Germany can now put up 5 billion euros ($7.8 billion) to help the bank ride out its exposure to the subprime banking crisis. The government bailout, however, required approval from EU regulators. "The Commission's investigation found that the risk shield constitutes state aid, but that the aid is in line with EU rules," since the aid is limited to six months and is reversible, meaning it can be paid back if it distorts competition, the EU said in a statement.

Other European governments have jumped in to rescue troubled banks. The European Commission is investigating Britain's nationalization of Northern Rock PLC, the mortgage bank that nearly collapsed in a bank run last year.

Numerous European banks have been battered by the U.S. mortgage crisis. Switzerland's UBS AG saw losses and write-downs of approximately $19 billion. Deutsche Bank AG said Tuesday that it wrote down $4.2 billion. German regional bank BayernLB reported write-downs of $6.7 billion.

The number one spot in the rankings, compiled by the Boston Consulting Group, was occupied by the INDUSTRIAL AND COMMERCIAL BANK OF CHINA, with market capitalisation of nearly 340 billion dollars (218 billion euros). In second place was CHINA CONSTRUCTION BANK, followed by HSBC of Britain, BANK OF CHINA, Bank of America and Citigroup of the United States.

The study found that banks in NORTH AMERICA AND WESTERN EUROPE HAD SUFFERED A LOSS OF 695 BILLION dollars in market capitalisation at the end of 2007 while their counterparts in emerging market countries BRAZIL, RUSSIA, CHINA AND INDIA HAD SEEN THEIR MARKET CAPITALISATION INCREASE BY 753 BILLION DOLLARS.

Major US and European banks have suffered losses and asset writedowns stemming from the near collapse of US subprime - high risk - mortgage sector, which undermined the value of billions of dollars' worth of their mortgage-backed securities.

As one diplomat said, "THIS COULD NOT HAVE HAPPENED WITHOUT THE BEIJING GOVERNMENT APPROVING IT." Given the fact that relations between the Vatican and Beijing have been scratchy to say the least, one can only wonder if this is the start of a mating game. It could lead to diplomatic relations and China's recognition of the pope as leader of all Catholics in the world, including Chinese Catholics, many of whom have been forced to join the state-backed Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association.

Something seemed afoot in the last few months. In November, Monsignor Pietro Parolin, undersecretary for relations with states, was reported to have made a secret visit to China. The Vatican never denied the reports. In March, a Chinese delegation secretly had talks in the Vatican, sources confirmed.

ONE PRECEDENT FOR BATON DIPLOMACY that comes to mind is a similar event that happened in the Vatican on February 20, 1988 when the now mostly-forgotten Cold War still existed. The then-Soviet Union's Red Army Choir performed for Pope John Paul, singing, of all things, Ave Maria. It, too, was a shocker when it was announced. But on Dec 1, 1989, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev made his historic visit to the Vatican, TURNING RELATIONS BETWEEN THE KREMLIN AND THE VATICAN ON THEIR HEAD AFTER SOME 70 YEARS OF MUTUAL DISTRUST. Relations between Russia and the Vatican were established in 1990 and the rest, as they say, is history.

Blair, a life-long Anglican, converted to Catholicism in December after he left office in June. The Italian weekly magazine Panorama is reporting in its latest edition that Bush, a Methodist, may follow his political soul-mate and also convert to Catholicism after he leaves office next year.

Panorama tries to build up its case by reminding the reader that Bush prayed together with Pope Benedict when the pontiff visited the White House on April 16, that Bush's brother Jeb, the former governor of Florida, converted to Catholicism, the religion of his wife, and that a number of Bush's advisers are Catholic. It was reported in zenit.org on April 15th, that - "U.S. President George Bush said that when he looks into Benedict XVI's EYES, he sees GOD."

The Washington Post ran a story on April 13 by Daniel Burke of Religion News Service. Citing the high number of Catholics in his administration, Burke wrote that "George W. Bush could well be the nation's first Catholic president." At the very end of his piece, he has two quotes to the effect that Bush is a "closet Catholic" and the parallel to Blair, but no outright speculation about conversion.

That shouldn't be any surprise. The statement showed his trademark topic - THE COMPATIBILITY OF FAITH AND REASON - was prominent at the three-day session. He has been stressing this for years, with some success (as during his recent U.S. visit) and some misunderstanding (as in his Regensburg speech). With another Catholic-Muslim meeting due later this year, with delegates of the Common Word group, we can expect this issue to stay front and centre in inter-faith dialogue.

That the Iranian delegation agreed with the statements on faith and reason shows they did not see the contradiction between them in Islam that some observers read into Benedict's comments in Regensburg. They also agreed that "FAITH AND REASON ARE INTRINSICALLY NON-VIOLENT," a message Benedict said he meant to get across there.

