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Dressed in a gray suit with an American flag pin in his lapel, then-Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez said the modest two-lane span that U.S. taxpayers paid for would be “a critical transit route for trade and commerce” between Afghanistan and Tajikistan.

Today, the bridge across the muddy waters of the Panj River is carrying much more than vegetables and timber: It’s paved the way for drug traffickers to transport larger loads of Afghan heroin and opium to Central Asia and beyond to Russia and Western Europe.

Standing near his truck in a dusty patch on the Afghan side of the river, Yar Mohammed said it was easy to drive drugs past the Afghan and Tajik border guards.

“It’s an issue of money,” Mohammed said, to the nods and grins of the small group of truckers gathered around him near the bridge at Nizhny Panj. “If you give them money, you can do whatever you want.”

The roots of the global drug trade are often a murky tangle of poverty, addiction, violence and corruption. However, it’s clear why the dirt-poor former Soviet Central Asian republic of Tajikistan is on the verge of becoming a narco-state.

After the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, the United States and other Western powers looked the other way as opium and heroin production surged to record levels, making Afghanistan by far the world’s biggest producer.

Much of the ballooning supply of drugs shipped across Afghanistan’s northern border, up to one-fifth of the country’s output, has traveled to and through Tajikistan. The opium and heroin funded rampant corruption in Tajikistan and turned the country, still hobbled by five years of civil war in the 1990s, into what at times seems like one big drug-trafficking organization.

Every day last year — extrapolating from United Nations estimates — an average of more than 4 metric tons of opium, which can be made into some 1,320 pounds of heroin, moved on the northern route. Put another way, the equivalent of nearly 6 million doses of pure heroin — at 100 milligrams each — is carried across the northern Afghan border each day.

After it’s cut with other substances and sold on the street corners and in the apartment stairwells of Russia and Western Europe, the main retail markets for Central Asian heroin, that could produce at least 12 million doses.

Nevertheless, it’s clear even to a casual visitor at the bridge that neither the Afghan or the Tajik border guards have much interest in curbing, or even inspecting, the exports that pass in front of them.

In fact, as the Afghan drug supply has grown, Tajik seizures have fallen. In 2004, Afghanistan produced 4,200 metric tons of opium, and some 5 metric tons of heroin or its equivalent in opium were seized in Tajikistan, according to U.N. figures. Last year, with Afghan cultivation rising to 7,700 metric tons of opium, Tajik authorities seized less than 2 metric tons of heroin.

Although the United States wields enormous influence in both countries, their drug problems have taken a back seat to the war against the Taliban. Until the past year, Afghanistan’s growing drug production was at best a midlevel priority for Washington, and the U.S. hasn’t pressed Tajik President Emomali Rahmon to rein in his country’s drug trafficking, Western officials said. Nor, they said, has any other Western government with troops in Afghanistan.

All along the Afghan-Tajik border, smugglers for years have thrown sacks of heroin over the Panj River, waded across when the water is low, set up flotillas of car tires and used small ferries or footbridges.

The U.S.-financed bridge has made drug trafficking even easier, truck driver Mohammed said with a toothy smile: “You load the truck with drugs.”

In a series of email exchanges with Peter’s New York, Gibbs said he was not satisfied with the WHO’s critique, indicating that the basis for it was ambiguous.

“The WHO stated that they had no evidence to support my suggestion,” Gibbs said. “They made a very fair statement. However the principle reason for my conclusion remains—that none of the genes of the new virus had been sampled/found/caused epidemics since at least 2000, despite probably coming from at least two different parents on two continents, where other strains had been sampled.”

Gibbs said that might have been a coincidence, but the unusual placement of the virus on what what virologists call phylogenetic trees—a sort of schematic family history of the virus–also peeked his interest. On top of that, Gibbs observed that there was a lack of evidence that pig populations in North America, from which the virus is believed to have emerged, had been infected. Only the pigs on one farm in Canada have as yet been shown to have contracted the virus.

