High-protein spring wheat on the Minneapolis Grain Exchange rose by almost 25% to record levels on Monday after all trading restrictions were scrapped. The March futures contract closed at up $4.75 at $24 a bushel, the record price for any US wheat contract. The price of spring wheat has more than doubled since January.

Kazakhstan has become the latest country to put export restrictions on wheat as it battles against inflation. Russia and Argentina have already imposed similar export restrictions. Reports of a drought in Northern China, where most of the country's wheat is grown, also pushed prices higher. Extreme weather has already damaged crops in other parts of the world and US wheat inventories are expected to fall to their lowest level for 60 years.

The U.S. National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) reported that many American cities and towns suffered RECORD COLD TEMPERATURES IN JANUARY AND EARLY FEBRUARY. According to the NCDC, the average temperature in January "was -0.3 F cooler than the 1901-2000 (20th century) average."

CHINA is surviving its most brutal winter in a century. Temperatures in the normally balmy south were so low for so long that some middle-sized cities went days and even weeks without electricity because once power lines had toppled, it was too cold or too icy to repair them. There have been so many snow and ice storms in ONTARIO and QUEBEC in the past two months that the real estate market has felt the pinch as home buyers have stayed home rather than venturing out looking for new houses. IN JUST THE FIRST TWO WEEKS OF FEBRUARY, TORONTO received 70 cm of snow, SMASHING THE RECORD OF 66.6 CM FOR THE ENTIRE MONTH set back in the pre-SUV, pre-Kyoto, pre-carbon footprint days of 1950.

REMEMBER THE ARCTIC SEA ICE? The ice we were told so hysterically last fall had melted to its "lowest levels on record? Never mind that those records only date back as far as 1972 and that there is anthropological and geological evidence of much greater melts in the past. THE ICE IS BACK. Gilles Langis, a senior forecaster with the Canadian Ice Service in Ottawa, says the Arctic winter has been so severe the ice has not only recovered, it is actually 10 to 20 cm thicker in many places than at this time last year.

OK, SO ONE WINTER DOES NOT A CLIMATE MAKE. It would be premature to claim an Ice Age is looming just because we have had one of our most brutal winters in decades. But if environmentalists and environment reporters can run around shrieking about the manmade destruction of the natural order every time a robin shows up on Georgian Bay two weeks early, then it is at least fair game to use THIS WINTER'S WEATHER STORIES TO WONDER WHETHER THE ALARMIST ARE BEING A TAD PREMATURE. And it's not just anecdotal evidence that is piling up against the climate-change dogma.

"WE MISSED WHAT WAS RIGHT IN FRONT OF OUR EYES," says Prof. Russell. It's not ice melt but rather WIND CIRCULATION THAT DRIVES OCEAN CURRENTS NORTHWARD FROM THE TROPICS. Climate models until now have not properly accounted for the wind's effects on ocean circulation, SO RESEARCHERS HAVE COMPENSATED BY OVER-EMPHASIZING THE ROLE OF MANMADE WARMING ON POLAR ICE MELT.

Last month, Oleg Sorokhtin, a fellow of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences, shrugged off manmade climate change as "a drop in the bucket." Showing that solar activity has entered an inactive phase, Prof. Sorokhtin advised people to "stock up on fur coats."

He is not alone. Kenneth Tapping of our own National Research Council, who oversees a giant radio telescope focused on the sun, is convinced we are in for a long period of severely cold weather if sunspot activity does not pick up soon. THE LAST TIME THE SUN WAS THIS INACTIVE, EARTH SUFFERED THE LITTLE ICE AGE THAT LASTED ABOUT FIVE CENTURIES AND ENDED IN 1850.

Crops failed through killer frosts and drought. FAMINE, PLAGUE AND WAR WERE WIDESPREAD. Harbours froze, so did rivers, and trade ceased. IT'S WAY TOO EARLY TO CLAIM THE SAME IS ABOUT TO HAPPEN AGAIN, BUT THEN IT'S WAY TOO EARLY FOR THE HYSTERIA OF THE GLOBAL WARMERS, TOO.

