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The vaccinated, but not the non-vaccinated, dogs in the Purdue studies developed autoantibodies to many of their own biochemicals, including fibronectin, laminin, DNA, albumin, cytochrome C, cardiolipin and collagen.

This means that the vaccinated dogs — ”but not the non-vaccinated dogs”– were attacking their own fibronectin, which is involved in tissue repair, cell multiplication and growth, and differentiation between tissues and organs in a living organism.

The vaccinated Purdue dogs also developed autoantibodies to laminin, which is involved in many cellular activities including the adhesion, spreading, differentiation, proliferation and movement of cells. Vaccines thus appear to be capable of removing the natural intelligence of cells.

Autoantibodies to cardiolipin are frequently found in patients with the serious disease systemic lupus erythematosus and also in individuals with other autoimmune diseases. The presence of elevated anti-cardiolipin antibodies is significantly associated with clots within the heart or blood vessels, in poor blood clotting, haemorrhage, bleeding into the skin, foetal loss and neurological conditions.

The Purdue studies also found that vaccinated dogs were developing autoantibodies to their own collagen. About one quarter of all the protein in the body is collagen. Collagen provides structure to our bodies, protecting and supporting the softer tissues and connecting them with the skeleton. It is no wonder that Canine Health Concern’s 1997 study of 4,000 dogs showed a high number of dogs developing mobility problems shortly after they were vaccinated (noted in my 1997 book, What Vets Don’t Tell You About Vaccines).

Mr Key, following his first one-on-one meeting with his counterpart in Australia since becoming Prime Minister, said a common border was an achievable goal.

It would reduce travelling time, potentially reduce airfares and make trans-Tasman travel a “painless experience”.

“The barriers are in a number of areas: biosecurity, physical security, quarantine issues, but I believe that they are surmountable,” Mr Key told reporters.

“Last year the leadership group set an objective of reaching a more common border by 2015. In my view that’s far too long.

“If we’re serious about wanting to progress this issue we should be much more ambitious in a time scale.”

With about one million annual visitors from Australia to New Zealand, making it the country’s largest tourist market, boosting the numbers would have obvious financial benefits, Mr Key said.

Mr Rudd agreed an easier pathway between the countries would benefit both.

“It’s one of those things we’ve decided to crunch it, see if we can get an agreement within the year. If we can’t, we’ll explain to you why,” Mr Rudd said.

“We’ve decided rather than just have it languish in never-never land, to bring it into decision making territory.”

The two prime ministers had one-on-one talks and dinner last night at Mr Rudd’s Sydney residence, Kirribilli House, and talks continued today including cabinet ministers and business leaders.

Mr Key, who presented a $2 million cheque from New Zealanders for the bushfire relief fund, said the trans-Tasman relationship had “never been in better heart”.

High on the agenda was the global financial crisis and the need for continued strong action to restore economic growth and protect jobs.

Mr Rudd will attend next month’s G20 leaders summit in London, and said he would consult Mr Key on “the best set of responses on global co-ordinated stimulus and the question of returning private credit flows to normal, as soon as possible”.

The leaders also discussed a move towards a single economic market after 26 years of Closer Economic Relations (CER), to align and strengthen the two economies, stimulate business activity, competitiveness and job creation.

“Worldwide (CER) is the model free trade agreement. It’s been around for a quarter of a century, it’s pretty good and we’re determined to make it better,” Mr Rudd said.

Economic crisis has cast doubt on funding hopes for many big renewable energy projects, but the giant panels built into roofs on this sloping farm at the foot of the Vosges hills in eastern France are attracting attention from farmers to financiers.

Westphal is one of a small but growing band of farmers in the European Union’s biggest agricultural producer who are taking up new incentives for solar power to supplement farm incomes as well as help France meet renewable energy targets.

“We’re trying to go a bit beyond agriculture to earn our living in a different way,” said Jean-Luc Leonhart, an old classmate of Westphal’s visiting his friend’s project with a view to installing solar panels on his own farm.

In a mountainous region famed for Munster-Gerome cheeses and good quality white wines, Westphal is working on a grand scale.

His built-in panels form one of the largest integrated installations of photovoltaic systems — which generate electricity direct from solar power — yet built.

The 20 million euro ($26 million) investment means constructing five enormous sheds covered by 36,000 square meters of solar panels with a capacity to generate 4.5 megawatts (MW) of electricity, enough to power 4,000 homes.

“It’s quite a gamble,” said Westphal, who runs the farm with his brother.

The size, combined with a government guarantee of long-term electricity contracts at an inflation-linked “feed-in” tariff, helped win the scheme bank support.

Banque Populaire jointly financed Westphal’s project with Credit Agricole, France’s leading lender to farmers.

“It was the economies of scale that convinced them,” Westphal said. The farmer expects to generate 2 million euros a year in electricity sales from his solar site.

…

For other farmers considering solar energy, a cooperative would be a good way to create economies of scale without a huge individual investment, he added.

One example is a group of 77 cattle breeders in the Aveyron region of south-west France, who formed a company, SAS Adder, to manage the 17 million euro construction of 33,0000 square meters of integrated roof panels on their farms.

