The malice, mischief and Machiavellian manoeuvrings revealed in the illegally hacked megabytes of emails from the University of East Anglia's prestigious Climate Research Unit, for example, offers a useful paradigm of contemporary scientific conflict. SCIENCE MAY BE OBJECTIVE; SCIENTISTS EMPHATICALLY ARE NOT. This episode illustrates what too many universities, professional societies, and research funders have irresponsibly allowed their scientists to become. Shame on them all.

The source of that shame is a toxic mix of institutional laziness and complacency. TOO MANY SCIENTISTS IN ACADEMIA, INDUSTRY AND GOVERNMENT ARE ALLOWED TO GET AWAY WITH CONCEALING OR WITHHOLDING VITAL INFORMATION ABOUT THEIR DATA, research methodologies and results. That is unacceptable and must change. Only recently in America, for example, have academic pharmaceutical researchers been required to disclose certain financial conflicts of interest they might have. On issues of the greatest importance for public policy, science researchers are less transparent than they should be. That behaviour undermines science, policy and public trust.

Dubbed "climate-gate" by global warming sceptics, the most outrageous East Anglia email excerpts appear to suggest RESPECTED SCIENTISTS MISLEADINGLY MANIPULATED DATA AND SUPPRESSED LEGITIMATE ARGUMENT in peer-reviewed journals.

These claims are forcefully denied, but the correspondents do little to enhance confidence in either the integrity or the professionalism of the university's climatologists. What is more, there are no denials around the researchers' repeated efforts to avoid meaningful compliance with several requests under the UK Freedom of Information Act to gain access to their working methods. Indeed, researchers were asked to delete and destroy emails. SECRECY, NOT PRIVACY, IS AT THE ROTTEN HEART OF THIS BAD BEHAVIOR BY OSTENSIBLY GOOD SCIENTISTS

RAJENDRA PACHAURI defended the INTERGOVERNMENTAL PANEL ON CLIMATE CHANGE (IPCC) in the wake of apparent suggestions in emails between climate scientists at the University of East Anglia that they had prevented work they did not agree with from being included in the panel's fourth assessment report, which was published in 2007. The emails were made public this month after a hacker illegally obtained them from servers at the university.

Pachauri said the large number of contributors and rigorous peer review mechanism adopted by the IPCC meant that any bias would be rapidly uncovered. "The processes in the IPCC are so robust, so inclusive, that even if an author or two has a particular bias it is completely unlikely that bias will find its way into the IPCC report," he said.

"Every single comment that an expert reviewer provides has to be answered either by acceptance of the comment, or if it is not accepted, the reasons have to be clearly specified. So I think it is a very transparent, a very comprehensive process which insures that even if someone wants to leave out a piece of peer reviewed literature there is virtually no possibility of that happening." THE IPCC, WHICH WAS SET UP BY THE UN IN 1988, IS THE WORLD'S LEADING AUTHORITY ON CLIMATE CHANGE. It advises governments on the science behind the problem and was awarded the Nobel peace prize along with Al Gore in 2007.

Joe Public, coast-to-coast, now knows, thanks to the clowns at East Anglia's CRU, just how royally he has been screwed. Senator James Inhofe's Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works has written to all the relevant US Government agencies, acquainting them with the nature of the e-mails. But the real car crash for Obama is on Capitol Hill where it is now confidently believed his Cap and Trade climate legislation is toast. It was always problematic; but with a growing awakening to the scale of the scientific imposture sweeping the world, as far as the Antipodes, the clever money is on Cap and Trade laws failing to pass, with many legislators sceptical and the mid-term elections looming ever closer.

The term that Fox News is now applying to the Climategate e-mails is "game-changer". For the first time, Anthropogenic Global Warming cranks are on the defensive, losing their cool and uttering desperate mantras such as "You can be sceptical, not denial." Thanks, guys. In fact we shall be whatever we want to be, without asking your permission.

AT THIS RATE, COPENHAGEN IS GOING TO TURN INTO A COMEDY CONVENTION WITH THE REAL WORLD LAUGHING AT THESE LIARS. Now is the time to mount massive resistance to the petty tyrants and hit them where it hurts – in the wallet. Further down the line there may be, in many countries, a question of criminal prosecution of anybody who has falsified data to secure funds and impose potentially disastrous fiscal restraints on the world in deference to a massive hoax. IT'S A NEW WORLD OUT THERE, Al, and, as you may have noticed, the climate is very cold indeed.

