More than 100,000 people a week are catching norovirus, which causes sudden vomiting and diarrhoea, and the numbers contracting the disease will peak this month, it was reported last night. Thousands of workers and children who fell ill over the holiday period are due to return to jobs and classrooms in the coming days. Many have already called in sick and doctors warn them not to go back until they are fully recovered, such is the risk of spreading the disease.

Patients affected should stay at home for 48 hours after they last suffered from the symptoms, the NHS advised. The absences will cost the economy millions of pounds. So far this winter about two million people have fallen ill with the norovirus, the highest number for five years and double the amount of cases by this time last year, according to reports. Doctors warned people with the condition to stay away from GPs' surgeries and hospitals and to phone for advice to avoid further spread.

The bug usually lasts two days and can sweep through schools, offices, hospitals and prisons. It has struck passengers on the Queen Victoria cruise ship and cases have been found in more than a dozen hospitals. The disease can cost the NHS up to £100 million in an epidemic year as operations are cancelled when patients are struck down and agency staff have to cover staff sickness.

Sri Lanka plunged back into war after four years of relative peace almost as soon as President Mahinda Rajapaksa took power in late 2005, but both he and the Tigers had held off scrapping a Norwegian-brokered truce to avoid appearing the villain. With the pact formally ended, hopes of resurrecting collapsed peace talks any time soon are dead and investment in the $26 billion economy could suffer.

"This means all-out war," said Iqbal Athas, an analyst with Jane's Defense Weekly in Colombo. "The government has dropped the peace option and has opted for a fuller military onslaught on the rebels. One thing is certain, there'll be more confrontations. There'll be more violence now," he added. "The government perceives it to be end-game - It will be the most intense period of war Sri Lanka has seen." More than 5,000 people have been killed since early 2006, taking the death toll since the war erupted in 1983 to around 70,000.

The killing of the charismatic opposition leader has fuelled doubts about stability and the transition to democratic rule in nuclear-armed Pakistan, a key ally in the U.S. anti-terrorism drive. "In all the four provinces, for some days this election process came to a complete halt," Chief Election Commissioner Qazi Mohammad Farooq told a news conference. "Polling will now be held on February 18 instead of January 8."

President Pervez Musharraf, in a televised address to the nation, said army and paramilitary troops would deal forcefully with any renewed violence and appealed for national reconciliation leading to free and fair elections.

Sharif's Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz) said opposition parties should unite and demand that Musharraf and the election commission step down. "General Musharraf has failed to ensure law and order and the election commission has failed to hold elections on schedule," said spokesman Ahsan Iqbal. "... both must resign and we should have a neutral national unity government and an independent election commission."

In the capital alone the London Ambulance Service had to deal with its highest number of emergency calls since the Millennium - the majority related to excess alcohol. As midnight came and went there was mayhem as scores of drunken partygoers around the country tumbled into the streets, some wearing little more than their underwear.

Fights erupted and a string of dishevelled young men and women collapsed on benches and in doorways too inebriated to remember or care that the night was supposed to be a celebration. There to mop up the mess were thousands of emergency workers drafted in to provide cover on the busiest night of the year. In the first four hours of 2008, London Ambulance Service (LAS) dealt with an astonishing 1,825 calls alone, peaking at over 500 calls an hour between 2am and 4am. The volume of 999 calls was up 17 per cent on last year and four times worse than a normal night.

For anyone not used to the less than sober face of a British New Year the night was something of an eye-opener. Belgian Florence Meganck, 25, was out in Bristol and summed up the evening. "I saw a girl who looked like she wasn't older than 12 buy alcohol from a shop and then give it to even younger girls waiting outside. Even though I haven't drunk tonight I have had such fun laughing at all the drunken English people. But these drunks won't enjoy New Year's Eve, most of them won't even remember it."

Temperatures were expected to drop into the 20s and teens in parts of Florida by Thursday morning, following the 30-degree temperatures some northern parts of the state saw Wednesday. The cold spell could prove devastating to the state's citrus industry, which is the nation's largest and already has suffered from years of disease and hurricanes.

Crops can withstand some cold, but not for long. Thirty-two degrees for four hours will damage an orange, for example, but 28 degrees for that long can actually ruin the tree. Most of the citrus industry is situated south, for this very reason, and in those areas it was not expected to get as cold. But citrus crops were not the only ones at risk. A broad variety of plants and produce - from broccoli and cabbage in the north to strawberries, tomatoes and corn in the south - are also threatened. In Louisiana, strawberry farmers covered their crops with material in an attempt to protect them.

