Water is already recycled in places like Singapore and the UK, but the idea is still unpopular in Australia. But the country is currently suffering from a severe drought - the worst on record. Last week Prime Minister John Howard declared water security to be the biggest challenge currently facing Australia, and he announced a A$10bn ($7.7bn; £3.9bn) package to tackle the problem.

Mr Beattie said that falling water levels had left his state administration with no option but to introduce recycled water in south-eastern Queensland, starting from next year. "We're not getting rain; we've got no choice," he told ABC radio. "These are ugly decisions, but you either drink water or you die. There's no choice. It's liquid gold, it's a matter of life and death," he said. Mr Howard supported Mr Beattie's comments, telling a Sydney radio station: "I've advocated recycling for a long time... I am very strongly in favour of recycling, and Mr Beattie is right."

The report's lead author, Munira Mirza, blamed government policy for a growing split between Muslims and non-Muslims. She said ministers should engage with Muslims as citizens. The survey of more than 1,000 Muslims from different age groups in the UK, found:

71% of over-55s compared with 62% of 16 to 24-year-olds feel they have as much, if not more, in common with non-Muslims in Britain than with Muslims abroad

19% of over-55s compared with 37% of 16 to 24-year-olds would prefer to send their children to Islamic state schools

17% of over-55s compared with 37% of 16 to 24-year-olds would prefer living under Sharia law than British law

28% of over-55s compared with 74% of 16 to 24-year-olds prefer Muslim women to choose to wear the hijab

3% of over-55s compared with 13% of 16 to 24-year-olds admire organisations like al-Qaeda that are prepared to fight the West

Ms Mirza said the government should stop emphasising differences between Muslims and non-Muslims. "The emergence of a strong Muslim identity in Britain is, in part, a result of multicultural policies implemented since the 1980s, which have emphasised difference at the expense of shared national identity. "Religiosity amongst younger Muslims is not about following their parents' cultural traditions, but rather, their interest in religion is more politicised. "Islamist groups have gained influence at local and national level by playing the politics of identity and demanding for Muslims the 'right to be different'."

Conservative leader David Cameron said the poll was extremely worrying. "It shows the extent to which multiculturalism has failed, because what the poll showed is that these young people feel more separated from Britain than their parents did," he told BBC News.

The UK, Czech Republic and Poland want the constitution replaced by a new, slimmed-down mini-treaty. French and Dutch voters rejected the constitution in referendums in 2005. Spain's Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos told the meeting in Madrid the constitution was "a magnificent document" that should be "complemented rather than carved up".

"Is the only way out of the constitutional impasse the wholesale dismantling of the constitutional treaty? By cutting it into little pieces?" he asked. The new constitution was drafted to streamline decision-making within the growing EU and would create a permanent president and foreign ministry.

The BBC's Oana Lungescu in Madrid says Spain now seems set on a collision course with opponents of the constitution. Belgium and Luxembourg have expressed views similar to Spain's. The German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, whose country holds the rotating EU presidency, aims to bring both camps together by June.
But our correspondent says that will not be easy.

Wary of dividing the EU even more, Germany only sent an observer to the Madrid meeting of "the friends of the constitution". Germany did back the constitution in a parliamentary vote, but has not yet formally ratified it. The countries represented in Madrid were: Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Estonia, Finland, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia and Spain.

The conservative contender in the French presidential race, Nicolas Sarkozy, was the first to call for a mini-treaty that would be ratified by parliament, not through another referendum.

A mini-treaty would cut the existing constitution into bits and preserve only the technical changes that would allow the EU to work more effectively and admit further new members.
The Europe ministers of Spain and Luxembourg, who organised the conference, say the countries that have approved the constitution - with a combined population of more than 270 million - want their voice to be heard.

In a joint article published in a number of European newspapers, Spain's Alberto Navarro and Luxembourg's Nicolas Schmit say that in today's globalised world "a united and capable Europe is more necessary than ever. "We cannot resign ourselves to Europe being no more than a huge market or a free trade area," they write.

"Be joyous my heart, miracles of the Messiah will soon be here," reads a poem used to conclude the first broadcast. "The scent of breaths of the One we know comes from near. Grieve not of sorrow and melancholy, as assured I was
? last night that a Savior will come, it's clear."

