"The trend line in my M3-plus-debt chart is staggering," Kuever said. "There has been a straight, long-term trend line of M3-plus-credit increasing since 2000. Long-term, we are creating inflation and the dollar has lost almost 98 percent of its value in the past 100 years."Kuever, a retired investor, is concerned that with growing budget and trade deficits "the dollar could collapse."Especially if the Fed cannot increase rates, because we have already entered a recession," he said.
Bob Chapman, who issued a reconstructed M3 estimate to the 100,000 subscribers to his newsletter, "The International Forecaster", agrees."The world is awash in money and credit," Chapman told WND. "My numbers show M3 increasing at about a 10-percent rate right now."Chapman believes the U.S. economy entered a recession in February. In his newsletter of Dec. 9 he predicted the Fed would hold interest rates at 5.25 percent."The Fed is in a very tough spot here," Chapman wrote, "If they raise rates, the real estate market will collapse, and if they lower rates, the dollar will collapse."

How low could the dollar go?
"The key in how low the dollar goes is the interest rates," Chapman told WND. "In March, the Fed is going to have to make a decision which way to go. If Fed rates go up, the dollar will hold in the 78.33 range, but the stock market and the economy will tank. If the Fed lowers rates to keep the economy from crashing, the bottom will fall out of the dollar, and I see it going as low as 55. Once the dollar hits bottom, it will take the stock market and the economy right with it anyway. The Fed is in a box they can't get out of."

How severe will the coming dollar collapse be?
"People in the U.S. are going to be hit hard," Chapman warned. "In the severe recession we are entering now, Bush will argue that we have to form a North American Union to compete with the Euro.""Creating the amero," Chapman explained, "will be presented to the American public as the administration's solution for dollar recovery.

In the process of creating the amero, the Bush administration just abandons the dollar."

Given its reputation as perhaps the most powerful organisation in the world, the Bilderberg group doesn't go a bundle on its switchboard operations. Telephone inquiries are met with an impersonal female voice - the Dutch equivalent of the BT Callminder woman - reciting back the number and inviting callers to "leave a message after the tone". But behind this ultra-modest façade lies one of the most controversial and hotly-debated alliances of our times.

On Thursday the Bilderberg group marks its 50th anniversary with the start of its yearly meeting. For four days some of the West's chief political movers, business leaders, bankers, industrialists and strategic thinkers will hunker down in a five-star hotel in northern Italy to talk about global issues. What sets Bilderberg apart from other high-powered get-togethers, such as the annual World Economic Forum (WEF), is its mystique.

Not a word of what is said at Bilderberg meetings can be breathed outside. No reporters are invited in and while confidential minutes of meetings are taken, names are not noted. The shadowy aura extends further - the anonymous answerphone message, for example; the fact that conference venues are kept secret. The group, which includes luminaries such as Henry Kissinger and former UK chancellor Kenneth Clarke, does not even have a website.

This year Bilderberg has announced a list of attendees They include BP chief John Browne, US Senator John Edwards, World Bank president James Wolfensohn and Mrs Bill Gates. In the void created by such aloofness, an extraordinary conspiracy theory has grown up around the group that alleges the fate of the world is largely decided by Bilderberg.

A former journalist, Mr Gosling runs a campaign against the group from his home in Bristol, UK. "My main problem is the secrecy. When so many people with so much power get together in one place I think we are owed an explanation of what is going on.

Mr Gosling seizes on a quote from Will Hutton, the British economist and a former Bilderberg delegate, who likened it to the annual WEF gathering where "the consensus established is the backdrop against which policy is made worldwide". "One of the first places I heard about the determination of US forces to attack Iraq was from leaks that came out of the 2002 Bilderberg meeting," says Mr Gosling.

"There's absolutely nothing in it. We never sought to reach a consensus on the big issues at Bilderberg. It's simply a place for discussion," says Lord Healey. Formed in the spirit of post-war trans-Atlantic co-operation, the idea behind Bilderberg was that future wars could be prevented by bringing power-brokers together in an informal setting away from prying eyes.

"Bilderberg is the most useful international group I ever attended. The confidentiality enabled people to speak honestly without fear of repercussions. "In my experience the most useful meetings are those when one is free to speak openly and honestly. It's not unusual at all. Cabinet meetings in all countries are held behind closed doors and the minutes are not published."