Following the snowiest December on record, many areas of New Hampshire got about a foot of snow on New Year's Day, with a couple of inches added during the night and a couple more likely Wednesday. Storm totals could reach 18 inches in parts of Maine and New Hampshire and up to a foot in Vermont.

But imprecision is a venerable US political tradition, according to FactCheck.org, an independent watchdog which aims to "hold politicians accountable" for what they say. "PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATES KEPT US BUSY" over the past year, said Brooks Jackson, director of FactCheck, an arm of the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania. The campaign trail produced "a bumper-crop of falsehoods and distortions," which the organization has threshed through for its new list of prize-winning whoppers.

Topping the list with not one but five bogus claims was former New York mayor and Republican contender RUDY GIULIANI. FactCheck demolishes each of them, especially Giuliani's assertion that New York City was suffering "record crime" until he became mayor. "In fact," says FactCheck's sober analysis, "the city recorded its highest rates of both violent crime and property crime years before he took office. The downward trend was well established before he was sworn in" as mayor, in 1994.

The Democrats were no slouches in the hokum department. SENATOR HILLARY CLINTON claimed in a TV spot that soldiers in the National Guard and Reserves did not enjoy health insurance until she took up their cause. But FactCheck researched the issue and demonstrated that most of them did have health care. "Clinton did help expand and enhance government health care coverage for reservists, but can't claim credit for creating coverage where none existed," it said.

Covering up for an exposed half-truth sometimes leads to more prevarication. ROMNEY claimed recently that as a youth he "saw" his father, who was governor of Michigan, walking in a protest with civil rights leader Martin Luther King. Challenged on it, Romney argued that "saw" didn't necessarily mean with his own eyes. "I 'saw' him in the figurative sense," Romney explained. "If you look at the literature or look at the dictionary, the term 'saw' includes being aware of -- in the sense I've described."

The 2008 presidential candidates are no better nor worse tellers of tall tales than their predecessors, Jackson said. "IT IS JUST A FUNCTION OF RUNNING FOR OFFICE," he said. "The incentive is to say things that get votes - TRUTH IS OF SECONDARY IMPORTANCE TO A CANDIDATE."

In his time, president JOHN F. KENNEDY boasted he could read 1,200 words a minute. President LYNDON JOHNSON claimed that he had an ancestor who died at the Alamo -- a heroic battle in Johnson's home state of Texas. In fact, Johnson great uncle took part -- but didn't die -- in another battle with Mexico, at San Jacinto.

Cannon, writing in the Atlantic magazine, also recalled that RONALD REAGAN boasted to Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir and Nazi-hunter Simon Wiesenthal that he had filmed the liberation of the Nazi death camps by US soldiers in World War II.

The problem with that story was, Reagan never served in Europe. FactCheck.org website

The 90,465-tonne German-registered vessel called LT Cortesia with 27 people on board ran into difficulties on the Varne Bank towards the middle of the Channel at 5am. The vessel was travelling from the Thames estuary westbound towards the Atlantic Ocean when it ran aground.

An MCA spokesman said none of the crew were injured and early indications suggest the ship is watertight with no reported pollution from the vessel. MCA spokeswoman Rosie Tapping said the container ship was registered as carrying hazardous cargo, but the exact nature of the materials on board was unknown.

A Dover Coastguard spokesman said it was a mystery why the container ship suddenly ran aground. He said: "We haven't a clue why it ran aground. The vessel had come down normally, made an alteration to its route and then went aground. The weather has been fine and its traffic pattern was OK until the last minute when it went aground. Until we get to speak to the people on board to find out what happened, we will not know."

Surging economies in China and India fed by oil and gasoline have sent prices soaring over the past year, while tensions in oil producing nations like Nigeria and Iran have increasingly made investors nervous and invited speculators to drive prices even higher.

Violence in Nigeria helped give crude the final push over $100. Light, sweet crude for January delivery rose $4.02 to $100 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange before slipping back, according to Brenda Guzman, a Nymex spokeswoman.

There were no reports of injuries or damage, but dozens of tourists were evacuated from the base of the volcano and a group of 53 people was stranded after a local river swelled with meltwater and cut off road access.The volcano is one of the country's most active and is in the Araucania region in southern Chile.

Before the eruption, people in the towns closest to the volcano said they heard loud noises underground. The volcano began erupting at 18:20 p.m. (2130 GMT) on Tuesday and it was unclear how long it would continue.
The 10,253-foot (3,125-meter) Llaima volcano has frequent moderate eruptions.

