For eight years green-fingered grandmother June Turnbull, 79, has tended the blooms at the entrance to the village and paid for it all using her pension.

And all without any accidents or mishaps. But now the frail pensioner will have to have three large 'men at work' signs erected while she gardens for three hours each week. Wiltshire County Council says June must abide by the rules because the flowerbed is on a highway and because of that they need a licence for her to work there.

To qualify for a licence from the Highways Authority she must wear a fluorescent jacket, have three metal warning signs surrounding her and have a man on guard. With a licence, Urchfont Parish Council can put June on their insurance policy.

The Health Protection Agency said today that additional tests are being carried out at the government-run Institute of Animal Health at Pirbright following the discovery. The bacterial disease, which can cause pneumonia, is spread through the air in droplets of contaminated water, often from air conditioning or showers. It can be fatal.

The development came on the day tests were expected to confirm that a leak of foot and mouth disease came from a vaccine company based at the Pirbright laboratory in Surrey. A Cambridge-educated scientist became the key figure in the foot and mouth inquiry after chemical drums from the Merial vaccine factory at the centre of the outbreak were found on his allotment.

Dr Duncan Fawthrop, 47, uses the blue plastic drums as planters on his vegetable patch. His parish council allotment is next to the field belonging to beef farmer Derrick Pride where the disease first took hold last week.
Merial's bosses confirmed that Dr Fawthrop had visited his allotment on Tuesday with inspectors from the Department of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs working on the foot and mouth inquiry.

The scientist's identity was revealed as the Government announced a third suspected outbreak of foot and mouth disease in Surrey.

The level of funds markedly exceeded the ECB's only previous major intervention on the day after 9/11 when it lent €69bn followed by €40bn over subsequent days. Even more striking was its one-day pledge to meet 100 per cent of all funding requests from financial institutions.

This liquidity injection was designed to ensure that money markets continued to function and did not succumb to a credit freeze. The Federal Reserve followed suit although in far less dramatic fashion.

The ECB did not offer any detailed explanation for its move, which caught markets by surprise, but simply said it was now seeking to "assure orderly conditions in the euro money market". However, it came as several financial institutions, such as BNP Paribas, admitted they had suffered significant losses as a result of investments linked to the credit markets. Many of these are linked to problems in the US subprime mortgage sector.

The Dow Jones industrials extended its series of triple-digit swings, this time falling more than 380 points. The announcement by BNP Paribas raised the specter of a widening impact of U.S. credit market problems. The idea that anyone -- institutions, investors, companies, individuals -- can't get money when they need it unnerved a stock market that has suffered through weeks of volatility triggered by concerns about tight credit and bad subprime mortgages.

A move by the European Central Bank to provide more cash to money markets intensified Wall Street's angst. Although the bank's loan of more than $130 billion in overnight funds to banks at a low rate of 4 percent was intended to calm investors, Wall Street saw it as confirmation of the credit markets' problems. It was the ECB's biggest injection ever.

The Federal Reserve added a larger-than-normal $24 billion in temporary reserves to the U.S. banking system.

The Mail reports that Labour MP Gisela Stuart has warned that the new treaty would incorporate the European Council into the EU structures for the first time, forcing EU leaders to "promote its values, advance its objectives, serve its interests rather than those of member states." She argued, "it used to be that leaders met in order to co-ordinate the interest of the nation states."

"Under this new structure, that body where heads of state meet will become subordinate to the union's interests. THEY WILL NOW HAVE A DUTY TO REPRESENT THE INTERESTS OF THE UNION, NOT THE INTERESTS OF THE MEMBER STATE. It's a consolidation of the way the union works into a structure which is much more like a government."

In an article in the Times, William Hague argues that "ALL MPS WERE ELECTED ON MANIFESTOS PROMISING THE BRITISH PEOPLE THE FINAL SAY ON THE CONSTITUTION IN A REFERENDUM. Mr Brown has no mandate to sign up to 98 per cent of it and ram it through Parliament without so much as a by-your-leave from voters. Even if all the objectives the Government set itself have been met, the bulk of the constitution has still been brought back. The Government's claim to have safeguarded our interests is about as credible as a student who set his own exam paper, marked it himself and then awarded himself an A-grade."

