The BBC journalist's release followed the intervention of a religious scholar only hours before Hamas guerrillas threatened to storm the gang's compound in Gaza City to try to free Johnston by force, The Times has learnt. They asked the cleric one question: "What is God's opinion regarding the abduction of this journalist?" Sheikh Dayeh recalls his answer: "According to religious law the answer is clear: his freedom has to be returned to him. Keeping him in captivity is against religious law." The answer amounted to a fatwa, or religious order.

Johnston's fate was in part secured by the plight of another hostage, the Israeli soldier Gilad Schalit, being held underground somewhere in the southern Gaza Strip. Hamas negotiators decided that the Army of Islam's role in capturing the corporal - regarded as legitimate antiIsraeli resistance - outweighed its later aberration in kidnapping the journalist. Hamas therefore decided not to seek retribution.

"It is not Hamas's policy to ban resistance groups, just as long as their weapons are not turned against Palestinians," said Ayman Taha, one of the key negotiators in talks with the Army of Islam, led by Mumtaz Dagmoush.

Britain's harvest of peas, the biggest in Europe, has been devastated by the weather, with as much as 50,000 tonnes of the annual crop of 150,000 tonnes expected to be lost. Some individual farmers may lose 70 per cent of their harvest.

Vegetable growers in eastern Britain, from Norfolk to Scotland have been hardest hit, with losses especially concentrated in Lincolnshire and South Yorkshire. "The situation is absolutely diabolical," said Martin Riggall, chief executive of the Processed Vegetable Growers' Association. "Some of the most productive areas have been absolutely devastated by the rain. They look like a First World War battlefield. We have never seen a growing season like this."

The rain has badly disrupted the planting regime for brassicas - cabbages, cauliflowers and sprouts, for harvest in the early autumn - but its most ruinous effect has been on the massive crop of peas which go for freezing. The rains and flooding have come in the middle of the harvest, which is an extremely sensitive operation.

The peas in any given field will only be at their best for a short time "window" which may be only 12 hours, so they are planted and harvested with military precision. But the waterlogging of the fields has meant that in numerous cases these windows have been missed, and any pea plant whose roots are under water for more than a few hours will die.

Rescuers had finished clearing the debris and found 25 bodies.The explosion happened at 8:50 p.m. at Tianying Karaoke Parlor, a two-storey roadside building where bath services were also operated, in Tianshifu Township, Benxi Autonomous County of Manchu Nationality. Four of the injured are reported to be in a serious condition.
Local government officials have ordered that every effort be made to help the victims and identify the cause of the accident.

The Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith, said there was no intelligence to suggest that an attack was imminent, paving the way for security at airports and other transport hubs to be eased.

The move followed an announcement by the Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, that a review of the arrangements for recruiting overseas doctors into the NHS would take place.

All eight suspects arrested since Saturday's airport attack, in which two men drove a Jeep carrying a crude gas cylinder and petrol bomb into the side of the terminal, had links to the health service, with six of them being fully qualified doctors.

The decision to lower the threat level was made by the Joint Terrorism and Analysis Centre (JTAC), which has staff drawn from across Whitehall departments, the intelligence agencies and the military.

The Home Secretary said: "There is no intelligence to suggest that an attack is expected imminently. However, the reduction of the threat level to severe does not mean the overall threat has gone away.

"There remains a serious and real threat against the UK, and I would again ask that the public remain vigilant."

"We're watching a movie where the thieves in Gaza fall out and one of them claims to be honest and brave, and the other is the bad guy. This Hamas game fools no one," said Yasser Abed Rabbo, chief aid to PA President and Hamas rival Mahmoud Abbas.

Rabbo charged Hamas was in "cahoots" with Johnston's kidnappers, the Gaza-based Army of Islam, which together with Hamas kidnapped Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit last June. Johnston was held in Gaza for nearly four months.

Hamas leaders denied the rescue operation was staged. "Our efforts resulted in the freedom of Johnston and prove Hamas is able to restore law and order to the Gaza Strip unlike the corrupt Fatah party," Hamas spokesman Abu Oubaida told WND.

