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The failures of Downey Savings and Loan Association, based in Newport Beach, and PFF Bank & Trust of Pomona brought the number of U.S. bank failures this year to 22.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. was appointed receiver of the two thrifts. U.S. Bank, based in Minneapolis, acquired all the deposits of both.

Downey, the 23rd-largest U.S. savings and loan, had assets of $12.8 billion and deposits of $9.7 billion as of Sept. 30. PFF, the 38th-largest, had assets of $3.7 billion and $2.4 billion in deposits.

Also Friday, Georgia regulators shut down The Community Bank, a small bank in Loganville, Ga. The FDIC was made receiver of the bank, which had $681 million in assets and $611.4 million in deposits as of Oct. 17. The FDIC said all the bank’s deposits and about $84.4 million of its assets will be acquired by Bank of Essex, of Tappahannock, Va. Its four branches will reopen Monday as offices of Bank of Essex.

The Office of Thrift Supervision, the federal regulator for the two California thrifts, said they both suffered mounting losses since last year. Downey’s business focused on nontraditional, high-risk home mortgages such as payment-option and adjustable-rate loans.

The Treasury Department agency recently boosted the minimum capital requirements for the parent, Downey Financial Corp., as the company struggled with the slumping mortgage market. Downey was hit hard by rising mortgage defaults, especially in its option adjustable-rate mortgage holdings. Option ARMs allow customers to choose a different payment option each month — including a payment that is smaller than the interest due on the loan.

Option ARMs have been among the worst-performing loans during the downturn in the real estate market.

PFF, established in 1892, had a large concentration of housing construction loans hit hard by the deteriorating real estate market on the West Coast, the thrift agency said.

“The closing of these two thrifts once again demonstrates the tremendous impact of the housing market distress on the state of California,” said John Reich, director of the Office of Thrift Supervision, in a statement. This year, four of the five failures of institutions regulated by the agency — and all the ones of significant size — had major concentrations in housing finance business in California, he said.

Trials could also be conducted away from the public in the Government’s Porton Down military research site in Salisbury, Wiltshire, it is claimed.

There are currently no GM food trials underway in the country and the more than 50 that have been conducted since 2000 have been affected by vandalism. Opponents of GM benefit from current rules, which dictate that all trials must be disclosed on a Government website.

However, a review of security arrangements for trials has been ordered by Hilary Benn, the Environment Secretary and Lord Mandelson, the Business Secretary.

The Independent reported that ministers are preparing to scrap the disclosure rule.

A Government source told the newspaper: “We need to review the security arrangements. The rules are a charter for people who want to stop the experiments. A lot of information has to be put in the public domain and that makes it very easy for people to trash them.”

Mr Benn said: “We need to see if GM foods have a contribution to make, and we won’t know the answer about their environmental impact unless we run controlled experiments. It’s important to go with the science.”

Lord Mandelson acted to loosen rules on GM licensing in his previous job as EU Trade Commisioner, and it is thought he favours a relaxation of the conditions in Britain.

While the Government has signalled that GM crops hold the potential to prevent future food crises, Gordon Brown has trodden carefully around the issue due to fierce opposition from large sections of the public.

Leeds University, where a trial batch of 400 GM potato plants was destroyed by vandals in June, is planning to make a final attempt to complete the trial, and is asking the Government to fund security fences and CCTV cameras on its farm.

Professor Tim Benton, the research dean at the university’s Faculty of Biological Science, told The Independent: “We need to find a way to do crop trials in a safe way and to minimise the environmental risk. We cannot carry on for the next 20 or 30 years saying it’s too scary, the public is too frightened, it is politically too dangerous.

The activists are uneasy not only about signs that both Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates could be in the Obama Cabinet, but at reports suggesting that several other short-list candidates for top security posts backed the decision to go to war.

“Obama ran his campaign around the idea the war was not legitimate, but it sends a very different message when you bring in people who supported the war from the beginning,” said Kelly Dougherty, executive director of the 54-chapter Iraq Veterans Against the War.

The activists — key members of the coalition that propelled Obama to the White House — fear he is drifting from the antiwar moorings of his once-longshot presidential candidacy. Obama has eased the rigid timetable he had set for withdrawing troops from Iraq, and he appears to be leaning toward the center in his candidates to fill key national security posts.

The president-elect has told some Democrats that he expects to take heat from parts of his political base but will not be deterred by it.

