MONTREAL — Gold production will continue to fall, despite a brief boost in 2009 and soaring prices, as deposits are exhausted and new discoveries remain elusive, say miners.

In terms of production, "2009 is the outlier as far as the trend," Omar Jabara, spokesman for US-based Newmont Mining, the second-largest gold producer in the world, told AFP.

Overall, "it's a fact that gold production from mines has been in decline since 2001 and has gone roughly from 85 million ounces to about 75 million ounces a year," said Vincent Borg, spokesman for number one producer Barrick Gold.

"It sort of goes down about one million ounces every year and our forecast is that it will continue to decline despite the higher price" for gold nowadays, he said.

Almost everywhere, mineral deposits are being exhausted and new deposits are not being found fast enough to replace them, these experts explain.

South Africa, which was once at the vanguard of world production, saw a 9.3-percent drop in production year-over-year in the second quarter, according to its Chamber of Mines.

Globally, "it's just that the assets are not there anymore," Tonya Todd, a spokeswoman for Goldcorp, Canada's second biggest gold mining firm.

"Just because gold reached a new high today doesn't mean we can send a message to our 26 mines saying produce as much gold as you can today because they are already," said Borg.

"It's not like a water tap you can turn on and it comes right away."

Barrick and Newmont expect nevertheless to continue increasing production next year by seven percent and five to 10 percent, respectively. But long-term, it's downhill.

Omar Jabara explained that it takes from seven to 10 years to start production of a mine after finding an economically viable gold deposit.

And "no significant new discoveries have been found in recent years, despite the higher gold prices and despite higher exploration budgets," said Borg.

What is already happening and is likely to continue is that the grade or quality of deposits industry-wide will be "on average lower than deposits discovered in the past," opined Jabara.

The global gold mine production is forecast to rise by 3.7 percent in 2009 to about 2,500 tonnes, but will satisfy only two-thirds of demand, which soared this year amid the global financial crisis to 3,800 tonnes, according to the World Gold Council.

Historically, gold recycling or the sale of central bank stockpiles made up for supply shortages.

But during the latest financial crisis, banks have been buying up gold in large quantities to protect monetary reserves against weakness in the US dollar.

Since the start of November, for example, India's central bank has scooped up 200 tonnes of gold from the International Monetary Fund, at market value for about 6.7 billion dollars.

Amid uncertainty in the stock market, small investors and hedge funds are also coveting gold, driving up demand for the precious metal.

With mine production sloping downwards, an increasing supply of gold must come from existing supplies -- such as coins, bullion or jewelry -- but it will be very limited.

"All the gold ever produced through history amounts to about 165,000 tonnes, which would barely fill two Olympic-size swimming pools," said Jabara.

Gold prices soared to a record above 1,180 dollars in London on Wednesday hitting 1,180.20 dollars an ounce in trading on the London Bullion Market, after striking a series of historic peaks in recent days and weeks.

The Catholic Church in Ireland was granted immunity to cover up child sex abuse among paedophile priests in Dublin, a damning report has revealed.

Authorities enjoyed a cosy relationship with the Church and did not enforce the law as four archbishops, obsessed with secrecy and avoiding scandal, protected abusers and reputations at all costs, the report said..

Hundreds of crimes against children from the 1960s to the 1990s were not reported while police treated clergy as though they were above the law.

In a three-year inquiry, the Commission to Inquire into the Dublin Archdiocese uncovered a sickening tactic of ''don't ask, don't tell'' throughout the Church.

''The Commission has no doubt that clerical child sexual abuse was covered up by the Archdiocese of Dublin and other Church authorities,'' it said.

''The structures and rules of the Catholic Church facilitated that cover-up.

''The State authorities facilitated that cover-up by not fulfilling their responsibilities to ensure that the law was applied equally to all and allowing the Church institutions to be beyond the reach of the normal law enforcement processes.''

Four archbishops - John Charles McQuaid who died in 1973, Dermot Ryan who died in 1984, Kevin McNamara who died in 1987, and retired Cardinal Desmond Connell - did not hand over information on abusers.