An experienced boiler room dealer has warned that the UK has wildly underestimated the danger from foreign-based scamsters touting dud shares. The dealer, who has asked to remain anonymous, has been working in Spanish boiler rooms for several years. He told BBC2's Working Lunch that, "it's a billion pound industry, every year." Boiler rooms are staffed by teams of salesmen who cold call unsuspecting investors to offload worthless investments. They use a mixture of telephone bullying and sophisticated sales tactics gleaned from legitimate business.

The latest are "cloned" shares, phoney shares in well known companies such as Google and Microsoft. "Stopping it is nigh on impossible," the dealer tells Working Lunch. "The people who do this, we're materialistic. There's too much money. People aren't going to just stop doing it," he adds.

Steve Wilmot calculates that UK losses to boiler rooms exceed the size of all fraud on plastic cards and are well over half a billion pounds. "It's the biggest single financial threat to middle England."

A steadily increasing amount of natural gas is bought from Egypt, and Israel also imports coal for some of its power plants from Australia, Angola, South Africa and Columbia.

For the decade following the 1967 Six Day War, Israel benefited from direct reasonably-priced fuel piped in from Iran, when it was ruled by the Shah. In 1979, when Iran underwent an Islamic revolution, the pipeline was closed. Israel also lost a major source of oil when it relinquished the oil fields of the Sinai Peninsula in exchange for a treaty with Egypt in 1982.

In 2004, Minister of Infrastructures Yosef Paritzky (Shinui) revealed that most of Israel's oil imports originate in countries with which the Jewish state does not maintain diplomatic relations. He did not elaborate. In response to Israel's recent condemnation of a Swiss oil deal with Iran, Swiss newspapers alleged that Israel continues to purchase a large amount of high-quality oil from the Islamic Republic through a European intermediary. Gas in Israel rises to $7.19 a gallon at the pump

Lord Leach argued that "What the Treaty actually does is to increase countries' power to pass measures, BUT TO REDUCE THEIR POWER TO BLOCK THEM. This is a crucial distinction that has not been adequately recognised in debates, either inside or outside Parliament."

He noted that "given a recent poll of 1,000 UK chief executives found that more than half of them thought that the benefits of the single market are now outweighed by the costs of EU regulation," IT WOULD BE UNWISE TO MAKE IT EVEN EASIER FOR BRUSSELS PRODUCE MORE LAWS.

He notes, "PROTECTION, SUBSIDIES AND OTHER SUCH FOLLIES DISTORT AGRICULTURE more than any other sector. Alas, the opportunity to eliminate protection against imports offered by exceptionally high world prices is not being taken. A host of countries are imposing export taxes instead, thereby fragmenting the world market still more. MEANWHILE, RICH COUNTRIES ARE ENCOURAGING, OR EVEN FORCING, THEIR FARMERS TO GROW FUEL INSTEAD OF FOOD."

The FT reports that Agriculture Commissioner Mariann Fischer Boel has said that food prices have gone up more than the cost of basic commodities, suggesting that "it is possible that somewhere along the food chain someone may be doing well out of this." THE GUARDIAN REPORTS THAT A UN TASKFORCE, LED BY A BRITISH DIPLOMAT, SIR JOHN HOLMES, WILL BE CREATED TO DEVELOP A COHERENT INTERNATIONAL RESPONSE TO THE FOOD CRISIS.

Meanwhile, amid growing uncertainty in the biofuels sector and following reports that biofuels drive up food prices and harms the environment, Transport Minister Jim Fitzpatrick yesterday suggested at a conference organised by Biofuels Media that the UK's target of 5% renewables for motor fuels by 2010 will remain in place.

Women and girls may be lured into prostitution by adverts placed in Jobcentres, MPs were warned today. A charity which helps females rescued from the sex trade said the Government was acting as a 'pimp' by accepting ads for strippers, escort girls, lap dancers and adult show hostesses.

Director of the Poppy Project, Denise Marshall, told the Commons' Home Affairs Select Committee: "Because no-one is monitoring it, you don't know who is using it, and when you are offering £20 an hour to be a webcam stripper to a 17-year-old, the chances are they may be naïve," she said. Outside the hearing, Ms Marshall said: "It's the Government as pimp. It's just dreadful. The jobs included stripper, webcam stripper, adult show hostess, lap dancing and work with an escort agency. I'm appalled that the Government is giving women entree into the commercial sex industry."

THE DWP INSISTED THAT IT WAS LEGALLY OBLIGED TO CARRY THE VACANCIES AFTER A TEST CASE BROUGHT BY THE ANN SUMMER SEX SHOP CHAIN IN 2003. A HIGH COURT JUDGE RULED THAT JOBCENTRES MUST CARRY ADVERTISEMENTS FOR LEGAL WORK IN THE "SEX AND PERSONAL-SERVICES INDUSTRIES".

