Hank Dittmar is an American transport expert and head of the Prince's Foundation for the Built Environment, which was set up by Prince Charles to promote traditional building design.

.In 2050, I would hope to see cities that restored a more intimate relationship with the countryside around them both in the use of local materials in building construction and local traditions of architecture.

We should be moving towards cities that are based around walking than around the motor car, and around living in a way that relies on the sort of energy budget and food budget that's available to us close by.

One way to move in that direction is to start to think about some timeless patterns of how cities ought to be. And that means thinking about cities as being typological [examples of different types of buildings, streets, squares and spaces] rather than a series of one-off sculptural objects that generate the "wow" factor.

We need to think of ways of having our workplace close to where we live. If we do that, we reduce transport intensity and make it easier for people to be close to their families. You will then see polycentric cities emerging rather than mono-centric cities, where everyone leaves their home to go to work.

The thing that I worry about most for the future is if energy becomes unaffordable and more scarce. We could move into a situation where those who can afford energy sort of withdraw and continue to use it and those who don't move into more deprivation.

This could lead to further destabilisation. A lot of the cities where people are urbanising are being fed by petroleum-based agriculture and petroleum-based economies - and that's mighty scary.

Michael Dear is Professor of Geography at the University of Southern California. He is also author of The Postmodern Urban Condition.
One of the effects of global capitalism is the creation of an increasingly polarised world. On the one hand, you have what my colleague Mike Davis calls a planet of slums, and on the other hand, you have what we call cities of gold.

While these terms can apply on a global scale, they can also apply to cities, such as Los Angeles and Mexico city, where there is a lot of slum and a lot of gold.

We don't build a city and towns with city centres any more you add city centres afterwards as an aesthetic afterthought or as a consumption opportunity.

What this polarisation within cities creates is what I call post-modern urbanisation and I think we're going to see a lot more of it by 2050. Basically, in conventional cities - modernist cities - the norm has been for the centre to organise the hinterland.

However, in post-modern urbanism, this has been reversed - the hinterland organises what's left of the core. Look at Southern California, the Pearl River Delta, or Barcelona, there is a huge decentralised spread of urban development and no real single core to speak of.

LA, for example, has 20 or 30s downtowns - there isn't the conventional pattern of people travelling into the city and out of the city in the morning. People cross the city in a wide variety of ways and this means a lot more choices - a lot more dispersed patterns of behaviour. It also means a lack of central authority in organising a city region or its government.

We don't build a city and towns with city centres any more you add city centres afterwards as an aesthetic afterthought or as a consumption opportunity. We simply have a collage or pastiche of almost random urban spread which ultimately collides and creates cities and then we start adding the trappings of conventional cities.

So, you have an extraordinary fragmented urban region which extends in the case of LA over 14,000 square miles.

This offers up opportunities for intense local autonomies - on the one hand you have the rich succeeding but on the other, you have poorer people claiming their spaces.

Local autonomies develop in a metropolis. In our region that tends to be Hispanics, and that's one of the most important demographic trends that you can imagine.

Nigel Thrift is vice-chancellor of the university of Warwick and one of the leading human geographers and social scientists.
In the developed world my guess is by 2050 energy sustainability will have become a big deal and the result of that will be that the kind of sprawl that we have seen in the United States in particular will actually be halted, on the grounds of energy costs.

In Europe, things ought to be better because on the whole, European cities are much more compact and should be able to last out some of problems that the larger sprawling cities in the developed world will have. Even if you look at London - it doesn't spread over a vast area.

What I would really like to see is some kind of a Marshall Fund, but for cities around the world.

I think the issue then becomes whether the more severe forecasts on global climate change do start to bite and if they did then some cities especially coastal cities like London would start to have problems in terms of flooding and so on - indeed that has already been forecast.

I don't think that this means doom or anything of the kind. But it will involve some quite substantial government action at some point to start thinking about the way that cities ought to be and at the moment it seems to me that that thinking is only being half done.

There are some important urbanists, like Richard Rogers, who are quite right when they say we need to do more thinking in this area about the form of cities in the future and how they link up. Some types of transport will turn out to be really problematic. We may have seen the heydays of certain kinds of air travel over the next 10 to 15 years.

With regards to other parts of the world, the future looks patchy. In parts of Asia and Africa, you can see examples of countries and cities that will be able to weather the worst - as well as some of the worst weather. On the other hand, there are some cities that are highly vulnerable - what is needed is worldwide action to prevent some of the problems there.

What I would really like to see is some kind of a Marshall Fund, but for cities around the world.

Stephen Graham is a professor of human geography at the University of Durham. He is editor of The Cybercities Reader.

There was a lot of hype in the last 30 or 40 years somehow implying that the more important your technology and more important your information technology, the less and less you need to move around, the less and less that you need to meet face-to-face with people and the less and less you need to rely on the city.

There was an assumption with the shift towards broadband, virtual reality would somehow allow people to withdraw. The evidence seems to go completely against that expectation.

I think there is a radical democratisation going on based on much lower cost access and based on things like wireless technologies which are much cheaper to lay out across cities.

This may seem paradoxical but the evidence indicates that the more economies, social interactions and cultures rely on advanced technologies, the more cities seem to grow. I think there is a demand to be face-to-face with people no matter how capable the technology - and, of course, by 2050, we will have had fairly radical technical shifts. Those processes of change seem to go together rather than in opposition.