The first files were handed over by the Cardinal in 1995 but even then he had records of complaints against at least 28 priests.

The primary loyalty of bishops and archbishops is to the Church, the report said.

Bishop James Kavanagh, Bishop Dermot O'Mahony, Bishop Laurence Forristal, Bishop Donal Murray and disgraced Bishop Brendan Comiskey, a reformed alcoholic who failed to control paedophile priests when in charge of the Ferns Diocese, all knew about child abuse for many years.

The inquiry, headed by Judge Yvonne Murphy, said the hierarchy cannot claim they did not know that child sex abuse was a crime.

Cardinal Connell was credited for instigating two secret canon law trials which took place over the 30-year period and led to two priests being defrocked.

Monsignor Gerard Sheehy, a powerful figure in the Catholic Archdiocese, one of the largest in Europe, fought to prevent the internal prosecutions.

Religious orders, for example the Columbans, had clear knowledge of complaints dating back to the early 1970s.

Parts of the 700-page report have been censored to prevent pending or potential prosecutions of abusers being prejudiced with references to two priests, and one of the cleric's brothers, removed.

While the Dublin Archdiocese inquiry found no evidence of a paedophile ring, some of the most shocking findings included:

* One priest admitted sexually abusing more than 100 children;

* Another accepted he abused on a fortnightly basis during his 25-year ministry;

* One complaint was made against a priest who later admitted abusing at least six other children;

* It took police 20 years to decide on a prosecution of one priest.

The inquiry said it uncovered inappropriate contacts between authorities and the Archdiocese.

Allegations were made against one priest, known as Fr Edmondus, but Garda Commissioner Daniel Costigan handed the case to Archbishop McQuaid and took no other action.

The inquiry also warned of inappropriate relations between some senior police and priests in two other cases.

''A number of very senior members of the gardai, including the Commissioner (Costigan) in 1960, clearly regarded priests as being outside their remit,'' the report said.

''There are some examples of gardai actually reporting complaints to the Archdiocese instead of investigating them.

''It is fortunate that some junior members of the force did not take the same view.''

The inquiry, which was looking at a sample of 46 priests dating back to 1975 but took its review back as far as the 1940s, outlined an insurance scheme for victims set up by the Archdiocese in 1987.

Church files show at the time Archbishops McNamara, Ryan and McQuaid had, between them, information on complaints against at least 17 priests.

The Commission said it proved the hierarchy knew the sex abuse scandals would cost the Church dearly.

''The taking out of insurance was proving knowledge of child sex abuse as a major cost to the Archdiocese and is inconsistent with the view that archdiocesan officials were still 'on a learning curve' at a much later date, or were lacking in an appreciation of the phenomenon of clerical child sex abuse,'' it said.

"The Archdiocese was pre-occupied until the mid-1990s with maintaining secrecy, avoiding scandal, protecting the reputation of the Church and preservation of assets.

"All other concerns, including the damage done to young victims, came second," the report said.

''The welfare of the children, which should have been the first priority, was not even a factor to be considered in the early days,'' the Commission said.

VATICAN CITY — In 1512, Raphael finished his ruminative portrait of Pope Julius II, who commissioned Michelangelo to paint the Sistine Chapel ceiling. In 1999, the Italian conceptual artist Maurizio Cattelan produced “The Ninth Hour,” a wax sculpture of Pope John Paul II struck down by a meteorite.

Somewhere along the way, the Vatican’s relations with the art world had clearly gone astray.

And so in an effort to improve the Catholic Church’s engagement with contemporary artists — and perhaps put a gentler face on a contentious papacy — the Vatican invited more than 250 artists, architects, musicians, directors, writers and composers for an audience on Saturday with Pope Benedict XVI.

Sitting before Michelangelo’s “Last Judgment” in the Sistine Chapel, after a choir sang music by Palestrina, Benedict urged them to embark on “a quest for beauty.” In what he called “a cordial, friendly and impassioned appeal,” he told his guests to be “fully conscious of your great responsibility to communicate beauty, to communicate in and through beauty.”

