YET $1 TRILLION IS THE AMOUNT OF DEFAULTS AND WRITEDOWNS AMERICANS WILL LIKELY WITNESS BEFORE THEY EMERGE AT THE FAR SIDE OF THE BURSTING CREDIT BUBBLE, estimates Charles R. Morris in his shrewd primer, "The Trillion Dollar Meltdown." That calculation assumes an orderly unwinding, which he doesn't expect.

"The sad truth," he writes, "is that subprime is just the first big boulder in an avalanche of asset writedowns that will rattle on through much of 2008." EXPECT THE LANDSLIDE TO CASCADE THROUGH HIGH-YIELD BONDS, COMMERCIAL MORTGAGES, LEVERAGED LOANS, CREDIT CARDS AND - THE BIG UNKNOWN - CREDIT-DEFAULT SWAPS, Morris says. The notional value for those swaps, which are meant to insure bondholders against default, covered about $45 trillion in portfolios as of mid-2007, up from some $1 trillion in 2001, he writes.

Morris sketches a scenario in which hedge fund counterparty defaults would ripple through default swap markets, TRIGGERING WRITEDOWNS OF INSURED PORTFOLIOS, DEMANDS FOR COLLATERAL, AND A RUSH TO GRAB CASH FROM DEFAULTING GUARANTORS. THE CREDIT SYSTEM WOULD SUFFER "AN UTTER THROMBOSIS," HE SAYS, MAKING THE SUBPRIME CRISIS "LOOK LIKE A WALK IN THE PARK."

At the heart of the proposals, agreed on Wednesday by Hank Paulson, US Treasury secretary, and Alistair Darling, UK chancellor, is the creation of a body made up of senior Treasury and regulatory figures from London and Washington.

Mr Brown and Mr Bush will discuss greater UK-US co-operation in tackling the financial crisis when they meet at a Nato summit in Bucharest this week and a Washington summit next month. Whitehall officials say the new UK-US working group, whose membership and terms of reference are being finalised, will seek to establish a common approach on how to respond to the crisis before next month's meetings of the Group of Seven, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.

However, officials say that, given the huge role that London and New York play in financial markets, the significance of the new body will go beyond that.

The Great Global Warming Swindle is based on sound science and interviews with real climate scientists. "An Inconvenient Truth,"on the other hand, IS MOSTLY AN EMOTIONAL PRESENTATION FROM A SINGLE POLITICIAN. The scientific arguments presented in "The Great Global Warming Swindle" can be stated quite briefly:

1. THERE IS NO PROOF THAT THE CURRENT WARMING IS CAUSED BY THE RISE OF GREENHOUSE GASES FROM HUMAN ACTIVITY. Ice core records from the past 650,000 years show that temperature increases have preceded - not resulted from - increases in CO2 by hundreds of years, suggesting that the warming of the oceans is an important source of the rise in atmospheric CO2. As the dominant greenhouse gas, water vapor is far, far more important than CO2 - and, in any case, water vapor is not within our control.

The current warming is likely to be part of a natural cycle of climate warming and cooling that's been traced back almost a million years. It accounts for the Medieval Warm Period around 1100 A.D., when the Vikings settled Greenland and grew crops, and the Little Ice Age, from about 1400 to 1850 A.D., which brought severe winters and cold summers to Europe, with failed harvests, starvation, disease, and general misery. Advocates have tried to deny the existence of these historic climate swings and claim that the current warming is "unusual" by using spurious analysis of tree rings and other proxy data, resulting in the famous "hockey-stick" temperature graph. THE HOCKEY-STICK GRAPH HAS NOW BEEN THOROUGHLY DISCREDITED.

2. IF THE CAUSE OF WARMING IS MOSTLY NATURAL, THEN THERE IS LITTLE WE CAN DO ABOUT IT. We cannot control the inconstant sun, the likely origin of most climate variability. None of the schemes for greenhouse gas reduction currently bandied about will do any good; they are all irrelevant, useless, and wildly expensive: Ironically, even if CO2 were responsible for the observed warming trend, all these schemes would be ineffective - unless we could persuade every nation, including China, to cut fuel use by 80 percent!

