Panel leader Dr Hamish Campbell of GNS Science said New Zealand was one of the most geologically active places on earth. Our farms, homes and forests are perched on an unusually thin skin of the earth's crust at the boundary of two tectonic plates.

The panel expects questions such as the best place to find cover in an earthquake, where the most dangerous place to live is, which volcano is likely to erupt next, who provides insurance cover in a landslide and how to escape a tsunami.

The natural threats to New Zealand were widespread and, statistically at least, several of the most dangerous were due to go, Campbell said.

"A full-scale Taupo eruption would literally take out all of the North Island," he said.

Lake Taupo erupted an average of once every 950 years but has not erupted since 181AD. Its largest known eruption left half a metre of volcanic debris on the Chatham Islands 1000km away. The Alpine fault, which runs the length of the Southern Alps, is due a major move that would shake every city in the South Island, Campbell said, flattening many houses.

Evidence of the last time the Alpine fault moved include a large area of southern beech forest in which every standing tree was snapped off at the trunk.

Landslides were less apocalyptic but more frequent and were the most common cause of destruction to property. In Auckland, it was only a matter of time before a new volcano appeared and began oozing molten lava.

"There is ample evidence to show there is plenty of activity going on under Auckland. Auckland is built on a hot spot that is deeply rooted; the magma is coming from very, very deep down."

But that would be fairly benign compared to what scientists believed was in store for Wanganui. The ground beneath the city was regularly experiencing tiny tremors, indicating something big was building up.

"We think there will be another volcano like Ruapehu smack on Wanganui," Campbell said.

To the west Mt Taranaki - with an eruption average of every 100 to 200 years - was also overdue.

"It is like Mt St Helens (which erupted in 1980 in the US, killing 57 people), so you get very big blowouts and big bits collapsing."

Campbell said a report commissioned after the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami concluded the risk to New Zealand from a tsunami was probably as great as from earthquakes.

"And there is no part of New Zealand that is immune to earthquakes."

You have until October 16 to put questions to the panel via www.tepapa.govt.nz/disasterask. Its answers will be filmed and broadcast via the site on October 21.

The jury of five men and three women may award additional punitive damages if it finds Wyeth failed to warn. However, if it finds that the company adequately warned of the drug's risks no damages will be payable, including the compensatory damages awarded by the jury on Wednesday.

"The plaintiff has the burden of proof that the defendant's conduct is negligent, and that it failed to adequately warn of the dangers," Judge Norman Ackerman instructed the jurors.

The lawsuit charged that Wyeth was negligent in the testing, manufacture and marketing of its hormone replacement therapy drugs.

"We disagree that there is any scientific basis to support the jury's finding of a causal link between hormone replacement therapy and the plaintiff's breast cancer," Wyeth spokesman Chris Garland said.

"This is one jury's verdict and cannot be used to predict the outcome of future cases," he added.

In the first federal Prempro trial, a jury last month in Little Rock, Arkansas found Wyeth was not negligent and had adequately warned patients and doctors of the cancer risk associated with the drug.

Wyeth is facing some 5,000 lawsuits involving its hormone replacement drugs.

"Lawyers all around the country are watching what happens in these cases to get a sense of whether Prempro plaintiffs have a chance of winning," said Howard Erichson, professor of law at Seton Hall Law School in Newark, New Jersey.

Deutsche Bank analyst Barbara Ryan predicted that few Prempro plaintiffs will win punitive damages because Wyeth immediately changed the drug's label to reflect an increased cancer risk after a federally sponsored trial showed long-term use of the drug in combination with the female hormone replacement estrogen caused a 26 percent higher risk of breast cancer in women aged 50 to 79 who had not undergone hysterectomies.

"Right away they appropriately relabeled the drug, which resulted in a 60 percent decline in the number of prescriptions" for Prempro, Ryan said. "So the company has very strong defenses against punitive damages."

The plaintiff, Jennie Nelson, 67, of Dayton, Ohio, took Prempro for about six years and blamed it for her breast cancer. As a result of the cancer, she underwent a mastectomy and chemotherapy and radiation therapy.