It has been established, said Gibbs, that swine easily contract the new flu from humans, and spread it among themselves. The absence of infection in the North American swine, Gibbs noted, may be evidence that the swine had already contracted the disease and built up immunity, or that they were vaccinated against viruses that resembled the novel swine flu closely enough for them to have been protected against it. Gibbs said the one Canadian herd that came down with the novel swine flu had not been inoculated, and that the evidence therefore leans toward inoculation as the reason North American pigs are disease free. That, in turn, would support a theory, according to Gibbs, that “the virus in the vaccine may be the immediate progenitor of the new human virus. ”

Gibbs said he would have been more satisfied if scientists at the WHO had examined the lists of all the vaccines licensed for production in the United States and Mexico and determined that none of them harbored strains from which the swine flu could have descended. He said he had been unable to locate such lists to make the determination himself.

Gibbs spells out fairly clearly how he thinks the new virus might have emerged due to a laboratory error. In manufacturing a vaccine, each of the viruses to be protected against must first be bred and then sterilized to prevent their further multiplication. When a subject is inoculated, the body reacts to the “killed” viral fragments and produces antibodies that provide protection against the live virus. Gibbs said that if the sterilization process was not carried out properly, pigs could end up being given live viruses, and instead of being protected, would contract the disease. The live viruses would then have a chance to multiply and exchange genetic material within the infected pig in a process known as reassortment, and a new virus could emerge and spread to humans as a “swine flu.”

The study of viruses is overlaid with a complex nomenclature and labyrinthine concepts and arguments in the field of genetics that are unfamiliar to the average layman. But the implications are far reaching, a fact not lost on the general public or on Gibbs.

Early this year, the Deerfield, Ill. based drug firm Baxter International Inc. shipped experimental vaccines for human flu that were contaminated with the bird flu. The cocktail of influenzas, if it had not been discovered by alert laboratory specialists in the Czech Republic in February, could have been administered to subjects, after which, some experts feared, the two viruses could have undergone reassortment, producing a new virus that possessed the lethality of bird flu and the communicability of human flu. Bird flu is a deadly disease that kills close to half its victims, but resists spread from human to human. Human flu, on the other hand, is far more benign, but is easily spread through human contact. A recombined virus with the characteristics of each of the two could conceivably wipe out almost half the world’s population.

Gibbs steers clear of elaborate intrigues that some believe are behind the new flu’s emergence. “Whenever I’ve thought something has resulted from a conspiracy, it usually turns out to be from a ‘cock-up,’” he said. The importance of establishing whether or not the flu emerged from a laboratory, he emphasized, is “to try to avoid a recurrence.”

He did admit, however, that there was a definite risk to the public of escaping pathogens held in government and private facilities.

“There are many historical precedents that are conveniently forgotten,” said Gibbs. “The recent Baxter incident seems to have been one.”

“The reappearance in 1977 of the H1N1 (virus) last seen in 1950 after a period of non-evolution,” which he speculated could represent “suspended animation in a freezer,” was another instance in which pathogens might have escaped from a laboratory. Gibbs also cited the escape of foot-and-mouth disease from a British government laboratory facility in 2007.

Asked if the resurrection of the viral agent for the deadly 1918 “Spanish” flu, which was reconstituted in 2005 by scientists at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for research purposes, was a safe proposition, he answered, “No, definitely not.”

New reports from the UN and analysts in India, Washington and London estimate that at least 30m hectares is being acquired to grow food for countries such as China and the Gulf states who cannot produce enough for their populations. According to the UN, the trend is accelerating and could severely impair the ability of poor countries to feed themselves.

Today it emerged that world leaders are to discuss what is being described as “land grabbing” or “neo-colonialism” at the G8 meeting next week. A spokesman for Japan’s ministry of foreign affairs confirmed that it would raise the issue: “We feel there should be a code of conduct for investment in farmland that will be a win-win situation for both producing and consuming countries,” he said.

