The evidence of this almost unthinkable scenario is everywhere:

SCHOOL: In public school classrooms across America, in every category and every demographic group, boys are falling behind. Girls excel and move on to college, where three out of five students are female, while young boys who don't naturally thrive when forced to sit still at a desk for six hours a day are diagnosed by the millions with new diseases that didn't exist a generation ago. To make their behavior more acceptable, they are compelled to take hazardous psycho-stimulant drugs like Ritalin.

Boys are more than 50 percent more likely to repeat elementary school grades than girls, a third more likely to drop out of high school and twice as likely to have a "learning disability." And the suicide rate among teen boys is far higher than that of girls.

"What we have done," explains Thomas Mortenson, senior scholar at the Pell Institute for the Study of Opportunity in Higher Education, "is we have a K-12 school system that seems to work relatively well for girls and does not work for a very large share of boys."

HOME: It's well known that roughly half of America's marriages end in divorce, but not nearly as well known that two out of three of those divorces are initiated by the wives. Moreover, America's family court system is scandalously biased in favor of the mother in child custody disputes. Fathers get custody of children in uncontested cases only 10 percent of the time and 15 percent of the time in contested cases. Meanwhile, mothers get sole custody 66 percent of the time in uncontested cases and 75 percent of the time in contested cases.

"Where you have minor children, there's really no such thing as no-fault divorce for fathers," says Detroit attorney Philip Holman, vice president of the National Congress for Fathers and Children. "On the practical level, fathers realize that divorce means they lose their kids."

Unfortunately, this loss by children of their fathers' influence is directly responsible far more than any other cause for the modern national scourges of gang life, crime and much more.

CULTURE: Fifty years ago, "Father knows best" was a hit TV show, in which insurance agent Jim Anderson (actor Robert Young) would come home from work each evening, trade his sport jacket for a nice, comfortable sweater, and then deal with the everyday growing-up problems of his family. He could always be counted on to resolve that week's crisis with a combination of kindness, fatherly strength and common sense.

Today, television virtually always portrays husbands as bumbling losers or contemptible, self-absorbed egomaniacs. Whether in dramas, comedies or commercials, the patriarchy is dead, at least on TV where men are fools unless of course they're gay. On "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy," the "fab five" are supremely knowledgeable on all things hip, their life's highest purpose being to help those less fortunate than themselves that is, straight men to become cool.

As this issue of Whistleblower shows, experts like Ph.D. scholar Christina Hoff Sommers, author of "The War Against Boys," agree: "It's a bad time to be a boy in America." Sommers provides example after example of what can only be called an all-out anti-male campaign:

"The carnage committed by two boys in Littleton, Colorado," declares the Congressional Quarterly Researcher, "has forced the nation to reexamine the nature of boyhood in America." William Pollack, director of the Center for Men at McLean Hospital and author of the best-selling "Real Boys: Rescuing Our Sons from the Myths of Boyhood," tells audiences around the country, "The boys in Littleton are the tip of the iceberg. And the iceberg is all boys."
In fact, Sommers reveals, it has become fashionable in elitist circles to conspire to change boys' very identity:

There are now conferences, workshops, and institutes dedicated to transforming boys. Carol Gilligan, professor of gender studies at Harvard Graduate School of Education, writes of the problem of "boys' masculinity in a patriarchal social order." Barney Brawer, director of the Boys' Project at Tufts University, told Education Week: "We've deconstructed the old version of manhood, but we've not [yet] constructed a new version." In the spring of 2000, the Boys' Project at Tufts offered five workshops on "reinventing Boyhood." The planners promised emotionally exciting sessions: "We'll laugh and cry, argue and agree, reclaim and sustain the best parts of the culture of boys and men, while figuring out how to change the terrible parts."
"Terrible"? As this edition of Whistleblower shows, there is nothing wrong and a very great deal right with boys and masculinity. As maverick feminist Camille Paglia courageously reminds her men-hating colleagues, masculinity is "the most creative cultural force in history."

"The problem," said David Kupelian, managing editor of WND and Whistleblower, "is that misguided feminists, intent on advancing a radically different worldview than the one on which this nation was founded, have succeeded in fomenting a revolution. And that revolution amounts to a powerful and pervasive campaign against masculinity, maleness, boys, men and patriarchy."

A school in Surrey is beginning a separate trial into the effects of food supplements, diet and exercise.

Research suggests that Omega 3 and 6 oils boost learning abilities - but some studies have cast doubt on this.

