The U.S. central bank in March said it would allow emergency loans to investment banks for the first time since the Great Depression to stave off WHAT OFFICIALS FELT WAS A THREAT OF A FULL-SCALE FINANCIAL MARKET MELTDOWN. U.S. policy-makers, including Paulson, now want to install new regulatory ground rules for such an emergency backstop.

"We should quickly consider how to most appropriately give the Fed the authority to access necessary information from highly complex financial institutions and THE RESPONSIBILITY TO INTERVENE IN ORDER TO PROTECT THE SYSTEM, so they can carry out the role our nation has come to expect -- stabilizing the overall system when it is threatened," Paulson said at a luncheon event.

The Fed and the Securities and Exchange Commission have nearly completed a formal agreement to oversee the financial system as an interim measure.

There are 6.7 billion people in the world today. The United States ranks third, with 304 million, behind China and India, according to projections released Thursday by the Census Bureau. The world's population surpassed 6 billion in 1999, meaning it will take only 13 years to add a billion people.

By comparison, the number of people didn't reach 1 billion until 1800, said Carl Haub, a demographer at the Population Reference Bureau. It didn't reach 2 billion until 130 years later. "You can easily see the effect of rapid population growth in developing countries," Haub said.

The BBC Ten O'clock News yesterday reported on the protests which erupted as the UK House of Lords ratified the Treaty yesterday. Over the course of the start of the debate four different people were ejected from the public gallery for shouting "give us a referendum". THE FT REPORTS THAT "BRITISH APPROVAL IS SEEN IN EUROPEAN CAPITALS AS A SIGNIFICANT SIGNAL THE LISBON TREATY IS NOT DEAD." The paper reports "Mr Brown will tell the President that he will not stand in the way of efforts to salvage the Treaty."

The Guardian reports that the Government will get the Queen to give royal assent to the Treaty bill to ratify the Treaty this morning ahead of Gordon Brown's lunch with Nicolas Sarkozy today. A separate piece notes that France wants to agree a deadline of October for a deal to be agreed which would lead to a second referendum in the spring.

Gullible journalists who bought the line that the UK was "secretly" in favour of killing off the Treaty, and was only going along with ratification for diplomatic reasons, should now realise that THE UK GOVERNMENT IS NOT REMOTELY IN FAVOUR OF DROPPING THE TREATY. Rushing through royal assent just to please Sarkozy shows where the Government really stands.

The Prime Minister has been held up as an EU role model after his refusal to suspend Parliament's approval of the Treaty after last week's Irish referendum rejection. Britain's parliamentary approval of the EU Treaty, which received Royal Assent this morning, will be used by Europe's leaders at Brussels summit dinner tonight to push Ireland into holding a second referendum next year.

Hans-Gert Pöttering, President of the European Parliament, told The Daily Telegraph that THE EU TREATY WAS "CERTAINLY NOT" DEAD FOLLOWING A FINAL RATIFYING VOTE IN HOUSE OF LORDS YESTERDAY NIGHT. "This shows that the Reform Treaty is very much alive. The decisions in the House of Lords and the Commons are an encouragement to do everything to get the Treaty ratified as well in those countries where it is not yet ratified," he said.

William Hague, the Shadow Foreign Secretary, said: "People should recognise that as far as the people of Britain are concerned THE TREATY SHOULD BE DEAD. The vote in Parliament in no way represented the British people's view. It is increasingly likely that in two years there will be a Conservative Government that will put the genuine British view."

The raid took place overnight on the Bonga oil platform about 120km (75 miles) off the coast of the Niger Delta, the company said. It is the first attack on the oilfield, which normally produces about 200,000 barrels a day. ATTACKS ON THE INSHORE NIGER DELTA HAVE HELPED DRIVE UP WORLD OIL PRICES.

Nigeria's valuable offshore oilfields had always been considered difficult for most militants to target, the BBC's Alex Last reports from Lagos. But early on Thursday gunmen in boats reached the Bonga installation, Shell's flagship project, for the first time. The shutdown has cut a tenth of Nigeria's total output in one go. This comes on top of a reduction of at least 20% in recent years following inland attacks.

Our correspondent says Bonga was new, expensive and working well despite the difficulties and repeated attacks affecting the company's inshore operations in the Delta. The militants in the Delta are getting more sophisticated and better equipped and armed, he says. Now they have proven that in terms of distance at least, all of Nigeria's facilities are within their reach.

Tanzanian Foreign Minister Bernard Membe, who heads a troika of observer states, told the BBC mounting violence could make a free vote impossible. He said monitors had witnessed people being shot dead - and they were questioning the value of their mission. A spokesman for the governing Zanu-PF party dismissed Mr Membe's remarks.