Aunts, uncles, grandparents and even siblings will take on increasing childcare responsibilities in a form of "COMMUNAL PARENTING" to cope with the effects of marital breakdown and growing pressures in the workplace, according to the Family and Parenting Institute. Rising divorce rates, fewer marriages and the growth of civil partnerships mean that THE TRADITIONAL FAMILY MODEL IS NO LONGER "THE NORM" and Government efforts to rescue it are futile, according to Dr Katherine Rake, the organisation's new chief executive.

Dr Rake will use her first major speech in the post to warn against the "trap" of attempting to preserve traditional family structures through Government initiatives. She will also forecast a dramatic change in the role of parents in the next decade. With mothers beginning to play a less dominant role in children's lives because of greater work commitments, fathers will experience a change comparable in scale to that seen by women since the 1950s, she predicts.

An estimated two million families in Britain already rely the older generation for help with childcare while about 200,000 grandparents are now sole carers. ALMOST HALF OF CHILDREN ARE NOW BORN OUTSIDE MARRIAGE, against only one in 10 a generation ago.

Muslim groups in Switzerland and abroad condemned the vote as biased and anti-Islamic. Business groups said the decision hurt Switzerland's international standing and could damage relations with Muslim nations and wealthy investors who bank, travel and shop there.

"The Swiss have failed to give A CLEAR SIGNAL FOR DIVERSITY, FREEDOM OF RELIGION AND HUMAN RIGHTS," said Omar Al-Rawi, integration representative of the Islamic Denomination in Austria, which said its reaction was "grief and deep disappointment." Muslims comprise about 6 percent of Switzerland's 7.5 million people. Many are refugees from the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s and about one in 10 actively practices their religion, the government says.

ANXIETIES ABOUT GROWING MUSLIM MINORITIES HAVE RIPPLED ACROSS EUROPE IN RECENT YEARS, leading to legal changes in some countries. There have been French moves to ban the full-length body covering known as the burqa. Some German states have introduced bans on head scarves for Muslim women teaching in public schools. Mosques and minaret construction projects in Sweden, France, Italy, Austria, Greece, Germany and Slovenia have been met by protests.

"The sale of these assets should be on a fair, commercial basis, allowing the group to achieve its strategic long-term (goals) away from cyclical economic pressures," the source was quoted as saying. Among the conglomerate's key assets are the QE2 cruiseliner and the Turnberry golf course in Scotland.

Dubai, one of the UAE's seven city states, said Wednesday it intends to request a "standstill" for at least six months on the maturing debt of Dubai World, its largest and most-indebted state-run holding. Global stock markets sank on the news, with investors fearing a possible default by the emirate and its quasi-state corporates - liable for about 80 billion dollars - could cause a wider debt crisis.

But the source said a six-month moratorium would give the time needed to restructure the holding company under the supervision of a supreme committee charged with leading the emirate out of the crisis. The main stock markets in Dubai and Abu Dhabi have dived at least 6%.

He said he wanted to see "more progress in taking out" Bin Laden and his second-in-command Ayman Zawahiri. Meanwhile, a Senate report claims US forces had Bin Laden "within their grasp" in Afghanistan in late 2001. BBC World Affairs correspondent Mike Wooldridge said this was not a new claim.

However, he said, staff working for the Democratic majority on the Foreign Relations Committee now claimed to have evidence that in December 2001 US military power was kept on the sidelines while Bin Laden escaped "unmolested" into Pakistan's unregulated tribal areas.

The prime minister said Pakistan had made progress against the Taliban in south Waziristan. But he told the BBC: "We've got to ask ourselves why, eight years after September the 11th, nobody has been able to spot or detain or get close to Osama bin Laden, nobody's been able to get close to Zawahiri, the number two in al-Qaeda."

Following the appointments, commentators across Europe rushed to condemn THE SECRECY SURROUNDING THE PROCESS and criticised the choice of Ashton and Van Rompuy, both largely unknown in Europe. In a rare occurrence the Mail and the Guardian shared the front-page headline "The great EU stitch-up" following the European Council meeting in which EU leaders reached an agreement on the two positions over a secretive dinner.