The Department for Education and Skills (DfES) will base any advice on the outcome of the Food Standards Agency review.

Nutrients
A DfES spokesman said: "The government is committed to ensuring that children are provided with the healthy food and nutrients they require during the school day, not just to aid their physical health, but to ensure they can study hard and behave well.

"The Food Standards Agency is currently conducting a systematic review of research looking at the effect of nutrition and diet on performance and behaviour of children in schools.

"This includes investigating studies that have used Omega 3 and 6 fish oil supplements in schools. While this work is not yet concluded, we will of course examine its results with interest."

Revamp
A revamp of school meals is intended to stipulate regular inclusion of oily fish in the school menu.

A spokeswoman for the FSA said: "Oily fish should be part of a healthy balanced diet. Evidence on the benefits of fish consumption is currently limited to cardiovascular diseases.

"No clear conclusions can be drawn for other health benefits, including the association of all aspects of diet and performance in children." Several local education authorities have organised trials of fish oil supplements.

More than 120 pupils aged between six and 12 took part in trials organised by Durham County Council.
Half used a combination of omega 3 fish oil and omega 6 evening primrose oil and half an olive oil placebo.
It suggested that after three months the group taking the natural fatty acids had significantly improved behaviour.

Schoolchildren across Teesside are also taking fish oil supplements after an initial pilot suggested positive results.

Cricket Green school in Merton, Surrey, is launching a trial organised by the not-for-profit Food For the Brain campaign.

'Culture of food'
Pupils at Cricket Green, a special school, have undergone a "nutritional makeover" involving workshops for parents and teachers as well as pupils. In preparation for the nine-month trial the parents and teachers have been taught to cook while the school has instigated a strict rule of no sugary drinks, no crisps and no confectionery.

The children also have access to water at all times and take part in daily structured exercise. A second school, a standard state primary, will join the trial in September and the campaign aims to work with 100 schools.

Campaign founder, nutritionist Patrick Holford, said: "The purpose of this trial is not just to prove what works but also to prove what works in terms of changing the whole culture of food in the community."

He added: "Kids used to have cod liver oil which is a supplement. A fact is a quarter of a million children are medicated with drugs like Ritalin - the evidence is that this number could be halved by giving food for the brain."

The warning from Longboat Key near Sarasota to the Ochlockonee River south of Tallahassee means Tropical Storm Alberto was expected to produce hurricane conditions within the next 24 hours.

A tropical storm warning remains in effect for Longboat Key to Englewood. (Projected path)

"We're talking about powerful forces of nature," Florida Gov. Jeb Bush said. "People need to take this very seriously."

At 11 a.m., Alberto's winds had increased to 70 mph, up from 50 mph just three hours earlier. The storm was centered about 190 miles south-southwest of Apalachicola and was moving north-northeast at about 7 mph, National Hurricane Center forecasters said.

The storm's sustained winds would have to hit 74 mph to make it a hurricane.(Web site taking bets on deadliness of hurricanes -- 2:28)

Alberto's core wasn't expected to reach Florida until Tuesday, but with tropical storm-force wind stretching 230 miles from the center, powerful gusts may be felt long before it makes landfall.

The storm's outer bands brought rain on the state Sunday, and forecasters warned that tornadoes were possible in west-central and northwestern Florida Monday night.

Heavy rain from Alberto drenched Havana, Cuba, and Pinar del Rio province to the west throughout the weekend, causing some minor street flooding. The official Prensa Latina news agency reported Monday a handful of old buildings around Havana crumbled in the heavy rains, a common occurrence during even the weakest storms, but there were no immediate reports of other major damage or injuries.

In Florida, 4 to 10 inches of rain could fall on the peninsula through Tuesday, forecasters said.

The prospect of a rain -- as long as it didn't come with hurricane-force wind -- was welcomed by firefighters who have been battling wildfires for six weeks on Florida's Atlantic coast.

"A good soaking rain would do a lot to help stop the fires in our area," said Pat Kuehn, a spokeswoman for Volusia County Fire Services. "It has been a hard fire season. We've had several fires a week here."

The tropical depression that produced Alberto formed Saturday, nine days after the official start of the hurricane season, in the northwest Caribbean, which can produce typically weak storms that follow a similar track this time of year, forecasters said. It became a named storm when its sustained winds reached 39 mph.

Scientists say the 2006 season could produce as many as 16 named storms, six of them major hurricanes.