That activists have seized on Bilderberg is no surprise to Alasdair Spark, an expert in conspiracy theories.
"Shouldn't we expect that the rich and powerful organise things in their own interests. It's called capitalism."

According to the president's press office, Pöttering "took advantage of this occasion to invite the Pope to speak during a plenary session of the European Parliament."

During his visit to Italy's capital, the German-born president participated in a congress organized by European bishops on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the Treaty of Rome. Pöttering had been one of the advocates of recognizing the Christian roots of Europe in its constitution.

Pope John Paul II spoke before the European Parliament in Strasbourg in 1988.

A top source in Syrian President Bashar Assad's Baath party told WND European leaders visiting Damascus in recent weeks delivered messages stating Israel was taking measures in advance of a large-scale conflict with Syria, including updating battle plans, training reservist soldiers and preparing the home front for missile attacks.

One senior European Union official told Assad the Israeli government instructed its major hospitals not to allow staff to take vacation time during the summer months for fear a conflict will break out during that period, according to the Baath party source.

The European officials advised Assad to engage in dialogue with the Jewish state and the U.S. leading to a full Israeli withdrawal of the Golan Heights, the Baath official said. The Golan is strategic mountainous territory looking down on Israeli population centres twice used by Syria to mount ground invasions into Israel.

Israeli security sources confirmed stepped-up training schedules for Israel Defense Forces reservist troops have been implemented. They say the training is not related to any expected confrontations, but is in response to internal military investigations that found reservists were not properly trained for the Lebanon war.

Assad, who signed a military alliance with Iran, is accused of supporting the insurgency against U.S. troops in Iraq and funnelling money and weapons to Hezbollah. Leaders of major Palestinian terror groups, including Hamas and Islamic Jihad, reside openly in Damascus.

A diplomat from Britain's Foreign Ministry touring Israel this week said the UK received signals Washington is ready to act on some of the Study Group recommendations.
"America understands that Iraq cannot be solved unless Syria is engaged and Israel withdraws from the Golan Heights and the West Bank," the diplomat said, speaking on condition his name be withheld.

Also last week, EU Foreign Policy Chief Javier Solana told Syria he expected Israel to evacuate the entire Golan Heights as part of any future peace deal. Solana's remarks were blasted by Israeli Knesset members, who pointed out the EU chief did not call for Syria to stop supporting Hezbollah or providing refuge to the leadership of the Hamas and Islamic Jihad terror groups, who live openly in Damascus.

The Gospel According to Judas, introduced yesterday at a press conference chaired by the head of the Pontifical Biblical Institute in Rome, also denies that Judas accepted 30 pieces of silver to betray Jesus. The book will be launched in London today at Westminster Cathedral.

The reception given to the book represents a remarkable rehabilitation for Britain's most celebrated politician-turned-convict. Lord Archer of Weston-super-Mare, a convicted perjurer, wrote the book with Francis Moloney, one of the Pope's top theological advisers, who was a member of the Vatican's International Theological Commission for 18 years.

Written and presented in the style of an original Gospel, it is being regarded by senior Roman Catholics as a way of bringing the Christian message to a wider audience. Dr Moloney will give his royalties to charity, but Archer will keep his. In an interview in his penthouse flat in London, he told The Times that he needed to earn a living.

Many churchgoers will be surprised at the Church's backing of a book that debunks some of Jesus's miracles. Dr Moloney and Archer said that they did not include the three best-known nature miracles, because they never happened. Nor did they include the most famous Judas story, in which he betrayed Jesus for 30 pieces of silver. The betrayal took place, they say, but Judas thought that he was acting as a double agent and was saving Jesus's life. The idea that some miracles did not happen and were written to shore up messianic interpretations of the Hebrew Bible has been common in academic circles for decades.

Dr Moloney, regarded by many as the greatest living Biblical scholar, drew on years of scholarship to make The Gospel According to Judas as close as possible to those passages thought genuine in the three synoptic gospels and the Gospel of St John. But he insisted that they omit verses agreed by scholars to have been invented by the original authors of the Bible.