But a constantly evolving and sometimes contradictory explanation of the events by Pakistani investigators has only clouded the issue. Meanwhile, her husband and her supporters are asking for a United Nations-led inquiry into her death, something Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf is unlikely to accede to. But even if Musharraf were to agree, there is very little for international forensics experts to investigate.

Within hours of the attack in the garrison town of Rawalpindi some 10 miles from the capital, authorities had already hosed down the streets. Pools of blood, along with possible evidence such as bullet casings, DNA samples from the bomber and tracks had been washed away. Retired Lieutenant General Hamid Gul, the former director general of Pakistani Intelligence, said he was shocked to see people cleaning up the debris so soon after the assassination.

"It's a crime scene, and they're washing away all the evidence! We need to be asking why the hell was this thing done." One of the few pieces of evidence from the crime scene that remains is amateur footage showing a clean-cut man in a black vest brandishing what appears to be a gun. Behind him stands another man, a white scarf wrapped around his head. It is thought that he might have been the suicide bomber.

The situation had already been muddied by contradictory versions of how Bhutto died. Initial health official reports stated that Bhutto had been shot twice before a suicide bomber detonated himself seconds later. But by Saturday, the government reversed track. Bhutto had been shot at, said Interior Ministry spokesman Javed Iqbal Cheema, but the shooter missed. The force of the explosion knocked Bhutto, who had been waving at the crowds from her vehicle's sunroof, backwards. She hit her head on a protruding lever, and succumbed to the fractures to her skull. Cheema presented X rays to support his claim, but witnesses and close friends who rushed Bhutto to the hospital say that there was no doubt she had been shot.

Doctors who had attended Bhutto immediately after the attack initially said that she died of gunshot wounds, but over the weekend they released new findings in line with the Interior Ministry's claim that the official cause of death was head wounds sustained when Bhutto fell. The reversal has many people suspecting government interference. Says Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan, an opposition member of the National Assembly and a former petroleum minister: "The government says it was the work of terrorists and they say someone has claimed responsibility. What I don't understand is why they keep changing the story of how Bhutto died? Why do that? These summersaults make everything look suspicious."

And although the city itself seemed a little quieter - if no less tense - yesterday, the same could not be said for nearby villages in the Luo province of Nyanza where revenge against the Kikuyu was extracted swiftly and brutally.

Virtually cut off from the outside world by roadblocks erected by Luo fighters, the roads into Kisumu were also lined with flames yesterday afternoon. Smoke billowed from homes in the outlying hills. On the plains, sugar cane plantations and fields of maize owned by non-Luos also burned. Farmyard animals and flightless herons, squawking in terror, cowered on the asphalt as crops went up in flames on either side of the road.

"Billions of shillings worth of crops have been destroyed," said Helga Kagumba, a white farmer of German origin who watched from her veranda as fighters set fire to her sugar cane plantations, destroying 40 years of work in a few hours of ethnically motivated fury.

With food and fuel running dangerously low in many parts of the country, aid agencies are warning of a growing humanitarian crisis.

The particles it uses are so small - 80,000 times thinner than a human hair - that they can pass through membranes protecting the brain or babies in the womb. Nano health supplements, such as antioxidants, are already on the market while the first of hundreds of new foods are expected to arrive in the next 12 months. However, the products are being introduced without any regulation or independent assessment to ensure they are safe - mirroring the controversy over the launch of GM foods ten years ago.

Some critics have talked of the threat of the creation of a "grey goo" of tiny particles with hidden harmful properties. Prince Charles has said it would be "surprising" if the technology did not "offer similar upsets" to thalidomide - the morning sickness drug that caused children to be born with deformed limbs. Professor Vicki Stone, Professor of Toxicology at Napier University in Edinburgh, is concerned about unforeseen side effects. "We know very little about the ability of nanoparticles to move around the body, to accumulate or to be excreted, or their potential to cause toxic effects in organs," she said. However, nanotech advocates have remarkable claims for the technology. For example, foods are in development that are said to stave off the aging process.

The consumer group Which? is about to launch a nanotech campaign arguing that consumers need to be consulted on the risks and benefits before it is too late. The food and farming department Defra has published an independent report which admits there are serious gaps in safety data. It warns: "There could be very significant implications for business and the wider community if potential risks are not identified and managed before any harm to the environment or human health may be done." The report - Characterising the Risks Posed by Engineered Nanoparticles - states there is a shortage of research money.

It says the resulting absence of basic information about the particles means "it will be difficult or impossible to develop any general understanding of nanoparticle toxicology". The report adds: "Transfer across biological barriers - e.g. to the brain or foetus - should be studied. Research into how long these tiny particles persist in the body is urgently needed." It warns that work assessing human toxicology is being hamstrung by "profound difficulties in accessing relevant funding for these longer term projects".