After the coming of the 12th imam, or Mahdi, "liberal democratic civilization" will be found only in "history museums," explained the program.

"Contrary to the views of western theoreticians, who usually depict an ambiguous and dark future for mankind, Muslim experts believe human history, despite its many ups and downs, has a very auspicious fate," explained the program. "Muslims believe hopes for the realization of such a happy ending for the world are called 'Awaiting Redemption,' and means waiting for man's problems to be solved by the Savior at the end of time. This awaiting influences many, and inspired them with activity and enthusiasm in confronting darkness and oppression for changing the existing situation."

This messianic figure will be a direct descendant of Muhammad, according to the broadcasts.

"In short, when he reappears, peace, justice and security will overcome oppression and deceit and one global government, the most perfect ever, will be established," it said.

The Mahdi will appear suddenly, according to the report, in Mecca. Though no one can know the day, Shiites believe, the report actually suggests possibilities in the Muslim calendar.

The Mahdi will lead a cataclysmic battle against a descendant of Muhammad's archenemy, Abu Sofyan, culminating in the cities of Kufa and Najaf. His enemy, though, is destroyed later in Jerusalem.

"Another beautiful moment of the Savior's appearance is the coming down of Prophet Jesus (PBUH) from heaven," says the report. "Hazrat Mahdi receives him courteously and asks him to lead the prayers. But Jesus says you are more qualified for this than me. We read in the book Tazkarat ol-Olia, 'the Mahdi will come with Jesus son of Mary accompanying him.' This indicates that these two great men are (sic) complement each other. Imam Mahdi will be the leader while Prophet Jesus will act as his lieutenant in the struggle against oppression and establishment of justice in the world. Jesus had himself given the tidings of the coming of God's last messenger and will see Mohammad's ideals materialize in the time of the Mahdi."
As WND reported last month, in a greeting to the world's Christians for the coming new year, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said he expects both Jesus and the Mahdi, to return and "wipe away oppression."

"I wish all the Christians a very happy new year and I wish to ask them a question as well," said Ahmadinejad, according to an Iranian Student News Agency report cited by YnetNews.com

"My one question from the Christians is: What would Jesus do if he were present in the world today? What would he do before some of the oppressive powers of the world who are in fact residing in Christian countries? Which powers would he revive and which of them would he destroy?" asked the Iranian leader.

"If Jesus were present today, who would be facing him and who would be following him?"

Ahmadinejad's mystical pre-occupation with the coming of the Mahdi is raising concerns that a nuclear-armed Islamic Republic could trigger the kind of global conflagration he envisions will set the stage for the end of the world.

The launcher is a version of the Shahab 3 missile that has a range of 800 to 1,000 miles, the magazine said, citing unidentified U.S. agencies. A missile of its kind could reach Saudi Arabia and as far west as Turkey, the report said.

Additionally, improvements in space launches could help Iran build an intercontinental ballistic missile with a range of almost 2,500 miles, according to the magazine.A satellite launch by Iran would likely increase concern by the United States and Europe about its strategic capabilities and intentions, the magazine said.

Iran has long been at odds with the United States and Europe, pushing ahead with plans to enrich uranium as part of what Tehran calls a peaceful energy program. The West has feared that Iran instead was trying to develop nuclear weapons.

London-based forecaster Tropical Storm Risk on Tuesday said the six-month season, which begins on June 1, was expected to bring 17 tropical storms, of which nine will strengthen into hurricanes with winds of at least 74 miles per hour .Four of those are expected to become more destructive "intense" hurricanes, TSR said.
But TSR said current and projected climate signals indicate that Atlantic basin and U.S. landfalling hurricane activity will be 75 percent above the 1950-2006 average in 2007.

TSR had predicted in December that Atlantic basin and U.S. landfalling hurricane activity would be just 60 percent above average this year. It raised the projected activity level because of the sudden dissipation in February of last year's El Nino weather phenomenon.