About half of the 500 invited artists did not attend, including Bono from the rock band U2. But the meeting still seemed a public relations success in light of the fierce controversies that have made this papacy less than loved by the downtown art scene, and made that art scene unbeloved by a pope who decries nihilism and relativism at every turn.

It was also a triumph for Archbishop Gianfranco Ravasi, the director of the Pontifical Council for Culture, who organized the event and is widely seen as a rising star in the Vatican hierarchy. He is also leading the charge for the Vatican to have its own pavilion at the next Venice Biennale art exhibition in 2011.

He said the aim of the event on Saturday was “to re-establish a dialogue” between the church and artists “that’s necessary and fertile for both.”

The artists in attendance seemed genuinely grateful for the opening.

“It’s quite an emotional experience,” said Zaha Hadid, an Iraqi-born architect whose new Maxxi museum of contemporary art is the most admired new building in Rome in years. The architect Daniel Libeskind called the event an “amazing step.”

Bill Viola, an American video artist whose work often reinterprets Christian motifs, played down any notion that the Vatican was trying to co-opt artists like him into helping improve its image. For centuries, he said, artists have struggled with “walking that fine line between creative freedom, between bending the rules; how far can you bend the rules before you break them?” Mr. Viola said.

“There’s real potential for something interesting here,” he said.

The crowd, which came from around the world but largely from Italy, also included the composers Ennio Morricone and Arvo Part, the artists Anish Kapoor and Jannis Kounellis, and the Italian film directors Nanni Moretti and Matteo Garrone.

The artists received medals from the Vatican and feasted on a banquet, with the renowned sculpture of Augustus of Prima Porta as a backdrop.

The Italian artist Mimmo Paladino suggested that it was now up to the Vatican, not artists, to turn the dialogue into a reality, perhaps even by commissioning art.

“I wouldn’t rule it out,” Archbishop Ravasi said. “But we’re not in the Renaissance.”

Pope and Anglican Leader Meet

VATICAN CITY — A month after the Vatican announced the creation of a new Anglican rite within the Roman Catholic Church, Pope Benedict XVI on Saturday met with the Most Rev. Rowan Williams, the archbishop of Canterbury and spiritual leader of the Anglican Communion.

In a statement, the Vatican called the meeting “cordial.”

Relations between the churches have been tense since the Vatican announced the new structure, aimed at traditionalist Anglicans uncomfortable with the Anglican Church’s ordination of female and gay clergy members, which will allow Anglicans to join the Catholic Church.

In an interview with Vatican Radio, Archbishop Williams said he had wanted to tell the pope his “concerns” about the new structure. “Clearly many Anglicans, myself included, felt that it put us in an awkward position for a time,” he said.

Both sides expressed a commitment to continuing ecumenical dialogue. Benedict gave Archbishop Williams a pectoral cross, a sign of respect.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/22/world/europe/22pope.html?_r=1

Evangelist Tony Alamo was sentenced Friday to 175 years in prison for taking underage girls across state lines for sex, effectively punishing him for the rest of his life for molesting children he took as "brides" in his ministry.

During Friday's hearing, some of Alamo's victims testified about how their families were destroyed while the evangelist took over their lives.

Alamo, 75, had been convicted in July on a 10-count federal indictment. U.S. District Judge Harry F. Barnes said Alamo used his status as father figure and pastor and threatened and threatened the girls with "the loss of their salvation."

"Mr. Alamo, one day you will face a higher a greater judge than me, may he have mercy on your soul," Barnes said.

Just before Barnes sentenced Alamo, the evangelist offered a brief statement to the court praising God then later adding:

"I'm glad I'm me and not the deceived people in the world."

Alamo's lawyers said they planned to appeal Barnes' ruling. His defense offered a doctor who said he suffered from hardening arteries, diabetes, glaucoma and other health problems. However on cross-examination the doctor acknowledged he saw Alamo only once in 2004 and that the purpose of Alamo's visit was to get an eye lift to make him appear younger.

The evangelist will stay in Texarkana pending a Jan. 13 hearing in which Barnes will decide whether Alamo's victims will get restitution from him. After that hearing, Barnes said Alamo would go to a federal prison that has hospital facilities.