Research by Which? found six out of ten people (61 per cent) have never heard of nanotechnology.

The campaigners said it is wrong to fly in food more than 5,000 miles from a country where millions are on the brink of starvation. They are planning to mount protests at Waitrose outlets, all of which stock the Zimbabwean tilapia fillets. Buyers for the chain say that selling the fleshy white fish helps preserve threatened species such as cod.

Last night, Wilf Mbanga, editor of The Zimbabwean, a UK-based newspaper, said: "People are starving in Zimbabwe. There is no food in the shops, there is no fish to be had there for the ordinary people. It's incredibly cruel taking food out of the mouths of starving people. It is very ill-advised of Waitrose. It is morally wrong. I find it very disturbing that they are taking fish from Zimbabwe at a time when millions are starving and surviving purely on international aid."

Professor Terence Ranger, president of the Britain Zimbabwe Society and a fellow at St Antony's College, Oxford, said: "Zimbabwe has a tremendous food shortage. It seems inappropriate for food of any sort from there being exported here. But on the other hand, Zimbabwe is badly in need of cash for hospitals and schools and it is a question of where this money is going."

Officials and traders both say there is no hope prices will come down soon. Since last week rice, the country's main staple, sold at nearly 40 taka ($0.60) per kilogram (2.2 pounds) in retail markets, twice the price the troops are offering, buyers said.

Bangladesh produces around 29 million tonnes of rice and wheat annually, nearly enough to feed its population. But two spells of devastating floods in July-September last year followed by the country's worst cyclone since 1991 in November destroyed nearly 1.8 million tonnes of rice, forcing authorities to issue an international appeal for emergency food aid.

One hope was an offer by India to sell 500,000 tonnes of rice in the post-cyclone period as a special gesture as New Delhi agreed to temporarily suspend a ban on rice exports - but the deal has not been finalised.

China is set to make 2008 the year it asserts its status as a global colossus by flexing frightening economic muscle on international markets, enjoying unprecedented levels of domestic consumption and showcasing itself to a watching world with a glittering £20bn Olympic Games. The world's most populous nation will mark the next 12 months with a coming-of-age party that will confirm its transformation in three decades from one of the poorest countries of the 20th century into the globe's third-largest economy, its hungriest (and most polluting) consumer and the engine room of economic growth.

Once regarded at best as a sporting also-ran, China is widely tipped to top the medals table in the Beijing Olympics in August, an event in which the country's leadership is investing huge importance and prestige. It will be a celebration viewed with consternation by many, as China's authoritarian regime shows little sign of relaxing its grip on power and continues to expand its influence overseas from the oil fields and metal mines of Africa to the City of London. Appropriately, 2008 marks the Year of the Rat, an animal considered in Chinese folklore to be a harbinger and protector of material prosperity.

BRITAIN WILL FEEL THE FULL POWER OF THE NEW SUPERPOWER'S CONFIDENCE. This month, for the first time, China's state-controlled banks will begin spending some of its $1.33trn (£670bn) in foreign currency reserves on London's financial markets. Beijing has ruled that Britain should become only the second destination after Hong Kong to be allowed to receive investors' money via so-called "sovereign funds" ? the huge state-controlled surpluses built up by cash-rich economies from Qatar to South Korea.

THE UK HAS MADE IT CLEAR THAT BEIJING'S INVESTMENT, WHICH COULD REACH AS MUCH AS £45BN, IS WELCOME and it follows the recent acquisition by Chinese banks of stakes in such blue chip stocks as Barclays and the US private equity firm Blackstone, at a cost of $3bn. THE TALK IN THE FINANCE HOUSES IS THAT THE LABEL "MADE IN CHINA" WILL SOON BE REPLACED BY ONE READING "OWNED BY CHINA". Takeover speculation has provoked concern in some quarters at the wisdom of selling large assets to organs of a democratically unaccountable state where the financial sector remains underdeveloped.

BUT OTHERS WARN 2008 HAS AS MUCH POTENTIAL TO BE A DISASTER as a triumph for Beijing's attempts to herald its own arrival on the world stage. The Chinese capital will host 31,000 journalists for the Olympics and any sign of protest or an attempt to quell dissent with violence would be catastrophic.

THE DRUM BEAT OF PROTECTIONISM is already sounding in America and will only get louder in a presidential election year, putting pressure on both Republican and Democratic candidates to take a "strong" stance on China.