Last year's hurricane season was the most destructive on record. Hurricane Katrina devastated Louisiana and Mississippi and was blamed for more than 1,570 deaths among Louisiana residents alone.

It also was the busiest in 154 years of storm tracking, with a records 28 named storms and a record 15 hurricanes. Meteorologists used up their list of 21 proper names -- beginning with Arlene and ending with Wilma -- and had to use the Greek alphabet to name storms for the first time.

The first named storm of 2005 was Tropical Storm Arlene, which formed June 9 and made landfall just west of Pensacola in the Florida Panhandle

Seismic activity has been mounting since February at the volcano, about 470 miles southeast of the Peruvian capital of Lima. Ubinas erupted April 14, sending a column of ash some 2,600 feet into the air.

Tents, blankets and food were distributed to the 144 families who evacuated to a camp six miles from their village, Jose Acosta, a Civil Defense Institute official, said Saturday.

Another 150 families will be evacuated by Sunday, said Acosta, adding that the villagers will be allowed to return to their homes if the threat decreases.

Winds have carried smoke and volcanic ash into the neighboring highland region of Puno, where residents have complained of headaches and stomachaches, the Peruvian newspaper El Comercio reported.

The country's Air Force Command accused the US of carrying out three aerial espionage missions in the last week.

The command said it believed the US was preparing to attack and suggested it would resort to shooting down US spy planes if they continued their flights.

Correspondents say Pyongyang often alleges that spying flights are taking place - the US does not comment.

Warning

The Korean People's Army (KPA) Air Force Command said an RC-135 plane had flown over territorial waters on 6, 8 and 10 June .

In a statement it said the US flights were "openly crying out for a pre-emptive attack" on the country.

The command said the espionage missions were a "violent infringement of [North Korea's] sovereignty and a grave violation of international law".

It continued: "The KPA Air Force seriously warns the US imperialists that it will sternly punish the aggressors if their planes continue illegally intruding into the sky ... on espionage missions.

"They had better not forget the wretched fate of the EC-121 large spy plane in the 1960s," it added.

In 1969 North Korean fighters shot a US plane down off the country's east coast, killing all of the 31 crew on board

Prostitution was legalized in Germany in 2002 and already by last year the situation for women was dramatic, warned the British newspaper Telegraph in an article Jan. 30, 2005.

The article recounted the experience of a 25-year-old woman who, after turning down a job providing "sexual services" at a brothel in Berlin, faced possible cuts to her unemployment benefits.

Brothel owners enjoy access to official databases of those registered for unemployment benefits. The woman, unnamed in the article, had said that she was willing to work in a bar at night and had worked in a café. Later she received a letter from the job center saying that an employer was interested in her and that she should ring them. Only then did she realize that she was calling a brothel.

Germany's welfare laws oblige woman under 55 who have been out of work for more than a year to take an available job -- including in the sex industry -- or lose benefits, the Telegraph reported. The government had considered making brothels an exception, but eventually ruled this out.

Brunhilde Raiser, director of the National Council of German Women's Organizations, declared that in her country, "Forced prostitution has yet to become a public issue of concern as a severe violation of human and women's rights." Her remarks appeared May 5 in the Christian Science Monitor, ahead of the June 9-July 9 World Cup.

Red card

Archbishop Agostino Marchetto, secretary of the Pontifical Council for Migrants and Travelers, was interviewed by Vatican Radio on Thursday about the problem of prostitution during the soccer tournament.

Adopting soccer terminology, he said that the sex industry, its clients, and the public authorities merited a "red card" for taking advantage of the sporting event to promote prostitution. He cited estimates that up to 40,000 women, many of them against their own volition, will be engaged in centers set up for prostitution in Berlin and surrounding areas in these weeks.

Hamas's armed wing, Izzedine al-Qassam Brigade, said it had fired rockets into Israel from the Gaza Strip.

"This is only the start and rocket firings will continue," a spokesman was quoted by Reuters news agency as saying.

"Next time, the rockets will be longer in range and they will hit places deeper inside the Zionist entity."

The spokesman said the attacks were a response to Israeli "crimes and the killings of civilians in Gaza".

The head of the United Nations has called for a full inquiry into Friday's deaths.

'Right to fight'

Hamas government spokesman Ghazi Hamad told the BBC that Friday's deaths had changed what he called "the rules of the game", and that suicide attacks could resume.

You can expect anything from what happened in Gaza," he told Radio Four's Today programme.

Hamas's armed wing has been distributing leaflets declaring the end of the February 2005 truce and appearing to promise a resumption of bomb attacks on Israeli towns.