In India, China and Africa, the picture has been very polarised. Only a small number of elite people have been connected to the new technologies. However, I think there is a radical democratisation going on based on much lower cost access and based on things like wireless technologies which are much cheaper to lay out across cities.

It is also based on all kinds of interesting entrepreneurship where people in informal settlements or squatter settlements set up little internet spaces. These bring whole communities that have an awful amount of energy and into the digital age.

I think there are signs for optimism based on this extraordinary rapid democratisation.

Walden Bello, Executive Director of the Bangkok-based research and policy institute Focus on the Global South and professor of sociology at the University of the Philippines.

An urban nightmare in less than 50 years' time is certainly what will engulf us if current trends continue.

In the South, urban populations are growing at twice the rate of national populations. People continue to be expelled from the countryside in large numbers, and a key reason for this is that agriculture has simply been made unattractive

by the lack of agrarian reform the dumping of cheap subsidised agricultural products from the North courtesy of the World Trade Organization's Agreement on Agriculture decades of city-biased and industry-first economic development policies that consistently pushed down the price of grain and other farm products. At the same time, the capacity of industry and manufacturing to absorb the influx from the countryside is being eroded by de-industrialisation.

Local manufacturers are being driven out of business by radically lowered tariffs on foreign products under economic programmes imposed by the International Monetary Fund and WTO, and foreign investors are closing up shop and moving to China to take advantage of dirt-cheap wages.

One of the results of this migration-without-absorption is the mushrooming of vast shantytowns populated by what some have called a "subproletariat."

Assaulted by climate change, massive air pollution, and biologically dead rivers, the cities of the South are becoming environmental disaster areas. The urban poor living in such settlements under terrible conditions of squalor, crime, and insecurity now make up 30-40% of the population of cities such as Manila, Jakarta, Mexico City, and Lagos.

With their budgets gutted by austerity programs pushed by the IMF and World Bank and unable or unwilling to tax the rich, city governments cannot provide basic services needed by this swelling urban mass such as water, electricity, and infrastructure.

Northern cities have their equivalent of these third world shantytowns: inner city ghettoes, overcrowded housing projects, and suburban slums where racial minorities and immigrants and their children cluster, unable to find jobs or able to find only low-paying unskilled jobs unwanted by the dominant society.

The capital of the empire is becoming a paradigm for the rest of the urban America: Washington, DC, is a predominantly black city dominated by white minority that works in the city by day but lives in the suburbs of Virginia and Maryland by night.

Assaulted by climate change, massive air pollution, and biologically dead rivers, the cities of the South are becoming environmental disaster areas.

Manila, Shenyang, Mexico City are the rule. In the North, the gains registered in restoring the environments in some cities in the last few years are now threatened by the combination of climate change, tight city budgets imposed by fiscal conservatives, and influential pro-development lobbies.

The urban landscape depicted by Paul Theroux in his classic 1986 novel O-Zone, where the rich live in artificial "green" enclaves protected by private corporate armies from the environmentally devastated areas surrounding them that are populated by the rest, will soon move from fiction to fact.

These trends can be reversed, but only by moves that would truly be revolutionary, among them a rigorous regime of very deep cuts in greenhouse gas emissions; an end to the poverty and inequality creating programs of the World Bank, IMF, and World Trade Organization; a new economic relationship based on justice and equity between the North and the South that would involve strict controls on the operations of transnational corporations.

If the 20th century is any indication, sceptics say, such deep-seated changes can only come after terrible wars and social turmoil.

But perhaps the increasingly common realisation among the rich and well-off that their privileges can no longer be purchased at the expense of the misery of the many and the destruction of the planet might just be the spectre that can bring about a relatively peaceful transition this time around.

Saskia Sassen is a leading theorist of globalisation and its impact on cities. She is the author of the newly published: Territory, Authority and Rights - from Medieval to Global Assemblages. The urban landscape, no matter where we are, will look different from what it does today. This will certainly be the case in the big cities that are also powerful economic centres.

I think we are moving in that direction and that means there will be a lot of innovation - it will be a bit more of a free-for-all and we will invent new political forms of membership.

The way we experience the city today in Europe will be very rare in the future. European cities will feel more like cities of the global south. Europe will see a lot more immigration and more big cities - and they will have a sense of the frontier town. The city will be a frontier space.

We will have dreadful situations in some of these cities because there will be an awful lot of dispossessed people and a lot of struggle. The centre will not hold, necessarily.

We are just at the beginning of the future - but we can't quite see it. We are entering a phase in which the political will be profoundly changed - in the same way that when citizenship and secular statehood was implemented and there were no more divine monarchs.

What we are going to see is the reinvention of the notion of political. The notion of rights will become rights to the city and that will mean rights to things like housing and rights to water.

Here, in London, for example, you have a sense that things are really governed - in New York less so, in Mexico City even less so and in Sao Paulo, even less so.

I think we are moving in that direction and that means there will be a lot of innovation - it will be a bit more of a free-for-all and we will invent new political forms of membership, which will enable people who are truly marginal to claim their rights to the city.

Political turmoil in the Middle East has caused sharp fluctuations in petroleum prices since the 1970s.

Crisis after crisis, from confrontations between Israel and Arab nations to the unsettling situations in Iran and Iraq, have unsettled the Middle East and the world.

These conflicting interests have become even more complicated in recent times.