A woman Alamo took as a child "bride" at age 8 challenged the evangelist from the witness stand Friday to submit himself to God's judgment. Reading from lined notebook paper, she said Alamo tore her family apart by taking her as a child bride and described how she shook uncontrollably when he first molested her.

"You preyed on innocent children," she said staring down Alamo, who wore yellow prison scrubs and a windbreaker for the hearing.

"You have the audacity to ask for mercy. What mercy did you show us?" she said.

A moment later she asked, "What kind of man of God does what you have done?"

The woman told Barnes that she planned to become an FBI agent in order to help other child sex abuse victims.

Two other child brides testified. One, who said she is now employed full-time and has a life of her own outside of the ministry, said she hoped Alamo would spend the rest of his life in jail.

"Maybe the real God, not the God you made up, will have mercy on your soul," the woman said.

Barnes said there was ample evidence that Alamo engaged in a pattern of molesting younger and younger girls in his ministry.

Alamo accused his victims of lying, as he has done throughout his prosecution.

The New York Daily News

THE Vatican yesterday slammed tonight’s Halloween celebrations as “anti-Christian” and “dangerous” because of its links to the occult.

The ghosts and goblins fun festival falls before tomorrow’s deeply-significant Roman Catholic holy day of All Saints.

The condemnation follows similar criticism from Catholic bishops in Spain who earlier his week urged parents not to let their children dress up for Halloween.

The Vatican’s official newspaper L’Osservatore Romano quoted liturgical expert Joan Maria Canals as saying: “Halloween has an undercurrent of occultism and is absolutely anti-Christian.”

Canals urged parents “to try to direct the meaning of the feast towards wholesomeness and beauty rather than terror, fear and death”.

L’Osservatore praised a church in Alcala de Henares, Spain, which had decided to hold a prayer vigil tonight, and the Paris archdiocese’s idea of having children play a lucky- dip game called Holywins instead of observing Halloween.

The article added: “These and similar initiatives in South America allow Catholic communities to have an alternative to the feast.”

Last year the Italian bishops’ newspaper Avvenire appealed for a total boycott, describing Halloween as a “dangerous celebration of horror and the macabre”.

The Vatican’s criticism of Halloween comes after it praisedthe witches and wizards saga Harry Potter – an about-face after an earlier strong condemnation of the series.

Meanwhile, officials from Italy’s Cats Protection League said it would increase patrols of volunteers tonight to stop black cats being snatched by Satanists.

Source:

U.S. Officials to Put Less Emphasis on School Closings

By Spencer S. Hsu
Washington Post
Tuesday, August 4, 2009

The Obama administration is finalizing guidelines that would scale back when the federal government recommends closing schools in response to the swine flu pandemic, several people involved in the deliberations said Monday.

More targeted guidance would mark a change in the government's approach from this spring, when health officials suggested that schools shut down at the first sign of the H1N1 virus. They later relaxed that advice.

This fall, federal authorities would recommend closures only under "extenuating circumstances," such as if a campus has many children with underlying medical conditions, a senior U.S. health official involved in the talks said. The official added that discussions are continuing and that no decision has been made.

Schools also might be advised to close if many students or staff members are already sick or otherwise absent, officials said.

"The framework is to try to keep schools open to the extent possible," the senior health official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because the White House has not completed its review of the issue.

School closings this past spring raised questions about whether closings slow the spread of H1N1 and are worth the educational and economic cost. The federal government's decision could have a far-reaching effect on tens of millions of Americans, the economy and other countries wrestling with similar choices.

President Obama's top scientific advisers, Cabinet members and national security aides are racing to update the government's flu strategy before the school year begins this month, when infections are expected to surge -- particularly among young people.

Decisions on school closings will be made locally because the flu's severity varies geographically and because local and state governments have authority over school and public health matters, officials said. Federal guidance could change if the virus becomes more virulent or lethal, officials said.