For the first time, a large-scale study has quantified what many experts suspect: there is a constant membership turnover among most American faiths. America's religious culture, which is best known for its high participation rates, may now be equally famous (or infamous) for what the new report dubs "churn." The report, released today by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, is the first selection of data from a 35,000- person poll called the U.S. Religious Landscape Survey. Says Pew Forum director Luis Lugo, Americans "not only change jobs, change where they live, and change spouses, but they change religions too.

We totally knew it was happening, but this survey enabled us to document it clearly." According to Pew, 28% of American adults have left the faith of their childhood for another one. And that does not even include those who switched from one Protestant denomination to another; if it did, the number would jump to 44%. Says Greg Smith, one of the main researchers for the "Landscape" data, churn applies across the board. "There's no group that is simply winning or simply losing," he says. "Nothing is static. Every group is simultaneously winning and losing."

An even more extreme example of what might be called "masked churn" is the relatively tiny Jehovah's Witnesses, with a turnover rate of about two-thirds. That means that two-thirds of the people who told Pew they were raised Jehovah's Witnesses no longer are - yet the group attracts roughly the same number of converts. Notes Lugo, "No wonder they have to keep on knocking on doors."

A University of Hull team concluded that the drugs helped only a small group of the most severely depressed. Marjorie Wallace, head of the mental health charity Sane, said that if these results were confirmed they could be "very disturbing". But the makers of Prozac and Seroxat, two of the commonest anti-depressants, said they disagreed with the findings. A spokesman for GlaxoSmithKline, which makes Seroxat, said the study only looked at a "small subset of the total data available".

The researchers found that even the positive effects seen on severely depressed patients were relatively small, and open to interpretation. The seemingly good result came from the fact that these patients responded less to dummy pills (placebos) which they were given during trials, rather than any notable response to anti-depressants. Lead researcher Professor Irving Kirsch said: "The difference in improvement between patients taking placebos and patients taking anti-depressants is not very great. "This means that depressed people can improve without chemical treatments.

Dr Tim Kendall, deputy director of the Royal College of Psychiatrists Research Unit, has published research concluding that drug companies tend only to publish research which shows their products in a good light. He called for drug companies to be forced to publish all their data.

The accelerating destruction of the rainforests that form a precious cooling band around the Earth's equator, is now being recognised as one of the main causes of climate change. Carbon emissions from deforestation far outstrip damage caused by planes and automobiles and factories. The rampant slashing and burning of tropical forests is second only to the energy sector as a source of greenhouses gases according to a report published today by the Oxford-based Global Canopy Programme, an alliance of leading rainforest scientists.

Figures from the GCP, summarising the latest findings from the United Nations, and building on estimates contained in the Stern Report, show deforestation accounts for up to 25 per cent of global emissions of heat-trapping gases, while transport and industry account for 14 per cent each; and aviation makes up only 3 per cent of the total. "Tropical forests are the elephant in the living room of climate change," said Andrew Mitchell, the head of the GCP.

As the GCP's report concludes: "If we lose forests, we lose the fight against climate change."

They are putting forward the theory that radiation given off by mobile phones and other hi-tech gadgets is a possible answer to one of the more bizarre mysteries ever to happen in the natural world - the abrupt disappearance of the bees that pollinate crops. Late last week, some bee-keepers claimed that the phenomenon - which started in the US, then spread to continental Europe - was beginning to hit Britain as well.

The theory is that radiation from mobile phones interferes with bees' navigation systems, preventing the famously homeloving species from finding their way back to their hives. Improbable as it may seem, there is now evidence to back this up. Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) occurs when a hive's inhabitants suddenly disappear, leaving only queens, eggs and a few immature workers, like so many apian Mary Celestes. The vanished bees are never found, but thought to die singly far from home. The parasites, wildlife and other bees that normally raid the honey and pollen left behind when a colony dies, refuse to go anywhere near the abandoned hives.

The alarm was first sounded last autumn, but has now hit half of all American states. The West Coast is thought to have lost 60 per cent of its commercial bee population, with 70 per cent missing on the East Coast. CCD has since spread to Germany, Switzerland, Spain, Portugal, Italy and Greece. And last week John Chapple, one of London's biggest bee-keepers, announced that 23 of his 40 hives have been abruptly abandoned.

