In a speech in Bangalore yesterday, Mr Brown gave details of the foreign policy he plans to pursue when he becomes prime minister, as is almost certain this year. Making his first visit to India, he said that the post Second World War institutions had to be made fit for the 21st century. He outlined plans to overhaul the UN, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the Group of Eight (G8) industrialised countries, the EU and Nato.

He also promised to take the pressure off British troops by insisting that other Nato countries do more to help in hotspots such as Afghanistan. He pledged continuity to Mr Blair's policies but, in a change of tone, emphasised the importance of working multinationally rather than unilaterally.

He told an audience of Indian and British industrialists: The post-1945 system of international institutions built for a world of sheltered economies and just 50 states is not yet broken, but for a world of 200 states and an open globalisation, urgently in need of modernisation and reform. He said that he would work to ensure that the new world order would be in Britain's interests. We can help to build things and shape this new world order and shape it in a way that is good for Britain and British values.

The UN should be reformed to reflect the growing power of Asia, and Mr Brown insisted that he strongly backed India's bid to join the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, which have the right to veto all resolutions. The IMF would have to work to pre-empt financial crises rather than respond to them; the World Bank shift focus from purely development to promoting renewable forms of energy.

The Chancellor called for the stalled world trade talks to be restarted and condemned rising protectionism in America and Europe. He said that the EU would have to do more to embrace globalisation, rather than shut it out, saying that it would have to move from an inward-looking union the union of a trade-bloc Europe to outward-looking internationalists, the union of a global Europe .

Labour is drawing up plans for Mr Brown to face a formal ballot to confirm him as Labour leader, even if no one challenges him to replace Mr Blair (Philip Webster, Political Editor, writes).
This would avoid the need for him to kick his heels while the party elects a deputy leader, senior party sources said last night.

The British Government is keen to avoid holding a referendum on the constitution, despite Mr Blair's pledge three years ago to do so. Under the German timetable a referendum would coincide with the next general election and cause problems for Mr Blair's successor.

Mrs Merkel has announced private consultations over the next few months with the 18 countries that ratified the proposed constitutional treaty and the eight that did not to establish every nation's demands. A senior British official told The Times that the Government will argue that the EU is working well within its existing treaties and does not need a constitution nor a fresh round of referendums. The only way to avoid that would be to scrap the idea of a constitution or to present a dramatically slimmed-down treaty that makes technical changes in voting arrangements to reflect Europe's expansion from 15 to 27 nations.

The British position is at loggerheads with Mrs Merkel's dream of restoring the bulk of the rejected document, including sections that would create a European foreign minister and end the British veto in home affairs and justice policy.

The British official said: Europe is not broken. Decisions are being taken every month. Legislation is going through we have just had one of the most ambitious proposals announced for climate change. So you cannot say Europe's future hangs on another bout of institutional reform. The British position was last night complicated when Ségolène Royal, the French Socialist presidential candidate, vowed to hold a referendum on whatever new constitutional treaty emerged from the German process.

If she wins, the next prime minister, likely to be Gordon Brown, will struggle to avoid a referendum, even if he is able to argue that Mr Blair's 2004 promise to hold one no longer applies. The British source added: I do not think it is in Europe's interests to have another round of referenda. We all know what a shock to the system it was to have the French and Dutch votes. Why would you go back into it? If you lose one or two of these you are straight back into the crisis you have just tried to climb out of.

William Hague, the Shadow Foreign Secretary, said: It appears that the Government is saying one thing in the House of Commons and another in Brussels. Only yesterday Geoff Hoon [the Europe Minister] reiterated the Government's commitment to a referendum. Now we learn that it is not so committed.

Other crops, including avocados and strawberries, also have suffered damage in the cold snap, agricultural officials said."This is one of those freezes that, unfortunately, we'll all remember," said A.G. Kawamura, secretary of the California Department of Food and Agriculture.The latest freeze will likely surpass the damage done by a three-day cold snap in December 1998 that destroyed 85 percent of California's citrus crop, a loss valued at $700 million, Kawamura said.

Overnight temperatures dropped into the teens again early Monday in parts of the San Joaquin Valley, where many of the state's oranges and lemons are grown, according to the National Weather Service. The subfreezing conditions came after a weekend of record lows.Growers should expect the mercury to dip into the mid-20s until at least Wednesday night, National Weather Service meteorologist Daniel Harty said.