John O. Brennan, the deputy national security adviser who chaired two Cabinet-level meetings in the White House last week to coordinate H1N1 planning, said the internal debate is intended to "think through all the angles" and avoid "knee-jerk" decisions. He said it is too soon to predict the outcome.

"There will be circumstances where it makes sense to close schools, but what we are trying to do is refine" those instances, he said.

U.S. authorities will release within days other "community-mitigation" measures, intended to help keep businesses operating, help hospitals avoid being overwhelmed and guide local authorities in deciding whether to cancel public events, officials said.

Experts say such decisions are timely because of the quickly approaching fall flu season.

The H1N1 virus does not appear to be more lethal than seasonal flu, but it might be two or three times as infectious and is expected to hit young, healthy people and schools especially hard.

On average, about 36,000 Americans a year die of seasonal flu, and more than 200,000 are hospitalized, most of them elderly or already ill. By contrast, most H1N1 cases involve people younger than 18, and children are more infectious than adults, the British medical journal Lancet reported last month.

Advocates of school closings say it is among the best options to slow a pandemic -- and thus reduce deaths and the strain on hospitals.

Following a pandemic plan that the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published in early 2007, Obama on April 29 urged U.S. schools with confirmed or suspected flu cases to strongly consider closing for as much as two weeks. The advice came amid a spiraling H1N1 outbreak in Mexico.

More than 700 schools nationwide dismissed nearly a half-million students within days.

But the CDC stepped back May 4, noting that the disease did not appear as lethal as feared and recommending that sick students and staff members stay home for seven days. U.S. officials agreed to revisit the issue by fall.

Education officials said they felt bound to respect what federal officials were telling them, but they decried the effect of the closures, particularly the lost instruction time.

Federal officials proposed school closings after studying the outbreaks of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and avian flu in Asia earlier this decade, examining the 1918 and 1957 flu pandemics and using new computer models.

But opponents of school closings said that the research relied on unrealistic assumptions and overlooked real-world factors.

Schools would have to stay shut for the duration of a pandemic for closings to work, they say, which could have serious economic consequences. Parents staying home to tend their children would cause widespread financial losses.

Critics of school closings also note the tension between the main objectives of the government's flu response: to minimize illness and death and to limit social disruption.

The Lancet study reported that school closings could help slow the pandemic, but a 12-week closure in the United States or United Kingdom could cost 1 percent to 6 percent of gross domestic product.

Brennan said U.S. authorities are acting now with a "better understanding" of the virus, based on cases here and in the Southern Hemisphere, where flu season is in full swing. Earlier plans were premised on containing a deadlier outbreak that spread from Asia, not a milder form that began, and is already widespread, in North America, officials said.

Neil M. Ferguson, a leading CDC modeler, said the public might be the final decider. He said that people won't accept mass disruption unless the flu is severe and that then they may demand it.

The trouble with waiting is that school closings, to be effective, should be applied before an outbreak peaks, not when it is at its worst.

"Clearly there's some level of flu where it's worth closing the schools and some level of flu where it's not," Marc Lipsitch, a professor at the Harvard School of Public Health, who sits on an external board that is advising the CDC. "The problem here is it's not obvious to everyone which situation we're in."

If health officials see a change in the pandemic, the government will need to alter course again, he said. "It won't necessarily be smooth, but it will have to happen."

Staff writer Martin Weil and staff researcher Madonna Lebling contributed to this report.

French virologists on Sunday said they had found a new subtype of the AIDS virus that appears to have jumped the species barrier to humans from gorillas.
The new strain, found in a woman from Cameroon, West Africa, is part of the HIV-1 family of microbes that account for the vast majority of cases of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), they said.

Until now, all have been linked to the chimpanzee.

The new subtype has been called P, adding to three established HIV-1 subtypes — M, by far the most prevalent, and O and N, which are rare.

There is also an HIV-2 which is a minority viral family and is also suspected to have origins in non-human primates.

The virus was sequenced from a blood sample taken from an unnamed 62-year-old woman who moved to Paris from Cameroon, according to a letter published by the journal Nature Medicine.