According to Israeli and Palestinian security sources, the exact location in which Johnston was being kept has been known to Hamas, Fatah and Israeli security organizations for at least two months.
Although Hamas is considered a terror group by most Western governments, Johnston said, Hamas "is better at keeping law and order than many would agree. And God knows Gaza needs law and order."

And across America, school children are frightened to death with tales of rising oceans, monster tornadoes, droughts and millions dying - all because of man-made global warming. To begin with, those who believe the dire warnings of today's establishment press should know, as U.S. Sen. James Inhofe has pointed out, that "for more than 100 years, journalists have quoted scientists predicting the destruction of civilization by, in alternation, either runaway heat or a new Ice Age."

Believe it or not, over the last century America's major media have predicted an impending global climate crisis four different times - each prediction warning that entire countries would be wiped out or that lower crop yields would mean "billions will die." In 1895, the panic was over an imminent ice age. Later, in the late 1920s, when the earth's surface warmed less than half a degree, the media jumped on a new threat - global warming, which continued into the late 1950s. Then in 1975, the New York Times' headline blared, "A Major Cooling Widely Considered to Be Inevitable." Then in 1981 it was back to global warming, with the Times quoting seven government atmospheric scientists who predicted global warming of an "almost unprecedented magnitude."

Today, to cover all their bases, much of the press is changing its terminology from "global warming" to "climate change" or "climate catastrophe." That way they're covered either way: If the world gets colder, global warming is still at fault.

Whistleblower shows how all the main players - from politicians and scientists to big corporations and the United Nations- benefit from instilling fear into billions of human beings over the unproven theory of man-made global warming. Indeed, just three weeks after the U.N. ratcheted up international fears over global warming, a panel of 18 scientists from 11 countries has now reported to the U.N. that the only thing that can stop catastrophic climate change is a global tax - on greenhouse gas emissions.

That's right. Global problems, real or conjured up, require global governmental solutions. As Whistleblower explains, environmentalism is nothing less than the global elitists' replacement ideology for communism/socialism. With communism largely discredited today - after all, 100-150 million people died at the hands of communist "visionaries" during the last century - elitists who desire to rule other people's lives have gravitated to an even more powerful ideology. More powerful because it seems to trump all other considerations, as it claims the very survival of life on earth is dependent on implementing its agenda.

Thus, while scientists and climatologists who dare to question the rigid orthodoxy of man-made catastrophic global warming are openly ridiculed and threatened with decertification, the movement for global governance, complete with global taxation, is moving into the fast lane.

"Global warming will be one of the most powerfully coercive weapons in the globalists' arsenal for the foreseeable future," said David Kupelian, WND managing editor and author of "The Marketing of Evil." "It's important that everyone understands the game being played. This issue of Whistleblower provides a powerful antidote to all the hysteria - namely, common sense and truth."

Britain's largest food retailer typically sells specialties such as low cholesterol, lactosefree, omega 3 enriched, locally sourced, soya, flavoured and goats' milk alongside standard cows' milk. Tesco also stocks 154 different jams, 107 varieties of pasta and 98 types of fruit cordial.

The recently opened American Whole Foods Market in Kensington sells 1,000 wines, 100 types of nuts and 40 different sausages. Psychologists believe the over-abundance of choice is making customers unhappy because they are faced with too many decisions and end up feeling they have chosen badly.

Professor Barry Schwartz, author of The Paradox Of Choice, said: "There is vastly too much choice in the modern world and we are paying an enormous price for it. It makes us feel helpless, mentally paralysed and profoundly dissatisfied. "We feel bad that every time we do make a choice, it seems we are missing out on other opportunities. This makes us feel inadequate and dissatisfied with what we have chosen."