An unusual warming of the eastern Pacific waters, El Nino events tend to suppress Atlantic storm activity. Other experts, including hurricane forecast pioneer Dr. William Gray and his team at Colorado State University, have also warned that the 2007 hurricane season is likely to be busier-than-average.

The relative calm of last year's hurricane season, which forecasters had mistakenly predicted would be busy, came on the heels of a record 28 storms and 15 hurricanes in 2005 and only a slightly less furious season in 2004.

US military unveils heat-ray gun

The US military has given the first public display of what it says is a revolutionary heat-ray weapon to repel enemies or disperse hostile crowds.
Called the Active Denial System, it projects an invisible high energy beam that produces a sudden burning feeling, but is said to be harmless.

Military officials believe the gun could be used as a non-lethal way of making enemies surrender their weapons. Officials said there was wide-ranging military interest in the technology. "This is a breakthrough technology that's going to give our forces a capability they don't now have," defence official Theodore Barna told Reuters news agency. "We expect the services to add it to their tool kit. And that could happen as early as 2010."

US 'plans stealth shark spies'

Pentagon scientists are planning to turn sharks into "stealth spies" capable of tracking vessels undetected, a British magazine has reported.
They want to remotely control the sharks by implanting electrodes in their brains, The New Scientist says.

It says the aim is "to exploit sharks' natural ability to glide through the water, sense delicate electrical gradients and follow chemical trails".

US military looks to 'black ice'

The plastic-like substance, the brainchild of the US Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa), would be used to force slip-ups from enemies. The "polymer ice" would be designed for hot, arid environments, "as found in Iraq and Afghanistan", it said.

A spray-on "reversal agent" could be incorporated into boots and tyres to prevent friendly forces sliding around. In a document published on the agency's website, officials point out that "to get from point A to point B, one must have sufficient traction with the ground". Darpa believes a polymer-based compound could replicate the properties of black ice - a thin, translucent slippery coating, typically found on roads in winter - to reduce traction.

The villagers do not seem to see any link between their large appetite for firewood and the advancing sand dunes. They keep cutting down trees in the vicinity and using sun-dried branches as wood fuel or even as an income earner.

Further east in a village called Damasak, Sani Yunusa, 56, says the sand dunes were "not so strange". He claims he had witnessed something similar as a child. "The sand should not prevent people from cutting down trees as they have been doing for centuries," he says. "Desertification is just nature at work and it will reverse itself when it is ready."

But Mr Yunusa is no expert on desertification and the experts say that the march of the sand towards Nigeria's south has become almost irreversible. And the more trees villagers in Bulamadu and Damask cut down, the faster the sand dunes gallop towards the coastline to the country's south.

Earlier this month, Mr Bush announced the deployment of over 20,000 more troops in a bid to end the violence.
Site - a Washington-based organisation that analyses militant networks - posted the video and transcript on its website, but did not say how it obtained it. In the tape - 14 minutes of footage with English subtitles - Zawahiri said that Mr Bush's strategy in Iraq was going to fail.

"I ask him, why send 20,000 (troops) only - why not send 50,000 or 100,000?" he said. "Aren't you aware that the dogs of Iraq are pining for your troops' dead bodies?" He said that al-Qaeda and the Taleban were regaining control in Afghanistan, and called on all Muslims to bear arms or support those bearing arms to defend Islam. The message is the first apparent reaction by al-Qaeda to Mr Bush's planned "surge" in Iraq.

On 5 January, Zawahiri appeared in an audiotape posted on a website urging Somalia's Islamist militias to carry out attacks against Ethiopian troops.

He said he might have had to sanction the removal of a child from its natural family into the care of a gay couple. Mr McCormick said his request to avoid such cases had been refused. That left him with no option but to resign, he claims.

Mr McClintock, a member of the Christian People's Alliance council, said new rules on same-sex couples contradicted both his personal religious beliefs and his duty as a magistrate to put the child's welfare first.
Last year Mr McClintock, a former manager in the steel industry and now a self-employed logistics consultant, said he thought it was wrong for the government to use disadvantaged children as "guinea pigs".

He said placing them with gay couples was an "experiment in social science". The tribunal, which is expected to last three days, is due to begin in Sheffield. His case is to be heard as the Roman Catholic church mounts a campaign to be exempt from laws on adoption by gay couples.

