In an address to members of the Vatican department on doctrinal matters, Benedict said the Church had a duty to defend the "great values at stake" in the field of bioethics. The speech was the latest in a series in which the conservative Pope has told his listeners that scientific progress should not be accepted uncritically. Benedict, who headed the same department for years before his election in 2005, said the Church was not against scientific progress but wanted it based on "ethical-moral principles".

He said this included total respect for the human being as a person "from conception until natural death," and respect for the natural transmission of life through sexual intercourse. Practices like freezing embryos, suppression of embryos in multiple pregnancies, embryonic stem cell research, the prospect of human cloning and artificial insemination outside the body had "shattered the barriers meant to protect human dignity", he said.

"When human beings in the weakest and most defenseless state of their existence are selected, abandoned, killed or used as pure 'biological material,' how can one deny that they are being treated not as 'someone' but as 'something,'" he said. It was the Pope's latest foray into scientific issues. On Monday he warned against the "seductive" powers of science, saying it was important that science did not become the sole criteria for goodness.

More than 10% of virus samples taken in Western Europe this winter were resistant to oseltamivir, better known as Tamiflu, according to figures from the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC). Nearly 10% of the samples in Canada were resistant too, according to national authorities there, and the U.S. found nearly 7% resistance.

The number of resistant strains are still small overall, but the superbugs aren't evenly distributed around the world: In Norway, a staggering 75% of the 16 samples taken this winter were drug-resistant - enough to pull up Western Europe's average by about 8 percentage points.

One thing is certain. The news won't help Roche Holding AG, the Swiss holding company for Tamiflu manufacturer Hoffman-La Roche. Tamiflu sales dropped off sharply in the second half of 2007, Roche announced this week.

African leaders at a summit in neighboring Ethiopia attended by the U.N. head have called for urgent action to stop the bloodletting, which has turned one of the continent's more stable nations and best economies into its most pressing crisis. Ban arrived from Ethiopia in the morning to meet predecessor Kofi Annan, who is spearheading mediation efforts in Nairobi, as well as opposition leader Raila Odinga and civil society representatives, U.N. officials said.

He told the 53-nation African Union summit on Thursday the violence in Kenya threatened to "escalate to catastrophic levels" and called on President Mwai Kibaki and Odinga to do everything possible to resolve the crisis. "The aim of the visit is to offer support to the Annan-led panel and be briefed by the U.N. country team on the humanitarian crisis," a U.N. official in Nairobi said. More than 300,000 Kenyans are living as refugees.

Mr Gate's letter to the German Defence Minister has been described as "unusually stern" by a German newspaper which has seen the correspondence. The German Defence Minister, Franz Josef Jung, is reported to have issued an equally stern response. The Nato-led force has almost 37,000 troops in Afghanistan.

Mr Gates's letter asks for Germany to consider a new mandate which could allow thousands more troops to be sent to Afghanistan with some deployed to the more dangerous south. This harsh exchange of letters comes amid growing concern that the Nato led mission in Afghanistan is failing. It also comes amid growing signs of a strain in the Nato alliance itself.

Washington has tried to avoid a public row with Nato members. But speaking to a senate committee a senior US diplomat stated that "we expect more from our Nato allies" adding that too few allies had combat troops fighting the insurgents in the south.

Men who consume two or more sugary soft drinks a day have an 85% higher risk of gout compared with those who drink less than one a month, a study suggests. Cases in the US have doubled in recent decades and it seems fructose, a type of sugar, may be to blame, the British Medical Journal study reports. UK experts said those with gout would be advised to cut out sugary drinks.

About 1.5% of the UK population currently suffers from gout and there has been an increase in numbers over the last 30 years - although the condition is more associated with Victorian times. The symptoms of painful, swollen joints, mainly in the lower limbs, are caused when uric acid crystallises out of the blood into the joints.
US and Canadian researchers said the increase in cases had coincided with a substantial rise in the consumption of soft drinks. Previous research had also shown that fructose increases levels of uric acid in the bloodstream.