Citrus growers already have lost between 50 percent and 75 percent of their crops, said Philip LoBue, a farmer and chairman of California Citrus Mutual, a 2,000-member trade organization."When you're already cutting ice within the oranges, you know those are gone," LoBue said.

Growers hastened to pick as much fruit as possible before the chilly weather hit Friday, but an industry labor shortage meant much of the $960 million crop went unharvested, LoBue said.The full impact of the freeze would not be known until inspectors check fruit for damage, agricultural officials said. In the meantime, fruit packers were asked to keep produce harvested during the freeze on hold for five days to monitor for quality problems and keep damaged fruit off store shelves.

After a weeklong freeze in 1990, the industry took two years to recover, said Joel Nelsen, president of California Citrus Mutual.

Not since the darkest days of the Cold War has the Bulletin, which covers global security issues, felt the need to place the minute hand so close to midnight. The decision to move it came after BAS directors and affiliated scientists held discussions to reassess the idea of doomsday and what posed the most grievous threats to civilisation.

Growing global nuclear instability has led humanity to the brink of a "Second Nuclear Age," the group concluded, and the threat posed by climate change is second only to that posed by nuclear weapons.
"These environmentally driven threats - 'threats without enemies' - should loom as large in the political perspective as did the East/West political divide during the Cold War era."

A number of alarming nuclear trends led to a statement by the Bulletin that "the world has not faced such perilous choices" since the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The worries include Iran's nuclear ambitions, North Korea's detonation of an atomic bomb, the presence of 26,000 launch-ready weapons by America and Russia, and the inability to secure and halt the international trafficking of nuclear materials such as highly enriched uranium and plutonium.

A less immediate threat, but included in the assessment, is the one posed by emerging life science technologies, such as synthetic biology and genetic modification. While the technology had the potential to alleviate the climate warming effects of burning coal, its development raised the spectre that nuclear materials would be available for nefarious ends as well, the board argued.

"The important point is that this organisation, which for 60 years has been monitoring and warning us about the nuclear threat, now recognises climate change as a threat that deserves the same level of attention," he said.

Both the nuclear menace and a runaway greenhouse effect were the result of technology whose control had slipped from humans' grasp, the BAS directors said.

The swastika is a cross with its arms bent at right angles to either the right or left. In geometric terms, it is known as an irregular icosagon or 20-sided polygon. The word is derived from the Sanskrit "svastika" and means "good to be". In Indo-European culture it was a mark made on people or objects to give them good luck.

It has been around for thousands of years, particularly as a Hindu symbol in the holy texts, to mean luck, Brahma or samsara (rebirth). It can be clockwise or anti-clockwise and the way it points in all four directions suggests stability. Sometimes it features a dot between each arm.

Nowadays it is commonly seen in Indian artwork and current and ancient Hindu architecture, and in the ruins of the ancient city of Troy. It has also been used in Buddhism and Jainism, plus other Asian, European and Native American cultures.

he British author Rudyard Kipling, who was strongly influenced by Indian culture, had a swastika on the dust jackets of all his books until the rise of Nazism made this inappropriate. It was also a symbol used by the scouts in Britain, although it was taken off Robert Baden-Powell's 1922 Medal of Merit after complaints in the 1930s.

The Finnish Air Force also used it as its official symbol in World War II, and it still appears on medals, but it had no connection with the Nazi use. It is rarely seen on its own in Western architecture, but a design of interlocking swastikas is part of the design of the floor of the cathedral of Amiens, France.

Swastika is also a small mining town in northern Ontario, Canada, about 580 kilometres north of Toronto. Attempts by the government of Ontario to change the town's name during World War II were rejected by residents.

But it is its association with the National Socialist German Workers Party in the 1930s which is etched on the minds of Western society. Before Hitler, it was used in about 1870 by the Austrian Pan-German followers of Schoenerer, an Austrian anti-Semitic politician.

Its Nazi use was linked to the belief in the Aryan cultural descent of the German people. They considered the early Aryans of India to be the prototypical white invaders and hijacked the sign as a symbol of the Aryan master race. The Nazi party formally adopted the swastika - what they called the Hakenkreuz, the hooked cross - in 1920. This was used on the party's flag , badge, and armband.

In Mein Kampf, Adolf Hitler wrote: "I myself, meanwhile, after innumerable attempts, had laid down a final form; a flag with a red background, a white disk, and a black swastika in the middle. After long trials I also found a definite proportion between the size of the flag and the size of the white disk, as well as the shape and thickness of the swastika."