"The earthquake in the Zionist towns will start again and the aggressors will have no choice but to prepare their coffins or their luggage," the leaflets read.

The Israeli army says it detected at least three rocket launches but has no record of the rockets landing in Israel or causing any damage.

For now this move by Hamas seems mainly symbolic, the BBC's Simon Wilson reports from Jerusalem.

Under the ceasefire arrangement agreed with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, Hamas has enjoyed enormous political success, taking power with a landslide victory in parliamentary elections in January.

So far this does not amount to a complete change in Hamas's position but if it were to return to widespread militant activity, the question would be how Israel might respond, our correspondent adds.

In the past it has refused to differentiate between political and armed wings, assassinating a number of Hamas leaders, including its wheelchair-bound founder, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin.

Inquiry call

UN Secretary General Kofi Annan's spokesman said the UN chief was deeply disturbed by the killings.

A senior Israeli military officer, Maj-Gen Yoav Galant, said it was too early to be certain about the cause of Friday's explosion.

"This may have been an accident which caused an artillery shell to fall off course, or an older unexploded shell which went off, or perhaps an explosive device which was tinkered with," he said.

Mr Abbas declared three days of Palestinian mourning following the deaths, which included five people from the same family, a man and one of his wives and three of his children.

They were having a picnic on the beach when the explosion happened. The children's seven-year-old sister had been swimming in the sea at the time and survived. Twenty people were wounded.

The quest for energy control has informed Washington's support for high-risk "color revolutions" in Georgia, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Belarus and Kyrgyzstan in recent months. It lies behind US activity in West Africa, as well as in Sudan, source of 7% of China's oil imports. It lies behind US policy vis-à-vis President Hugo Chavez' Venezuela and President Evo Morales' Bolivia.

In recent months, however, this strategy of global energy dominance has shown signs of producing just the opposite: a kind of "coalition of the unwilling", states that increasingly see no other prospect, despite traditional animosities, but to cooperate to oppose what they see as a US push to control the future security of their energy.

If the trend of recent events continues, it won't be US-style democracy that is spreading, but rather Russian and Chinese influence over major oil and gas supplies.

Some in Washington are beginning to realize that important figures might have been too clumsy in recent public statements about both China and Russia, two nations whose cooperation in some form is essential to the success of the global US energy project.

Russia's energy geopolitics
In recent months SCO members have taken several potentially strategic steps to distance themselves from energy and monetary dependence on the US. In his recent State of the Union speech, President Putin announced that Russia is planning to make the ruble convertible into other major currencies and to use it in its oil and gas transactions.

A convertible ruble is to be introduced, according to latest Russian statements, on July 1, six months earlier than originally planned. Russia also has stated it plans to shift a share of its now considerable dollar reserves away from the US currency and that it will use 40 billion US dollars to purchase gold reserves.

Russia's state-owned natural-gas transport company, Transneft, has consolidated its pipeline control to become the sole exporter of Russian natural gas. Russia has by far the world's largest natural-gas reserves and Iran the second-largest. With Iran inside, the SCO would control the vast majority of the world's natural-gas reserves, as well as a significant portion of its oil reserves, not to mention the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow corridor for a majority of Persian Gulf oil-tanker shipment to Japan and the West.

Late last month Russia and Algeria, the two largest gas suppliers to Europe, agreed to increase energy cooperation. Algeria has given Russian companies exclusive access to Algerian oil and gas fields, and Gazprom and Sonatrach will cooperate in delivery to France. Putin has canceled Algeria's US$4.7 billion debt to Russia and, for its part, Algeria will buy $7.5 billion worth of Russian advanced jet fighters, air defense systems and other weapons.

On May 26 Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov also announced that his country would definitely supply Iran with sophisticated Tor-M1 anti-aircraft missiles, reportedly as a prelude to supplying even more sophisticated weapons.

Then, in one of the more fascinating examples of geopolitical chutzpah, the Kremlin-controlled Gazprom gas monopoly entered quiet negotiations with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert through his billionaire friend, Benny Steinmetz, to secure Russian natural-gas supplies to Israel via an undersea pipeline from Turkey to Israel.

According to the Israeli paper Yediot Ahronot, Olmert's office has said it will support the Gazprom proposal. In several years Israel faces a shortage of gas from Tethys Sea drilling and soon from Egypt. Tethys Sea gas is projected to run dry in a few years. British Gas is in talks to supply gas from Gaza but Israel disputes BG's right to drill.

