At the weekend, the temperature was forecast by the state weather centre to hit 37 degrees in central Russia. An emergency drought situation has been declared in 19 of Russia's 83 regions with crops dying on an estimated 9.6 million hectares of fields. The drought-struck areas were suffering "colossal destruction," Agriculture Minister Yelena Skrynnik said Tuesday at a meeting with President Dmitry Medvedev.

The coldest place on earth in winter, Oimyakon in the Sakha region, was forecast to swelter at 32 degrees centigrade on Friday, the ITAR-TASS news agency reported. In Moscow, people paddled in fountains to escape the heat and bought record amounts of ice cream. Alexei Lyakhov, the head of the Moscow and Moscow region weather centre, said in televised comments on Friday that temperatures would hit 36 degrees in Moscow on Saturday and no rain was expected over the next five days.

Known as the "polio of agriculture," wheat rust is a devastating fungus that attacks the stem of wheat. Like polio, we thought we had this disease licked. Half a century ago and after a decade of research, agronomist Norman Borlaug isolated a gene, Sr31, that rendered wheat immune to wheat rust. As a bonus, the gene also increased crop yield. Farmers were eager to plant these resistant and bountiful wheat varieties, and they became so widespread and ubiquitous that by the 1970s it was thought that wheat rust was extinct.

Unfortunately, the disease was merely in hiding. In 1999, a new strain of wheat rust, one that's immune to the Sr31 gene, was discovered in wheat fields in Uganda. In the mere decade since it was discovered, this new strain, dubbed Ug99, has spread alarmingly quickly to several countries throughout Northern Africa and the Middle East. After infecting Iran, the disease is now poised to invade Punjab, one of the world's top wheat-growing areas. It was also discovered in South Africa, where scientists fear trade winds may carry spores to Australia, the fifth largest wheat-growing nation in the world.

Wheat provides a full one-fifth of the world's food calories, and a large global infestation could result in the starvation of millions. Scientists say that mere luck and uncommonly dry conditions are all that have prevented true disaster from striking already, and that will inevitably run out. Fungicides can help to lessen crop loss, but they are a temporary solution, and most of the world's poor farmers, like those currently affected, just can't afford them.

To make matters worse, a less devastating form of the disease known as "stripe rust" has remained a threat, and now we are realizing that the extent of the current outbreak is far more serious than we realized. Unlike wheat rust, stripe rust is a problem in the US already, and it's getting worse. If wheat rust also manages to make its way through our borders, as it is likely to do eventually, the combo of wheat rust and stripe rust could spell disaster.

We have no knockout gene for this new variety, and the types of mild resistance found in the wheat gene pool merely slow the fungus down. But it is thought that a variety containing several of these smaller barriers will be able to stop the disease. In addition, relying on a whole arsenal instead of a single gene means that the disease is far less likely to be able to mutate its way out of trouble this time. A single gene will always be overcome eventually, but diverse defenses are more likely to keep a plant healthy. GM crop supporters, please re-read this paragraph several times over.

Until the end, the bill was the source of bitter battles on Capitol Hill, with Democrats urging action to protect the economy and rein in Wall Street, and Republicans portraying the measure as a massive government intrusion on the private sector. The GOP is hoping that its message of big government over-reach proves more attractive to voters this fall than Democrats' appeal to popular anger at Wall Street.

The final vote was 60-39, with every Democrat voting for the bill except Senator Russ Feingold (Democrat for Wisconsin) who has maintained that it doesn't go far enough to crack down on Wall Street firms. President Obama is expected to sign the bill when it reaches his desk. The 2,300 page financial reform bill is designed to prevent future financial meltdowns like the one that doomed Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers and AIG while plunging the economy into a deep recession. The measure would give federal regulators the power to seize failing financial institutions that post a "systemic risk" to the economy.

The bill would also give regulators tighter control of hedge funds and private equity firms, as well as the complex financial derivatives at the heart of the sub-prime mortgage debacle. And it would create a new consumer protection agency designed to combat lending abuses. Republicans blasted the bill as a big government jobs killer. "We're going to be driving jobs and business overseas with this massive piece of legislation," said Senator Saxby Chambliss (Republican for Georgia).