After the EU summit, Gordon Brown issued a written statement to the Commons instead of appearing in front of MPs to answer questions as he normally does following such meetings. Despite never having been elected to a public office in her entire life, Cathy Ashton will receive an annual salary of £270,000 as EU Foreign Minister - more than the British Prime Minister - and will be entitled to a chauffeured car, housing allowance and a staff of 20. In total, the allowances and perks she will receive while in the Commission WILL NET HER AN ESTIMATED £4MILLION.

Van Rompuy is known to be a committed EU federalist, who just days before his appointment called for direct EU taxes to be introduced during a speech at the secretive Bilderberg group. Following his appointment, French President Nicolas Sarkozy described Van Rompuy as "an extremely determined man who knows exactly where he's going, he's a perfect connoisseur of European politics. I'm going to tell you something: I think he's one of the strongest personalities around the Council table."

By 2034, 44.1 million Americans will be living with diabetes - nearly twice the current number of 23.7 million, according to the report, published in the December issue of the journal Diabetes Care. About 90 percent of those with diabetes have type 2, a version of the condition that develops over time. Accounting for inflation, the direct medical cost of treating them will rise from $113 billion annually to $336 billion, the report says.

The numbers are disturbing, said Dr Elbert Huang, an assistant professor of medicine at the University of Chicago and lead author of the report. But he said he considers the predictions "very conservative" because they don't account for the growing proportion of overweight children and teenagers, who are at higher risk for developing diabetes.

Huang said he won't be surprised if the surge in diabetes turns out to be even worse than he projects. "Prior estimates have all said there would be a dramatic rise in the diabetes type 2 population," he said, but in every case "the actual [diabetic] population has ended up being larger than the estimates."

THEY'RE IGNORING THE DAMAGE THEY'VE DONE TO PUBLIC CONFIDENCE in the arbiters of climate science. "What they've done is search through stolen personal emails — confidential between colleagues - who often speak in a language they understand and is often foreign to the outside world," Penn State's Michael Mann told Reuters Wednesday. Mr Mann added that this has made "something innocent into something nefarious."

We don't doubt that Mr Jones would have phrased his emails differently if he expected them to end up in the newspaper. He's right that it doesn't look good that his May 2008 email to Mr Mann regarding the UN's Fourth Assessment Report said "MIKE, CAN YOU DELETE ANY EMAILS YOU MAY HAVE HAD WITH KEITH RE AR4?" Mr Mann says he didn't delete any such emails, but the point is that Mr Jones wanted them hidden.

The furor over these documents is not about tone, colloquialisms or whether climatologists are nice people. The real issue is what the messages say about THE WAY THE MUCH-BALLYHOOED SCIENTIFIC CONSENSUS ON GLOBAL WARMING WAS ARRIVED AT, AND HOW A SINGLE VIEW OF WARMING AND ITS CAUSES IS BEING ENFORCED. The impression left by the correspondence among Messrs Mann and Jones and others is that THE CLIMATE-TRACKING GAME HAS BEEN RIGGED FROM THE START.

MANY COMMONWEALTH MEMBERS ARE ISLAND STATES THREATENED BY RISING SEA LEVELS. Leaders also called for the strongest possible outcome at next month's climate change summit in Copenhagen. They unanimously agreed to seek a legally binding international agreement, but accepted that "a full legally binding outcome" might have to wait until 2010.

Commonwealth leaders "welcomed the initiative to establish, as part of a comprehensive agreement, A COPENHAGEN LAUNCH FUND STARTING IN 2010 AND BUILDING TO A LEVEL OF RESOURCES OF $10 BILLION ANNUALLY BY 2012," a statement in Trinidad on Saturday said. UK Foreign Secretary David Miliband said the declaration sent a clear political message.

"The Commonwealth is showing that you can find some common ground amidst countries that are very different, large and small, rich and poor, and that climate change is an issue that affects us all, and that the world needs to show the sort of resolution that we've seen here over the past 24 hours," he said.

Indeed, it is arguable that the "special relationship" of the second half of the 20th Century and since has been something of a departure from what at times has been an antagonistic one. The latest signs of what might be a historic decline came when the ambassador, Sir Christopher Meyer - always ready with a quote - said that during the lead-up to the war on Iraq in 2003, Britain failed to make its influence felt on two fronts.