But even with Egypt and Gaza, gas shortages are expected by 2010 unless Israel is able to find new sources. Enter Gazprom and Putin. The gas would be diverted from the under-used Russia-Turkey Bluestream Pipeline, which Russia built to increase its influence over Turkey two years ago. Putin clearly seeks to gain a lever inside Israel over the one-sided US influence on Israeli policy.

China energy geopolitics also in high gear
For its part, Beijing is also moving to "secure energy at the sources". China's booming economy, with 10% growth, requires massive natural resources. China became a net importer of oil in 1993. By 2045, China will depend on imported oil for 45% of its energy needs.

On May 26, crude oil began to flow into China through a newly completed pipeline from Atasu, Kazakhstan, to the Alataw Pass in China's far-western region of Xinjiang, a 1,000-kilometer route announced only last year. It marked the first time oil is being pumped directly into China. Kazakhstan is also a member of the SCO, but had been regarded by Washington since the collapse of the Soviet Union as in its sphere of influence, with ChevronTexaco, Rice's former oil company, the major oil developer.

By 2011 the pipeline with extend some 3,000km to Dushanzi, where the Chinese are building their largest oil refinery, due to completed by 2008. China financed the entire $700 million pipeline and will buy the oil. Last year the China National Petroleum Corp bought PetroKazakhstan for $4.2 billion and will use it to develop oilfields in Kazakhstan.

China is also in negotiations with Russia for a pipeline to deliver Siberian oil to northeastern China, a project that could be completed by 2008, and a natural-gas pipeline from Russia to Heilongjiang province in China's northeast. China just passed Japan to rank as world's second-largest oil importer behind the United States.

Beijing and Moscow are also integrating their electricity grids. Late last month the China State Grid Corp announced plans to increase imports of Russian electricity fivefold by 2010.

In its relentless quest to secure future oil supplies "at the source", China has also moved into traditional US, British and French oil domains in Africa. In addition to being the major developer of Sudan's oil pipeline, which ships some 7% of total China oil imports, Beijing has been more than active in West Africa, the source of vast fields of highly prized low-sulfur oil.

Since the creation of the China-Africa Forum in 2000, China has scrapped tariffs on 190 imported goods from 28 of the least developed African countries, and canceled $1.2 billion in debt.

Indicative of the way China is doing an end-run around the Western-controlled International Monetary Fund among African states, China's Export-Import Bank recently gave a $2 billion soft loan to Angola. In return, the Luanda government gave China a stake in oil exploration in shallow waters off the coast. The loan is to be used for infrastructure projects. In contrast, US interest in war-torn Angola has rarely gone beyond the well-fortified oil enclave of Cabinda, which ExxonMobil along with Shell Oil have dominated until recently. That is apparently about to change with the growing Chinese interest.

Chinese infrastructure projects under way in Angola include railways, roads, a fiber-optic network, schools, hospitals, offices and 5,000 units of housing developments. A new airport with direct flights from Luanda to Beijing is also planned.

Indirectly, through its support of the Sudanese government, China is also a contender in a high-stakes game of potential regime change in neighboring, oil-rich Chad. This year, World Bank president Paul Wolfowitz was forced to back down from plans to cut off World Bank aid because of the threat of an oil-export cutoff by Chad. ExxonMobil is currently the major oil company active in Chad. But Sudan backs Chadian rebels, who were only prevented from toppling the notoriously corrupt and unpopular regime of President Idriss Deby by the 1,500 French soldiers propping up the regime. Washington has joined with Paris in backing Deby.

Sudan has involved Chinese, rather than Western, corporations in exploiting its oilfields, largely as a result of misconceived US sanctions imposed in 1997, which blocked US oil companies from doing business in Sudan. A new Sudan-backed regime in Chad would jeopardize the Chad-Cameroon pipeline and Western oil firms. One can imagine China just might be willing to step into such a vacuum and help Chad develop its oil, especially if the lion's share went to China.

Immediately after his humiliating diplomatic visit to Washington in April, President Hu went on to Nigeria, Africa's largest oil producer and long regarded by Washington as in its "oil sphere of interest". In Nigeria, Hu signed a deal whereby the African country will give China four oil-drilling licenses in exchange for a commitment to invest $4 billion in infrastructure.

China will buy a controlling stake in Nigeria's 110,000-barrel-per-day Kaduna oil refinery and build railway and power stations, as well as take a 45% stake in developing Nigeria's OML-130 offshore oil and gas field, referred to by the chairman of China National Overseas Oil Corp as "an oil and gas field of huge interest ? located in one of the world's largest oil and gas basins".