Olivier De Schutter, special envoy for food at the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, said: “[The trend] is accelerating quickly. All countries observe each other and when one sees others buying land it does the same.”

The UN’s food and agricultural organisation and other analysts estimate that nearly 20m hectares (50m acres) of farmland – an area roughly half the size of all arable land in Europe – has been sold or has been negotiated for sale or lease in the last six months. Around 10m hectares was bought last year. The land grab is being blamed on wealthy countries with concerns about food security.

Some of the largest deals include South Korea’s acquisition of 700,000ha in Sudan, and Saudi Arabia’s purchase of 500,000ha in Tanzania. The Democratic Republic of the Congo expects to shortly conclude an 8m-hectare deal with a group of South African businesses to grow maize and soya beans as well as poultry and dairy farming.

India has lent money to 80 companies to buy 350,000ha in Africa. At least six countries are known to have bought large landholdings in Sudan, one of the least food-secure countries in the world.

Other countries that have acquired land in the last year include the Gulf states, Sweden, China and Libya. Those targeted include not only fertile countries such as Brazil, Russia and Ukraine, but also poor countries like Cameroon, Ethiopia, Madagascar, and Zambia.

De Schutter said that after the food crisis of 2008, many countries found food imports hit their balance of payments, “so now they want to insure themselves”.

“This is speculation, betting on future prices. What we see now is that countries have lost trust in the international market. We know volatility will increase in the next few years. Land prices will continue to rise. Many deals are even now being negotiated. Not all are complete yet.”

He said that about one-fifth of the land deals were expected to grow biofuel crops. “But it is impossible to know with certainty because declarations are not made as to what crops will be grown,” he said.

Some of the world’s largest food, financial and car companies have invested in land.

Alpcot Agro of Sweden bought 120,000ha in Russia, South Korea’s Hyundai has paid $6.5m (£4m) for a majority stake in Khorol Zerno, which owns 10,000ha in Eastern Siberia, while Morgan Stanley has bought 40,000ha in Ukraine. Last year South Korea’s Daewoo signed a 99-year lease for 1.3m hectares of agricultural land in Madagascar.

Devinder Sharma, analyst with the Forum for Biotechnology and Food Security in India, predicted civil unrest.

“Outsourcing food production will ensure food security for investing countries but would leave behind a trail of hunger, starvation and food scarcities for local populations,” he said. “The environmental tab of highly intensive farming – devastated soils, dry aquifer, and ruined ecology from chemical infestation – will be left for the host country to pick up.”

In Madagascar, the Daewoo agreement was seen as a factor in the subsequent uprising that led to the ousting of the president, Marc Ravalomanana. His replacement, Andry Rajoelina, immediately moved to repeal the deal.

Concern is mounting because much of the land has been targeted for its good water supplies and proximity to ports. According to a report last month by the London-based International Institute for Environment and Development, the land deals “create risks and opportunities”.

“Increased investment may bring benefits such as GDP growth and improved government revenues, and may create opportunities for economic development and livelihood improvement. But they may result in local people losing access to the resources on which they depend for their food security – particularly as some key recipient countries are themselves faced with food security challenges”, said the authors.

Holiday snapshots and family details about the newly appointed head of Britain’s MI6 intelligence agency have been removed from a Facebook page after a newspaper told the government about them.

Pictures from the social networking Web site published in the Mail on Sunday newspaper show John Sawers posing with his children, wearing a Santa hat and playing Frisbee on a beach.

The paper said the information was posted by Sawers’ wife on her Facebook page. It included vacation photos, details about the couple’s three children and the location of their London home.

Shelley Sawers’ page has been removed from the site, although a cached page can still be viewed that shows a picture of the spy chief’s wife.

Some politicians called the details a security lapse — but others said they revealed nothing but a few mildly embarrassing domestic details.

“It’s not a state secret that he wears Speedo swimming trunks,” said Foreign Secretary David Miliband. “For goodness’ sake, let’s grow up.”