The jury deliberated for about 33 hours over six days before reaching its verdict.

It had appeared to be deadlocked by the second day, but was urged to continue its deliberations by the judge. About three hours before the verdict was announced, the judge replaced one male juror with an alternate.

Nelson's attorneys declined to comment on the reason for the juror replacement, but said the deliberation time reflected a jury that had taken a careful approach to its task.

The market shrugged off the news and Wyeth shares finished off their earlier highs but still up 26 cents at $51.18 on the New York Stock Exchange.

The findings are "egregious" and "alarming," the department's inspector general, Earl Devaney, wrote in the report.

"Computer users at the department have continued to access sexually explicit and gambling Web sites due to the lack of consistency in department controls over Internet use," he wrote.

Devaney titled his report, "Excessive Indulgences." Its cover illustration is a photo montage of the types of Web sites employees have visited. One picture includes a shot of a woman's bare stomach.

Department officials say they are taking action to cut back on abuses by the agency's almost 80,000 employees with Internet access.

Devaney said in his report that he wanted to test the effectiveness of the department's rules on Internet usage. He looked primarily for visits to sexually explicit, gambling, gaming and auction sites because they are time-consuming and obviously not work-related, he said.

The investigation also found:

- A number of computers accessed sexually explicit Web sites for 30 minutes to an hour.

- One computer had 2,369 log entries at two game sites for about 12 hours.

- At least one computer accessed an Internet auction for almost eight hours.

Despite the findings, Devaney noted that since 1999, the department has taken just 177 disciplinary actions, 112 of which were for accessing pornographic or sexually explicit Web sites.

"Without strong and effective controls, we believe that this activity will continue and possibly increase," Devaney wrote.

In response, department officials issued a memo to all employees on Sept. 27 reminding them that some of the activities Devaney found "have significant legal and administrative consequences" and that violators could be fired or turned over to the police.

The department is working on blocking inappropriate Internet sites, the memo said. But it reminded employees that "just because an inappropriate site is not blocked does not mean that it is authorized for access."

In his remarks, Bernanke did not offer Congress and the Bush administration recommendations on how the massive entitlement programs should be changed. Efforts by the administration to overhaul the Social Security program - once a centerpiece of President Bush's second-term agenda - sputtered last year, meeting resistance from Republicans and Democrats alike.

As the population ages, the nation will have to choose among higher taxes, less non-entitlement spending by the government, a reduction in spending on entitlement programs, a sharply higher budget deficit or some combination thereof, Bernanke said.

Government spending on Social Security and Medicare alone will increase from about 7 percent of the total size of the U.S. economy to almost 13 percent by 2030 and to more than 15 percent by 2050, he said.

Bernanke declared: "The fiscal consequences of these trends are large and unavoidable."

The government recorded a budget deficit of $319 billion last year. This year's red ink is projected by the White House to total around $296 billion.

Financially shoring up Social Security and Medicare will involve difficult choices by lawmakers and other policymakers, Bernanke said.

For instance, if the government tried to finance projected entitlement spending entirely by revenue increases, the taxes collected by the federal government would have to rise from about 18 percent of the total size of the economy to about 24 percent in 2030, he said.

In his speech, Bernanke did not discuss the future course of interest rates.

The Federal Reserve meets next on Oct. 24-25, and many economists believe the policymakers will leave rates unchanged for the third meeting in a row.

With the economy slowing, the central bank in early August decided to halt - for the first time - a two-year long campaign to boost interest rates to fend off inflation. Policymakers suggested that the cooling economy would eventually lessen inflation pressures.

There's been relief on the inflation front as once-surging energy prices have settled down. Gasoline prices, which had topped $3 a gallon in the summer, have slid and are now averaging $2.31 a gallon nationwide, the Energy Department says.

Officials behind the system, launched yesterday by the Forensic Science Service (FSS), say it enables them to separate mixed or poor quality samples of DNA. It is a world first in analysing samples that have been extremely difficult to interpret.