Other apiarists have recorded losses in Scotland, Wales and north-west England, but the Department of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs insisted: "There is absolutely no evidence of CCD in the UK." The implications of the spread are alarming. Most of the world's crops depend on pollination by bees. Albert Einstein once said that if the bees disappeared, "man would have only four years of life left".

German research has long shown that bees' behaviour changes near power lines. Now a limited study at Landau University has found that bees refuse to return to their hives when mobile phones are placed nearby. Dr Jochen Kuhn, who carried it out, said this could provide a "hint" to a possible cause.

Josette Sheeran told the BBC that the WFP needed increased contributions from donors to make sure it could meet the needs of those who already rely on it. She said it also faced growing demands from countries like Afghanistan, where people were now unable to afford food. Food prices rose 40% last year because of rising demand and other factors.

Ms Sheeran said the WFP was holding talks with experts to decide whether food aid would need to be stopped or rationed if new donations did not arrive at the agency in the short term. The former US undersecretary of state said she hoped the cuts could be avoided, but warned that the agency's budget requirements were rising by several millions of dollars a week because of the higher food prices.

Ms Sheeran said Egypt had just widened its food rationing system after two decades and Pakistan had reintroduced ration cards after many years. China and Russia were meanwhile imposing price controls, while Argentina and Vietnam were enforcing foreign sales taxes or export bans, she said. The US, the world's largest donor of food aid, has since reduced its surplus and instead chosen to provide funding to international agencies.

The news comes a month after Gary Weddell, a 47-year-old police inspector, shot his mother-in-law and then himself while on bail accused of killing his wife. The prison population is now 82,068, above capacity even including the additional 400 police and court cells.

As a result of the crisis, Jack Straw asked magistrates to lock fewer people up. Nick Herbert, the shadow justice secretary, said: "After Gary Weddell murdered his mother-in-law while out on bail, the Government claimed it was unusual for bail to be granted to murder suspects. "Now we discover the disturbing truth that a large number of people charged with murder were in fact free on bail at the time.

A spokesman for the National Neighbourhood Watch foundation, which campaigns for safer communities, said: "Those figures are worryingly high. "I think most people would be surprised to learn that bail has been granted so frequently to people charged with the most serious of offences."

The German bank "expects to file its claim against UBS in the State of New York by the end of February," a statement said. HSH took exception to investment of 300 million euros (444 million dollars) in collateralised debt bonds which had been structured and managed by UBS. CDOs are a type of asset-backed security comprising a portfolio of fixed-income assets, and are often backed in part by home loans, which in the case of the US subprime market, suffered from widespread defaults last year.

In its statement, HSH Nordbank said it would argue "that UBS's management of the portfolio has been in breach of its contractual obligations and fiduciary duties and that substitutions were made solely for the benefit of UBS." The German bank, formed from a merger of two northern regional German banks, said it would demand "the recovery of its losses which we regard as the responsibility of UBS."

The Swiss banking giant plunged to its first-ever full-year net loss last year after losing 18 billion dollars in the US subprime mortgage crisis. UBS revealed a net loss of 4.4 billion Swiss francs (4.0 billion dollars, 2.7 billion euros) in 2007, compared to a profit of 12.3 billion Swiss francs in 2006.

With the February 12 assassination in Damascus of a senior Hizballah commander continuing to roil the waters of the Middle East, that much-anticipated second round could be drawing nearer. Hizballah has vowed revenge for the car bomb killing of Imad Mughniyah, and Israel is taking the threat seriously.

Israel has placed its army on alert and reinforced its presence along the northern border with Lebanon. Patriot anti-missile batteries have been deployed near Haifa, Israel's second-largest city, 40 kilometers south of the Lebanese border. Hizballah also is on alert. "We are ready for another war and it will come," says a local. The Hizballah commander said that the Shi'ite fighters will be on the offensive in the next war, HINTING AT TAKING THE BATTLE INTO ISRAEL ITSELF. "We weren't expecting the last war and we fought only to defend our land, but NEXT TIME YOU WILL SEE A VERY DIFFERENT KIND OF FIGHTING," he said.

One senior UNIFIL officer said "the situation in the region is so dangerous that the tiniest spark can start a new war."

