dioxide into the air."

"Anthropogenic (man-made) global warming bites the dust," declared astronomer Ian Wilson after reviewing the newest study, now accepted for publication in the peer-reviewed Journal of Geophysical Research. The project, called "Heat Capacity, Time Constant, and Sensitivity of Earth's Climate System," was authored by Brookhaven National lab scientist Stephen Schwartz.

"Effectively, this (new study) means that the global economy will spend trillions of dollars trying to avoid a warming of (about) 1.0 K by 2100 A.D.," Wilson wrote in a note to the U.S. Senate committee on environment and public works Sunday. He was referring to the massive expenditures that would be required under such treaties as the Kyoto Protocol.

"Previously, I have indicated that the widely accepted values for temperature increase associated with a double of CO2 were far too high, i.e. 2-4.5 Kelvin. This new peer-reviewed paper claims a value of 1.1 +/- 0.5 K increase," he added.

Another leader, Ivy League geologist Robert Giegengack, chair of the Department of Earth and Environmental Science at the University of Pennsylvania, said he doesn't even consider global warming among the top 10 environmental problems.

WND also reported on NASA-funded study that noted some climate forecasts might be exaggerating estimations of global warming. The space agency said climate models possibly were overestimating the amount of water vapor entering the atmosphere as the Earth warms.

The theory many scientists work with says the Earth heats up in response to human emissions of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide, causing more water to evaporate from the ocean into the atmosphere. In addition, WND reported that Dr. Fred Singer, professor emeritus of environmental sciences at the University of Virginia, maintains there has been little or no warming since about 1940.

"Any warming from the growth of greenhouse gases is likely to be minor, difficult to detect above the natural fluctuations of the climate, and therefore inconsequential," Singer wrote in a climate-change essay. "In addition, the impacts of warming and of higher CO2 levels are likely to be beneficial for human activities and especially for agriculture."