In 2004, shortly after moving to the French capital, the woman was tested for HIV. She responded to diagnostic tests for HIV-1 but further tests failed to pinpoint the viral subtype.

The virus was genetically decoded and then put through a computer model to compare its evolutionary past against known viruses, both HIV and its equivalent in apes, called simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV).

The strain was a “significant” match with SIVgor — an immune deficiency virus found in gorillas.

“The most likely explanation for its emergence is gorilla-to-human transmission of SIVgor,” the letter says.

The research was headed by Jean-Christophe Plantier at a national referencing laboratory for HIV at the Rouen Hospital Centre, northwestern France.

HIV is believed to have jumped from humans from their closest animal relatives more than a century ago, in west-central Africa.

Analysis of tissues preserved by doctors in the colonial-era Belgian Congo shows that HIV-1 began spreading among humans at some point between 1884 and 1924, according to an investigation published last October.

But until now, the known vector has been the chimpanzee.

Some experts have suspected that the gorilla may have been implicated in the N subtype, but this is the first time that a link has been so clearly defined.

“A gorilla origin is highly likely” in the new P subtype, Marie Leoz, one of the research team, told AFP.

“For the time being, it’s the closest source. What is still quite difficult, though, is to date when the first transmission of the virus took place, because there are still very few gorilla strains that are available.”

Leoz also said subtype P was probably rare among humans, but further work was needed to confirm this.

The Cameroonian woman has no sign of AIDS, is receiving treatment and has a stable count of viruses and of CD4 cells, a key benchmark of immune-system fitness, said Leoz.

There are several theories that seek to explain how HIV entered humans.

An infected animal bit a human, or a HIV-infected ape was butchered and sold for bushmeat, and the virus entered the bloodstream through tiny cuts in the hand, according to these hypotheses.

AIDS first came to public notice in 1981, when alert US doctors noted an unusual cluster of deaths among young homosexuals in California and New York.

It has since killed at least 25 million people, and 33 million others are living with the disease or HIV, the virus that destroys immune cells and exposes the body to opportunistic disease.

The Raw Story

The number of Britons who have died after contracting swine flu has almost doubled in two days to 14, officials said yesterday.
London is days away from an epidemic with the West Midlands not far behind.

Britain has the third highest number of confirmed cases of the virus in the world, just behind Mexico - where the outbreak began.

As the shocking figures were released a leaked internal memo warned last night that the NHS is not ready to deal with a swine flu epidemic because of 'muddled' emergency plans and time-wasting bureaucracy.

A senior trust executive condemned some crisis measures as 'contradictory' and 'a complete waste of time'.

The creation of Tamiflu vouchers - a key weapon in the Government's fight against the killer flu - could in fact slow the distribution of the antiviral drugs, the correspondence said.

Rather than setting up a costly process that asks people to download vouchers from the internet, existing prescription forms would distribute Tamiflu just as quickly, it suggested.

The leaked memo was penned by a senior official responsible for crisis planning and was not meant for the public domain.

In it, the official criticised the Government’s 'muddled thinking' in advising health authorities how to implement the new phase, in which people get diagnoses by contacting a national call centre.

Instructions for the so-called new phase were described as 'a total fudge'.

Chief Medical Officer Sir Liam Donaldson said yesterday that 14 had died so far of what was believed to be swine flu.

He would not give details of where the five latest cases were. All had underlying health problems.

Sir Liam said there were 335 people in hospital in England with swine flu of whom 43 are in critical care.

Laboratory tests showed that yesterday there were 9,718 confirmed cases in the UK. This was just behind Mexico, with 10,262 cases. The U.S. is in the lead with 33,902 confirmed cases.

However, Sir Liam admitted it was unknown how many in the UK were suffering from the virus as many would be treating themselves at home rather than contacting their GP.

We do know something about the people seeking help from the NHS but there will be many other people who look after themselves,' he said.

He said latest data from 100 GP surgeries around England showed that about 27,000 people per week were being diagnosed as having a flu-like illness. Of these, an estimated 8,000 will have swine flu.

The number of flu cases being seen every week works out at 51.9 per 100,000 people.