“It’s about minimizing the costs, spreading the risk and sharing the profits,” said Pierre Bastide, Adder’s president.

Nine months ago he lost his job as the security manager for the Western United States for a Fortune 500 company, overseeing a budget of $1.2 million and earning about $70,000 a year. Now he is grateful for the $12 an hour he makes in what is known in unemployment circles as a “survival job” at a friend’s janitorial-services company. But that does not make the work any easier.

“You’re fighting despair, discouragement, depression every day,” he said.

Cooper is not counted in traditional unemployment statistics since he works five days a week, 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. But his tumble down the economic ladder is among the more disquieting and often hidden aspects of the downturn.

The massive quarterly loss, equal to $22.95 a share, was AIG’s fifth in a row, bringing the total loss over that period to more than $100 billion.

The U.S. Treasury and Federal Reserve said AIG had posed a systemic risk requiring government action to prevent its problems from damaging the entire financial system.

AIG, the recipient of $150 billion in taxpayer aid last year, will get access to an additional $30 billion under the government’s revised plan announced on Monday.

It also got more lenient terms on existing financing and will be able to significantly pay down an outstanding credit facility in a swap that will give the government a preferred-share stake in two life insurance businesses.

AIG also announced plans to spin off part of its property-casualty business, to be renamed AIU Holdings.

The revamped rescue package is the third since last fall when the government stepped in to bail out AIG, once the world’s biggest insurer by market value.

The Treasury and the Fed said that AIG, which has counterparties around the globe, was so important to the U.S. economy and financial system that it had to be helped, and they held out the possibility more aid might be needed.

The “double-whammy” of the worst economic crisis in living memory and a motley crew of political extremists determined to stir up civil disorder has led to the ­extraordinary step of the Army being put on ­standby.

MI5 and Special Branch are targeting activists they fear could inflame anger over job losses and payouts to failed bankers.

One of the most notorious anarchist websites, Class War, asks: “How to keep warm ­during the credit crunch? Burn a banker.”

Such remarks have rung alarm bells in Scotland Yard and the Ministry of Defence.

Intelligence sources said the police, backed by MI5, are determined to stay on top of a situation that could spiral out of control as the recession bites deep.

The chilling prospect of soldiers being drafted on to the streets has not been discounted, although it is regarded as a last resort.

What worries emergency planners most is that the middle classes, now struggling to cope with unemployment and repossessions, may take to the streets with the disenfranchised.

The source said “this potent cocktail is reminiscent of the poll tax riots which fatally wounded Margaret Thatcher’s government in 1990”.

Last night Scotland Yard vowed it was ready to face any threat. A source said: “We do have a policing plan in place and we have riot police officers trained for such measures.”

But other senior police leaders fear the force will be unable to cope.

The scale and the speed of the global banking crisis has at times been almost overwhelming, and I know that in countries everywhere people who rely on their banks for savings have been feeling powerless and afraid. But it is when times become harder and challenges greater that across the world countries must show vision, leadership and courage – and, while we can do a great deal nationally, we can do even more working together internationally.

U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Robert Drain in New York issued the ruling today after witnesses for Troy, Michigan-based Delphi testified the cuts were vital to its survival because its lenders demanded them. About 1,600 objections were filed by workers.

Ending the benefits will save $70 million a year and eliminate $1.1 billion of debt, Delphi said. The company has said its value has fallen so much that it may be unable to cover debt accrued while in bankruptcy. Robert Vican, a Delphi employee who retired in 2001 after almost 37 years at the company, said the ruling would be especially painful for elderly former workers.

“It’s a real shame,” said Vican, of Hemlock, Michigan. “It’s an easy way out, to take something away from people who can’t do anything about it. The majority of these people bent over backward to satisfy that company.”

The parts-maker won approval in January 2007 of a Chapter 11 turnaround plan that valued the company at about $12.8 billion. That value was later reduced to $7.2 billion. Delphi wasn’t able to implement the plan in April because investors led by Appaloosa Management LP backed out of an agreement to provide as much as $2.55 billion, saying the company failed to meet conditions.

‘Terminate the Benefits’

“They’d squirted something flammable into the car’s engine block in the gap between the windshield and the hood,” said Klostermann. “The engine was completely destroyed.”

The 34-year-old’s experience isn’t unique in the German capital. At least 29 vehicles were destroyed in arson attacks this year, most of them luxury cars, according to police. The number is already about 30 percent of the total for 2008. The latest to go up in flames was a Porsche, on Feb. 14, two days after a Mercedes was set alight in a public car park.

While youths in Athens protest by throwing Molotov cocktails, in Paris by toppling barricades, and in Budapest by hurling eggs at politicians, protesters in Berlin rage at their economic plight by targeting the most expensive cars — symbols of German wealth and power.

A group calling itself BMW — the initials stand for Movement for Militant Resistance in German — has claimed responsibility for several attacks in left-wing magazines and Web sites, police spokesman Bernhard Schodrowski said.