The country's state-run media has been using the occasion to hail the merits of the government's one child policy. Rights groups overseas have criticised the policy as coercive and draconian. China's population is expected to increase by about 10 million a year, hitting a peak of 1.46 billion in the 2030s.

The newborn baby's overjoyed father was quoted as saying his son would be blessed his whole life. Planners in the world's most populous country are not so happy. One official was quoted in the China Daily as saying that 1.3 billion citizens would put great pressure on the economy, society, resources and the environment.

State media are boasting that the strict family planning policy meant the 1.3 billion mark was reached four years later than predicted. The paper admitted the one child policy had been badly applied in some places.
It did not give any details, though rights groups overseas accuse the authorities of forcing women to have abortions.

The traditional preference for boys has also led to female foetuses being aborted. One hundred and twenty boys are now registered as born for every 100 girl babies. Yet the newspaper said the one child policy should continue to be endorsed.

Outside the famous façade of the treasurer's house, camel traders mixed with horsemen. Nabateans in traditional costume set up a series of market stands. A few hundred metres away, a company of legionnaires marched into the Roman auditorium to display their skills. Then on came the gladiators, for a fight to the death. It was all part of Petra's bid to win a place among the New Seven Wonders of the World in a competition that is currently in progress.

They call it the "rose red city half as old as time". The slogan could have been written by an advertising copywriter from Madison Avenue. Actually the line was coined by one of the earliest tourists to visit, after the city was rediscovered by the outside world in the early 19th century. Ever since then, visitors have been coming from around the globe. They cannot fail to be staggered by the magical combination of man-made and natural beauty.

Your breath is taken away the moment you emerge from the narrow gorge that forms the main entrance. In front of you, the majestic classical façade of the treasurer's house, carved out of the rock face. Down the spectacular valley the wonders continue. The 4,000-seat auditorium, also hewn from the rich red sandstone. Tombs and places of worship towering down from the cliff faces on either side. All this was made possible by the engineering skills of the Nabateans, more than 2,000 years ago. They channelled water down a series of ceramic-lined culverts, making life possible in this arid hideaway.

For the Jordanians involved in the re-enactment, that all means that Petra is a natural choice for the New Seven Wonders of the World. "Of course," explained Adam al-Samady, one of the "Romans" on parade. "It's unbelievable. To me, of course, it is just one of a kind." Jordan is taking this competition very seriously. It is more than just a bit of fun. The tourist trade here has been hit hard by recent troubles across the Middle East, devastated even according to many in the trade that I have spoken to.

Adam al-Samady explained the importance of winning the contest. "It is very important, because Jordan is a small country whose whole economy is based on tourism," he said. "Unfortunately during these past five years with the war in Iraq, Palestine, Lebanon, tourism has been completely dead. If Petra becomes one of the seven wonders of the world, I think there will be a big change." It is a tough contest, though. Petra is on a shortlist of 21, but every one of the other contenders would also be worth a place in the last seven: the Taj Mahal, the Pyramids, Stonehenge, Machu Picchu, to name but four.

The result is to be announced on 7 July: which just happens to be 7/7/07....

Google Earth states it demarcates its maps according to international standards, but no Israeli-Palestinian negotiations even the failed Camp David final-status negotiations in 2000 ever placed the Temple Mount within Palestinian territory.

The United Nations considers eastern sections of Jerusalem, recaptured by Israel during the 1967 Six Day War, to be "disputed." The Israeli Knesset officially annexed the entire city of Jerusalem as its capital in 1980.
"Google Earth is reinforcing lies," Rabbi Chaim Rechman, director of the international department at Israel's Temple Institute, told WND.

"The Muslims have engaged in a systemic campaign to re-write history and erase any traces of Judaism from the Temple Mount in total disregard to all actual archeological and historic evidence," he continued." Now Google Earth has given in to this campaign."

Mort Klein, president of the Zionist Organization of America, accused Google Earth of encouraging terrorism.
"When the Arab terrorists see Google Earth's falsification of geographic realities, they will be appeased and encouraged because these kinds of lying maps send the message that their disinformation campaigns and their terrorism work," Klein told WND.