Almost all of Nigeria's current oil production is controlled by Western multinationals. But the situation there will also soon change in China's favor. Similar soft infrastructure loans or energy investment offers are being made to Gabon, Ivory Coast, Liberia and Equatorial Guinea. The curious charge against China of "not playing by the rules" and "trying to secure energy at the source" begins to assume real dimension when these and Russia's recent energy moves are taken as a totality.

Whither Washington?
It's little wonder that some Washington hawks are getting alarmed. Suddenly, the world of potential "enemies" is no longer restricted to the Islam-centered "war on terror". Leading neo-conservative ideologue Robert Kagan wrote a prominent opinion article recently in the Washington Post. Kagan is privy to pretty high-level thinking in Washington, presumably. His wife, Victoria Nuland, worked as Vice President Richard Cheney's deputy national security adviser until being named US ambassador to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

Kagan declared, in reference to Russia and China, "Until now the liberal West's strategy has been to try to integrate these two powers into the international liberal order, to tame them and make them safe for liberalism. If, instead, China and Russia are going to be sturdy pillars of autocracy over the coming decades, enduring and perhaps even prospering, then they cannot be expected to embrace the West's vision of humanity's inexorable evolution toward democracy and the end of autocratic rule."

Kagan charged that China and Russia have emerged as the protectors of "an informal league of dictators" that, according to Kagan, currently includes the leaders of Belarus, Uzbekistan, Myanmar, Zimbabwe, Sudan, Venezuela, Iran and Angola, among others around the world, who, like the leaders of Russia and China themselves, resist any efforts by the West to interfere in their domestic affairs, either through sanctions or other means.

"The question is what the United States and Europe decide to do in response," wrote Kagan.

Ministers are meeting at a time of increased stock market volatility, and they were expected to debate the underlying reasons for this. The meeting is laying the groundwork for the summit of G8 leaders which will take place in July in St Petersburg.

The BBC's Damian Grammaticas in the city says the ministers will aim to tackle the issues that could undermine global growth, such as concerns that rising inflation will prompt central banks to increase interest rates. Economists also worry that the huge US trade deficit - and corresponding surpluses in China, Japan and some oil producing countries - might cause sharp falls in the US dollar and wider economic problems as a result.

'Oil blackmail'

But one of the most serious concerns is energy, our correspondent adds. Questions are being asked whether sources of oil and gas are secure and whether the high price of oil - about $70 (£38) a barrel - is a threat.

Russia now rivals Saudi Arabia as the world's largest energy exporter, but there have been concerns about relying on it as an energy supplier since it turned off gas supplies to Ukraine last winter. Western nations say Russia should open up its own energy resources and pipelines because more transparency and more competition will ensure cheaper, stable supplies.

Russia says it is a reliable partner and wants to buy energy distribution networks in Europe. The ministers are also meeting counterparts and officials from Australia, Brazil, China, India, Nigeria and South Korea for discussions on global trade.

They are expected to issue a communique later on Saturday.

The baby girl was conceived through artificial insemination, and was selected in a Brussels laboratory to become a compatible donor of bone marrow for her 6-year-old brother.

"Although it is not prudent to criticize the subjective intention of the parents who have suffered and rejoiced with the cure of their son, it must be recognized that the technique of 'medicine babies' constitutes a worrying form of eugenics," stated the document.

"For this 'medicine baby' girl to be born, Mrs. Hilde van de Velde's Brussels laboratory deliberately produced 20 to 30 human embryos for the purpose of selecting them," the bishops said. "One of them had the good fortune to survive. But the rest were eliminated and destroyed as vulgar merchandise."

The document explained that the practice is inadmissible for two reasons.

First, because we are faced with "human embryos voluntarily produced and eliminated."

The message of the bishops continued: "A noble end does not justify killing embryos, which are individuals of the human species. Here the embryo is not treated as an end: It is used as an instrument and considered as merchandise.

"This practice is a regression of humanism, which is particularly insidious as it camouflages with the emotion aroused by the sick child and the parents' suffering."

Second, the letter stated, the selection of human beings is an act of eugenics.

"Eugenics is an odious practice, which consists in selecting the children that will be born according to utilitarian criteria that does not respect their intrinsic dignity," the bishops wrote.

"In this case, an exterior demand, medical and technical, decides who deserves to live and who deserves to die," the message said.