"We assume that Serbia is a single state whose jurisdiction covers all of its territory," Medvedev said. "We will stick to this position." Medvedev, the Kremlin-backed frontrunner for president, met pro-Western President Boris Tadic and nationalist Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica, who has long leaned on Moscow for help against the secession of Serbia's southern province. Currently Russia's first deputy prime minister, Medvedev is expected to win a presidential election on Sunday. He was traveling with Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, a signal that RUSSIAN SUPPORT FOR BELGRADE WOULD CONTINUE AFTER HIS ELECTION. In a statement on Sunday, the Russian foreign ministry again demanded a "compromise" on Kosovo.

It also recalled that Russia had a peacekeeping contingent in Kosovo from 1999 to 2004 -- POSSIBLY POINTING TO PLANS TO PROPOSE A RETURN OF RUSSIAN TROOPS TO THE TERRITORY, IN ETHNIC SERB AREAS THAT RESIST ALBANIAN RULE. Belgrade has pulled its ambassadors from the countries that have recognized the Albanian-majority province, and counts on Russia as its main ally. "This visit comes at an extremely important moment, it's an opportunity to confirm our common positions CONCERNING THE ILLEGAL SNATCHING OF KOSOVO," Serbian Trade Minister Predrag Bubalo told local media.

Negotiating teams met early on Monday to try to finalize agreement on ending post-election turmoil that has left at least 1,000 dead before an opposition deadline to resume street protests expires on Wednesday.

The government has agreed in principle to create a prime minister's seat demanded by the opposition, but the parties are split on the premier's powers, sharing of ministries and the possibility of a new election if the coalition collapses.

By early afternoon, both sides said they were unable to agree and had to push the decisions up to their bosses through mediator Kofi Annan, the former U.N. secretary general. "On many of the issues that are outstanding, we are unable to agree, so they have been referred to the principals in the hope that they enjoy greater leverage and can be able to thrash out those issues," Ruto told reporters.

Christofias, 62, has agreed to meet the leader of the breakaway Turkish Cypriot north. The European Union, the United States and Britain urged him to waste no time to end the division hindering Turkey's European Union accession efforts.

"I believe that soon an exploratory meeting will be arranged," Christofias told journalists on Monday, while Turkish Cypriot leader Mehmet Ali Talat asked for swift talks. "I genuinely congratulate Mr. Christofias and I call on him to cooperate in the process of negotiations which should start as soon as possible," he told a news conference in the divided Cypriot capital of Nicosia.

"I would strongly encourage you to grasp this chance and without delay start negotiations under United Nations auspices with the leader of the Turkish Cypriot community on a comprehensive settlement," European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said in a statement to Christofias. The United States and Britain also issued statements saying 2008 offered a window of opportunity and offering support.

While most of the outgoing centre-left coalition supports the abortion law, centre-right politicians are divided, some favoring a more restrictive approach, others an outright ban. Avvenire, the newspaper of the Italian Bishops Conference, said a statement the association issued at a weekend congress, supporting the current abortion law, was invalid and "imaginary" because it had been approved "by acclamation" and not put to an individual vote by delegates.

The clash, which dominated Italian newspapers on Monday, appeared to thwart any attempt by political parties to keep the thorny issue of abortion in the background of the campaign. Pope Benedict repeated the Church's opposition to abortion on Monday, saying life must be respected "from its dawn" and "in every moment of its earthly development" but did not mention the doctors' dispute

Exponential growth in processing power and the shrinking of technology would see the development of microscopic computers, he said. "We will see a billion-fold increase in the price-performance of computers in the next 25 years," he said. "Virtual will compete with reality," he told the Game Developers Conference.

Mr Kurzweil said it was possible to accurately predict the growth and change in computing power by looking at how it had developed over the last 50 years. "There will be a 100,000-fold shrinking of computer technology over the next 25 years," he said. "Today you can put a pea-sized computer inside your brain, if you have Parkinson's disease and want to replace the biological neurons that were destroyed by the disease."

He said a billion-fold increase in computing performance and capability over the next 25 years coupled with the 100,000 fold shrinking, would lead to "blood cell-size devices" that can go inside our bodies and keep us healthy and inside our brain and expand our intelligence". Mr Kurzweil, who invented the flat bed scanner and text-to-speech synthesis, said the virtual world was a misnomer. "In virtual worlds we do real romance, real learning, real business. Virtual reality is real reality."