Indeed, Abu Nasser, second-in-command of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades terror group, said he was "thrilled" by Google Earth's depictions.
"Congratulations to Google Earth," Abu Nasser told WND.
"We congratulate Google and the American people in making this very important change in the Middle East.

The Al Aqsa Mosque (located on the Temple Mount) is part of Jerusalem, and Jerusalem is part of Palestine. If such a big institution like Google corrected these historical mistakes on maps, maybe we can bring about a change in the depictions of Palestine by the American media, which is controlled by the Zionists."

According to Abu Nasser, whose terror group says it is trying to liberate the Al Aqsa Mosque, the Jewish Temple "never existed." "At least not on the area Jews now call the Temple Mount.," he said. "Maybe a Temple existed somewhere, but not in Jerusalem. The Temple Mount exists only in the imaginations of the Jews and Americans."

Abu Nasser's Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades is the declared "military wing" of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah party. The Brigades, together with the Islamic Jihad terror group, has taken responsibility for every suicide bombing in Israel the past two years, including an attack in Tel Aviv in April that killed American teenager Daniel Wultz and nine Israelis.

The revelation's about Google Earth's Mideast map follow media reports this week insurgents in Iraq are using Google's satellite imagery to attack British bases and troops. Intelligence sources quoted by Britain's Daily Telegraph said raids of insurgents last week found printouts of Google satellite photographs of British bases, including details such as toiled blocks, Land Rover parking, and tented areas.

One of the photographs, taken of a hotel housing a British regiment, had the camp's longitude and latitude written on the back, the newspaper said. "This is evidence, as far as we are concerned, for planning terrorist attacks," an intelligence officer told The Daily Telegraph. "Who would otherwise have Google Earth imagery of one of our bases?"

In 2004, marine scientists estimated that industrial fleets have fished out at least 90 percent of all large ocean predators, including tuna, marlin, swordfish, sharks, cod, halibut, skates, and flounder, in just the past 50 years. With the depletion of wild fish schools, virtually all growth in the global catch today comes from farmed fish.

The developing world makes more money from seafood than from coffee, cocoa, tea, or any other agricultural commodity. Shrimp alone counts for 20 percent of global seafood trade. Today, fishers from developing countries catch three out of four wild fish (by weight). Many of the 200 million people who depend on fisheries for a living - fishing families, boat builders, fishmongers - cannot afford to eat the fish they catch and handle.

According to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, an average of 9.4 million hectares of forest (roughly the size of Portugal) was lost annually during the 1990s. Africa and the Caribbean had the highest rates of deforestation, each losing 0.8 percent of total forested area per year. Major logging countries also suffer from rapid deforestation: Indonesia loses nearly 2 million hectares of forest annually, while Brazil lost 2.3 million hectares of Amazon forest between August 2002 and 2003.
Deforestation remains a serious issue globally, since forests are crucial in regulating the planet's carbon and hydrological flows and provide a host of local environmental services. Land use changes primarily deforestation accounted for an estimated one-third of global carbon emissions between 1850 and 1998.

Average annual economic losses from such events have risen from $26 billion in the 1980s to $67 billion over the last decade.Average annual fatalities due to weather, meanwhile, jumped from 22,000 in the 1980s to 33,000 in the 1990s.

Castilla-Leon has some 2.1 million hectares of cultivated land and produces nearly a third of Spain's wheat and a quarter of its barley. "These plagues are cyclical and are stopped by snow and frost, but this year the voles are not disappearing. Quite the opposite.

They breed at a phenomenal rate," Donaciano Dujo, the regional president of farm union ASAJA. The voles eat the leaves of grain crops, the seeds of pulses and like to burrow under the roots of alfalfa. An ASAJA spokeswoman said there were reports that the number of vultures and eagles in the region had dropped, meaning there were fewer predators around.

Dujo said there were just too many voles for predators to cope with. "What people have been seeing is that a stork will come along and eat three or four voles, but then it's had enough." Farmers have alerted the regional government and asked for help in curbing the outbreak, Dujo said.

"It will permit us to underpin investments, above all in those countries whose governments are making efforts to liberate themselves from the (US) imperialist yoke," Chavez said. "This fund, my brother," the Venezuelan president said, referring affectionately to Ahmadinejad, "will become a mechanism for liberation. Death to US imperialism!" Chavez said.

Ahmadinejad, who is starting a tour of left-leaning countries in the region, called it a "very important" decision that would help promote "joint cooperation in third countries," especially in Latin America and Africa. It was not clear if both Chavez and Ahmadinejad were referring to investment in infrastructure, social and energy projects or other types of financing.