Aside from Clinton and Gates, the roster of possible Cabinet secretaries has included Sens. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) and Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.), who both voted in 2002 for the resolution authorizing President Bush to invade Iraq, though Lugar has since said he regretted it.

With retail and wholesale clients around the world stocking up on the precious metal, the Perth Mint has been forced to suspend orders.

As the World Gold Council reported that the dollar demand for gold reached a quarterly record of $US32 billion ($50.73 billion) in the third quarter, industry insiders said the race to secure physical gold had reached an intensity that had never been witnessed before.

Perth Mint sales and marketing director Ron Currie said the unprecedented demand had forced the Mint to cease orders until January, with staff working seven days a week, 24-hour days, over three shifts to meet orders.

“We have never seen this before and are working right at capacity. And we are seeing it from clients in the shop buying one ounce, right up to 30,000 ounces from overseas clients,” Mr Currie said.

Robert Jaggard, manager of bullion and rare coins dealer Jaggards, said business had picked up strongly and he expected it to increase further.

“All around the world there has been a heavy run on physical gold and there is a shortage of supply,” he said.

Mr Jaggard, who has been dealing in gold for 40 years and is an agent for the Perth Mint, said some clients were buying up to $1million worth of gold, paying a premium above the spot price.

Late yesterday afternoon, spot gold in Sydney was trading at $US747.30 an ounce, up $US8.15 on Thursday’s local close.

“Professional business people who have previously bought small amounts now want more gold because they are suffering in other markets,” Mr Jaggard said.

At a conference this week in Munich, delegates were lined up 30-deep to purchase physical gold. And reports out of the Middle East suggested that there had been unprecedented gold buying in Saudi Arabia during the first half of November, with an estimated $US3.5 billion purchased in recent weeks.

The World Gold Council, releasing its global demand trends yesterday, said identifiable investment demand, which incorporates demand for gold through exchange-traded funds and bars and coins, was the biggest contributor to overall demand during the quarter. It was up to $US10.7 billion, double last year’s levels.

The figures showed retail investment demand rose 121 per cent to 232 tonnes in the third quarter, with strong bar and coin buying reported in Swiss, German and US markets.

The quarter also witnessed widespread reports of gold shortages among bullion dealers across the globe, as investors searched for a haven. Overall, quarter three saw Europe reach an all-time record 51 tonnes of bar and coin buying. France became a net investor in gold for the first time since the early 1980s.

World Gold Council chief executive James Burton said gold’s universal role as a store of value had shone through during the quarter, helping attract investors and consumers to all forms of gold ownership.

“The rise in demand for gold bars and coins has been impressive,” he said.

Crops and water supplies are suffering serious damage as earth is washed and blown away across a third of the country, according to the largest-scale study for 60 years.

Harvests in the north-east, known as China’s breadbasket, will fall 40% within half a century on current trends, even as the 1.3 billion population continues to grow.

While experts cited farming and forestry as the main causes, contributing to over a third of the area affected, the research team said erosion was damaging industrial areas and cities as well as remote rural land. About 4.5bn tonnes of soil are scoured away each year, at an estimated cost of 200bn yuan (£20bn) in this decade alone.

The poor will be worst hit, warns the report from China’s bio-environment security research team, which worked on the survey for three years. Almost three-quarters of them already live in erosion-hit areas.

The country’s 80,000 reservoirs are also affected, with sand and mud reducing their storage capacity each year. Like soil deposits along rivers, that increases the risk of flooding.

“If we don’t conduct effective measures, erosion will cause major damage to social and economic development,” Chen Lei, the director of the Ministry of Water Resources, told the official People’s Daily newspaper.

The state news agency Xinhua said more than 3.5m square kilometres were affected in total, with 1.6m square kilometres scoured by water and 2m square kilometres by wind.

Professor Mu Xingming of the Institute of Soil and Water Conservation told the Guardian that overpopulation was largely to blame. He said his analysis of north-east China over the last century showed the effects of increasing population density.

New roads and railways were also contributing to the problem and people were less aware of the need for environmental protection than in other countries, he added.

Mu cited the Yellow River as one of the areas worst hit. “Historically, it got its name because of its colour – because the water contains more mud and sand than other rivers. But now it’s yellower because of human activities,” he said.

Quoting “highly informed” sources, the daily said Washington has asked Saudi Arabia for 120 billion dollars, the United Arab Emirates for 70 billion dollars, Qatar for 60 billion dollars and was seeking 40 billion dollars from Kuwait.