"The potential for an Israeli military strike on Iran over its nuclear program has grown sharply, but its consequences would be devastating and would lead to a long war," warns ORG's Paul Rogers in his report "Military Action Against Iran: Impact and Effects". The report analyzes recent developments and argues that Israel is now fully capable of attacking Iran, having deployed new systems that include long-range strike aircraft and armed drones.

It predicts that a strike by the Jewish state would be "focused not only on destroying 'military real estate' - nuclear and missile targets - but also would hit factories and research centers, and even university laboratories, in order to do as much damage as possible to the Iranian expertise that underpins the [nuclear] program." Furthermore, the Israeli campaign "would not be limited to remote bases but would involve the direct bombing of targets in Tehran," ORG conjectures. "It would probably include attempts to kill those technocrats who manage Iran's nuclear and missile programs."

Rogers says that there would be numerous civilian casualties, not just among people who staff Iran's nuclear and missile programs, but also among their families - because living quarters would be hit - and the help staff in factories, research stations and university departments. Iran's nuclear and missile programs would be heavily damaged, the report says, but Iranian political unity would increase, making President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's hold on power more stable.

In response, Iran could withdraw from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and take immediate action to develop nuclear weapons, using "deeply-buried facilities that are reported to be under construction." There would be missile attacks on Israel; actions to cause a sharp rise in oil prices by closing the Straits of Hormuz; paramilitary and/or missile attacks on western Gulf oil production, processing and transportation facilities, and "strong support" for militias in Iraq and Afghanistan that oppose the US and its allies..

The report warns: "An Israeli attack on Iranian nuclear facilities would almost certainly be the beginning of a long-term process of regular Israeli air strikes to further prevent the development of nuclear weapons and medium-range missiles. Iranian responses would also be long-term, ushering in a lengthy war with global as well as regional implications."

Even since the fall of communism, while the period of conscription has been repeatedly shortened, few have seriously considered converting the Bundeswehr into an exclusively professional army.

In recent months, however, an increasing number of leading politicians in Germany have begun considering a fundamental reform of the country's military - including the abolishment of conscription. In an interview with the daily Hamburger Abendblatt, German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle, head of Merkel's coalition partner the pro-business Free Democrats, reiterated his support for eliminating the draft.

"I am convinced that we should turn the Bundeswehr into a professional army," Westerwelle said. "It would be the correct decision to end conscription as quickly as possible." He said he thinks it would be possible to end Germany's system of conscription before the next general elections, currently set for 2013.

Westerwelle's comments come just weeks after Chancellor Angela Merkel's government agreed to cut conscription from nine months to six months, a reduction that went into effect on the first of July. But with Berlin hoping to reduce spending by 80 billion euros by 2014, some have suggested that cutting conscription entirely could be a good way to save money.

The new site will be found at BBC.com. Currently that address has redirected to the bbc.co.uk site which, like the vast majority of BBC's operations, is funded by a license fee paid by every British household. The BBC receives a guaranteed 3.6 billion pounds ($5.4 billon) each year from the license fee.

While BBC's TV, radio and web operations in the UK do not feature any advertising, the bbc.co.uk global website features ads when viewed by users in the US. Miranda Cresswell, senior vice president of BBC.com, said in a statement: "You're going to see more analysis, more insight and more perspective that connects the dots on events and issues that affect us all in the US."

Such an approach will undoubtedly see the BBC compete more directly with US newspapers and broadcasters for local and regional stories. Until now, most of BBC's US coverage has focused on major national stories, usually with an international impact. This also means that the BBC's US site will be competing for advertising dollars with the web operations of commercial newspapers and broadcasters who do not have any other source of revenue.

In the UK, it has come under fierce attack from broadcaster BSkyB and other commercial rivals experiencing a severe advertising slump. James Murdoch, seen as heir to his father Rupert Murdoch's News Corp's media empire, has described the broadcaster's scale and ambitions as "chilling". The amount of free content the BBC already makes available online has discouraged many UK newspapers from attempting to charge readers for content on the web.