The FSS, which carries out forensic testing for police forces throughout the country, is piloting DNAboost with the police forces of West Yorkshire, South Yorkshire, Northumbria and Humberside.

The system is particularly effective in cases where more than one person has touched a surface. Previously there was a low success rate in distinguishing one person from another, particularly where DNA traces were small or of poor quality.

Tests suggest it will increase crime detection rates by at least 15% and will lead to scientists identifying 40% more samples than at present. Paul Hackett, DNA manager at FSS headquarters in Birmingham, said: "This means a great many more cases have the potential to be solved and a great many more families could look forward to securing justice."

British-based FSS runs the world's first and largest national DNA database under contract to the Home Office. The company can complete analysis in one week that might take a year in other European countries. The pilot scheme will run for three months, after which it will be available to other police forces in the country.

DNAboost is the biggest advance since the introduction in 1999 of Low Copy Number, which can match a minute DNA sample and was used by the Australian authorities to ensure the conviction in December 2005 of Bradley John Murdoch for the murder of Peter Falconio.

The FSS used a single hair as evidence to convict Sarah Payne's killer, Roy Whiting, who was found guilty of murder and kidnapping in December 2001.

Last year, Cambridge was in third place and Oxford in fourth, beaten by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). This year that was reversed and MIT slipped to 4th spot.

Imperial College London finished in ninth position in the rankings, edging out Princeton and Columbia universities. Beijing University and the Australian National University were the first outside the UK or US to appear on the list, securing the 14th and 16th positions.

Glasgow and Birmingham universities made it into the top 100 for the first time this year, while University College London improved its position from 28th to 25th and King's College rose from 73rd to 46th.

However, the London School of Economics came in at number 17, a slip from its position at number 11 last year, while Bristol also fell from 49th in 2005 to 64th position this year.

Ian Leslie, the pro-vice chancellor for research at Cambridge said: "It is very reassuring that the collegiate systems of Cambridge and Oxford continue to be valued and respected by peers, and that the excellence of teaching and of research at both institutions is reflected in this ranking."

The vice-chancellor Oxford, John Hood, said: "The exceptional talents of Oxford's students and staff are on display daily. This last year has seen many faculty members gaining national and international plaudits for their teaching, scholarship and research, and our motivated students continue to achieve in a number of fields, not just academically.

"Our place amongst the handful of truly world-class universities, despite the financial challenges we face, is testament to the quality and the drive of the members of this university."

The study is based on a survey of more than 3,000 academics and 736 graduate employers, and takes into account a university's student-staff ratio, its ability to attract foreign students and its internationally renowned academics.

The world university rankings 2006

1. Harvard
2: Cambridge
3: Oxford
4: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
5: Yale
6: Stanford
7: California Institute of Technology
8: University of California, Berkeley
9: Imperial College London
10: Princeton

In the West, people are used to thinking of mosquitoes as nothing more than a nuisance. But in much of Asia they can pose a serious problem. A mosquito bite can kill, and at this time of year Delhi is teeming with mosquitoes.

Most Western tourists visiting India still take long courses of malaria pills. But malaria, though it is one of the world's biggest killers, is more of a problem in rural areas than in cities. It is dengue that has invaded modern, 21st-century cities, and left them struggling to cope. And there are no vaccine or preventive pills for dengue.

Tourists need not cancel their holidays in Delhi yet. At the moment the city is not facing a major outbreak, but it is on alert to prevent one. Every autumn there are cases of dengue in the city, but this year there have been more than usual, and that has the authorities worried.

"There is no need to panic and we are not declaring it an epidemic yet," the health minister for Delhi state, Yoganand Shastri, said after emergency talks. There has been public concern after it emerged there had been an outbreak at one of India's premier hospitals, the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, and a doctor had died.

Very few of those infected with dengue die of the disease. The problem is that the rate of infection is so high that this small proportion can still mean a lot of people. When 800 people died in Indonesia in 2004, at least 80,000 people were believed to have been infected.

So far this year there have only been 497 cases of infection in Delhi.