First, it did not insist, as the conditions for its support, on progress in the Middle East peace process and on better planning for post-war Iraq. Second, it did not get a commercial trade-off. Its demands for changes to an air services agreement and steel tariffs were ignored.

Sir Christopher remarked: "I said to London, 'The key thing now, quite apart from Iraq, is to translate this popularity into real achievements which benefit the national interest', and we failed." The picture he painted was one in which the then BRITISH PRIME MINISTER TONY BLAIR WAS VERY MUCH THE JUNIOR AND PERHAPS DISPENSABLE PARTNER.

Investigators found "elements of an explosive device" at the scene of Friday's attack, a statement said. Officials said a second, less powerful device went off on Saturday near the site of the first, but no-one was hurt. There was no immediate confirmed claim of responsibility for the blast on Friday evening, which hit a train popular with government officials and business executives at peak travel time. "Criminology experts say, on the basis of preliminary information, that an improvised explosive device, equivalent to 7kg (15 lb) of TNT, had gone off," said Alexander Bortnikov, head of Russia's domestic intelligence service.

At least three of the 14 carriages left the tracks as the train reportedly approached speeds up 200 km/h (130mph). Russia's prosecutor-general has opened a criminal case on terrorism charges, Russian news agencies say. If terrorism is confirmed as the cause, observers say the derailment would represent the deadliest attack outside the volatile North Caucasus region for five years.

State-controlled giant Royal Bank of Scotland has helped lead the charge, provoking fears that taxpayers could be stung if the loans go unpaid. The Treasury has already injected £45.5billion into RBS, which became a watchword for reckless lending. Meanwhile, question marks hang over the fate of thousands of Britons employed by companies under Dubai's control. The emirate's investment vehicles hold interests in Alton Towers, the London Eye, P&O, hotel chain Travelodge, and the London Stock Exchange. THERE ARE FEARS THAT DUBAI WILL HAVE TO LAUNCH A FIRE-SALE OF ASSETS AS IT STRUGGLES WITH ITS DEBTS.

The United Arab Emirates holds at least £5.9billion of investments in Britain, while UK firms have holdings of £4.6billion there. British restaurateurs who set up in the region - including Gordon Ramsay and Gary Rhodes - are poised to lose out in the crash, as well as high-profile figures who have bought property there such as David Beckham. Last night Gordon Brown sought to quell FEARS THAT DUBAI'S DEBT CRISIS COULD TRIGGER A DEVASTATING 'DOUBLE DIP' GLOBAL RECESSION.

'If this is a localised problem then it can be dealt with, and I believe that that is the case,' he said after breaking off from a meeting of Commonwealth leaders in Trinidad. Markets slumped on Thursday after it emerged that Dubai's heavily indebted state corporation was unable to meet its interest payments. MORE THAN £14BILLION WAS WIPED OFF BRITISH BANKING SHARES amid fears they would be hit by further losses, though yesterday there was a partial rebound.

The Dubai saga is also a reminder of two unpleasant realities, that investors have lately seemed to forget. THE FIRST IS THAT THERE IS STILL PLENTY OF BAD NEWS STILL TO COME - INCLUDING FOR THE MAJOR BANKS. And Dubai is not, by any stretch, going to be the worst we get. The sheer range of estimates out there for European banks' exposure to Dubai shows how little anyone really knows. On the basis of some fairly sketchy assumptions, Credit Suisse has suggested that EUROPEAN BANKS MAY HAVE $40BN EXPOSURE TO DUBAI DEBT.

They say a 50% loss on that - who knows how much it could turn out to be - would be equivalent to a 5% rise in provisions in 2010, or a hit of about 5 billion euros after tax. That's not nothing, but - assuming the losses are fairly broadly spread - it's a rounding error on the losses of the past two years. Certain London-based hedge funds who had bet on Dubai World being bailed out could have an uncomfortable few weeks ahead. And big banks like HSBC and Standard Chartered will face some irritating losses if all the Dubai debt ends up being restructured.

In the meantime, the markets will have been reminded of that second unpleasant fact they'd rather not think about in the lead-up to Christmas. ALL OF THE MONEY BORROWED BY GOVERNMENTS IN THE PAST TWO YEARS WILL EVENTUALLY HAVE TO BE PAID BACK. And not just in Dubai. That could make for an interesting few weeks.