The United States, although a key player in preventing armed conflict in the Middle East, has found some of its strategies have cast a shadow over the petroleum market.

Iran is a case in point.

If Iran develops nuclear weapons, Israel along with Saudi Arabia and other Arab nations will strongly object. Tensions in the Middle East will intensify rapidly.

Hoping to avoid such an outcome, the United States has argued for economic sanctions as a way to resolve suspicions over Iran's nuclear weapons development.

However, a visit to the Strait of Hormuz clearly shows the limits of that strategy.

The gateway to the Persian Gulf, the Strait of Hormuz is an important passage for oil tankers. About 80 percent of Japan's petroleum imports pass through this narrow, sharply curved sea lane between Iran to the north and the United Arab Emirates and Oman to the south.

On Oman's northern tip is the small port of Khasab. At around 8 a.m. each day, about 200 small boats from Iran race across the strait to dock in Khasab.

The boats usually carry a contraband cargo of sheep and goats. The smuggled livestock can be sold in Oman for three times the price it fetches in Iran. Using Japanese-made outboard motors, the boats cut across the paths of huge oil tankers to unload their cargo in Khasab.

For the return trip, the boats load up on Chinese-made clothing and shoes brought in via the United Arab Emirates. They sail in fleets back to Iran.

With many Iranians now settled in Oman and the UAE, this illicit trade has gone on for years. Omani authorities do little to clamp down on the smuggling.

A harbor official, a man originally from Iran, explains:

"The Strait of Hormuz has always been a lifeline for Iran to get around economic sanctions," the harbor official said. "Regardless of how strongly the United States calls for such sanctions, it is meaningless here."

The small boats are not only used for smuggling. They also sometimes present a military threat.

In the 1980s during the Iran-Iraq war, boats were equipped with small missiles that were used to attack American ships.

A rubber raft was used in the 2000 suicide bombing of the USS Cole in waters off Yemen.

Even though the United States has a huge military advantage, there are no assurances it can win a guerrilla war. That, in a nutshell, is the problem the United States faces in the Middle East.

Key to the stable supply of Middle Eastern oil has long been friendly relations between the United States and Saudi Arabia, the world's largest petroleum exporter.

However, key events have loosened the tight bonds of what was once dubbed the "Washington-Riyadh axis."

Topping the list is 9/11. Of the 19 terrorists who carried out the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States, 15 were from Saudi Arabia.

Public outrage in the United States led to charges that the Saudi Arabian government was being "too soft on terrorists."

Yet, Saudi Arabia has also taken new steps in its own "petroleum diplomacy" with overtures to China, an increasingly influential consumer of oil.

In January, after King Abdullah ascended to the throne in Saudi Arabia, his first official overseas destination was not the United States, but China.

That decision was symbolic of a new age in petroleum geopolitics.

In April, Chinese President Hu Jintao paid a return visit to Riyadh. Reports said he and his Saudi counterparts talked about natural gas development in Saudi Arabia and the construction of oil refineries in China.

The slogan of the energy security seminar held in January in Dubai was "Look East." The Middle East is clearly interested in looking toward the Asian market, and especially China.

As a researcher from Saudi Arabia put it: "Our anti-American feelings fit perfectly with the appeal of the fast growing Chinese market. Differences in political systems are irrelevant."

While Saudi Arabia will not likely immediately sever ties concerning mutual interests with the United States, questions will certainly arise over what might happen to petroleum supplies should cracks appear in the relationship between the two nations.

Iraq is the second major headache for the United States. Prior to the Iraq war, the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush predicted the conflict would be quickly concluded with a stable new government soon in place.

That would bring Iraq's petroleum production within three years to its levels before the first Persian Gulf War in 1991, reaching 3.5 million barrels a day, according to U.S. senior officials. However, security in Iraq is still precarious. Today, three years on, petroleum production remains at about 2 million bpd, in part because of terrorist acts that sever pipelines.

U.S. calls to turn the Middle East into a democracy, part of its strategy in the war on terrorism, have had the reverse effect to what was expected.

Washington assumed that as democratization progressed, fewer people would be sympathetic to terrorism because of the disruption it causes society. With order and balance restored, a pro-American government would have naturally emerged.

That strategy has collapsed.

Instead, we are seeing an even more virulent form of anti-American sentiment in nations across the Middle East that are still controlled by strong-armed rulers.

In democratic elections held in Palestine, Hamas won the most seats. The radical Muslim organization is decidedly anti-American.

While a U.S. presence remains necessary for stability in the Middle East and a stable oil supply, the future of the region is growing increasingly unclear as Washington's control over the region declines.

"The international community seems almost to be sleepwalking down that latter path - not by conscious choice, but rather through miscalculation, sterile debate and paralysis," he said.

He was speaking amid heightened international tension over North Korea's nuclear programme and western fears that Iran may be trying to develop an atomic bomb.

North Korea says it is preparing to test a long-range missile capable of carrying a nuclear warhead as far as Alaska in what the United States, South Korea and Japan have called a grave threat to regional security.

"I hope the leader of North Korea will listen to what the world is telling them," Mr Annan said in his speech to the 65-state conference in Geneva. He added that Iran needed to reassure the world of its peaceful intentions by co-operating fully with the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Labour had a manifesto commitment to retain an independent nuclear deterrent but it only applies until the next general election.

Mr Brown, seen as the most likely next prime minister, has sparked new debate on the issue by highlighting his personal commitment to replace Trident.