Catholic leaders in England and Wales said its teaching prevented church adoption agencies placing children with homosexuals and they would have to close if bound by the rules.

In fact, in many cases, especially where the attacker is a woman and the student a male, such assaults are treated as a joke, with a hand-slap for the teacher, and some ribald locker room humor directed at the student.
WND has documented in recent months an alarming string of dozens of cases of female teacher-on-male student sexual assaults, but those are just part of the overall problem, Miller said.

Her volunteer group, called Stop Educator Sexual Abuse, Misconduct and Exploitation, often feels overwhelmed by the dearth of information, injuries to students, and obstacles posed by opponents such as the National Education Association.

But she says it's a do-or-die battle. "I won't give up trying. I have vowed to keep trying until we have good strong legislation to hold the perpetrators criminally responsible," she told WND.
She said the problem easily could be many times larger than the scandals involving Catholic Church priests molesting children, and the hundreds of millions of dollars in civil liabilities already determined in those cases.
"You are not mandated to send your children to church, but you are mandated by law to send your children to school," she said. "And, by God, schools better be mandated to keep them safe."

She's said she's confident of two things: the problem is bigger than most people want to realize, and there's very little being done to address it. "The U.S. Department of Education does not require any state to gather information on educators' misconduct with students. Only 17 of the states require that schools report to their own state Department of Education when a teacher resigns or is fired for these circumstances," Miller told WND.
And with so few requirements for reporting problems, the result is that offenders are not weeded out of the system, and in fact, many have been transferred and promoted even though their involvement in troubling situations is common knowledge, she said.

In one case, a school administrator had been in more than a dozen different school settings, with varying allegations of sexual misconduct in each case, before he finally was shut down, Miller said. And that happened only because the perpetrator drugged a student in order to assault him, and the student died of a drug overdose,

Even then, Miller said, it took the victim's family to hire a private investigator who assembled the background information in pursuit of a lawsuit over the death.
Even further, the established influences of teacher unions and other groups actually work to protect such offenders, sometimes making arrangements for a teacher caught in a sexual assault on a student to resign with a positive recommendation so they can move on the another district., she said.
In one case, a teacher caught stepping outside the law actually was paid damages to resign and move on.

"Such multitudes are indisposed by fevers in this country that farmers have difficulty gathering their harvest, the labourers having been almost every day carried out of the field incapable of work and many die." So wrote Bedfordshire poet William Cooper in the summer of 1783. Across the country, newspapers reported the presence of a thick smog, and a dull sun, "coloured like it has been soaked in blood".

The cloud first reached Britain on the 22 June 1783. In his Naturalist's Journal, Gilbert White reported: "The peculiar haze or smoky fog that prevailed in this island and even beyond its limits was a most extraordinary appearance, unlike anything known within the memory of man." The killer cloud lasted weeks, if not months, and engulfed much of Western Europe - as thousands of kilometres away in Iceland, the volcano Laki continued to erupt.

Millions of tonnes of toxic gas were carried by the prevailing winds across Scandinavia and eventually to Britain. The cloud contained sulphur dioxide and sulphuric acid which attacked the lungs of its victims, choking and killing men and women, rich and poor alike.
The events are better documented in Iceland where up to a third of the population died. Yet, incredibly, the British tragedy wrought by Laki has been largely forgotten.

Evidence now brought together by BBC Two's Timewatch makes clear the extent of the disaster. Panic and fear were widespread - as was death. But just how many died, no-one knew until recently.
Dr John Grattan of Aberystwyth University, Wales, has spent a decade scrutinising hundreds of local parish records looking for evidence. In total, he estimates Laki's killer cloud took the lives of 23,000 British men and women, making it the greatest natural disaster in modern British history. France and other countries were similarly hit.

And it could happen again. Iceland has 18 volcanoes that have been active in recent centuries, the greatest concentration anywhere on the planet. "There will be another one," says leading vulcanologist Professor Stephen Self, of the Open University, who has studied the Laki eruption. "It's difficult to predict what size it will be, but there will be future events like this from Iceland. "Ash clouds, gas clouds, sulphuric acid clouds from Iceland could sweep across Britain again."