The note added: "This embryo deserved to live because it is genetically compatible with the recipient of the bone marrow, while the other numerous embryos were killed for the sole reason of not having the required characteristics."

A £600m drop in overall exports was one of the main factors behind the fall. But despite the overall drop, exports to Europe rose 2.5% to £2.37bn. Meanwhile, analysts blamed the strength of sterling for the fall in exports.

A higher pound makes UK exports more expensive in overseas markets, and the pound has been strengthening recently, especially against the US dollar.

'Encouraging'

Despite the widening deficit analysts said signs from Europe proved to be "encouraging" "The figures show that the UK is beginning to feel the effect of stronger eurozone growth," said Dominic Bryant of BNP Paribas.
"Export growth to the eurozone countries has surged to about 30% year on year from only 12.4% percent at the end of 2005."

But analysts warned that rising demand from UK consumers could continue to drive imports higher, while competition in the export market from other countries would also have an effect.

"A further widening in the goods deficit might be expected going forward to the extent that world trade continues to expand rapidly, particularly with UK export share losing out to the likes of emerging Asia," said George Buckley, chief UK economist at Deutsche Bank.

After Friday morning prayers, Sheikh Jarrah Kada, 42, sporting a thick salt-and-pepper beard, gathers with his companions at a friend's house to drink tea.
Sitting on plastic garden chairs under the shade of a giant hazelnut tree, they discuss the death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, al-Qaeda's leader in Iraq, who was killed in a US air strike on Wednesday.

One of the men leafs through the al-Dustur newspaper, a Jordanian daily, which carries a picture of Zarqawi's bloated face on the front page.

For Sheikh Kada, wearing a pale blue prayer cap, Zarqawi's death is a reason to celebrate. But not because the Sheikh sees him as a terrorist - indeed, quite the opposite.

He regards Zarqawi as a hero, a martyr who died in the name of Islam. "He was a great leader - he fought for Islam," says Sheikh Kada, drawing nods of approval from the 10 men sitting in the circle. "I'm happy that he is dead because he is now going to heaven."

City of jihad

Sheikh Kada is the local leader of the Salafi branch of Islam - an austere form of Islam that advocates Sharia Islamic law and preaches the duty of jihad.
Set in rolling hills just outside the Jordanian capital, this historic city has gained a reputation as a hotbed of Islamic fundamentalism with a tendency to send its sons to take part in the Iraqi insurgency.

An agricultural engineer, the sheikh says he knows of "tens" of young men from the city who have followed Zarqawi's path and gone to Iraq to fight as insurgents.

The last jihadist he knew from Salt was killed during an attempt to try to free women from Iraq's notorious Abu Ghraib prison in 2003.

For Sheikh Kada and his friends, many wearing white flowing robes, jihad is an honourable cause - warranted both in Iraq and elsewhere in the Middle East. It is a fight against what they see as injustices committed against Muslims.

"America must leave all the places it occupies in the Middle East because it is killing our women and children," the sheikh says. "The Jews must also leave Israel and give back the land to the Palestinians."

Destination Iraq

The men bristle at the idea that they are in any way extremist. "We are true believers in Islam," says Abu Roman, 55, an accountant. "Islam is not terrorism. I don't kill Americans in America, I don't kill the British in Britain, and I don't kill the Chinese in China. I just want the Arab lands to be free and Islamic."

The flow of jihadists from Salt into Iraq has been staunched by the Jordanian authorities in the last two years.
But the men say that there are many volunteers ready to go and perform jihad across the border. Sheikh Kada insists he has never persuaded anyone to go and fight Jihad in Iraq. "Jihad is here," he says poking his chest with his index finger.

Throughout the hour-long conversation, Abdel Rahman Abdullah, 16, wearing a white Versace T-shirt, listens attentively. Asked if he would to go to Iraq and be a jihadist like Zarqawi, he barely pauses for thought.

"I'd be ready tomorrow," he says.

Viktor Khristenko, Russian's energy minister and guardian of 5pc of the world's oil reserves, declared that motorists and business would have to learn to live with expensive fuel because "the era of cheap hydrocarbons is over". He also made it clear that any intervention by EU states if Russian firms sought to buy their European rivals would be regarded as unfriendly.

He was speaking shortly after the Chancellor, Gordon Brown, indicated that any bid by Gazprom, the Russian gas giant, for Centrica, the British Gas parent, would be treated as a political rather than commercial move.