Speaking to the BBC's Focus on Africa programme, Jerome Macdonald Gumbo accused the Tanzanian foreign minister of bias. He said: "Skirmishes between the MDC and Zanu-PF are normal but not to the extent that the elections cannot be free and fair. He is biased." Earlier on Wednesday, the opposition said four abducted activists had been found dead. The bodies were discovered near the capital Harare, according to the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), led by presidential contender Morgan Tsvangirai.

The MDC says at least 70 of its supporters have now been killed and 25,000 forced from their homes in a state-sponsored campaign of violence. Zimbabwean public broadcaster ZBC has also announced it will no longer carry campaign adverts from the MDC. There are no privately controlled radio or TV stations in Zimbabwe and only a few weekly newspapers, which most people cannot afford.

"We see striking similarities between the transatlantic tensions that built up in the early 1990s and those that are accumulating again today. THE OUTCOME OF THE 1992 DEADLOCK WAS A MAJOR CURRENCY CRISIS AND A RECESSION IN EUROPE," said a report by Morgan Stanley's European experts.

Just as then, Washington has slashed rates to bail out the banks and prevent an economic hard-landing, while Frankfurt has stuck to its hawkish line - ignoring angry protests from politicians and squeals of pain from Europe's export industry. Indeed, the ECB has let the de facto interest rate - Euribor - rise by over 100 basis points since the credit crisis began.

Just as then, the dollar has plummeted far enough to cause worldwide alarm. In August 1992 it fell to 1.35 against the Deutsche Mark: this time it has fallen even further to the equivalent of 1.25. It is potentially worse for Europe this time because the yen and yuan have also fallen to near record lows. So has sterling. A CRUNCH IS LOOMING IN 2009 WHEN A WAVE OF MATURITIES FALL DUE. "Could the funding dry up? We think it could," said the bank.

The report from the Baker Heart Institute found that 26 per cent of adult Australians had a body mass index of 25 or more, meaning they were overweight or obese. It warned that the health system was facing a time bomb unless action was taken. The findings make Australia the world's most overweight nation, ahead of the US, which has a 25 per cent obesity rate.

Professor Simon Stewart, the institute's head of preventative cardiology, said that obesity was now the biggest threat to the health of Australians, with an estimated nine million of the 21 million population obese or overweight. "That is a whole million more obese adults than we had thought," he said.

The study predicted there would be an extra 700,000 heart-related hospital admissions in the next 20 years due to obesity and almost 125,000 people would die because of the condition in that period. The report called for a national weight loss strategy on the scale of smoking and skin cancer campaigns, including subsidising gym memberships and personal training sessions.

Environment minister Phil Woolas said that the nation must ask itself whether GM crops are part of the solution to the food shortages and rising prices which have already caused rioting in several developing countries. It is understood Mr Woolas held preliminary talks with the Agricultural Biotechnology Council, an umbrella group formed in 2000 to promote the role of biotechnology in agriculture. He said: "There is a growing question of whether GM crops can help the developing world out of the current food price crisis.

There is no commercial cultivation of GM plants in the UK at present, and only one trial is under way, involving potatoes in Cambridgeshire. Supporters of the crops argue that they boost productivity and cut the use of pesticides, while critics are concerned about the contamination of conventional crops.

Gordon Brown is believed to have some sympathy for reconsidering the issue, in the light of the worsening food crisis.

In total there were 205,600 abortions carried out in England and Wales in 2007 a 2.2 per cent rise on the previous year. Of those 4,376 were carried out on girls too young to legally have sex. Women aged 19 were the most likely to have an abortion in 2007 with 36 procedures carried out for every 1,000 19-year-olds.

The rise in abortions amongst the very young showed the biggest increase with a 20 per cent rise in terminations for girls under 14, up from 136 in 2006 to 163 in 2007.

Monsignor Aldo Giordano, named earlier this month as THE PERMANENT OBSERVER OF THE HOLY SEE TO THE COUNCIL OF EUROPE, spoke Sunday with Vatican Radio about Ireland's June 12 referendum that put the Treaty of Lisbon in limbo. The treaty needs unanimous approval from the Union's 27 member states for it to go into effect.

"We are interested in the Europe of history, of culture, that Europe which today is able to confront the world," he said. "EUROPE MUST REDISCOVER ITS ROOTS, THE FOUNDATION OF ITS VALUES. Europe needs an ideal, but this ideal must be well-founded." Meanwhile, Monsignor Giordano considered the strength of the Church's voice in Europe, saying that he believes its position on morals "is heard". "Still," he affirmed, "THE KEY TO MAKING THE CHURCH'S VOICE STRONGER IS THROUGH ECUMENICAL AND INTERRELIGIOUS DIALOGUE."