In his Mansion House speech in the City of London, He said Britain would show a "national purpose" in protecting its security.

"Strong in defence in fighting terrorism, upholding NATO, supporting our armed forces at home and abroad, and retaining our independent nuclear deterrent," he said.

"In an insecure would we must and we will always have the strength to take all necessary long term decisions to ensure both stability and security."

'No moral reason'

It is thought Mr Brown wants anti-nuclear campaigners to know he is just as committed to replacing Trident as Tony Blair.

BBC political editor Nick Robinson said Mr Brown's words would take the heat off the prime minister, who could have produced "uproar" if he had made the same announcement.

The government's position is that decisions on updating or replacing Trident are likely to be needed during the current Parliament.

A Ministry of Defence spokesman said: "No decisions have been taken on the replacement of Trident, either in principle or detail."

But the decision is expected to be taken in months rather than years.

Anti-nuclear groups, Labour backbenchers and trade unionists voiced their alarm at Mr Brown's words.

Kate Hudson, chairwoman of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, said: "We were hoping that any potential future prime minister would stick by the commitments made last year by then Defence Secretary John Reid for a full public and parliamentary debate.

"Our feeling is statements like this from someone as significant as Gordon Brown pre-empts that debate."

Statesman's spin?

Ms Hudson said this was the moment to start multi-lateral disarmament talks.

"At this point, when we face no nuclear threat, to decide on a new Trident replacement is beginning a new nuclear arms race," she said.

Labour MP Ian Gibson, an opponent of Trident, said many young Labour backbenchers had been weaned on CND and had not lost those early political views.

"So it may not be as easy [to agree to replace Trident] as people might think because the chancellor says so," he told BBC News 24.

Another Labour backbencher, Gordon Prentice, asked: "How are we going to persuade other countries not to go for nuclear weapons when we are spending millions of pounds not disarming but upgrading our nuclear weapons?"

Keith Sonnet, deputy general secretary of Unison, the country's biggest trade union, also urged Mr Brown to think again.

'Smothering debate'

The Conservatives accused Mr Brown of "spin" designed to make him look statesmanlike when he was in fact just repeating Labour's 2005 manifesto.

Shadow defence secretary Liam Fox said: "The chancellor is reheating an old pledge to retain the current nuclear deterrent but he is not committing to replacing the independent nuclear deterrent when it reaches the end of its current life."

Liberal Democrat defence spokesman Nick Harvey said: "Gordon Brown's posturing on Trident is smothering the national debate that this government promised to the British people," he said.

Earlier, Tony Blair promised the "fullest possible debate" on Trident, but stopped short of promising a vote.

The choice could prove controversial - most other Anglican Churches around the world do not allow women to be bishops.

The bishops voted 95-93 to back Bishop Jefferts Schori after a number of ballots, AP news agency reported. A total of seven candidates were in the running for the post.

Gay row - It is the second contentious issue for the convention.

KATHARINE JEFFERTS SCHORI
Born 1954 in Pensacola, Florida
Consecrated Bishop of Nevada in 2001
Supporter of ordination of gay bishops

A separate row has been raging over gay bishops, nearly three years after the Americans sparked fury from African Churches and other traditionalists by ordaining the first openly gay bishop, Gene Robinson of New Hampshire. The convention in Ohio is under pressure to "repent" of its decision to ordain him, to ban future openly gay bishops and to end the blessing of same-sex unions in church services.

A compromise is being considered to offer repentance only for the effect on the wider Church.

As well as facing possible opposition to her election, Bishop Jefferts Schori faces challenges within the Church too.

Membership has been shrinking for years, and a quarter of the remaining 2.3m parishioners are 65 or older.

Some conservative sections of the Church are also threatening to break away.

The new resolution is a watered-down version of a proposal, rejected on Tuesday, to stop electing gay bishops.

The compromise will not satisfy traditionalists who regard gay sex as sinful, says the BBC's Robert Pigott.

The traditionalist majority within the Anglican Church had been calling for stricter measures against the ordination of gay bishops.

It had also demanded curbs on church blessings for same-sex couples.

Divisive issue

The non-binding resolution, approved on Wednesday at the US Episcopal Church's convention in Ohio, stops far short of meeting their demands.

The resolution says the church must "exercise restraint by not consenting to the consecration of any candidate [for bishop] whose manner of life presents a challenge to the wider church and will lead to further strains on communion".

Earlier, the outgoing Presiding Bishop, Frank Griswold, and the woman who becomes his successor in November, Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori, had appealed for a compromise.

They called for the convention to show it recognised just how divisive the issue of gay bishops was for Anglicans.

"Unless there is a clear perception on the part of our Anglican brothers and sisters that they have been taken seriously in their concerns, it will be impossible to have any genuine conversation," Bishop Griswold said on Wednesday.

Bishop Schori acknowledged the resolution was "far from adequate" but, she said, "it is the best we can do at this convention".

"This church, the body of Christ, is not wholly one and not wholly two," she said.

'Careful reflection'

Our correspondent says the likelihood of a formal schism within the church depends on the degree to which the compromise offered by the US Episcopals divides the traditionalists who have been calling for their expulsion.

Much of the Anglican communion, dominated by traditionalist churches in the developing world, is unlikely to be satisfied, he says.

The Anglicans' religious leader, Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, said it was not yet clear how far the resolutions adopted by the Episcopal Church meet demands for a moratorium on gay bishops.