However, in London the rate is 180 per 100,000 - just short of the 200 cases that denotes an epidemic. In the West Midlands the rate is 140 per 100,000 cases.

Peter Holden, who has helped draw up the pandemic plans with the British Medical Association, last night denied that emergency measures were confusing.

He said: 'There is not confusion, but with an organisation as large as the NHS you will have some problems with people getting the wrong end of the stick.'

But he admitted that Tamiflu vouchers seemed to be 'a needless waste of money when prescriptions could do the same job'.

Ian Dalton, national director of flu resilience at the Department of Health, said last night: 'Locally, the NHS has been coping very well with the challenges it has faced so far. However, now that we have moved into the treatment phase, further clear guidance has been provided to the NHS on its roles and responsibilities.

'Although this is being centrally led, the local NHS clearly must ensure that these plans are implemented in a way that meets local needs.'

Last week, Health Secretary Andy Burnham warned that by the end of August some 100,000 people will be coming down with the virus every day.

He moved the country on to treatment mode, which means those with flu symptoms will be encouraged to quarantine themselves at home and get a friend to pick up anti-viral drugs for them.

Sir Liam said that was still the most accurate prediction to date of what will happen. It is widely expected that the number of cases will see a surge in the winter months when flu is more prevalent.

About 15 per cent of calls to NHS Direct are currently about colds and flu, he added.

Today it emerged that a third case had been recorded of the swine flu virus becoming resistant to Tamiflu, the major drug to combat it.

The new case was in Hong Kong, to add to further cases in Japan and Denmark.

The Daily Mail

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has stressed that the US missile shield plans would contradict efforts for global reduction of nuclear weapons.

"If our partners decide to create an American missile defense system with global reach, this will undoubtedly cast serious doubt on the prospects for further strategic offensive arms reductions," news agencies quoted Lavrov as saying during a Tuesday interview with Vesti-24 television.

Lavrov's remarks came just one day after US President Barack Obama and his Russian counterpart Dmitry Medvedev agreed on a deal that renews the key Cold War-era Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty due to expire in early December.

Amid both sides' efforts to rebuild Washington-Moscow ties, which stooped to a post Cold War-era low during former president George W. Bush's administration, the US's refusal to scrap the plans has remained a sore spot in the relations.

Moscow rejects the idea of a US anti-missile defense system in two former Soviet states as a threat to its security but US President Barack Obama who is now in Moscow says the missile system is aimed at Iran, not Russia.

Meanwhile a series of reports by government committees and internatiolanl think tanks have undermind the effectiveness of such a system.

The planned system comprises of a radar in the Czech Republic and 10 interceptor missiles in Poland.

Last month, British parliament's Foreign Affairs Committee, with lawmakers from the country's main political parties, expressed reserve over the plans in a report on weapons proliferation.

“We are not convinced that, as they are currently envisaged and under current circumstances, the United States' planned ballistic missile defense (BMD) deployments in the Czech Republic and Poland represent a net gain for European security,” the report said.

The lawmakers also argued that “the United States' development of its system involved its abrogation of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty,” from which the United States withdrew seven years ago.

A recent study by a group of Russian and American military and academic experts for the US-based think tank EastWest Institute both undermined the effectiveness of the anti-missile defense system and the likelihood of its main pretext -an "imminent" attack from Iran.

PressTV

Patients would be encouraged to store their medical records with companies like Google and Microsoft under plans being drawn up by the Conservatives.

David Cameron wants people to use services like Google Health and Microsoft HealthVault, which both operate in the US, as an alternative to the £12bn national patient record database ordered by the government.

But the Liberal Democrats have complained that the plan could give Google undue commercial advantage.

Cameron has repeatedly cited Labour's planned electronic patient record database as an example of how centralised government programmes can go wrong. The database is not due to be ready until 2014, four years behind schedule.

At the recent Conservative spring conference in Cheltenham, the Tory leader said that his party would have adopted a different approach to the issue of how to improve access to patient records in the internet era.

"We would have said, 'Today you don't need a massive central computer to do this,'" he