USA - Does Al Gore know about this? While the former vice president is leading the charge for drastically changing the way humans do business in a bid to avert catastrophic, man-made global warming, scientists reported today there is noticeable climate change taking place on Jupiter, too.
JERUSALEM - As Israel pursues peace talks with Syria, speculation is growing that the Jewish state will seriously consider unilateral military action against Iran within the next year.
USA - The 2008 winter was the coldest in 40 years for the upper Midwest, Plains states and most of Canada. Minnesota newspapers report that this year's opening of the locks to Mississippi barge traffic, delayed by three weeks, was the latest since the modern waterway opened in 1940.
U.N. - Billions of pounds are being wasted in paying industries in developing countries to reduce climate change emissions, according to two analyses of the UN's carbon offsetting programme.
KHARTOUM - Sudan is on the brink of a new civil war following more than a week of north-south clashes in the disputed oil-rich town of Abyei, a senior southern official said on Monday.
MIDDLE EAST - Eight years after the failure of the last round of negotiations, Israel and Syria are again seeking a peace settlement. With the possible return of the Golan Heights, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is presenting himself as AN APOSTLE OF PEACE.
COLOGNE - German Interior Minister Wolfgang Schäuble wants to set up a central communications monitoring agency in Cologne for use by the police and intelligence agencies, modeled after the US's NSA and the UK's GCHQ. But critics fear the creation of a powerful new super-agency.
LONDON - Union leaders last night criticised record City bonuses, claiming they 'defied economic gravity'. They called for an inquiry to see whether the £12.6 billion payout had been funded with the help of a £50billion Bank of England bail out.
LONDON - Former US President Jimmy Carter is again making waves, this time in telling the London Times that Israel possesses 150 nuclear weapons.
MARS - A Nasa spacecraft has sent back the first historic pictures of an unexplored region of Mars. The Mars Phoenix lander touched down in the far north of the Red Planet, after a 680 million-km (423 million-mile) journey from Earth.
CAMDEN, AUSTRALIA - With its lace curtain bungalows and steepled Anglican church, the once tranquil town of Camden in New South Wales seems the most improbable of settings for a row that combines race and religion.
NASA - Not so long ago, anyone claiming to see flashes of light on the Moon would be viewed with deep suspicion by professional astronomers. Such reports were filed under "L" - for lunatic.
WESTMINSTER - Ministers should go ahead with the idea of PERSONAL "CARBON CREDITS" to meet emissions targets, MPs have said. The Environmental Audit Committee said the scheme would be more effective than taxes for cutting carbon emissions.
USA - A mission to discover the wreck of the Titanic was actually a cover-story for examining the remains of two Cold War nuclear submarines, the man who located the liner has revealed.
COTTBUS, GERMANY - Few politicians in Germany have quite as much momentum these days as Oskar Lafontaine and the populist leader of the rising Left party is making the most of it.