He goes on to say that "According to a study by the think-tank Open Europe, ONLY 10 OUT OF 250 PROPOSALS IN THE CONSTITUTION HAVE BEEN CHANGED. As dozens of senior EU politicians have said, this is the same content with a different label - our case is simple: this is the EU constitution in all but name, the British people were promised a referendum on it, so let them have that vote."

THE 'NEW' TREATY STILL CONTAINS REFERENCES TO THE ORIGINAL 'CONSTITUTION', DESPITE REPEATED CLAIMS FROM EU POLITICAL LEADERS THAT THE "CONSTITUTIONAL CONCEPT HAS BEEN ABANDONED" IN THE NEW EU TREATY.
Times

Washington had promised Israel a substantial increase in its financial support to bolster it against Iran. But US officials decided to amend their pledge because of escalating costs, including the need to spend $750 million (£375 million) to fly thousands of armoured troop carriers to Iraq to protect troops against Iranian-made roadside bombs.

The Pentagon has come under intense pressure to speed up deployment of the new Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicle (MRAP), which boasts a V-shaped hull and a raised chassis and is proven to withstand a range of explosive projectiles common in Iraq. The army has ordered 8,000 MRAP vehicles at a cost of $12 billion. But a request by the Pentagon for an emergency transport budget illustrates the increasing danger faced by troops on the ground. Officials said extra funds would be used to get 3,400 MRAPs to Iraq by the end of the year.

The diversion of funds has caused a budget shortfall in Israel that forced Ehud Olmert, the prime minister, to convene an emergency cabinet meeting yesterday. Officials discussed ways of dealing with the £250 million deficit in next year's budget, which Israeli commentators said would result in austerity measures.

More worryingly for Israel, there are fears the shortfall will have a significant impact on the ability of the country to defend itself as military training and procurement are cut back.

The tension over the delayed American money has tarnished relations between the two countries, which were boosted only last week when Israel confirmed it would enjoy a surge in American defence aid of 25 per cent over the next 10 years.

China has been plagued by a summer of heavy rainfall in which 936 people have died in floods, landslides and house collapses, the Ministry of Civil Affairs said on its website.

This is three times more than the number of homes needed for immigrants under the last Conservative government. A team of independent researchers, who carry out work for MPs, said an average of 19,000 immigrant households a year were established between 1992 and 1997.

But the figure has since soared to 66,000 a year, which has helped to price many British first-time buyers out of the market. Between 1997 and 2005, the latest period for which figures are available, 592,000 houses were needed solely for immigrants.

JERUSALEM - Fresh from bulldozing a synagogue near Judaism's third holiest site, destroying another synagogue near Judaism's second holiest site and calling up 3,000 soldiers to forcibly evict two Jewish families from a Jewish market, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's government now has ordered a rabbi and his mobile yeshiva to vacate Hebron, the oldest Jewish city.

Rabbi Danny Cohen, an emissary to Hebron for the Chabad Lubavitch Worldwide Jewish Outreach Movement, says he was surprised when earlier this week he received an eviction notice from the Israeli government demanding he remove his mobile structure from the city.

Cohen teaches Torah and organizes prayer quarams for Hebron residents from his headquarters - a mobile trailer parked in Hebron's Jewish neighborhood. The rabbi says he was forced to set up religious shop in the trailer because of extreme Israeli government regulations against building new Jewish structures in Hebron, an important biblical city that once served as the Jewish capital.

While rampant illegal construction in Arab sections of Hebron remains largely unregulated, the Israeli government strictly enforces construction regulations in the city's Jewish sections, which are cordoned off to about 25 percent of Hebron's territory; the rest of Hebron is Arab.

Aryeh King, chairman of the Jerusalem Forum, said Jerusalem municipal workers told him they were instructed by Olmert's office to ignore illegal Palestinian construction in Jerusalem.