"The wider communion will therefore need to reflect carefully on the significance of what has been decided before we respond more fully," he said on Wednesday.

Statistics for its 280,000 customers for 2005 showed people aged between 40 and 59 had the highest level of debt - owing an average of £34,456.

But increases in the amount of money owed were greatest among the over-60s.

The CCCS said the amount of money owed by people over 60 who contacted the group had soared by 25% to an average of £33,658.

The Foundation for Credit Counselling, which is responsible for the CCCS, said it hoped to use the statistics to help people in debt.

Chairman Malcolm Hurlston said: "The aim of this yearbook is to make use of the knowledge and experience of CCCS in improving our understanding of people in debt, alleviating their problems and anticipating future needs."

The CCCS also saw the number of young people struggling with debt increase. It was contacted by more 18 to 24-year-olds and found they owed an average of £15,079 in 2005, compared with £11,935 two years earlier.

Overall, of people on one of the group's debt management plans - under which interest is frozen in exchange for a set amount being repaid each month - the average amount owed was £30,763 in 2005, as against £29,340 the year before.

Reports of such a plot had surfaced in the media before but have not previously been confirmed.

It is believed the plot was disrupted by security services, although arrests are not thought to have been made.

The report lists nine attempts by al-Qaeda - aside from 11 September - to attack aviation targets worldwide.

Crashed into targets
One of these is the plot to fly into Canary Wharf. Another is an attempt in the summer of 2003 to use camera flash attachments as stun guns as well as cameras to disguise bomb components.

In this plot, the airliners were to be crashed into targets in the east coast of the US, Australia, Britain and Italy.

Other plots are well known, including that of the so-called shoe-bomber Richard Reid and attempts to use portable surface to air missiles to attack planes, including in Kenya.

The original reports of a possible plot against Canary Wharf emerged in late 2004, but the details were murky and officials declined to confirm them.

In February 2003, tanks were also deployed to Heathrow Airport to deal with a suspected terrorist threat, a move which proved controversial. It is not believed the deployment of the tanks was linked to the same Canary Wharf plot confirmed by the US report.

The Department of Homeland Security report, dated 16 June 2006 and marked unclassified, was first reported by ABC News in the US and has since also been seen by the BBC.

It makes clear that al-Qaeda remains interested in attacking aviation targets and "likely desires a successful repeat of a 2001 suicide hijacking against the United States".

It lists a number of ways that it could use aircraft as weapons or target different parts of the industry. Amongst the areas of concern are the use of lasers to blind or distract pilots.

Helicopter 'threat'
Three hundred and eleven possible laser incidents have occurred since late November 2004 although the number has recently declined.

Another fear is the transfer of a particular tactic used in Iraq to attack US military helicopters being used against commercial helicopters elsewhere.

Improved security has helped protect aviation, although al-Qaeda also continually appears to be searching for new approaches and probing for vulnerabilities, for instance trying to take advance of less effective security screening in some countries.

The report says the department "continues to receive information on terrorist threats to the US aviation industry worldwide; however, there is no recent information to suggest near-term operational planning may be under way within the United States".

What if the next burger you ate was created in a warm, nutrient-enriched soup swirling within a bioreactor?

Edible, lab-grown ground chuck that smells and tastes just like the real thing might take a place next to Quorn at supermarkets in just a few years, thanks to some determined meat researchers. Scientists routinely grow small quantities of muscle cells in petri dishes for experiments, but now for the first time a concentrated effort is under way to mass-produce meat in this manner.

Henk Haagsman, a professor of meat sciences at Utrecht University, and his Dutch colleagues are working on growing artificial pork meat out of pig stem cells. They hope to grow a form of minced meat suitable for burgers, sausages and pizza toppings within the next few years.

Currently involved in identifying the type of stem cells that will multiply the most to create larger quantities of meat within a bioreactor, the team hopes to have concrete results by 2009. The 2 million euro ($2.5 million) Dutch-government-funded project began in April 2005. The work is one arm of a worldwide research effort focused on growing meat from cell cultures on an industrial scale.

"All of the technology exists today to make ground meat products in vitro," says Paul Kosnik, vice president of engineering at Tissue Genesis in Hawaii. Kosnik is growing scaffold-free, self-assembled muscle. "We believe the goal of a processed meat product is attainable in the next five years if funding is available and the R&D is pursued aggressively."

A single cell could theoretically produce enough meat to feed the world's population for a year. But the challenge lies in figuring out how to grow it on a large scale. Jason Matheny, a University of Maryland doctoral student and a director of New Harvest, a nonprofit organization that funds research on in vitro meat, believes the easiest way to create edible tissue is to grow "meat sheets," which are layers of animal muscle and fat cells stretched out over large flat sheets made of either edible or removable material. The meat can then be ground up or stacked or rolled to get a thicker cut.

"You'd need a bunch of industrial-size bioreactors," says Matheny. "One to produce the growth media, one to produce cells, and one that produces the meat sheets. The whole operation could be under one roof."

The advantage, he says, is you avoid the inefficiencies and bottlenecks of conventional meat production. No more feed grain production and processing, breeders, hatcheries, grow-out, slaughter or processing facilities.

"To produce the meat we eat now, 75 (percent) to 95 percent of what we feed an animal is lost because of metabolism and inedible structures like skeleton or neurological tissue," says Matheny. "With cultured meat, there's no body to support; you're only building the meat that eventually gets eaten."