The Foreign Office would not comment further on the case.

But Conservative lawmaker Patrick Mercer, who heads Parliament’s counterterrorism subcommittee, said the revelations left Sawers open “to criticism and blackmail.”

John Sawers, 53, was named last month as the new head of the Secret Intelligence Service, or MI6, Britain’s foreign intelligence agency. A former spy, diplomat and foreign policy adviser to ex-Prime Minister Tony Blair, he is currently Britain’s ambassador to the United Nations.

NSA budgeting documents also indicate that the design of the 1-million-square-foot center should be completed by February, with building to begin in June on a project that could mean thousands of construction jobs for a state that, like many others, has been stuck in a building lull.

President Barack Obama last week signed a spending bill that included $181 million for preparatory construction of the Camp Williams facility and tentatively agreed to two future phases of construction that could cost $800 million each.

The secretive agency released a statement Thursday acknowledging the selection of Camp Williams as a site for the new center and describing it as “a specialized facility that houses computer systems and supporting equipment.”

Budget documents provide a more detailed picture of the facility and its mission. The supercomputers in the center will be part of the NSA’s signal intelligence program, which seeks to “gain a decisive information advantage for the nation and our allies under all circumstances” according to the documents.

The agency is set up to collect intelligence on foreign threats, but it has been accused of also participating in the unwarranted monitoring of the communications of U.S. citizens.

A similar center is being constructed in San Antonio, Texas, and NSA documents indicate that the agency is also expanding its existing intelligence collection facilities in North Yorkshire, England, and Fort Meade, Md. The agency has been seeking to decentralize its operations in an effort to protect assets and find areas with the capacity to satiate the energy appetites of its enormous computer caches.

To that end, the initial phase of the project is expected to include more than $52 million in preparatory electrical work — much of that is likely to be spent connecting two large power corridors that run through Camp Williams to the construction site near the base airstrip. The next phases of the project will include $340 million in electrical work, according to the documents.

About $70 million has been budgeted for security, including vehicle inspection facilities, fencing, surveillance and separate visitor control centers for construction and technical personnel.

All NSA security measures will be in addition to security that the Utah National Guard already provides for the 28,000-acre Camp Williams facility.

“Physical and technical security of the construction site will be assured,” the budget documents promise.

While the project — and the ongoing operation of the center — will bring millions of dollars into the state, the Utah Guard doesn’t stand to make a penny.

Guard spokesman Hank McIntire said the state, which manages Camp Williams, would act as “a benevolent landlord.”

Citizens Education Project director Steve Erickson, who advocates for greater military oversight, was wary.

“If we’re going to be landlords,” he said, “we should act like a good landlord and have some rules that apply to the tenants to make sure they’re behaving.”

Regrettably, he said, that’s not likely to happen when dealing with one of the most secretive government agencies in the world.

“The major part of Indian reserves is in dollars — that is something that’s a problem for us,” Tendulkar, chairman of the Prime Minister’s Economic Advisory Council, said in an interview yesterday in Aix-en-Provence, France, where he was attending an economic conference.

Singh is preparing to join leaders from the Group of Eight industrialized nations — the U.S., Japan, Germany, Britain, France, Italy, Canada and Russia — at a summit in Italy next week which is due to tackle the global economy. China and Brazil will also send representative to the summit.

As the talks have neared, China and Russia have stepped up calls for a rethink of how global currency reserves are composed and managed, underlining a power shift to emerging markets from the developed nations that spawned the financial crisis.

“There should be a system to maintain the stability of the major reserve currencies,” Former Chinese Vice Premier Zeng Peiyan said in a speech in Beijing yesterday, highlighting China’s concerns about a global financial system dominated by the dollar.

In 2008, the DHS Science and Technology Directorate awarded a $6.2 million contract to Thales Communications to demonstrate the first-ever portable radio prototype that lets emergency responders-police, firefighters, emergency medical personnel and others-communicate with partner agencies, regardless of the radio band they operate on. This is the final pilot in a three-part test, DHS said.