Chavez said on Saturday that Iran and Venezuela had agreed to back a further oil production cut in the cartel to stem a recent fall in crude prices.

Some critics of the SPP see it leading toward a breakdown of national sovereignty and representative government, fearing it will lead inexorably toward a European Union-style regionalization for North America.

"Now that we see books being published by SPP, how can anyone deny that the Bush administration is involved in a process of North American deep integration?" asks Jerome R. Corsi, author and WND columnist who is writing a book on the movement. "SPP is creating North American regulations that replace and supersede U.S. regulations in a wide range of policy areas. Just the three-language format of the full colour production is enough to let readers know that the Bush administration considers our appropriate regulatory scope to be North American in nature. We no longer have a U.S. energy policy, for instance, we have a North American energy policy."

Corsi, known as one of the chief critics of plans for a North American Union, said:
"Since 2001 and the formation of the Prosperity Partnership with Mexico, trilateral working group activity in North America has been gaining momentum. After the declaration of the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America in Waco, Texas, on March 23, 2005, we have a full-fledged shadow bureaucracy that is setting up the regulatory structure for what could easily evolve into a full regional government."

"Despite the advanced stage of SPP working group activity," Corsi said, "few U.S. congressmen or senators have any idea that SPP working groups are producing a North American regulatory structure. I still find myself going into the offices of congressmen and senators on Capitol Hill and having to work with staff to show them SPP websites they never have seen before, even though some of their bosses sit on committees that are supposed to be responsible for oversight of the SPP activities I am showing them for the first time."

"SPP is one of the best kept secrets in Washington," Corsi told WND, "even though SPP has a website, there are SPP websites embedded in the websites of many government agencies, and now SPP is publishing full-color books in three languages. Yet, nobody in Washington has bothered to hold a single SPP hearing. Meanwhile, we are being led into regional government by bureaucrats whose mission is to create North American policies, not to worry about the sovereignty of the United States."

The SPP website contains somewhat different versions of the 2005 prosperity agenda and security agenda, as well as the 2006 prosperity agenda and the security agenda.
"This is no conspiracy," Corsi continued. "Conspiracies are conducted in secret. Now, SPP even publishes books documenting the North American deep integration agenda the SPP working groups are advancing day-by-day."

The data consolidate news last month that the value of euro notes in circulation had overtaken the dollar for the first time. Outstanding debt issued in the euro was worth the equivalent of $4,836bn at the end of 2006 compared with $3,892bn for the dollar, according to International Capital Market Association data.

Outstanding euro-denominated debt accounts for 45 per cent of the global market, compared with 37 per cent for the dollar. New issuance last year accounted for 49 per cent of the global total. That represents a startling turnabout from the pattern seen in recent decades, when the US bond market dwarfed its European rival: as recently as 2002, outstanding euro-denominated issuance represented just 27 per cent of the global pie, compared with 51 per cent for the dollar.

The rising role of the euro comes amid growing issuance by debt-laden European governments. However, the main factor is a rise in euro-denominated issuance by companies and financial institutions.One factor driving this is that European companies are moving away from their traditional reliance on bank loans and embracing the capital markets to a greater degree.

Another is that the creation of the single currency in 1999 has permitted development of a deeper and more liquid market, consolidated by a growing eurozone.This has made it more attractive for issuers around the world to raise funds in the euro market. And, more recently, the trend among some Asian and Middle Eastern countries to diversify their assets away from the dollar has further boosted this trend.

René Karsenti, executive president of ICMA, said: It is the stable interest rates in Europe that have helped and the fact that [the euro] has strengthened and shown resilience. Since the start of 2003, the European Central Bank's main interest rate has fluctuated only 1.5 percentage points, ranging from a low of 2 per cent in the middle of that year to 3.5 per cent, its rate today.

In comparison, the Fed funds rate, the main US interest rate, has fluctuated 4.25 percentage points, ranging from 1 per cent in the middle of 2003 to 5.25 per cent, its level today. The euro has also risen to trade around $1.30 against the dollar, from around parity three years ago. Sterling issuance has grown in the past three years, reinforcing its attraction as a niche currency among some investors. The yen, in comparison, has fallen out of favour.

Overall, international capital markets have doubled in size in terms of bond issuance during the past six years.