3. FINALLY, NO ONE CAN SHOW THAT A WARMER CLIMATE WOULD PRODUCE NEGATIVE IMPACTS OVERALL. The much-feared rise in sea levels does not seem to depend on short-term temperature changes, as the rate of sea-level increases has been steady since the last ice age, 10,000 years ago. In fact, many economists argue that the opposite is more likely - that warming produces a net benefit, that it increases incomes and standards of living. But the main message of The Great Global Warming Swindle is much broader. WHY SHOULD WE DEVOTE OUR SCARCE RESOURCES TO WHAT IS ESSENTIALLY A NON-PROBLEM, AND IGNORE THE REAL PROBLEMS THE WORLD FACES: hunger, disease, denial of human rights - not to mention the threats of terrorism and nuclear wars? And are we really prepared to deal with natural disasters; pandemics that can wipe out most of the human race, or even the impact of an asteroid, such as the one that wiped out the dinosaurs? YET POLITICIANS AND THE ELITES THROUGHOUT MUCH OF THE WORLD PREFER TO SQUANDER OUR LIMITED RESOURCES TO FASHIONABLE ISSUES, RATHER THAN CONCENTRATE ON REAL PROBLEMS. Just consider the scary predictions emanating from supposedly responsible world figures: THE CHIEF SCIENTIST OF GREAT BRITAIN TELLS US that unless we insulate our houses and use more efficient light bulbs, the Antarctic will be the only habitable continent by 2100, with a few surviving breeding couples propagating the human race. Seriously!

I imagine that in the not-too-distant future all the hype will have died down, particularly if the climate should decide to cool - as it did during much of the past century; WE SHOULD TAKE NOTE HERE THAT IT HAS NOT WARMED SINCE 1998. Future generations will look back on the current madness and wonder what it was all about. They will have movies like An Inconvenient Truth and documentaries like The Great Global Warming Swindle to remind them.

Author details:- S. FRED SINGER, AN ATMOSPHERIC PHYSICIST, is Research Fellow at the Independent Institute, Professor Emeritus of Environmental Sciences at the University of Virginia, and former founding Director of the US Weather Satellite Service. He is author of Hot Talk, Cold Science: Global Warming's Unfinished Debate. (This article was originally published in May 22, 2007)

The Alliance for Climate Protection's "we" campaign will employ online organizing and television advertisements on shows ranging from "American Idol" to "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart." It highlights the extent to which Americans' growing awareness of global warming has yet to translate into national policy changes, Gore said in an hour-long phone interview last week. He said the campaign, which Gore is helping to fund, was undertaken in large part because of his fear that U.S. lawmakers are unwilling to curb the human-generated emissions linked to climate change.

"This climate crisis is so interwoven with habits and patterns that are so entrenched, the elected officials in both parties are going to be timid about enacting the bold changes that are needed until there is a change in the public's sense of urgency in addressing this crisis," Gore said. "I've tried everything else I know to try. The way to solve this crisis is to change the way the public thinks about it."

Representatives from 163 countries were to launch a weeklong, United Nations-led meeting on the nuts-and-bolts of an international agreement to replace the 1997 Kyoto global warming pact after its first phase expires in 2012. Delegates are racing to rein in greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide, which are blamed for the rise in global temperatures. Scientists say emissions need to be reduced to avoid the worst effects of warming, which they say COULD lead to drought, floods, higher sea levels and worsening storms.

The process, however, has been fraught with disagreements over which countries should take the lead to reduce greenhouse gases by as much as half by 2050. China has argued that developed countries must take the lead in reducing pollution because their unrestrained emissions over the past century contributed significantly to global warming.

Monsignor Vittorio Formenti, who compiled the Vatican's newly-released 2008 yearbook of statistics, said Muslims made up 19.2 percent of the world's population and Catholics 17.4 percent. "For the first time in history we are no longer at the top: the Muslims have overtaken us," Formenti told Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano in an interview, saying the data referred to 2006.

He said that if all Christian groups were considered, including Orthodox churches, Anglicans and Protestants, then Christians made up 33 percent of the world's population -- or about 2 billion people. The Vatican recently put the number of Catholics in the world at 1.13 billion people. It did not provide a figure for Muslims, generally estimated at around 1.3 billion.

They include protectionism, defence, immigration, EU integration, Turkey and the EU budget. Gordon Brown yesterday said however that he and the French President "share the same vision of Europe".

Con Coughlin has a comment piece in the Telegraph, arguing that THE UK SHOULD REMAIN SCEPTICAL OVER ANY EXTRA FRENCH DEPLOYMENT TO AFGHANISTAN, as there is no suggestion these troops would actually be involved in combat operations, leaving the real fighting to the British, US, Danish, Canadian and Dutch troops already in the south of the country.

NOTING THAT THE FRENCH PRESIDENT MADE SIMILAR RHETORICAL PLEDGES ON HIS VISIT TO WASHINGTON LAST YEAR, without any concrete results, Coughlin concludes that "those who have dealt with Mr Sarkozy before on these issues have found that THE HEADLINE-GRABBING PROMISES HE MAKES DURING HIGH-PROFILE MEETINGS WITH FOREIGN LEADERS IN REALITY DON'T AMOUNT TO VERY MUCH."