Goldman has also consented to an agreement that when it puts together new mortgage securities, it'll run any prospectuses or term sheets by its legal or compliance departments. As if it wasn't doing that already. And there's lots more like that: people on the mortgage desk have to attend training seminars on disclosure! Goldman "shall provide for appropriate record keeping"! And so on and so forth.

Meanwhile, the closest thing to an admission of wrongdoing coming from Goldman is this: It was a mistake for the Goldman marketing materials to state that the reference portfolio was "selected by" ACA Management LLC without disclosing the role of Paulson & Co Inc in the portfolio selection process and that Paulson's economic interests were adverse to CDO investors. Goldman regrets that the marketing materials did not contain that disclosure.

This doesn't even rise to the level of an apology: it's just a "regret". Meanwhile, Goldman will be more than happy to wire $150 million to IKB and $100 million to RBS, as detailed in the proposed judgment. Technically the judgment is contingent on being approved by the New York judge, but that's just a formality. As a way of getting out from under this suit, it would be cheap at twice the price.

The UK's Royal Bank of Scotland, which is now 84% owned by the UK taxpayer and lost about $840 million in investments, will receive $100 million compensation. German bank IKB Deutsche Industriebank will receive $150 million, with the remaining $300 million going to the US Treasury. Terms of the settlement are subject to approval by a federal judge.

The SEC said Goldman had acknowledged that marketing material contained "incomplete information". In a statement, Goldman did not admit legal wrongdoing but said the move was "the right outcome for our firm, our shareholders and our clients". Despite the record fine, Goldman shares rose by 4.5%, reflecting the fact that many analysts felt the firm had got off lightly.

"They pay $550 million and they get an $800 million pop in their stock price... they got off easy," said Kevin Caron at Stifel, Nicolaus & Co. Goldman made a profit of $3.5 billion in the first three months of this year.

BP executive Kent Wells said the oil had been stopped at 1425 local time (1925 GMT) and he was "excited" by the progress. "It is very good to see no oil go into the Gulf of Mexico," said Mr Wells. BP shares rose in New York trading on Thursday after the flow was stopped, having already performed well over the day. But BP is stressing that even if no oil escapes for 48 hours, that will not mean the flow of oil and gas has been stopped permanently.

BP chief operating officer Doug Suttles emphasised that there was no reason for "celebration" yet, particularly for those in areas already damaged by oil. "The job is not finished," he said. The pressure testing is necessary to check the strength of the well. If the pressure within the cap on top is low, that could indicate oil is leaking out further down the well.

If the pressure remains high, BP and the government will have to decide whether to try to keep the well shut or to leave it open and pipe oil to four vessels on the surface. The US government's incident commander, Admiral Thad Allen, said even if it was successful, the well would be reopened and oil capture by ships on the surface would restart while a seismic test was done.

The Vatican issued the guidelines in response to the clerical sexual abuse scandal. It is the first major Vatican document since the clerical abuse scandal erupted earlier this year. The Vatican in 2007 issued a decree saying the attempted ordination of women would result in automatic excommunication for the woman and the priest who tries to ordain her.

That is repeated in the new document, adding that the priest can also be punished by being defrocked. Today Vatican sex crimes prosecutor Monsignor Charles Scicluna defended the inclusion of both sex abuse and ordination of women in the same document. He said it was a way of codifying two of the most serious canonical crimes against sacraments and morals that the congregation deals with.

'They are grave, but on different levels,' he said, and noted that the document also lists crimes against the sacraments including desecrating the Eucharist, violating the seal of the confessional and - for the first time - APOSTASY, HERESY AND SCHISM.'

The senators said that the American public deserved to know whether "justice and punishment for terrorism took a back seat to back-room deals for an oil contract". The demand is the latest blow for BP which is already being vilified in America in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico.

It is understood that the firm has minutes of two telephone conversations between Sir Mark Allen, a former senior MI6 official who is now an adviser to BP, and Jack Straw, the former Justice Secretary. There is also a private letter between the pair. Within months of these communications, the Government agreed to a prisoner transfer agreement with Libya which paved the way for Abdel Basset al-Megrahi to be sent back to Tripoli.