Dr Andrew Bamji, president of the British Society for Rheumatology, said anecdotally cases of gout appeared to be rising. "When you think about it, it makes a lot of sense in that fructose inhibits the excretion of uric acid. I will certainly change my advice to patients and I suspect the number drinking fructose is quite large."

Without doubt, this would be a significant geopolitical move on both Iran's and China's part, bound to unsettle the US superpower that enjoys unrivalled hegemony in the oil region and which has unsettled China with its recent civilian nuclear agreement with India, widely interpreted as a long-term "containing China" initiative. In the tight interplay of geopolitics and geo-economics, with China heavily dependent on energy imports from Iran and other Persian Gulf states, the trend is definitely toward China's naval complement of its flurry of energy deals in order to secure its precious oil and (liquefied) gas cargo ships exiting through the narrow corridors of the Strait of Hormuz.

Presently, China's strategy is confined to the port city of Gwadar along the southwestern coast of Pakistan in Balochistan province, strategically located near the Hormuz Strait. Yet, due to the close US-Pakistan relations, it is highly improbable the US would permit Islamabad to enter into strategic relations with Beijing so that China, still lacking a formidable navy, could utilize it for power projection in the region. Not so with Iran, which is constantly threatened by the US, and now France, and which already enjoys observer status at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), headed by China and Russia. Iran's bid to join the SCO has been stalled partly as a result of the standoff over its nuclear program, but will likely succeed in the not too distant future should the present patterns of Iran-Russia and Iran-China cooperation continue.

Regarding the latter, China has already surpassed Germany as Iran's number one trade partner. Sinopec, China's largest oil refiner, has just finalized a multi-billion dollar deal to develop the giant Yadavaran oil field, and this is in addition to the "deal of the century" contract for natural gas from Iran's immense North Pars field. Chinese contractors are also busy constructing oil terminals for Iran in the Caspian Sea, extending the Tehran metro, building airports, among other projects. And this while China arms sales to Iran have included such hot items as ballistic-missile technology and air-defense radars.

The growing Iran-China cooperation on the energy and trade fronts is bound sooner or later to spill over into more meaningful military cooperation and, in turn, this depends to some extent on the ebbs and flows of Iran-US and China-US "games of strategy", particularly if China feels additional pressure from the US on the geopolitical front.

Warning of catastrophe, U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon said he would travel to Nairobi on Friday from an African Union summit in neighboring Ethiopia to help his predecessor Kofi Annan, who has been trying to mediate an end to the crisis. The instability has shocked neighboring states and Western donors, and transformed Kenya from one of Africa's more peaceful and prosperous nations into its most urgent crisis.

Fresh protests erupted on Thursday after David Kimutai Too, an opposition Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) member of parliament, was killed in the Rift Valley town of Eldoret. Police commissioner Hussein Ali said Too's murder was a "crime of passion". The traffic police officer responsible, who had been arrested, had shot a fellow officer believed to be his girlfriend along with the legislator, he said.

ODM leader Raila Odinga said it was a political act, without giving evidence. "I condemn this second execution of an ODM member of parliament. The purpose of this killing is to reduce the ODM majority," he said. Earlier this week, another opposition legislator, Melitus Were, was gunned down outside his Nairobi home, triggering rioting and ethnic killings. ODM said it was a "political assassination". Police said they were treating it as "murder".

The world's second biggest quoted oil company said that fourth quarter income climbed 60 per cent, during a period when the oil price soared to $100 a barrel and prices at the petrol pump climbed to more than a £1 a litre. Union leaders called the results "obscene" at a time when pensioners, motorists and industry were struggling to pay higher energy prices. Tony Woodley, the General Secretary of Unite, demanded that the Government levy a windfall tax on the oil majors.