Global fertilizer demand is rising 5 percent a year, LEAVING A 1.2 MILLION-TON POTASH-PRODUCTION SHORTFALL. THE GAP MAY LAST UNTIL 2012, according to Uralkali. Fertilizers using potash, the common name for potassium chloride, improve crop yield as they help plants absorb nitrogen, use water and sunlight more efficiently and fight insects and disease.

The shortage is adding to a food crisis of "emergency proportions," United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon said April 14. GRAIN STOCKPILES FELL TO ABOUT 53 DAYS' WORTH LAST YEAR, THE LOWEST LEVEL SINCE RECORD-KEEPING BEGAN IN 1960.

The price of rice, the food staple for half the world, has more than doubled in a year as China, Vietnam and Egypt curbed sales to safeguard domestic reserves. Meat consumption is rising as incomes increase in emerging markets, boosting demand for feed grains.

Mariann Fischer Boel, the agriculture commissioner, released figures showing that the cost of many staples had gone up by more than the value of basic commodities used to make them. Bread increased 10 per cent between February 2007 and 2008, while the near-doubling of the price of wheat should have led to only a 3 per cent rise, the Commission said.

"Energy, transport and labour costs have risen. But it is possible that somewhere along the food chain someone may be doing well out of this. WE ARE NOT DRAWING CONCLUSIONS; WE ARE JUST PRESENTING FACTS."

Milk and cheese increased by a third and eggs by 17 per cent over the same period. That should have led to a 12 per cent rise in supermarkets, but the increase was 15 per cent. The price of cooking oils and fat were up 12 per cent rather than the 8 per cent accounted for by ingredients. Overall, prices that should have risen 5 per cent grew 7 per cent. Governments have been struggling for ways to control surging prices, which have led to disgruntled voters. The 450m citizens of the European Union in 2005 spent €927bn ($1,440bn, £733bn) on food, according to latest figures from Eurostat, the biggest outgoing after housing for most families.

David Nason, assistant secretary for financial institutions, said the Fed could even use its proposed "macro-prudential" authority to order banks, hedge funds and other entities to curtail strategies that put financial stability at risk.

The proposed new powers - outlined in a Treasury blueprint published last month - require legislation and may never be authorised. But policymakers see the plan as offering a template for future regulation.T he blueprint envisages giving the Fed roving authority to collect, analyse and publish market data from a wide range of institutions, from banks to hedge funds.

"The market stability regulator must have access to detailed information about all types of financial institutions," said Mr Nason. Hedge funds are uneasy about this proposal. However, MANY EUROPEAN CENTRAL BANKERS ARE EAGER TO ACQUIRE THE KIND OF MACRO-PRUDENTIAL POWERS THE TREASURY WOULD LIKE TO GIVE TO THE FED.

"The country is in its most precarious situation since the end of the famine a decade ago," said the paper from the Washington-based Peterson Institute for International Economics. Stephan Haggard, who wrote the paper with Marcus Noland, said the sharp increase in world prices for commodities had sent ripples through the communist state's economy. The authors are specialists in reclusive North Korea's trade with the outside world.

North Korea, which even in time of good harvests is about 20 percent short of what it needs, has grown more dependent on rice imported from neighboring China since a famine in the late 1990s that experts estimate killed at least 1 million people, he said.

Its limited foreign currency reserves, and poor reputation as a trade partner, mean the rice trade is being hit and ordinary North Koreans are feeling the squeeze, Haggard said. On top of that, North Korea also lost crops and farmland last year to floods.

Researchers from the University of Michigan found that in developed countries, yields were almost equal on organic and conventional farms. IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES, FOOD PRODUCTION COULD DOUBLE OR TRIPLE USING ORGANIC METHODS, said Ivette Perfecto, professor at U-M's School of Natural Resources and Environment, and one of the study's principal investigators. Catherine Badgley, research scientist in the Museum of Paleontology, is a co-author of the paper along with several current and former graduate and undergraduate students from U-M.

"MY HOPE IS THAT WE CAN FINALLY PUT A NAIL IN THE COFFIN OF THE IDEA THAT YOU CAN'T PRODUCE ENOUGH FOOD THROUGH ORGANIC AGRICULTURE," Perfecto said. In addition to equal or greater yields, the authors found that those yields could be accomplished using existing quantities of organic fertilizers, without putting more farmland into production. THE IDEA THAT PEOPLE WOULD GO HUNGRY IF FARMING WENT ORGANIC IS RIDICULOUS.

"CORPORATE INTEREST IN AGRICULTURE and the way agriculture research has been conducted in land grant institutions, with a lot of influence by the CHEMICAL COMPANIES AND PESTICIDE COMPANIES as well as FERTILIZER COMPANIES - all have been playing an important role in convincing the public THAT YOU NEED TO HAVE THESE INPUTS TO PRODUCE FOOD," she said.