"Ehud Olmert gave the order not to deal with the problem and not to put Israeli security forces to the duty of taking down the illegal Arab complexes," said King. "Senior municipal workers told me Olmert said not to bother with the illegal Arab homes because eventually eastern Jerusalem would be given to the Palestinian Authority."

Nile tilapia, a fish more usually seen on Kenyan dinner tables, was introduced to several abandoned fishponds in the west of the country. By consuming mosquito larvae it managed to reduce numbers of two of the main malarial mosquitoes by more than 94%. The BMC Public Health study noted the fish could prove critical as mosquitoes are becoming resistant to pesticides.

Nile tilapia's taste for mosquitoes has been known since 1917 but this is the first time field data has been published detailing their use in mosquito control, the researchers from the International Centre of Insect Physiology and Ecology said. The authors suggested that for Kenyans, the fish could prove a win-win investment. In addition to limiting mosquito populations they could also be used for food, and even generate income, too.

Joanne Greenfield, malaria advisor for the World Health Organization in Kenya, was more circumspect, while describing the findings as "positive". "This method may well work in a defined area of water, but mosquitoes spread in all sorts of places - including small pools in the mud and puddles - where you obviously can't introduce fish," she said. "It just wouldn't work for many areas."

But she added: "We recommend a spectrum of methods to combat malaria, and this could certainly be a useful tool."

Commuters faced huge delays when floods hit subways and overground train lines during Wednesday morning's rush hour.

New York state Governor Eliot Spitzer ordered an assessment of the system's drainage after the third major failure of the system in seven months. Some areas of New York experienced more than 3in (7.6cm) of rain in three hours on Wednesday morning, causing havoc on the transport system.

Elsewhere in the US, heavy downpours caused havoc - with parts of Nebraska being drenched by four inches (10cm) of rain in just one hour. And more flood warnings were issued on Wednesday in northern Illinois, where flooding a day earlier had forced dozens to evacuate their homes.

The farm is believed to be adjacent to a field in the village of Normandy where the first outbreak occurred.

Laboratory workers at Pirbright today face rigorous background checks as security services look into claims that the foot and mouth outbreak could have been the result of sabotage. Investigators are checking every worker with access to the powerful experimental vaccines and potentially lethal disease samples stored at two laboratories at the Surrey facility.

They are searching for an individual or group of workers with a motive to devastate Britain's farming industry, or with a grudge against either the private Merial Animal Health laboratory or the Government's Institute of Animal Health. There is a "strong possibility" that Pirbright was the source of the outbreak which has been confirmed at two nearby farms, a preliminary report by the Health and Safety Executive has concluded.

Asked if the outbreak could have been sabotage, Environment Secretary Hilary Benn said: "The truth is, we don't know. We're all very, very anxious." The theory would be investigated as "a matter of urgency", he added. Inspectors are examining various potential routes for "accidental or deliberate transfer of material from the site.

Excessive sunbathing, obesity, binge drinking and smoking have been linked to spiralling rates of cancer, according to a new cancer charity study.

Rates of melanoma, the most dangerous form of skin cancer, have risen by over 40 per cent in the past decade, making it the fastest rising cancer in the UK. Incidence of mouth, womb, and kidney cancers has also shown rapid increases in the last 10 years.

The study by Cancer Research UK suggests around half of all cancers could be prevented by lifestyle changes.

Trees were uprooted, smashing into cars and blocking streets, roofs were torn off houses and power cuts reported. The storms led to tornado and flash flood warnings, but gave way later to hot, humid weather.

A woman died when her car got stuck in an underpass and was hit from behind, city Mayor Michael Bloomberg said. Many workers stayed at home, as transport officials advised commuters to avoid the morning rush hour.

Every subway line going into the central Manhattan area was subject to delays during the rush hour. Rail routes to the city from neighbouring New Jersey were also affected. Flights from John F Kennedy airport were delayed by up to an hour and a half, and from LaGuardia by about an hour.

Temperatures were expected to rise above 38C (100F) during the day. The National Weather Service confirmed that the storm brought with it Brooklyn's first ever tornado, measured to be an F2 twister. The tornado brought winds of approximately 111 miles per hour.