The president said that every other European leader was grateful to Mr Brown for not blocking the replacement to the EU constitution. In return the Prime Minister signed Britain up to moves to create common EU immigration standards and cooperate on defence and nuclear policy. At the conclusion of yesterday's France-UK summit, the French president vowed to continue his charm offensive designed to draw Britain into deeper engagement in the EU.

For his part Mr Brown upgraded to formidable the entente that Mr Sarkozy had previously improved from cordiale to amicale. He said: "We believe that, working together, France and Britain can be an even greater force for good so, if you like, this will be the entente formidable."

An article in the paper notes that Britain has always in the past been against the idea of Europe having its own autonomous planning and operational centre outside NATO. However, it notes, "The British now seem to be more inclined to accept the idea of giving the EU a new 'operational headquarters' in Brussels."

The article also notes that "In order to appease London, Paris intends to only gradually ask for positions of responsibility within NATO. The post of deputy 'saceur' (number two in the allied forces in Europe) is therefore still with the British. And they remain very attached to their de facto status as America's first lieutenant within NATO."

He said that the allegations include FAKING AN MEP'S PLACE OF RESIDENCE to boost allowances, FAKING SIGNATURES TO QUALIFY FOR DAILY ATTENDANCE ALLOWANCES and faking meetings to create attendance lists. On secretarial allowances, Van Buitenen said that irregular practices went beyond the scope of the internal audit: KICKBACK PAYMENTS WERE MADE to MEP's by service providers to win a contract. Van Buitenen concluded: "THE WHOLE SYSTEM IS ROTTEN."

The EU is proposing that all citizens have their fingerprints taken when registering for passports and that their details be stored on a system in Brussels. The plan would apply to children as young as 6. Justice Commissioner Franco Frattini's office responded, saying, "Creating big databases poses data-protection challenges, nobody will deny it. However, precisely because we are aware of those challenges we will do everything that is needed to address them ... and ensure that we are taking duly into consideration all legitimate data protection concerns."

It describes the squabbles in Belgium over language and ethnicity as "an awful warning. A POLITICAL UNION HATCHED TOGETHER BY A FRACTIOUS ELITE, AND ANSWERABLE ONLY TO ITSELF, IS NOT A MODEL FOR ANYBODY TO FOLLOW."

With households now producing record amounts of recyclable waste, private companies employed by councils to process Britain's rubbish are unable to cope. Instead, they sell the waste to developing countries who use it to manufacture new products

Environmental campaigners said the millions of miles clocked up by "waste ships" would generate huge levels of carbon emissions while critics are demanding to know why councils are employing increasingly aggressive methods to meet Government targets on recycling if they can't deal with current levels.

Turkey is the most popular destination, taking 2.4million tons of metal, 260 tons of plastic and 13 tons of paper. China is next with 1.9million tons of paper, 390,000 tons of metal and 78,000 tons of plastic. Other bizarre destinations for British rubbish include Ghana, Vietnam and Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates. Campaigners are worried as EU rules do not force companies to check that waste is recycled on arrival.

The Netherlands has the highest rate of home births in the western world at 30 percent, only 10 percent of women in labour are given pain relief and caesareans are relatively rare. In contrast, about a third of babies are born by caesarean in the United States and about 20 percent in Britain, while only a tiny fraction of women have home births.

Midwives who assist home births can even be prosecuted in some U.S. states.

The disclosure that Germany is to stay away from the games' opening ceremonies in August could encourage PRESIDENT NICOLAS SARKOZY OF FRANCE TO JOIN IN A GESTURE OF DEFIANCE AND COMPLICATE GORDON BROWN'S DETERMINATION TO ATTEND THE OLYMPICS. Brown is to meet the Tibetan spiritual leader when he visits Britain in May, but is determined to be in Beijing. "We are fully engaged in supporting the Olympics," said David Miliband, the foreign secretary. "We want to see it as a success, and I think it's right that the prime minister represents us."

China had hoped to use the games to highlight its economic development and growing openness. But it is increasingly proving an opportunity FOR CRITICS TO BASH CHINA'S ONE-PARTY POLITICAL SYSTEM, HUMAN RIGHTS ABUSES, TREATMENT OF MINORITIES AND TIGHTLY CONTROLLED MEDIA. The EU foreign ministers are to discuss the China quandary at lunch in Slovenia today, with calls being made for a common European position.

"WE DON'T SUPPORT A BOYCOTT AND DON'T INTEND TO BOYCOTT THE OPENING OF THE GAMES," A BRITISH FOREIGN OFFICE SPOKESMAN SAID. "None of the 27 [EU states] are calling for a boycott yet." The French foreign minister, Bernard Kouchner, has described the boycott proposal as "interesting", while Sarkozy this week hedged his bets and said his attendance depended on China's conduct.