Old habits die hard, however, and the partnership with Archer almost collapsed when the bestselling author tried to inject unbelievable elements of fiction into the story of Jesus's life, death and resurrection. Dr Moloney agreed that Archer could invent a plausible ending to Judas's life but drew the line at giving him a deathbed conversion to Christianity.

"If there was ever a bill which needed to be vetoed -- this is it," said Traditional Values Coalition Executive Director Andrea Lafferty. "Most Christians might as well rip the pages which condemn homosexuality right out of their Bibles because this bill will make it illegal to publicly express the dictates of their religious beliefs."

Lafferty and other conservatives argue that the bill will "elevate homosexuality" -- a type of behavior, they stipulate -- to the same level as race and other characteristics that can't be changed. "The fact is that Conyers' so-called hate crimes bill is a fraud, designed for only one purpose: to add homosexuals, cross-dressers, drag queens and transsexuals to the ranks of federally protected minority groups," TVC said.

But a homosexual advocacy group -- named after murdered homosexual Matthew Shepard -- applauded the reintroduction of the hate crimes bill, calling it an "appropriate and measured response to the unrelenting and under-addressed problem of violent hate crimes committed against individuals based on their actual or perceived sexual orientation, gender, gender identity and disability."

Judy Shepard, executive director of the Matthew Shepard Foundation and Matthew's mother, said it's time the federal government expanded its definition of "hate crimes" to include those motivated by hatred of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender (GLBT) individuals.

The link between more cars and more flooding may not be immediately obvious to most of us, but it is vividly illustrated in a diagram in the report, entitled The Urban Environment, published yesterday by the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution.

Increased car ownership and use leads to demands for more roads and parking, the diagram explains. That then leads to an increase in hard, impermeable surfaces which cannot soak up rain - which in turn leads to more polluted surface water running off into drains, and in real downpours, a much higher risk of a flash flood.

These sort of complex interactions are not being addressed by the Government in policy and planning, says the report, calling for the development of an over-arching policy on the urban environment.

The commission expresses surprise that the Government does not already have such a comprehensive, connected strategy to deal with the combined pollution impact of housing, transport and energy use in the towns and cities, where 80 per cent of Britons now live. It wants "joined-up" policy, it says.

"The commission are actually astonished that the Government doesn't have an over-arching urban environmental policy that takes account of people's health and well-being, the environment and transport, and tries to join up what we do to tackle these problems," Sir John Lawton, the commission chairman said.

The document shows the Security and Prosperity Partnership, or SPP, is being directed at the highest level of the Bush administration, says the public interest group Judicial Watch, which obtained it and other documents through a Freedom of Information Act request. The Sept. 22, 2005, memo describes the agencies within the Department of Homeland Security responsible for executing the security agenda of the SPP.

Titled "Implementation Memorandum for the (SPP)," the document says the SPP "has, in addition to identifying a number of new action items, comprehensively rolled up most of our existing homeland security-related policy initiatives with Canada and Mexico, and ongoing action and reporting in the various U.S.-Canada and U.S.-Mexico working groups led by DHS should now be driven by a single agenda: the SPP."

"These new records prove the Security and Prosperity Partnership is being directed by officials at the very highest levels of the United States government," said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. Fitton said Americans "should know that the SPP is a core policy initiative for many agencies in our government, including the Department of Homeland Security."

Tests on a strain of the disease-causing bacterium, Yersinia pestis, taken from a 16-year-old boy in Madagascar revealed the organism has developed resistance to eight antibiotics used to treat the infection, including streptomycin and tetracyclin.

The bacterium is believed to have become resistant to drugs after swapping genes with common food bacteria such as salmonella, E coli and klebsiella, probably while being carried in the guts of fleas, which spread the disease by biting infected rodents.

The discovery has alarmed scientists who fear multiple drug-resistant strains of the plague may emerge in other countries, leading to highly dangerous pandemics which spread rapidly. Another serious concern is that drug-resistant strains of the organism may be collected by terrorist organisations and released into the air, causing widespread infection.

The plague first emerged several thousand years ago and swept across Asia and Europe during the Black Death pandemic between the 14th and 17th centuries. Successive pandemics are estimated to have claimed some 200m lives. Antibiotics brought the disease under control, but in recent decades the World Health Organisation has recorded outbreaks in 125 countries, most recently in the Democratic Republic of Congo, which last year reported 1,174 suspected cases and 50 deaths.