Currently radios only operate within a specific frequency band; subsequently, responders are often unable to communicate with other agencies and support units that operate in different radio frequencies. Comparable in size and weight to existing portable radios with similar features, multi-band radio would provide users with much-improved incident communications capabilities, the DHS stated.

Thales Liberty multiband mobile radio received US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) certification in April. The Liberty radio is made in the U.S. and is the first multiband, software-defined LMR designed specifically for government agencies and first responders, the company said.

In the most recent attempt by activists to break a two-year blockade of Gaza, a group called the Free Gaza Movement sent the ship loaded with humanitarian supplies and 21 activists and crew members from Cyprus.

The Israeli navy intercepted the ship Tuesday after it ignored repeated messages saying it would not be allowed to enter Gaza waters and ordering it to turn back.

Among those being held Friday were former U.S. Rep. Cynthia McKinney and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Mairead Corrigan Maguire, said Sandra Law, mother of detained British activist Alex Harrison.

Law, speaking from her London home, said her daughter was being held with other women from the group at Ramle jail, near Ben-Gurion Airport. She said she spoke briefly with her daughter Friday.

“The conditions (in the jail) aren’t great, but they’re certainly not as bad as they could be,” Law said. “They’re in good spirits.”

She said the planned deportation of the activists may have been delayed by their refusal to sign legal documents in Hebrew, which they do not understand.

Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor said those who signed an undertaking to return home voluntarily could be released immediately and repatriated on the first available flight.

The announcement by a top Kremlin aide came ahead of President Barack Obama’s visit to Moscow next week, when the deal is expected to be signed during a summit aimed at improving the nations’ strained relations.

Russia’s concession on arms shipments also came as the Obama administration is shifting the U.S. military’s focus from Iraq to Afghanistan, where a massive American offensive is currently under way in Taliban-controlled areas of Helmand province.

Russia has been allowing the United States to ship non-lethal supplies across its territory for operations in Afghanistan, and Kremlin officials had suggested further cooperation was likely.

Kremlin foreign policy adviser Sergei Prikhodko told reporters Friday that the expected deal would enable the U.S. to ship lethal cargo and would include shipments by air and land.

He said it was unclear if U.S. soldiers or other personnel would be permitted to travel through Russian territory or airspace.

“They haven’t asked us for it,” he said.

PVM Oil Associates, the world’s largest over-the-counter oil brokerage, said on Thursday it had been the “victim of unauthorised trading”. The privately owned company said that as a result of the unauthorised trades it had been forced to close substantial volumes of futures contracts at a loss.

London-based PVM said it had informed the Financial Services Authority, the UK regulator. But officials at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the US regulator, claimed they had been kept in the dark for several hours in spite of an agreement between the watchdogs last year to exchange such market-sensitive information spontaneously.

Oil traders in London and New York said the “unauthorised trading” explained the exceptional spike in business activity and prices in the early hours of Tuesday that some initially thought must have been caused by a geopolitical event. “Trading volumes rose overnight and prices jumped more than $2 a barrel without apparent justification,” a senior oil trader in New York said.

Prices rose in one hour from $71 to $73.5, the highest level for the year, according to Reuters data. In total, futures contracts for more than 16m barrels of oil changed hands in that hour – equivalent to double the daily production of Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest oil producer, and far more than the traditional 500,000 barrels for that time of the day.

Traders said the broker implicated had allegedly accounted for at least half of the unusual activity, with the rest the result of others chasing the rally. Oil prices on Thursday fell to $66.5 a barrel, down almost 10 per cent from Tuesday’s peak.

The Financial Times has identified the PVM broker as Steve Perkins. PVM declined to comment and Mr Perkins could not be reached. Fellow traders said Mr Perkins was considered an experienced broker, well-regarded in the market.