King Abdullah's initiative - a three-day meeting starting July 16 that will include Muslim, Christian, and Jewish clerics, as well as representatives of Eastern religions - stands out among interfaith gatherings that have become commonplace in the post-9/11 world. Not only is Saudi Arabia the birthplace of Islam, but it also is the wellspring of an austere, exclusivist version of Sunni Islam. Sometimes called Wahhabism, it bans the open practice of other faiths in the kingdom and tends to reject inter-religious dialogue with non-Muslim "infidels."

Some observers see the international conference - first broached by Abdullah in March - as a way to strengthen his hand against extremist elements at home. "It's very difficult to deal with [the radicals] on an intellectual basis, to open up their minds," says Shiite political activist Jafar Al Shayeb. "So having these Muslim scholars from all different parts of the world pushing for a more tolerant course, I think will help the government in dealing with radical groups internally."

In early June, the king brought about 500 Muslim leaders from around the world to Mecca to discuss Islamic views on interfaith dialogue. Former Iranian President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani sat next to Abdullah on the dais in a display of Sunni-Shiite unity.

Forecasters predicted heavy showers for much of the week, and said these could set the pattern for the rest of the month and beyond. The Met Office issued severe weather warnings across parts of northern and south eastern England, warning that up to 40mm of rain could fall in some northern areas today.

With the thundery showers expected to continue, forecasters predicted that the country may have seen the last of any lengthy periods of sunshine. Some even warned that the summer could be among the wettest on record. A severe weather warning is also in place for parts of south west England and Wales on Wednesday with the potential for as much as 50mm of rain in the worst affected areas.

Etna spews small amounts of smoke and ash from its summit most of the time. But some new fissures or vents have opened up since it picked up the pace of its eruptions in May.

A VOLCANO IN HAWAII has also begun to spew lava in greater quantities than witnessed ever before, experts have warned. The lava flow from Kilauea, which has been erupting on and off for 25 years, started on Nov 21 last year. But experts said that more lava is spilling from the volcano and into the ocean than usual. Experts from the US Geological Survey have also been monitoring the increased activity for the past few days.

Senior officials from the Group of Eight rich nations were meeting late into the night in Japan to thrash out wording that would allow President George W. Bush on Tuesday to put aside deep misgivings and sign on to a global goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by the middle of the century. Bush is under strong pressure from Japan and Europe but says he will not back a numerical target unless big polluters including China and India agree to binding commitments to curb their carbon pollution.

The G8 will set out its positions on climate change, aid to Africa, rising food prices and the global economy in a raft of statements due to be issued on Tuesday. Citing a final draft of the G8 communique, Japan's Yomiuri newspaper said the leaders would highlight downside risks to the world economy and label rising food and oil prices a "serious threat".

"How we respond to this double jeopardy of soaring food and oil prices is a test of the global system's commitment to help the most vulnerable," World Bank President Robert Zoellick said. "It is a test we cannot afford to fail," he told reporters.

Ruth Kelly said biofuels had potential to cut carbon emissions but there were "increasing questions" about them. "Uncontrolled" growing of fuel crops could destroy rainforest, she told MPs. A government-commissioned report recommends ministers "amend not abandon" biofuel policies. The Tories said policy had to change "right now".

Ms Kelly's statement comes as the European Parliament is about to vote on whether to scrap the EU's target of sourcing 10% of transport fuel from biofuels by 2020. World Bank president Robert Zoellick has also called for reform in rich countries, urging them to grow more food instead.

THE CAP IS THE MOST EXPENSIVE, WASTEFUL AND AMORAL SYSTEM OF FARM SUPPORT DEVISED BY HUMAN INTELLIGENCE. It penalises us repeatedly: we pay higher taxes to encourage production, we pay again to store surpluses, we pay yet again to destroy them, and then we're billed all over again as consumers to maintain artificially high prices. Output-based subsidies encourage the felling of hedgerows and the use of chemical fertilisers. Preventable poverty is inflicted on Africa, which finds European markets closed to its chief exports. Agricultural subsidies stand in the way of a comprehensive world trade settlement which would benefit consumers and farmers alike. Inflation is driven up, with deleterious consequences for the entire economy.