There are two forms of plague. Infections caused by bites lead to bubonic plague, named after large swellings or buboes on the skin. Untreated, it kills 40% to 70% of people, usually in less than a week. The second form, pneumonic plague, is almost 100% fatal within days if not treated. The last fatal case of the plague in England was at the end of the first world war, when a Mrs Garrod died on June 19, 1918 in Suffolk, a week after a neighbour, Mrs Bugg, succumbed to the infection.

"The resistance is carried by these genes and they can transfer easily from one strain to another with very high efficiency," said Elisabeth Carniel, who co-authored the paper in the journal Public Library of Science One.
"These kinds of multiple drug-resistant bacteria are spreading in the environment, so the chances are that contact between them and the plague bacterium will be higher than we thought.

Plague is not the disease it was because of the existence of antibiotics, so if we can't use antibiotics any more, or if we have only a very limited range of drugs that work, that will make the disease much more dangerous."

The message accompanying the photo on the Shabakat Falastin Lilhiwar online forum says the girl "is part of the Muslim generation which will go down in history as a generation that refused to accept humiliation and defeat." Hamas, officially considered a terrorist organization by the U.S. government, now governs the Palestinian Authority.

As WorldNetDaily reported, Hamas launched a children's website in 2002, encouraging kids to follow the example of terrorist suicide bombers. WND reported last year the children's website featured comic strips encouraging hatred of Israelis, who are defined as "evil Zionists." One strip featured two boys who come upon supposed toys in the street.

"Don't take any of them!" warns one boy. "These are not toys, but booby-trapped bombs that will explode in the hands of those who touch them. They are placed here by the evil Zionists to kill innocent Palestinian children."

The next panel states: "These are dangerous toys that are called booby-traps, placed by the evil ones to kill the people of our nation, who suffered from them and fight a jihad to drive them out of our beloved country."
Another story on the website describes an art class in which the teacher asks the children to draw a picture entitled: "When the sky is angry."

One boy draws a rainstorm and another lightning. But the teacher has special praise for the drawing of one boy: Says the teacher: "Look what your friend Az-Adin drew. He drew the sky raining stones on the Zionists. Everyone clap hands for your friend Az-Adin. We all clapped hands warmly for Az-Adin for his drawing that was inspired by the Palestinian stone revolution."

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice questioned on Monday what P.A. Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh (Hamas) meant by the word "resistance," which Israel considers a euphemism for terrorism."I am not going to try to interpret what the right of resistance means, but I'll tell you it doesn't sound very good to me when one talks about all forms of resistance," Rice said. "So I would put the question to the Palestinian government and to its prime minister -- do you mean the right of resistance by violence? And let's get an answer," she added.

Last November, the P.A. committed itself to a ceasefire with Israel in the Gaza Strip. Since then, however, Palestinian terrorists have launched 185 rockets at Israel from the Gaza Strip, with more than 150 of them landing inside Israel, the army said.The Israeli army also has uncovered more than 40 explosive devices along the border fence between Israel and the Gaza Strip, the Jerusalem Post reported on Tuesday.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Mark Regev said that Israel is "very concerned" about Haniyeh's speech, which "justifies terrorist acts." (Haniyeh told Palestinian lawmakers on Saturday that the Palestinians will use "resistance in all its forms.") There is a "very real terrorist threat" that isn't going to go away, Regev said. Hamas has given no indication that it is going to moderate its position. It stubbornly sticks to its commitment to violence and terrorism, he said.

The formation of the unity government is a problem, Regev said by telephone. Some moderate Palestinians have given legitimacy to Hamas by acting as a "fig leaf" for the extremists, he said. Nevertheless, he said Israel hopes it will be possible to work with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas (of the Fatah faction) to move the peace process forward.

Responding yesterday to U.S. Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, and former House Speaker Denny Hastert, R-Ill., the Czech leader said: "It becomes evident that while discussing climate we are not witnessing a clash of views about the environment, but a clash of views about human freedom."