"On these important ethical topics, from the question of human life - from birth to its end - and the family, but also moral topics such as justice, peace and the environment, I SEE THAT THE VOICE OF THE CHURCH IS VERY MUCH HEEDED ON THE PART OF POLITICS," he said. "Of course, it is not just an issue of being heeded; THERE IS ALSO A CRITICAL DIMENSION."

"The Churches must come to a consensus among themselves and make a common contribution," the Holy See representative affirmed. And, "there is also the inter-religious question, because there is religious pluralism in Europe and we must be able to make proposals or give shared visions also at the level of religions. I BELIEVE THAT THE MORE WE ARE UNITED AS CHRISTIANS AND AS MEN OF RELIGION, THE MORE POLITICS WILL HEED THESE ETHICAL ISSUES."

The traditionalists dealt a serious blow to Dr Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, by claiming that he can no longer hold the Church together. They warned that the Church was gripped by its most serious crisis since the Reformation. It could only be saved by the repentance of the Americans who triggered the row by ordaining a homosexual bishop, the Rt Rev Gene Robinson, five years ago.

The formal pronouncement of the schism is contained in an 89-page document titled The Way, the Truth and the Life, which has been drawn up by conservative Anglicans ahead of the breakaway Gafcon summit next week and which has been seen by The Telegraph. It is supported by the heads of key African churches including Nigeria, Uganda and Rwanda.

Archbishop Peter Akinola, the primate of Nigeria, states in one section: "THERE IS NO LONGER ANY HOPE, THEREFORE, FOR A UNIFIED COMMUNION."

"A VERY NASTY PERIOD IS SOON TO BE UPON US - BE PREPARED," said Bob Janjuah, the bank's credit strategist. A report by the bank's research team warns that the S&P 500 index of Wall Street equities is likely to fall by more than 300 points to around 1050 by September as "all the chickens come home to roost" from the excesses of the global boom, with contagion spreading across Europe and emerging markets. Such a slide on world bourses would amount to one of the worst bear markets over the last century.

Further into early July before short-lived momentum from America's fiscal boost begins to fizzle out, and the delayed effects of the oil spike inflict their damage. "GLOBALISATION WAS ALWAYS GOING TO RISK PUTTING G7 BANKERS INTO A DANGEROUS CORNER AT SOME POINT. WE HAVE GOT TO THAT POINT," he said.

Approved in this medieval French border city, which is home to a significant population of North Africans and Turks, the legislation establishes common rules for expelling foreigners who are detained on EU territory without permission to be there. Described by critics like Amnesty International as "severely flawed" and an erosion of human rights standards, but by supporters as a balanced approach, the so-called return directive passed in the European Parliament by a vote of 369 to 197, with 106 deputies abstaining.

"The member states must decide whether they need them - if so, then please legalize them," Manfred Weber, the German center-right legislator from Bavaria who shepherded the measures through the European Parliament, said of undocumented migrants in Europe. "If you don't need them for your labor markets, then send them home."

Europe, which has freedom of movement within its 25 Schengen states but no overarching policy on immigration, sees the law as a means to unify a patchwork of systems governing treatment of migrants who overstay their visas or who, in far lesser numbers, slip clandestinely across its borders.

A last-ditch Tory bid to delay the process for four months was defeated by a margin of 93, and peers later gave the EU Amendment Bill a third reading. Royal Assent is expected within 24 hours, as EU leaders are set to meet in Brussels to discuss the crisis caused by the Irish "No" vote. The PM says the treaty must be ratified by all 27 EU states to be accepted. During the Lords debate four protesters were removed from the public gallery after voicing their demands for a referendum.

The prime minister said he respected the Irish people's referendum vote, but the Irish government had asked for more time to discuss what to do in the wake of its outcome.

"Just as we have respect for the Irish, we should have respect for the other countries that are processing the treaty and ratifying the treaty as well," he said. "And perhaps we should also have respect for this House, which has also voted for ratification of the treaty." Mr Cameron hit back that he did not understand why Mr Brown could not bring himself to say the treaty was "dead". "THIS IS NOT A TREATY THAT BRITAIN WANTED OR NEEDED," HE SAID. "IT'S A TREATY YOU WERE SO ASHAMED OF YOU HAD TO SIGN IT IN A ROOM ALL ON YOUR OWN."