In Britain the Processed Vegetable Growers' Association PVGA says pea growers are worst-hit and some could

In Britain, the Processed Vegetable Growers' Association (PVGA) says pea growers are worst-hit, and some could go out of business."The harvesting teams and factories are both struggling to cope," said a spokesman. The PVGA is already in talks with buyers to increase the price of vegetables, a necessary strategy to prevent ruin for some of its members.Richard Hirst, farmer: 'The plants shut down when it hits 28C'Standing in a field so waterlogged that he was about to suspend harvesting for 12 hours, Richard Hirst reflected yesterday on the record July temperatures that have reduced his pea crop yield by more than 15 per cent.The plants simply shut down when the heat hits 28C. The findings, by Human Rights Watch (HRW), will make uncomfortable reading for Romania, which is to join the EU next year. But in Boise National Forest in Idaho, one lone tree tells a story that, in the wake of the ceasefire declared in March 2006, might be consigned to the history books "Long live Eta," it says.. Romania is consigning a generation of HIV-infected teenagers to a life of persecution on the margins of an unsympathetic society, a study shows. Nature and time and a desire to communicate provided the means for them to transmit their thoughts and feelings," Mr Bieter said.Hundreds of carvings have been lost to nature, disfigured by the growth of the trees. In the 19th century, you were your own entertainment" she said.As primitive as life as a shepherd was, many of the carvings depict illusions of grandeur.

"Some of [the shepherds] appear to have felt they were someone important - lords of immense mountain ranges and plains - since there was no one near to dispute their claim," Jose Mallea says in his book, Carving out History.Others have all the poignancy of marks etched on to prison walls. One tree carving near Reno in Nevada reads: "If [shepherd] life is what the old-timers told me it was, my balls are carnations."Another, carved in Euskara, the Basque language, says: "In Spain, they consider us great men, but here we are nothing.""I've never gone out and not been surprised by the creativity of these carvers. Others, like the Basques, branched out into shepherding, a largely solitary pursuit.Etchings then began appearing in the trees of California, Nevada, Wyoming, Idaho and other states across the west.Susie Osgood, a Forest Service archaeologist based in California, said. "[The etchings provide] a realistic window into what you think and do out here when you're all alone. They provide insight into a group that is largely inaccessible in any other way" John Bieter, executive director of the Cenarrusa Centre for Basque Studies at Boise State University in Idaho, told The Independent.During the California Gold Rush, thousands of young men from the Basque region followed the gold trail across the US The rush barely lasted six months Many foreigners left the country.

Some are rallying political cries for Basque solidarity, others depict the sexual fantasies of a lonely farmer, and many are no different from the graffiti found on school desks, simply stating such things as "Joxe was here". Researchers cataloguing the arborglyphs say the carvings provide a blueprint for Basque immigration patterns and expose the psyche of the solitary sheepherder caught up in the Gold Rush that swept across the western US in the 1850s."The trees are a wonderful window into the Basque immigrant's way of life from the turn of the century to today. Now, researchers are completing the puzzle with the help of a treasure trove of arborglyphs; thousands of 19th- and 20th-century tree carvings elaborately etched on to the trunks of aspen trees in the United States. The drama has been played out in the debating chamber of the country's parliament-in-waiting, complete with brawls and name calling.. For decades, anthropologists have combed the mountainous landscape of south-west France and the Spanish Pyrenees in an attempt to piece together the history of the Basque diaspora.

They worked together during the revolution and in government afterwards but their relationship was soured when Mr Yushchenko sacked Ms Tymoshenko as his Prime Minister. His supporters' mantra has been that Ms Tymoshenko is a self-serving megalomaniac. Her supporters have cast him as a malleable President in the thrall of a corrupt coterie of advisers. Mr Yanukovych's pro-Russian Party of the Regions won more votes than any other while Ms Tymoshenko's Fatherland Party came second and Mr Yushchenko's Our Ukraine Party was beaten into a humiliating third place. The two former orange allies, Yushchenko and Tymoshenko, spent months trying to form a coalition government but their talks collapsed in acrimony last month. The Russian-speaking east voted for Mr Yanukovych while the Ukrainian-speaking west split its vote between Mr Yushchenko and his onetime revolutionary ally, Julia Tymoshenko.

The crisis has left the country without meaningful direction since 26 March when parliamentary elections were held. Ukraine has traditionally been split along an east-west fault line and that was reflected in the March ballot where no party won enough votes to govern alone. But after the limbo of the past four months many say they are disenchanted with the political process and disappointed by politicians of all parties. When thousands protested in Kiev during the revolution it was common to hear people say that they finally felt empowered after more than a decade of Soviet-style autocracy.