Known as break-bone fever for the excruciating joint pain it can cause, dengue causes a severe fever, headaches and rashes. In the overwhelming majority of cases, it lasts six or seven days, and the patient makes a full recovery. In rare cases it can cause potentially serious brain symptoms, or develop into the more dangerous dengue haemmorrhagic fever, which causes internal bleeding. It can also cause dengue shock syndrome, which has a high rate or mortality.

Dengue is on the rise throughout much of Asia and is fast becoming a major menace.

There are only a few methods for protecting against mosquitoes. They are a problem year-round in Delhi, except for a few weeks in the winter when it is too cold for them, and a few weeks in the summer when it is too hot, but it is only at this time of year they carry dengue.

It is impossible to keep them out of houses and office blocks. Even with the windows closed, they come in through the air conditioning vents. Delhi is not a clean city. There are pools of stagnant water where the mosquitoes breed. But much better kept cities have not been able to keep them out.

Unlike malaria, which is usually passed on by mosquitoes that are active at night, dengue is carried by mosquitoes that bite by day. That means mosquito nets are not an option.

The best form of prevention is to cover up despite the heat, which still lingers into October, and the authorities have called for children to wear long-sleeved shirts to school to avoid being bitten.

"It is a very important discovery, the biggest we have made in 28 years. It will allow us to find out a lot more," Mexico City's mayor, Alejandro Encinas, said on Wednesday.

The altar has a frieze of the rain god Tlaloc and an agricultural deity.

Archeologists are still unearthing the 11-foot (3.5-m) monolith, which they think might be part of an entrance to an underground chamber.

At the site, excavators with pick axes and shovels hacked at the earth above the monolith while groups of archeologists, government officials and reporters waited around the deep pit.

"The importance of the monolith is what we are going to discover...It's likely that it is part of a chamber, of some offering. We won't know until we get close. First we have to get the stone out," said Alberto Diaz, a member of the archeological team.

The Aztecs, a warlike and deeply religious people who built monumental works, ruled an empire stretching from the Gulf of Mexico to the Pacific Ocean and encompassing much of modern-day central Mexico.

Their often bloody reign began in the 14th century and ended when they were subjugated in 1521 by the Spanish led by Hernan Cortes.

TALE OF THREE CITIES

The Aztecs began building the Templo Mayor pyramid-shaped temple in 1375. Its ruins are now only yards from downtown's choking traffic.

The temple was a center of human sacrifice. At one ceremony in 1487, historians say tens of thousands of victims were sacrificed, their hearts ripped out.

Spanish conquistadors destroyed the temple when they razed the city and used its stones to help build their own capital.

Now the site is surrounded by Spanish colonial buildings like Mexico City's cathedral and the historical National Palace as well as convenience stores and fast-food restaurants.

"Really, when we begin to excavate, we realize that we are in three different times, three different cities: You see the current city, the colonial city and the pre-Hispanic city," said Diaz.

"The helicopter service, a key mode of transport in Sarawak, has been stopped due to poor visibility," an official with the Department of Civil Aviation in Sarawak's capital Kuching told AFP.

Three scheduled flights operated by Malaysia Airlines and a unit of budget carrier AirAsia were also diverted on Wednesday due to poor visibility, he said.

Helicopters are required to have a minimum visibility of 1.5 kilometers (one mile) but visibility in most parts of the state is now less than one kilometer, the official said.

Air quality in Sarawak continued to remain unhealthy in most areas, with Air Pollutant Index readings of between 106 and 188. The index considers haze levels of 100-200 to be unhealthy.

"Hopefully by the end of the month, when the monsoon season kicks in, we will have rain and we will see the end of the haze," a meteorological services department official said.

In peninsular Malaysia, locations in five states including the tourist destination of Malacca posted unhealthy air quality between 101 and 116, up from two states on Wednesday.

Malaysia is hoping to post a sharp rise in tourist arrivals and earnings next year but top travel officials have warned that haze from the Indonesian forest fires could choke the industry.

The Malaysian and Indonesian governments have outlawed land clearing by fire but weak enforcement means the ban is largely ignored.