A newborn baby was illegally snatched from its mother by social workers in the early hours of yesterday morning. Officials claimed the 18-year-old mother was unfit to care for the child because of mental health problems. But hours later a High Court judge ordered the infant to be returned immediately, saying THE SOCIAL WORKERS HAD ACTED BEYOND THEIR POWERS. Mr Justice Munby told the officials that they "SHOULD HAVE KNOWN BETTER".

The troubling case follows complaints from parents THAT SOCIAL WORKERS HAVE TAKEN THEIR CHILDREN FOR ADOPTION WITHOUT GOOD REASON, and suggestions that families are being broken up to meet bureaucratic targets.

He said: "On the face of it, WHAT WAS DONE WAS WITHOUT LAWFUL AUTHORITY. The professionals involved in this case should know better. You cannot remove children, short of immediate murderous intent (situations where a child is in immediate danger), except by lawful means, which means either by a police officer or court". The judge added: "There is no suggestion in the documents shown to me so far that the mother is posing a risk of exposing the child to immediate physical attack and physical harm." The ruling was made shortly after midday, and mother and baby were reunited 46 minutes later.

Adoption targets were brought in seven years ago, when Tony Blair was trying to persuade social workers to find adoptive homes for more children. The then Prime Minister set targets to raise the number of children being adopted by 50 per cent to 5,400 every year. He promised millions of pounds to councils that managed to achieve the targets. Some have already received more than £2million for successful adoptions. Campaigners say the number of babies under a month old being taken into care and then adopted has risen from 500 in 1997 to 1,300 a year. Last year a BBC investigation discovered more than 100 claims of miscarriages of justice by parents whose children were taken by social workers for adoption.

Layton Bevan, co-founder of Families and Social Services Information Team, a support group for families frustrated by social services' actions, said: "It's obscene the way some social services can take children away from parents without the proper paperwork. We are aware of this happening in hundreds of cases a year through the sheer incompetence and organisational failure of social services departments. If they need to meet adoption targets they will do it by taking children from vulnerable families. Worryingly, the social services involved seem to have no accountability and ride roughshod over the law and the parents and children involved."

Members of Kenya's biggest tribe have disappeared in their thousands from Kisumu, making it the first - but perhaps not the last - city to be ethnically cleansed. "If we find any Kikuyus, we're going to slaughter them or burn them alive," 19-year-old Daniel Odongo said Wednesday, who wielded the machete as a mob of hundreds of young men with rusty axes and other weapons roared their approval. "But there is none in the houses around here."

Government figures released Wednesday said the number of people forced from their homes has risen to 300,000, showing that ethnic cleansing has not diminished, and this threatens to redraw Kenya's once cosmopolitan ethnic map in areas like the Rift Valley. On Wednesday, the top U.S. envoy for Africa, Jendayi Frazer, said Kenya was experiencing "clear ethnic cleansing" in the Rift Valley region. "There was an organized effort to push people out of the Rift Valley," Frazer said.

INDONESIA - Forty missing as floods sweep away Indonesia bridge. 80 people are feared dead in landslides and floods in the neighbouring Central Java province.

CARIBBEAN - Rare December tropical Storm Olga kills 22 in Caribbean.

ISRAEL - The coldest winter Snow storm covers Jerusalem for second night.

CHINA - China's worst snow storms in decades look set to continue for at least three more days, a top forecaster has warned. Storms cost China $4.5.billion.

AUSTRALIA - Australia's North eastern coast has been battered by cyclonic winds and flooding in December and January after many years of drought. You either get too much rain, or not enough!

USA IN 2007 - This year has been a year of weather extremes, from incessant rain in the Northwest to chronic drought in the heartland and wildfires in the West.

FIGI - This week Cyclone Gene hit Fiji's main island of Viti Levu, 3,500 km (2,200 miles) east of Australia, causing serious flooding.

SOUTHERN AFRICA - Africans lose homes, face crocodiles in floods. Floods and heavy rains which swept through southern Africa have left about 70,000 people in Malawi homeless. Zambia, Zimbabwe and Mozambique have also been hit by serious floods that have killed many.