Al-Seyassah said Washington sought the amount as “financial aid” to face the fallout of the financial crisis and help prevent its economy from sliding into a painful recession.

The daily said the United States plans to use the funds to help the ailing automobile industry , banks and other companies suffering from the global financial turmoil.

The four nations, all members of OPEC, produce together 14 million barrels of oil per day, around half of the cartel’s production and about 17 percent of world supplies.

The four states are estimated to have amassed close to 1.5 trillion dollars in surplus in the past six years due to high oil prices that rocketed above 147 dollars in July before sliding to just above 50 dollars.

The median home price in the nine-county region plunged to $375,000 in October, compared with $631,000 in the year-ago period, according to San Diego-based MDA DataQuick.

Last month’s median price was down 6.3 percent from September and nearly 44 percent from the peak median of $665,000 in the summer of 2007.

“The dramatic, near free-fall in the Bay Area’s median sale price in recent months stems mainly from the shift toward more sales occurring in lower-cost inland markets,” John Walsh, MDA DataQuick’s president, said in a statement. “At the same time, the role of foreclosures continued to grow across the region, adding more downward pressure to the median.”

Despite efforts by government, lenders and others to help strapped homeowners with mortgage payments, foreclosures have continued to rise in California, particularly in inland counties with metro areas such as Stockton, Merced, Riverside, San Bernardino and Modesto.

The U.S. financial crisis, rising unemployment and fears over the prospects of a deepening U.S. recession apparently is not dissuading buyers with bargain home prices in their sights, although the latest figures represent homes that closed escrow in October on sales that were initiated probably as far back as August.

Home sales in the San Francisco Bay area climbed nearly 39 percent last month from a year ago to 7,613 and nearly 5 percent from September.

October’s sales were the highest for any month since June 2007, when 7,964 homes were sold.

Once more, foreclosure resales accounted for a major slice of those sales — nearly 45 percent of the preowned homes sold last month. Most of those distressed sales took place in Contra Costa, Napa and Solano counties.

In pricier San Francisco County, where the median price slipped 12.1 percent to $699,000 from a year ago, sales plunged 21 percent.

Contra Costa County saw the steepest drop in price, with the median tumbling more than 46 percent to $285,000 from a year ago. Sales in the county soared by nearly 87 percent.

A six-county region of Southern California also saw a sharp jump in home sales and a decline in median price last month.

Sales in the region rose by 67 percent, while the median home price fell 33 percent to $300,000.

Feeding mice with genetically modified corn developed by the US-based Monsanto Corporation led to lower fertility and body weight, according to the study conducted by the University of Veterinary Medicine in Vienna. Lead author of the study Professor Zentek said, there was a direct link between the decrease in fertility and the GM diet, and that mice fed with non-GE corn reproduced more efficiently.

In the study, Austrian scientists performed several long-term feeding trials over 20 weeks with laboratory mice fed a diet containing 33% of a GM variety (NK 603 x MON 810), or a closely related non-GE variety used in many countries. Statistically significant litter size and pup weight decreases were found in the third and fourth litters in the GM-fed mice, compared to the control group.

The corn is genetically modified with genes that produce a pesticidal toxin, as well as genes that allow it to survive applications of Monsanto’s herbicide Roundup.

A book by author Jeffrey M. Smith, Genetic Roulette, distributed to members of congress last year, documents 65 serious health risks of GM products, including similar fertility problems with GM soy and GM corn: Offspring of rats fed GM soy showed a five-fold increase in mortality, lower birth weights, and the inability to reproduce. Male mice fed GM soy had damaged young sperm cells. The embryo offspring of GM soy-fed mice had altered DNA functioning. Several US farmers reported sterility or fertility problems among pigs and cows fed on GM corn varieties. Additionally, over the last two months, investigators in India have documented fertility problems, abortions, premature births, and other serious health issues, including deaths, among buffaloes fed GM cottonseed products.

The principle GM crops are soy, corn, cottonseed and canola. GM sugar from sugar beets will also be introduced before year’s end.

Mr. Smith, who is also the Executive Director of the Institute for Responsible Technology says, “GM foods are likely responsible for several negative health trends in the US. The government must impose an immediate ban on these dangerous crops.” He says, “Consumers don’t need to wait for governmental action. They can download a free Non-GMO Shopping Guide at www.HealthierEating.org.”