Some 10.3 million farmers in 22 countries grew engineered crops on 252 million acres last year, a 13 percent increase over 2005, according to the report. About 9.3 million of those people were considered subsistence farmers.

The United States, Argentina and Brazil were the top three countries that grew genetically engineered crops last year, mostly soy. India tripled its acreage of genetically engineered cotton last year to 9.5 million acres.
In the United States, 80 percent of soy - a key ingredient in many packaged foods - and a similar percentage of cotton are genetically engineered. Some 80.5 million acres of biotech corn are planted - about 40 percent of the country's crop - though much of that is used for animal feed.

In all, about 136.5 million acres of the nation's 445 million acres of farmland was under biotech cultivation last year, an increase of 10 percent over 2005 plantings.
Clive James, head of the advocacy group that prepared the report, said he expected more genetically engineered corn seed to be planted this year because of the recent boom in ethanol production. Ethanol, which is primarily made from corn in the United States, is expected to get another boost next week during President Bush's State of the Union address.

The report was paid for by two philanthropic groups, the Rockefeller Foundation and Ibercaja, a Spanish bank. The advocacy group received funding from biotech companies.
So far, no one has introduced crops with added nutrients and other attributes that could fight hunger in the developing world, as the biotech industry often promises. What's more, few biotech versions of crops such as rice that are widely consumed in poor countries have been distributed on a large scale. The four most popular biotech crops are soy, corn, cotton and canola.

"No (biotech) crop on the market today offers benefits to the consumer in terms of quality or price, and to date these crops have done nothing to alleviate hunger or poverty in Africa or elsewhere," said Nnimmo Bassey, a spokesman for the anti-biotechnology advocacy group Friends of the Earth Africa in Nigeria. "The great majority of (biotech) crops cultivated today are used as high-priced animal feed to supply rich nations with meat."

But Ms Kelly, a devout Catholic and member of the Opus Dei sect, remains determined to include a loophole for her church in the Equality Act 2006 which comes into force this April. A spokeswoman for Ms Kelly, who has overall responsibility for equality, said the minister wanted to "protect the pool of prospective parents" and would be trying to find a "pragmatic way forward" this week.

The Catholic church has threatened to close its seven adoption agencies rather than comply with laws that forbid them to discriminate against gay couples.
The Prime Minister is supporting her efforts to water down new laws that are supposed to guarantee gay people equal rights to goods and services.

But Ms Kelly faces a humiliating defeat on the issue as senior ministers queue up to oppose what they regard as an unworkable and unfair loophole. Alan Johnson, the Secretary of State for Education, who refused Mr Blair's request to grant the exemption when he was responsible for the issue last year, has been joined by Jack Straw, David Miliband, Des Browne and Peter Hain. Blairite loyalists such as Tessa Jowell and Lord Falconer have expressed their dismay.

Angela Eagle, the vice-chairman of the Parliamentary Labour Party, said that the exemption would drive a "coach and horses" through laws designed to end anti-gay discrimination. Chris Bryant, MP for Rhondda, said the move would have the effect of denying vulnerable children "a loving home". Same-sex adoption was made legal in England and Wales in 2002 but Catholic agencies were allowed to turn away gay couples on the grounds that they were not married.

Of the 2,900 children put up for adoption last year, the agencies placed around 4 per cent. But they found homes for around a third of the "difficult-to-place" children. Ms Kelly argues it is these children that would suffer if Catholic couples were no longer encouraged to adopt by church-run agencies.

Gay campaigners argue, however, that gay parents are themselves more likely to adopt the most vulnerable children and nothing should be done to bar them from the system. Ms Kelly refuses to say whether she regards homosexuality as a sin. She has defended failing to vote for civil partnerships or gay adoption on the grounds that they are "issues of conscience".

Many parts of Australia have been hard-hit by the drought, described as the worst for more than 100 years.
Experts have warned that an army of snakes is on the move, looking for water. Driven by extreme thirst they have been discovered in gardens, bedrooms and even Australian shopping centres.

Hospitals have reported a rising number of snakebites. Toxicologists have said there have been 60 serious cases since September.