BP has since won valuable oil contracts in Libya and is poised to begin deepwater drilling in the country next month. It is estimated the deal could be worth $20 billion.

The "pledge of allegiance" to a Jewish Temple Mount and a united Jerusalem was part of the monthly "March around Old City Temple Gates," a colorful event featuring the recital of Psalms at various closed gates around the Temple Mount. The monthly march usually attracts 2,000-3,000 people, but organizers successfully brought out thousands more Monday night as Jews around the world marked the beginning of the Hebrew month of Av.

The Ninth of Av is marked every year as the day when foreign invaders destroyed the First and Second Holy Temples. The marches feature music and dancing and are peaceful, but police have barred several of the monthly prayer rallies during the past year because of fears of Arab violence.

National Union Knesset Member Uri Ariel told the crowd that deterioration in security and the increasing discrimination against Jews in Jerusalem prompted the unusually large turnout. In his speech he described the "surrender of Jerusalem to Arabs," the worsening security in several Jewish neighborhoods, disturbances by anarchists and the discrimination by police who severely restrict the ability of Jews to ascend the Temple Mount.

(The fast of Tisha b'Av falls on the Hebrew calendar date of 9 Av - 20th July 2010.)

They follow similar tactics in villages across southern Lebanon, essentially using the residents as human shields, in gross violation of UN Resolution 1701. Al-Khiam was used as a rocket launching site during the Second Lebanon war.

During the Second Lebanon war, Hezbollah stored their weapons in open areas for the most part, which enabled the IDF to locate and destroy their stores. In the four years since then, Hezbollah has pursued a tactic of moving their weapons into civilian villages, essentially institutionalizing the tactic of using human shields on a large scale.

In an incident on 12 October 2009, there was an explosion at a Hezbollah weapons storehouse in the village of Tayr Filsay. Aerial footage, taken shortly after the explosion, shows Hezbollah operatives closing down the area around the warehouse, driving in two trucks and removing weaponry from the site. They then took the weapons to a known weapons storage facility in the center of the village of Dir a-Nahar about four kilometers away. Only after Hezbollah removed the weaponry did they allow UNIFIL and the Lebanese Army to enter the site of the explosion.

Pawning gold with the BIS, usually rare, is occurring at a record rate in 2010. The central banks plan to buy the gold back later in swap agreements, but if they don't, the BIS would need to sell the gold, which could then flood the market. This flies in the face of conventional market wisdom that the gold rush has been a "flight to safety" by governments: their central bankers considered gold more trustworthy than holding foreign currencies.

Yet, we have central banks offloading their gold, right in the middle of a sovereign debt crisis, to pay their governments' bills or prop up their commercial banks. Is gold losing its charm given the dire necessity of possessing hard cash to pay for emergencies? If central banks are trading their gold in, it might be bad news for the price of gold, but looking deeper, it may be even worse news for the world banking system.

For one, it means that central banks are actually having trouble paying their governments' bills and are finding it difficult to raise sovereign debt by issuing IOU paper. For another, gold is well-known as a fallback in times of extreme crisis - and if central banks are selling gold, could they be leaving themselves and their national banking system wide open to an even more severe liquidity crisis?

Key Question - If some central banks are trading their gold for cash, what are those central bankers thinking? What do they know, that we don't know yet?

During my time on the Bank of England's Monetary Policy Committee, which makes quarterly economic prognoses, Governor Mervyn King controlled the hiring and firing of the forecast team, who did his bidding. They had to produce a result that was consistent with King's views, or else they would be history. A patchwork of arbitrary fixes and prejudices frequently drive forecasts, which for the uninitiated are hard to see.

King always emphasized the importance of top-down judgments, which means you can just make stuff up as you go along. Worryingly, this was often only loosely based on the workings of the real world. Such glorified guesswork operated reasonably well during the boom years, but failed miserably when the recession hit. To put it bluntly, it isn't that hard to manipulate a forecast. I have seen it done.

David Blanchflower, a former member of the Bank of England's Monetary Policy Committee, is professor of economics at Dartmouth College and the University of Stirling.