The sheets would be less than 1 mm thick and take a few weeks to grow. But the real issue is the expense. If cultivated with nutrient solutions that are currently used for biomedical applications, the cost of producing one pound of in vitro meat runs anywhere from $1,000 to $10,000.

Matheny believes in vitro meat can compete with conventional meat by using nutrients from plant or fungal sources, which could bring the cost down to about $1 per pound.

If successful, artificially grown meat could be tailored to be far healthier than any type of farm-grown meat. It's possible to stuff if full of heart-friendly omega-3 fatty acids, adjust the protein or texture to suit individual taste preferences and screen it for food-borne diseases.

But will it really catch on? The Food and Drug Administration has already barred food products involving cloned animals from the market until their safety has been tested. There's also the yuck factor.

"Cultured meat isn't natural, but neither is yogurt," says Matheny. "And neither, for that matter, is most of the meat we eat. Cramming 10,000 chickens in a metal shed and dosing them full of antibiotics isn't natural. I view cultured meat like hydroponic vegetables. The end product is the same, but the process used to make it is different. Consumers accept hydroponic vegetables. Would they accept hydroponic meat?"

Taste is another unknown variable. Real meat is more than just cells; it has blood vessels, connective tissue, fat, etc. To get a similar arrangement of cells, lab-grown meat will have to be exercised and stretched the way a real live animal's flesh would.

Kosnik is working on a way to create muscle grown without scaffolds by culturing the right combination of cells in a 3-D environment with mechanical anchors so that the cells develop into long fibers similar to real muscle.

The technology to grow a juicy steak, however, is still a decade or so away. No one has yet figured out how to grow blood vessels within tissue.

"In the meantime, we can use existing technologies to satisfy the demand for ground meat, which is about half of the meat we eat (and a $127 billion global market)," says Matheny.

Photographs which depict a lush, rural environment are misleading. The country needs an average of 1m metric tonnes in food aid a year.

"North Korea is not an agrarian country," said Kathi Zelleweger, a frequent visitor to the country with aid organisation Caritas. It is mostly rugged mountain terrain, and only about 18% is arable.

It is dependent on fertilizer and machinery to make that land productive, both of which are expensive.

Politics compounds topography. Agriculture in North Korea was collectivised in the 1950s, in line with its Stalinist philosophy of self-reliance.
This means farmers have a low incentive to work hard, said Paul French, a writer on North Korea.

"If their farm produces five times as much, they don't get five times as much food," he said. Instead, they concentrate on their own private plots, which they use to feed themselves and to produce food for the markets.

Spiralling prices

The problem with this system is that market reforms, instituted in 2002, have sent prices soaring at a higher rate than wages. "Who can afford this stuff in the markets?" asked Mr French.

The answer: only the elite. Government officials, senior managers of state enterprises, security forces, and the leadership of the army are all unlikely to go hungry.

But a typical urban family can now only afford to buy 4kg of maize - the cheapest commodity - a month.

The UN's World Foof Programme estimates that an average urban North Korean's guaranteed diet is around 280g of cereals a day.
However, spokesman Gerald Bourke points out that North Koreans are very adept at foraging for wild food, and may also be given gifts from relatives.

The internationally recommended minimum is 550-590g a day, provided this is nutritionally balanced. But dietary balance is difficult to achieve in North Korea, where foodstuffs such as oil are prohibitively expensive.

The urban diet is partly made up of a ration provided by the government, but this has dropped from 300-250g of cereals per person per day. North Korean officials have told the WFP they expect it to slump to 200g a day.

"The rural folk have already learned how to cope," said Tim Peters, director of aid agency Helping Hands Korea. "But the urban people are so dependent on the government for distribution."

As a result, foreign donations that have helped to prop North Korea up in previous years are doubly important this year.

To date, only 270,000 of the 500,000 tonnes of food needed for 2005 has arrived, the WFP says.

And there is always the risk of natural disaster.

Floods exacerbated the extreme food shortages 10 years ago, and North Korea's ability to cope with them "is now probably worse", said Mr French.

Ongoing land clearance has destroyed natural water breaks, "so it all just comes flooding down".

Mr Bourke was reluctant to paint a worst-case scenario.

"I'm not in the business of predicting numbers that are going to die," he said. "North Koreans are very tough people. They are very accustomed to deprivation. But that doesn't take away the urgent need for food aid."

The Saudi ambassador to the US, Prince Turki Al-Faisal, said such an event could send prices spiralling from their current level of about $70 per barrel.

Iran is the Opec cartel's number two oil producer and analysts fear it could halt exports if the dispute worsens.

Tehran is currently examining proposals aimed at ending the diplomatic impasse.

STRAIT OF HORMUZ

"The idea of somebody firing a missile at an installation somewhere will shoot up the price of oil astronomically," Prince Turki told a conference hosted by the United States Energy Association.

He warned that any conflict involving Iran would threaten the Strait of Hormuz, through which most Middle East nations export their oil.

Tankers carry 17 million barrels of oil through the channel every day, according to the International Energy Agency.

US President George W. Bush has refused to rule out a military attack should diplomatic efforts to reach an agreement with Iran fail.

The US Energy Secretary, Sam Bodman, has maintained that the country would be in "good shape" if Iran did put a stop on its oil exports, thanks to America's emergency stockpile of almost 700 million barrels of crude oil.