Oh, and I almost forgot: Britain, as a food importer with relatively efficient farms, does especially badly out of the system, paying more in and getting less out. If we gave a direct acreage-based grant to our farmers instead of subsidising their Continental rivals, we could cut food prices, cut taxes and raise farm incomes all at the same time.

What's that? You think it's unfair to blame the Prime Minister? It's all the fault of the French? I wonder. The last time the CAP came up for renegotiation, Labour went into the talks claiming that it would not surrender Britain's budget rebate without a comprehensive overhaul of farming. In the event, TONY BLAIR GAVE UP OUR REBATE while agreeing to increase the percentage of the EU budget devoted to agriculture from 42 to 48 per cent. Then again, perhaps he did get something in return: shortly afterwards, MANY OF THE LEADERS WHO HAD DONE SO WELL OUT OF THE SETTLEMENT ANNOUNCED THAT THEY WOULD BACK TONY BLAIR AS PRESIDENT OF THE EU.

They have set up what amounts to a church within a church in order to organise for a long struggle against the ordination of gay clergy, the blessing of gay relationships, and what they claim is a drift towards accepting other religions as offering "equal access to God".

The Rev Rod Thomas, of the conservative Church of England group Reform, helped to formulate the organisation's strategy. He claimed that traditionalists had been forced to create a new alliance to prevent the Bible being rewritten by liberal Anglicans to suit their current lifestyles. "The Anglican Church is being destroyed by false teaching of the Bible on issues such as homosexuality", he said. "We are going to stand against this trend, and spread the true message of the Bible with confidence." Traditionalists believe the Bible rules out active homosexuality, for example. They met in Jerusalem to bolster their claim that they were in touch with the authentic teaching of the early Church.

Archbishop Peter Jensen accepted that their behaviour was "unusual" for Anglicans. But he said "these are unusual times".

This sounds very frightening, so let's look at the facts about polar sea ice. AS USUAL, THERE ARE A COUPLE OF HUGE PROBLEMS WITH THE REPORTS.

Firstly, the story is neither alarming nor unique. In the August 29, 2000 edition of the New York Times, the same NSIDC expert, Mark Serreze, said: "There's nothing to be necessarily alarmed about. There's been open water at the pole before. We have no clear evidence at this point that this is related to global climate change." During the summer of 2000 there was "a large body of ice-free water about 10 miles long and 3 miles wide near the pole". Also in 2000, Dr Claire Parkinson at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center was quoted as saying: "The fact of having no ice at the pole is not so stunning." Submarines regularly surface at the North Pole.

Secondly, the likelihood of the North Pole being ice free this summer is actually quite slim. There are only a few weeks left where the sun is high enough to melt ice at the North Pole. The sun is less than 23 degrees above the horizon, and by mid-August will be less than 15 degrees above it. Temperatures in Greenland have been cold this summer, and winds are not favorable for a repeat. Currently, there is about one million km2 more ice than there was on this date last summer.

Satellite records have been kept for polar sea ice over the last thirty years by the University Of Illinois. In 2007-2008, two very different records were set. The Arctic broke the previous record for the least sea ice area ever recorded, while the Antarctic broke the record for the most sea ice area ever recorded. Summed up over the entire earth, polar ice has remained constant. As seen below, there has been no net gain or loss of polar sea ice since records began.

Last summer, the headlines read "First ever traversal of the Northwest Passage". This sounds very dramatic, except that it is entirely incorrect. As the BBC reported: "In 1905, Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen became the first person to successfully navigate the Northwest Passage, in a wooden sailboat." The Northwest Passage has been navigated at least one hundred times over the last century.

According to official US Weather Bureau records (pdf) from 1922, there was open sailing very close to the North Pole that year. Anthony Watts unearthed this quote from the Weather Bureau: "In fact, so little ice has never before been noted." The expedition all but established a record, sailing as far north as 81 degrees in ice-free water. We must check back in seven weeks to see if the North Pole is ice-free. My money is on the experts being wrong - again.

Read the full report

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has set a tone ahead of this week's G-8 summit in Japan by sending a starkly-worded warning to her colleagues about the consequences of rising food prices. The crisis, she wrote in a six-page letter to other G-8 leaders last Monday, might "endanger democracy, destabilize nations and lead to international security problems."