UNITED KINGDOM - The unseasonably warm and wet winter so far in Britain has coaxed plants into early flowering. Daffodils were in bloom early January - a month earlier than normal. Update - January blew out with a vengeance yesterday as 80mph winds brought chaos around the the country and claimed the life of a lorry driver. Now a new wave of weather misery will batter Britain, with much of the country facing disruption from blizzards and icy conditions.

The breakthrough paves the way for lesbian couples to have children that are biologically their own. Gay men could follow suit by using the technique to make eggs from male bone marrow. Researchers at Newcastle upon Tyne University say their technique will help lead to new treatments for infertility. But critics warn that it sidelines men and raises the prospect of babies being born through entirely artificial means.

The race to find a cure for infertility is global. Greg Aharonian, a U.S. analyst who is trying to patent the technologies behind female sperm and male eggs, said he wants to undermine the argument that heterosexual marriage is superior because it is aimed at procreation. "I'm a troublemaker," he said.

There was disruption to 70% of the nationwide network in Egypt, and India suffered up to 60% disruption. UK firms such as British Airways have told the BBC that call centres have been affected by the outage. Industry experts said it could take up to one week to repair the damaged cables and resume full service. International telephone calls, which have also been affected, are being rerouted to work around the problem.

Disruption also occurred in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, reported the Associated Press. In Dubai, at least two internet service providers (ISPs) were affected. An official at the provider, DU, told AP that a fault in a cable between Alexandria, Egypt, and Palermo, Italy, was to blame. The company said it was due to "cuts in two international submarine cable systems in the Mediterranean Sea this morning (Wednesday). We are working actively with the submarine cable system operators (FLAG Telecom and SEA-ME-WE 4) to ascertain the reasons for the cables being cut," it said.

FLAG Telecoms operate the Fiber-Optic Link Around the Globe (FLAG), a 28,000km (17,400 mile) long submarine communications cable. SEA-ME-WE 4, or the South East Asia-Middle East-West Europe 4 project, as it is known, is a submarine cable system linking South East Asia to Europe via the Indian subcontinent and the Middle East.

Hundreds of thousands of people remain stranded at stations, with key rail links and highways blocked by the snow. The weather has affected nearly 80 million people across 14 provinces in the centre and south of the country.

A top agriculture official has also warned of a serious impact on crop production in the south. "The impact on fresh vegetables and on fruit in some places has been catastrophic," Chen Xiwen, deputy director of the Communist Party's financial affairs team, told journalists. In some areas, people are already experiencing shortages of food as the weather delays deliveries of key commodities.

More than a dozen provinces have also been hit by blackouts due to missed coal deliveries for power stations and rising demand amid the cold.

But as European stock markets started to fall the bank lost 500m euros for every 1% drop in share prices. This means that his bet was big enough to bankrupt France's second largest bank on the basis of any sustained fall in stock markets. Jerome Kerviel's actions cost Societe Generale 4.9bn-euros ($7bn; £3.7bn)

The BBC's business editor Robert Peston has also learned that Societe Generale's back office, or administrative operation, queried Mr Kerviel's transactions as long ago as March or April last year. "Bankers have confirmed that at the end of last year, Jerome Kerviel had generated a colossal hidden profit for the bank of 1.4bn euros," Mr Peston said. "AMONG THE GREAT MYSTERIES OF THE KERVIEL AFFAIR IS HOW THE FRENCH BANK COULD HAVE FAILED TO NOTICE A PROFIT OF THAT SIZE."

Mr Kerviel said he "did not believe" the bank's senior management would have been unaware of the risky bets he was taking, according to testimony published in the French daily Le Monde. "IT'S IMPOSSIBLE TO GENERATE SUCH LARGE PROFITS WITH SMALL POSITIONS, WHICH LEADS ME TO SAY THAT WHEN I'M IN THE BLACK, MY SUPERIORS CLOSED THEIR EYES ABOUT THE METHODS AND VOLUMES COMMITTED," he was reported as saying.