The threat of a cut in Iranian oil exports has been the main factor driving oil prices higher in recent months, with the price fluctuating either side of $70 per barrel.

The southern section of the fault, which crosses through Palm Springs and San Bernardino, has not experienced a major earthquake in at least 300 years, according to Yuri Fialko of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego.

As a result, the fault has been stressed to a level where it could unleash an earthquake with a magnitude of seven or greater. The fault marks the intersection where the Pacific plate meets the North American plate. The fault-slip rate, or pace of the plate movement at the fault, is about one inch per year. But pressure buildup indicates that the southern region of the fault has accumulated 6 to 8 meters of slip deficit--that is, movement that should have occurred but hasn't because the plates have temporarily become stuck against each other--which inevitably will be released in future earthquakes.

If the accumulated deficit were released in a single event, it would result in an earthquake about the same size as the San Francisco earthquake of 1906. Such a quake would affect many of the coastal cities in southern California.
"In the earthquake business, the past is a key to understanding the present and, by comparing ancient observations of the fault with what we have measured over the last 10 years, we can say with some certainty that the fault is approaching the end of its loading period," Fialko said in a statement. "All these data suggest that the fault is ready for the next big earthquake, but exactly when the triggering will happen and when the earthquake will occur, we cannot tell. It could be tomorrow, or it could be 10 years or more from now."

Quakes occurred along the central part of the fault in 1857 and 1906 in the northern part of the fault.

Predicting earthquakes, however, is difficult. Scientists generally believe there is a 70 percent chance of a large quake along the San Andreas in the next 30 years. Researchers, though, concede it could happen tomorrow or in 50 years.

Some scientists, however, have begun to conduct research that indicates the Earth gives off early warning signs through increased magnetic signals and other phenomena.

But the Pentagon refused to confirm or deny reports that it had activated its missile defence system in response.

The US ambassador to Japan hinted that the missile could be shot down.

Amid growing pressure on Pyongyang, former South Korean President Kim Dae-jung cancelled a planned trip to the North Korean capital.

The North has asserted its right to conduct missile tests, and said it was no longer bound by a 1999 moratorium or a 2002 agreement with Japan.

But it is also reportedly calling for talks with Washington to resolve the issue, which analysts said suggested North Korea was trying to use the row for wider, diplomatic purposes.

'Sense of crisis'

George Bush's national security adviser Stephen Hadley said on Tuesday that North Korea appeared to be moving towards a missile launch, although "the intelligence is not conclusive at this point".
He said it was "hard to tell" whether the country had finished fuelling a Taepodong-2, a missile thought capable of reaching US territory.

"There tends to be a desire to create a sense of crisis," he said.

The comments came after unnamed US officials had been quoted as saying that America's missile defence system had now been activated. But the Pentagon says it does not comment on the status of the system.

The White House has refused to say what action the US might take if the missile is launched. The US ambassador to Japan, Thomas Schieffer, said on Wednesday that the US had a greater capacity to track missiles than in 1998, when North Korea last launched a long-range missile.

Asked if the US would shoot down a missile, he said: "We have options that we have not had in the past, and all these options are on the table".

The BBC's Jonathan Beale in Washington says shooting a missile down would be only likely to escalate tensions.

Trip cancelled

Japan, Australia, China and South Korea have repeatedly called on North Korea to abandon any launch plans.

South Korea warned that thousands of tons of food aid would be at risk if the launch went ahead.

Officials in Seoul announced that the former South Korean President Kim Dae-jung had cancelled a visit to Pyongyang planned for next week.

The trip was now "practically impossible" because of "the unexpected circumstances", an official said.

Mr Kim has played a key role in past talks with North Korea, and had hoped to use the meeting to help restart stalled six-country talks on ending Pyongyang's nuclear programmes.

Right to test

North Korea has not said it plans to go ahead with a missile launch, but diplomats have asserted the country's right to develop and test missiles in recent media interviews.

Han Song-ryol, deputy chief of North Korea's mission to the United Nations, told South Korea's Yonhap news agency that the country would like to ease tensions over the situation through talks.

Talks deadlock

North Korea last tested a long-range missile in 1998 when it fired a Taepodong-1, with a range of 2,000km (1,200 miles), over northern Japan. North Korea has observed a self-imposed moratorium since 1999, but Han Song-ryol said that this only applied when the country was in dialogue with the US.

The US says North Korea also implicitly agreed not to test-launch any new missiles at multi-party talks on its nuclear programme last year. But the six-party talks have been stalled for months. Correspondents say North Korea may be now using the missile threat to try to break the deadlock, or as a bargaining chip in negotiations.

Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor will call on ministers to lower the 24-week abortion limit at a private meeting at the Department of Health.

He is expected to tell the Health Secretary that technological advances mean the abortion laws are outdated.

The government said there were no plans to alter the regulations.

However, 31 MPs have signed a Commons motion calling for a review of the law.

The Catholic church is against abortion altogether, but realises it is unrealistic to try to ban the practice completely.

Cardinal Murphy-O'Connor sparked controversy last year when he backed the then Tory leader Michael Howard's suggestion just before the election that the limit be lowered.

Medical advances have meant foetuses can survive even if they are born before 24 weeks gestation.

Doctors opposed

Doctors debated the issue at their annual conference last year for the first time since 1989, but voted against calling for a reduction in the limit.

And Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt has already said this year she is not in favour of lowering the limit despite the likes of France, Germany and Italy setting the limit at between 12 and 13 weeks.

But the church leader believes recent opinion polls have shown public opinion is changing.

A survey by the Observer newspaper earlier this year showed that half of women wanted tougher laws.

Archbishop of Cardiff Peter Smith told the BBC: "There is growing concern about the way the Abortion Act actually has worked.

"It was originally intended to be very, very restricted, but it has now become, in effect, abortion on demand."

The cardinal will also press the health secretary to set up a national bioethics committee to robustly discuss issues surrounding end of life and embryo science.

He is said to be concerned about the creeping moves towards genetic screening and so-called designer babies.

Embryo screening was in the headlines this week when doctors from Guy's Hospital in London said they had developed a new test to screen for a range of disorders.

At the moment the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority makes rulings on such issues, but is currently subject to a review of its remit.

No plans for a change

The Department of Health said the health secretary was happy to take the cardinal's views into consideration.

But a spokeswoman added: "It is accepted parliamentary practice that proposals for changes in the law on abortion have come from backbench members and that decisions are made on the basis of free votes.

"The government has no plans to change the law on abortion."

And Melissa Dear, of fpa, formerly the Family Planning Association, said she was against a reduction in the limit.

"Only a small minority of women have abortions after 20 weeks - about 1% - and for these there are good reasons.

"There may be genetic abnormalities or the women may be just before menopause or in their teens when periods are irregular and they may not have realised they were pregnant."

However, Liberal Democrat MP, Phil Willis, who chairs the Commons science and technology committee, said there was a "clear consensus" among the British public that the legislation should be reviewed.

He said: "What my committee is saying is that there ought to be a thorough review of the scientific evidence, that that should be placed at the disposal of Parliament and if, in fact, there is a need to reduce the time limit, then that should be the case."

The latest figures show more 185,000 abortions were carried out in 2004, but only 124 were carried out at 24 weeks.

The test looks at the whole DNA of a cell rather than focusing on a specific mutation in one gene, making it quicker to identify diseases in embryos.

It also allows doctors to check for many more potential illnesses.

The team will tell a Prague fertility conference five couples are expecting healthy babies after the test, and IVF.

How the new and existing embryo tests work
However, some campaigners have questioned the morality of such screening tests, as they inevitably lead to the destruction of some embryos.

Simone Aspis, from the British Council of Disabled People, said: "Who is going to make the decision about who should and should not live? We believe all babies have an equal right to life."

The new "DNA fingerprint" test of a cell can spot from a genetic signature that a condition, such as cystic fibrosis, is present, the scientists behind it say.

The team, from the genetics unit at London's Guy's Hospital, have developed a method called pre-implantation genetic haplotyping (PGH), which they expect to offer to over 100 families a year.

The current test is known as pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD).

50/50 chance
PGH involves testing parents and any existing children or relations carrying or with a genetic condition, to identify the faulty units of chromosomal DNA.

Using this information, it is possible to take a cell from the embryo, treat it in the lab to create more copies of its genetic material and then look for markers that show an embryo carries two copies of these faulty units, or haplotypes.

This would mean it would be affected by the condition.

The technique has been used to test for Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy (DMD). It primarily affects boys, who inherit the disease through their mothers.

Families with a history of the condition are currently offered embryo sex testing and no male embryos are implanted, as it is not possible to tell if they have the condition - even though they have a 50/50 chance of being affected.

But with the new test, doctors are able to see if an embryo carries the tell-tale DMD haplotypes seen in its parents, meaning more embryos can be selected for use.

Genetic trail
The test also allows detection of any of the genetic mutations which can cause cystic fibrosis.

Like DMD, it is a recessive disease, and means both copies of chromosome 7 must carry a fault for a child to have the disease - but PGD can spot only the most common of the hundreds of faults.

The team have also helped a woman affected by hydatidiform mole - a condition where pregnancy leads to a potentially fatal tumour forming instead of a foetus.

Professor Peter Braude, the fertility specialist who helped develop the test, said: "It doesn't matter what the genetic fault is.

"We can know the same chromosome that has affected a family member, and know the embryo is also affected."

'No flood'
Alison Lockwood, a nurse who is part of the genetics unit team, said the bottom line for couples who came to see her was the wish for a healthy baby.

"Until now, you really had to know the name of the mutation to do a direct test. Now that doesn't matter.

"With sex linked disease, you would currently have to take away probably 50% of embryos because they are male.

"But with this test, you might get up to 75% of embryos for transfer."

However she said the new test would not lead to a flood of people wanting to take advantage of the science.

"Of the patients currently referred for PGD, only a third end up going through a cycle.

"These are, generally, couples who can get pregnant without having to undergo fertility treatment, and when they get to know what it involves, many do not go ahead."

Dr Mark Hamilton, chairman of the British Fertility Society, said: "Any technique which has the potential to reduce the risk of serious, debilitating and potentially life-threatening disease has to be greeted with some enthusiasm.

"We are always striving to maximise the chance that fertility treatment will be successful.

"But not transferring because we are absolutely confident they are affected by a condition, rather than because we suspect they are, is preferable and much less wasteful."

But Josephine Quintavalle, of Comment on Reproductive Ethics, warned against further extensions of screening.

She said: "I am horrified to think of these people sitting in judgment on these embryos and saying who should live and who should die."