The major supermarket chains each stock more than 30,000 product lines, which are growing each year with the addition of more non-grocery items such as clothing, books, DVDs and electrical items. However, research in America suggests that less consumer choice may be better for mental well-being. Professor Mark Lepper of Stanford University found that consumers who tested six jams went on to buy more and feel happier than those offered 24 jams to taste.

A customer commented, "Just think, not that many years ago you just had milk!

The supermarket claims customers who buy its Localchoice milk are "helping to support their local farming community". But the Heart of England milk it sells in Hereford is produced at dairy farms in Lincolnshire and Derbyshire - a three-hour drive away.

A spokesman for Tesco insisted local "means different things to different people". "Customers view food from their region as local - as opposed to food produced a specific number of miles away from a store," he added. "Heart of England milk, as the name suggests, is sourced in the Midlands."

Friends of the Earth accused Tesco of not being straight with its customers. "I think it's misleading," said Sandra Bell, supermarket campaigner for the environmental group. "It's true that local may mean different things to different people but I think only Tesco would define local as 150 miles away. "Our food is travelling further than ever before and supermarkets like Tesco are a major cause of that."

More than 30,000 people are believed to have been forced to abandon their homes or been forcibly evacuated from more than 10,500 homes. Householders in Hull have been worst hit by the filthy, sewage-polluted water, with hundreds of homes in Gloucestershire also affected.

Many people have lost not only their homes, but all their possessions, having been left with only the clothes they were wearing when they fled the rising waters. Victims fear looters will take advange of rows of empty properties and aer being advised to ensure their homes are secure. In Gloucesteshire there were reports of looting in evacuated areas.

Prince Charles took to a rubber dinghy to visit some of theose worst hit in the village of Toll Bar just outside Doncaster, where the high street remains under as much as 5ft of water.

In Hull, hotels and rented accommodation has been swamped and there is now barely a spare room to be found.

Mr Brown announced a raft of proposed constitutional changes in the Commons last night, but THE 1701 LAW BANNING CATHOLICS FROM BECOMING EITHER KING OR QUEEN AND BARRING THE MONARCH FROM MARRYING A CATHOLIC LOOKS LIKELY TO REMAIN.

Cardinal O'Brien, the Edinburgh-based leader of Scotland's Catholics, said the new Prime Minister had missed the chance to remove the outdated sectarian law. He said: "I am deeply disappointed at the statement from Gordon Brown. "I remain deeply concerned that the Act of Settlement will continue to exist and believe it constitutes state-sponsored sectarianism.

"I have been happy to note the recent remarks by Scotland's new First Minister, Alex Salmond, that the Act of Settlement should be removed."

The story began several years ago when Rabbi Zalman Baruch Melamed, the rabbi of Beit El and the dean of the town's yeshiva, began to wonder when he might ever have the chance to fulfill the Biblical commandment (mitzvah) of Reishit HaGez - giving to the Cohen (the priest) THE FIRST CUTTINGS OF THE FLEECE OF SHEEP GROWN IN THE LAND OF ISRAEL.

But Rabbi Melamed was not willing to suffice with just one mitzvah. "I also wanted to fulfill another mitzvah, written in the verse immediately preceding the verse on Reishit HaGez (Deut. 18,3) - that of giving the right foreleg, cheeks and stomach of slaughtered sheep, goats and cows to the Cohen. So after cutting the fleece of one of the sheep and ritually slaughtering it, we are now ready to give these parts, as well as the wool, to a Cohen - and not just any Cohen, but to our great 'teacher and master,' and one who is of undisputed Priestly lineage, the former Chief Rabbi of Israel, Rabbi Avraham Kahane-Shapira."

Rabbi Melamed, who studied under Rabbi Shapira in the Merkaz HaRav yeshiva, said that the ceremony would be continued at that yeshiva at 7:30 this evening, "where I will merit to actually fulfill the commandments by giving the gifts to the Cohen, during the evening meal."