"As someone who lived under communism for most of my life I feel obliged to say that the biggest threat to freedom, democracy, the market economy and prosperity at the beginning of the 21st century is not communism or its various softer variants," said Klaus, responding to questions posed by the two lawmakers. "Communism was replaced by the threat of ambitious environmentalism."

He added, "The so-called climate change and especially man-made climate change has become one of the most dangerous arguments aimed at distorting human efforts and public policies in the whole world."
"I warn against adopting regulations based on the so-called precautionary principle which the environmentalists use to justify their recommendations, the clear benefit of which they are not able to prove." Klaus added,

Last month, Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., ranking member of the Senate Environment & Public Works Committee, congratulated Klaus for speaking out against the fears of man-made global warming.
"President Klaus is to be commended for his courage in speaking not only the truth about the science behind global warming fears, but the reality of the politicization of the U.N.," Inhofe said. "President Klaus's reported comments questioning the fears of catastrophic man-made global warming are in line with a growing chorus of scientists, peer-reviewed literature and government leaders who are finally realizing the true motivations behind climate scares.

The scientific and political momentum is clearly shifting away from climate alarmists to climate realists," Inhofe said.

Last week, Poland's education ministry outlined the bill to ban "homosexual propaganda" in schools and to sack teachers promoting such "culture". HRW said the proposal would "punish anyone who promotes homosexuality or any other deviance of a sexual nature in education establishments".

"Schools should be training grounds for tolerance, not bastions of repression and discrimination," the letter said. It also stressed that the ban "would deprive student of potentially life-saving information" on Aids/HIV.

On Saturday, more than 10,000 teachers marched in the capital, Warsaw, protesting against the government's education policy and demanding pay rises. The demonstrators demanded the dismissal of Education Minister Roman Gietrych, accusing him of ignoring teachers' groups and increasing intolerance.

Mr Gietrych heads the small, right-wing and ultra-Catholic League of Polish Families party, which has been accused of being homophobic. The BBC's Adam Easton in Warsaw says homophobia is common in Poland, which is deeply Catholic.

Five of its "top 10" are in Asia, such as the Yangtse, Mekong, and Ganges, though Europe's Danube and North America's Rio Grande are also included. WWF says governments should see water as an issue of national security. Its report is issued in advance of World Water Day (22 March).

"The world is facing a massive freshwater crisis, which has the potential to be every bit as devastating as climate change," said Dr David Tickner, head of the freshwater programme at WWF-UK.

WWF'S TOP 10
Salween - dams
Danube - shipping
La Plata - dams and shipping
Rio Grande - over-extraction
Ganges - over-extraction
Indus - climate change
Nile - climate change
Murray/Darling - invasive species
Mekong - over-fishing
Yangtze - pollution

"We need business leaders and governments to recognise that climate change is not the only urgent environmental issue that needs to be dealt with, and that they need to take notice of this freshwater emergency and act now, not later." WWF says governments need to protect rivers better, and ensure water is allocated to users equitably and sustainably, while industries which use a lot of water should seek ways to minimise the amount that they extract.

The insect carries a gene that prevents infection by the malaria parasite. The scientists also inserted the gene for green fluorescent protein (GFP) into the transgenic mosquitoes which made their eyes glow green. This helped the researchers to easily count the transgenic and non-transgenic insects.

In the laboratory, equal numbers of genetically modified and ordinary "wild-type" mosquitoes were allowed to feed on malaria-infected mice. As they reproduced, more of the GM, or transgenic, mosquitoes survived. After nine generations, 70% of the insects belonged to the malaria-resistant strain.
For resistant mosquitoes to be useful in the wild, they must survive better than non-resistant mosquitoes even when not exposed to malaria.

Even so, the researchers concluded: "The results have important implications for implementation of malaria control by means of genetic modification of mosquitoes." GM mosquitoes that interfered with development of the malaria parasite would make it more difficult for the organism to become re-established after it had been eradicated from a target area, they said.

Malaria, spread by the single-celled parasite Plasmodium , is endemic in parts of Asia, Africa, and central and south America. The organism is passed to humans through the bite of the Anopheles mosquito. Each year it makes 300 million people ill and causes a million deaths worldwide. Some 90% of cases are in sub-Saharan Africa, where a child dies of malaria every 30 seconds.