Russia with its huge oil and gas reserves has been one of the main beneficiaries of soaring oil price and shares the industry consensus that there is little prospect of relief. Mr Khristenko said: "Forecasting is a thankless task in hydrocarbons, but one can say with certainty that the era of cheap hydrocarbons is over."

Mr Khristenko, appointed energy minister by President Putin in 2004, said EU governments should stand back from the merger and acquisition activity in the energy sector which is sweeping Europe.

Speaking to The Daily Telegraph yesterday, he said: "The less political issues there are in this area, the easier and calmer it will be for suppliers and consumers and businesses." In today's global market, a firm's nationality was increasingly irrelevant, he said.

"We have global companies - it can be hard to pinpoint where a company comes from. BP is considered a British company and in America it is an American company. There is nothing contradictory in that because its assets are spread all over the world." Russia was intent on "the expansion of our own participation in others' assets".

He understood the nervousness about Russia's increasing influence - by 2030 nearly two thirds of the EU's gas needs will come from Russia. "If dependency on Russia is not good then one needs to move out of this dependency," he said. "So it is legitimate to encourage Russian participation in other markets like China, Japan and the USA."

Last winter he turned off the taps to Ukraine. Such a situation was unlikely to befall the UK. "Nobody should worry about gas supplies from Russia. None of our contracts have ever been broken. This did not happen, this does not happen and this will not happen."

He denied Russia was using energy dominance as a "weapon". British firms had nothing to fear about expanding in Russia, despite the politically motivated break-up of the Yukos oil group. Times had changed with 50pc of Gazprom now owned by outside shareholders, and the flotation of Rosneft in London later this year.

He pointed to the Putin administration's relaxed view of the steel merger between France's Arcelor and Russia's Severstal.

Reservoir levels are at a 10-year low for June, and the country is entering a summer season in which little rainfall is expected, according to figures from the state news agency EFE.

The drought is spread unevenly across the country, with the Atlantic-facing north still well watered while areas in the south-east have extreme shortages.

The worst-hit areas are the basins of the Segura and Júcar rivers in the south-east. Reservoir levels are down to 16% and 21% respectively, according to Spain's environment ministry.
That means that growth areas for tourism, such as the provinces of Murcia, Almeria, Alicante and Valencia, will be hit hardest. But the Costa del Sol, on the Mediterranean coast, has reported it will not experience serious water problems this year after the region's major reservoir was filled to overflowing by recent rains.

Last month, the environment ministry ordered €45m (£31m) be spent on anti-drought measures, including improved pumping from underground wells.

This is the second year of drought in Spain. Experts have predicted it may last between four and six years.

In April, the national meteorological institute warned that the country was heading for its worst drought since 1947.

More than 90% of Spain's eastern seaboard, from Tarragona in the north to Almeria in the south, is at risk from desertification, according to environment ministry figures published by El País newspaper yesterday.

For the moment, China remains the most populous nation, with 1.3 billion inhabitants, followed by India, which is home to 1.1 billion.

But India's higher fertility rate means the gap is narrowing and the UN expects it to overtake China before 2030.

Both countries are also experiencing rapid growth in their urban populations.

In China, the number of people in towns and cities is likely to exceed the number in the countryside by 2015.

India and China have to face the challenge of providing for their ageing populations, just as many Western nations do.

As people live longer and fertility decreases, there will be millions more people in retirement and fewer workers to support them.

It has been suggested that China will have to ease its strict one child policy to overcome the problem.

In India, where only 10% of the workforce is covered by formal pension schemes, there are questions over how the elderly will be supported.

Some experts say such problems could hamper the nations' economic growth

China's emergence as a world economic power follows years of expansion, with growth of 9% or more the norm.

It is a major exporter and may now be the world's fourth largest economy, having overtaken Italy and possibly the UK and France.

India has also seen dramatic growth - of more than 7% a year - and is the recipient of much foreign investment.

Figures from the Economist Intelligence Unit suggest the US will remain the largest economy in real terms.

But on a measure based on purchasing power, China could overtake the US by 2020.

Economic, social and environmental problems are a concern in India and China.

Vast wealth gaps exist, with the majority of people left on the margins of the nations' rapid economic growth. Social discontent has affected both.

Air and water quality is a concern in both countries. Many of the world's most polluted cities are in China.

Despite such problems, however, it is suggested that continued growth will drive up living standards for the populations as a whole.

Life expectancy is continuing to rise and infant mortality is falling. Access to education has improved, as has literacy.