"THESE COMMANDMENTS BRING US CLOSER TO OUR DREAM OF REBUILDING THE HOLY TEMPLE AND SUPPORTING THE PRIESTS," RABBI MELAMED SAID, "WHO WILL BE WHOLLY INVOLVED IN TEMPLE SERVICE. In addition, it counters that which we will read about in this week's Torah portion, regarding Korach's rebellion against the Levites' and Priests' stature."

Beit El Mayor Moshe Rosenbaum said, "This not such a hard mitzvah, yet over the course of our centuries of national exile, it seems to have been largely forgotten - and even after our return, it is still not widely practiced yet - Let us hope that we will be able to fulfill this commandment more often."

One bystander, Elkanah L., said with clear delight, "To hold a ceremony like this with such joy is simply a tremendous idea. It builds up love for mitzvot, ANTICIPATION FOR THE HOLY TEMPLE, bonding with the Land of Israel, and more."

The commandments of Reishit HaGez and the aforementioned gifts to the Priest are numbers 506 and 508 in the Sefer HaChinukh.

The decision to abort the massive bridge, whose construction had been deeply contested by leading Israeli archeologists, effectively means that a salvage excavation under way in the area, which has drawn the wrath of Islamic officials and led to low-level Arab violence in the region earlier this year, will be coming to a close shortly, the officials said.

The planned major bridge was meant to replace a temporary bridge that was constructed on the section of the Western Wall allocated for women's prayer. The temporary bridge was built more than a year ago, after the original stone ramp leading up to the Mughrabi Gate was removed, having been deemed unsafe by city engineers.

The Mughrabi Gate, which is the only designated entryway for non-Muslims to the Temple Mount, is also used by Israeli police to enter the Jerusalem holy site for routine patrols and to quell outbreaks of violence.

The Pope announced June 29, the feast of Sts. Peter and Paul, that he will attend the annual International Encounters of Peoples and Religions, promoted by the Community of Sant'Egidio, to be held October 21-23. During his address before praying the Angelus on Sunday, the [Pontiff] said: "I greet today, in advance, the dear Neapolitan community, who I invite to prepare for this meeting in prayer and with works of charity."

Naples will host some 300 people from over 70 countries who will take place in round table discussions and other activities. The International Encounters of Peoples and Religions was inspired by the World Day of Prayer for Peace convoked by Pope John Paul II in 1986. The event was held in Assisi.

After six months of deadlock, gun battles flared between police and students from a religious seminary in the heart of the capital, Islamabad. More than 140 were injured in the shooting.The incident was sparked by dozens of baton-wielding -students and their women, clad in burqas, who attacked policemen near the Lal Masjid (Red Mosque) and stole four guns and a radio set.

A ceasefire was negotiated but as night fell and the security forces cordoned off Lal Masjid, where the students are based, a mullah shouted through the mosque's loudspeaker that the "blood of the martyrs" would be avenged.

Western diplomats suspect that the government has used the madrassa to play up the level of the extremist threat in order to ensure a continuing flow of money from America. However, the American perception of Gen Musharraf's usefulness as an ally has been tarnished over the past six months.

As thunder and lightning swept across the UK, an inch of rain fell in less than an hour in parts of England, overwhelming drains and triggering floods. At the peak of the storm, parts of the country were peppered with hailstones the size of 50p pieces. Battersea in South London was blanketed in white in a scene more like winter than the height of summer.

Two girls aged 13 and 15 were treated for serious burns after being struck by lightning at the end of the school day at Ipswich High School. 'They were struck simultaneously,' said a spokesman. 'They both had entry and exit wounds on their arms and feet.' He said the girls, who remained conscious throughout their ordeal, had not suffered life-threatening injuries. The East of England Ambulance Service said the strike had blown the girls' shoes apart.

The stormy start to July follows the third wettest June on record. According to Met Office statistics, 105.3mm or 41ins of rain fell last month. Only 1912 and 1982 were wetter. It was also the dullest June for ten years, with just 33 hours of sunshine recorded at Jersey Airport - 15 hours below the average for the month. But despite the cloud and rain, it was the 11th consecutive month to be warmer than average.