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If enacted, the multibillion-dollar effort would represent the first time that top federal health officials have asked Americans to get more than one flu vaccine in a year, raising serious challenges concerning production, distribution and the ability to track potentially severe side effects.

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Memories of the nation’s earlier experience with a swine flu vaccine present another challenge. In 1976, hundreds of Americans developed neurological disorders after they were vaccinated for a swine flu strain. The public was asked to receive one of two vaccines developed to combat the strain.

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The greater challenge will be tracking any adverse reactions as millions of Americans get multiple vaccinations in a matter of months this fall and winter.

The document details the Australian government’s plans to acquire and expand a full spectrum – air, sea and land – arsenal of advanced weaponry in the nation’s largest arms buildup since World War II.

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The mainstays for the evolving Asian NATO…are Australia and Japan with India eyed as the third leg of the stool.

Stop and search is one of the most draconian powers employed by police in the war on terror and a constable’s right to use it will be severely curtailed under plans unveiled today. In a document seen by the Guardian, senior officers admit that the hundreds of thousands of stops carried out under the power had damaged community relations and reversed “fundamental” principles of civil rights.

Critics say that section 44 of the Terrorism Act 2000, which allows stops without suspicion, has alienated British Muslims without producing little or no benefit.

Usually an officer requires “reasonable suspicion” of wrongdoing to stop someone, but officers have been able to use the power across London since the July 7 terrorist attacks.

Under the new plans, Scotland Yard will effectively remove an officers’ power to stop people without reason, although they will keep the power for special circumstances when authorised by senior officers.

Lord Carlile, independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, told the Guardian: “Section 44 is over-used, there is no question of it, and that is causing alienation to some communities.”

The changes, which will become public today, are outlined in a document from Scotland Yard’s counter-terrorism chief, Assistant Commissioner John Yates, to the force’s watchdog, the Metropolitan Police Authority.

In the document, Yates admits the power has damaged community ties and reversed the “fundamental principle” that people should only be stopped when there is reasonable grounds of suspicion.

Eleanor Squillari, Madoff’s secretary of more than 20 years, told The Associated Press she thinks her former boss carefully orchestrated his arrest and that he’s protecting others who might have been involved in his multibillion-dollar scheme by not cooperating with investigators. She declined to speculate as to whom he might be protecting.

Squillari said that if she had a chance to speak to Madoff, she would ask him “to do the right thing and to let us know this happened.”

“We confirm that in the military operation the other night more than 100 non-combatants have been killed,” Farah province police chief Abdul Ghafar Watandar told AFP, referring to strikes early Tuesday.

“This information is based on the reports given to us by a delegation composed of ICRC (International Committee of the Red Cross) members and locals who went to the villages to investigate reports of civilian casualties.”

Bodies were still being pulled from the rubble, he said.

The planned 16-unit tract on the fringes of a suburb about 65 miles northeast of Los Angeles included four finished homes with granite countertops, whirlpool bathtubs and dual-pane windows.

“The current economic environment requires difficult decisions be made by the government, by banks and by individuals,” said John Wessman, a spokesman for Guaranty Bank of Austin, Texas. “We made the difficult decision to return the site to a safe, clean and undeveloped state keeping in mind the best interests of the community and our shareholders.”

Crews began tearing down the structures in late April and completed their work Tuesday.

Building permits had been issued for the development in September 2007, Victorville city spokeswoman Yvonne Hester told the Los Angeles Times.

At the time, the median price for a home in San Bernardino County, where Victorville is located, was $325,000, according to San Diego-based tracking firm MDA DataQuick.

In March, the most recent month for which data is available, the median price for the county was $160,000, DataQuick said.

The bank repossessed the development in December, months after work halted, Wessman said. Demolition permits for the project, which had started attracting vandals and squatters, had been granted in early April.

Besides the four completed homes, a dozen had been left in various stages of construction, but had not yet been closed up with drywall, Wessman said.

The homes were among a parcel of over 300 plots, the remainder of which remained unbuilt upon, he said.

About 21.8 percent of all owners were underwater as of March 31, the Seattle-based real estate data service said in a report today. At the end of the fourth quarter, 17.6 percent of homeowners owed more than their original mortgage, while 14.3 percent had negative equity three months earlier.

Property values dropped 14 percent from a year earlier in the first quarter, reducing the median value of U.S. single- family homes, condominiums and cooperatives to $182,378, Zillow said. The decline has left about 20.4 million of the U.S.’s 93 million houses, condos and co-ops with loans higher than the properties are worth. The gain in underwater homeowners will lead to more bank repossessions, Zillow said.

Benchmark crude for June delivery rose $1.95 to $55.79 on the New York Mercantile Exchange, levels not seen since November.

Demand for energy because of the recession has been decimated, leaving storage facilities more bloated than in any year since Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990.

Prices for crude, and gasoline, have plunged as a result, providing a break to everyone from industrial companies to consumers, though that must be taken in the context of shuttered factories and layoffs.

Al Jazeera broadcast footage on Monday that showed troops apparently preparing to convert Afghans to their faith.

Some of the Soldiers who appeared in the video have also been reprimanded, U.S. government and military officials told Al Jazeera’s James Bays.

The video, shot about a year ago, appeared to show military chaplains stationed in the U.S. air base at Bagram discussing how to distribute copies of the Bible printed in the country’s main Pashto and Dari languages.

Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told Al Jazeera he was not aware of the details of the footage but that the U.S. Army was not involved in promoting religion.

“From the United States’ military’s perspective, it is not our position to push any specific kind of religion,” he said at a Pentagon briefing in Washington on Monday.

In one recorded sermon, Lt. Col. Gary Hensley, the chief of the U.S. military chaplains in Afghanistan, tells Soldiers that, as followers of Jesus Christ, they all have a responsibility “to be witnesses for him”.

“The special forces guys — they hunt men basically. We do the same things as Christians, we hunt people for Jesus. We do, we hunt them down,” he says.

“Get the hound of heaven after them, so we get them into the kingdom. That’s what we do, that’s our business.”

Questioned about the footage, Greg Julian, a U.S. colonel in Afghanistan, told Al Jazeera: “Most of this is taken out of context … this is irresponsible and inappropriate journalism.

“This footage was taken a year ago … the Bibles were taken into custody and not distributed.

The British Airline Pilots’ Association (Balpa ), which represents more than 80% of commercial airline pilots, is to mount a legal challenge to Home Office plans to use “critical” airside workers as the first compulsory “guinea pigs” for the scheme.

MPs are shortly to be asked to approve the powers to compel the pilots and other airside workers at the two airports to register for the national ID card scheme as part of their “pre-employment” checks. The £30 fee is to be waived as an incentive for them to sign up.