Merkel organized a working group last April to analyze the recent rise in world food prices and to recommend solutions. Her government experts have found that "speculative trading in futures markets ? have a significant influence on the level and volatility of staple food prices." To answer the "dramatic nature" of the crisis, the commission recommends "heightened agricultural productivity" in developing nations, a "quick supply of seeds, fertilizer and farm equipment to selected regions" as well as "the instant abolition of export restrictions."

Droughts could hit the country twice as often as now and could be more severe in key agricultural production areas, the Bureau of Meteorology and the country's top science organisation, the CSIRO, said in a joint report. "Parts of these high-level projections read more like a disaster novel than a scientific report," said Tony Burke, the agriculture minister.

"What's clear is that the cycle of drought is going to be more regular and deeper than ever." Australia, which is currently suffering its worst drought in a century, has seen wheat exports tumble in the past two years.

The world's driest inhabited continent is normally THE SECOND-LARGEST WHEAT EXPORTER IN THE WORLD, but the harvest was decimated to just 13 million tonnes last year because of drought.

The discussions open at the Windsor Hotel, close to Lake Toyako, on Monday morning, with the heads of the United States, Japan, Germany, France Britain, Italy, Canada and Russia joined by 14 other heads of state in what is the largest ever G8 meeting.

Despite the efforts of police and immigration authorities in Japan, several thousand foreign demonstrators have joined forces with home-grown protesters to rail against everything from global warming to banning cluster bombs, poverty and even the G8 itself. One banner unveiled at a protest event in the nearby city of Sapporo declared: "No to the hypocritical G8 Summit promoting the destruction of the global environment."

Some 40,000 police have been mobilised across Japan to provide security for the summit, which will be US President George W Bush's final G8 meeting and is therefore considered a prime target for a potential terrorist attack.

The report by the TaxPayers' Alliance was highlighted by David Davis, the former shadow home secretary, who stands in a by-election this week on the issue of civil liberties. Mr Davis resigned as an MP after the opposition failed to defeat Government plans to hold terrorism suspects for 42 days.

Mr Davis said: "This is yet further damning evidence of Big Brother's expensive tastes. ID cards, CCTV, the DNA database and other measures are a huge waste of taxpayers' money on policies that undermine freedom and are utterly ineffective in fighting crime or terrorism. At the same time, the Government has failed to deal robustly with extremists and terrorists, like Abu Hamza. Yet again, this government penalise the innocent, and is a soft touch for the guilty."

Abu Hamza's extradition was requested in 2004 by the United States, where he is wanted for terrorism offences. But despite being convicted of a number of charges in Britain two years ago, he has still not been deported. The cost to taxpayers is estimated at £2.75 million in welfare payments, council housing, NHS bills, trials and legal appeals.

It quoted a confidential study by the hedge fund Bridgewater Associates as saying losses for banks holding risky assets could be four times greater than the 400 billion dollars previously estimated. The hedge fund expressed doubts that the financial institutes would be able to drum up enough funds to cover the losses, something it said could exacerbate the crisis.

Bridgewater, one of the world's biggest hedge funds, based its calculations on the state of risky debt-based US assets, such as mortgages, credit and credit card demands. The value of such risky assets is 26,600 billion dollars, according to the hedge fund. The losses would amount to 1,600 billion dollars if these assets were valued at market rates and not in the form of securitization, the newspaper said

THE AUTHORITY IS CONCERNED IT COULD BE ACCUSED OF DISCRIMINATION AFTER A WARNING FROM ITS OWN LESBIAN, GAY AND BISEXUAL ADVISORY GROUP. It has suspended work on the Circular Road above Avon Gorge, which would open up the area to wildlife and visitors. Talks are now being held to try to end the deadlock.

Head of parks, Peter Wilkinson, said the council had strong equality policies to protect the interests of all groups, irrespective of their sexuality. "The general public are unhappy about people taking part in lewd behaviour in public spaces, whether it's between men and women or people of the same sex", he said. "We are working together with the Terence Higgins Trust to make sure any work we will do is sensitive.

"We're making sure people know what we are doing so we are not seen to be discriminating." Although having sex in a public place could give rise to a criminal charge such as indecent exposure, police have said they are unlikely to investigate unless a formal complaint is made.

The PM said "unnecessary" purchases were contributing to price rises, and urged people to plan meals in advance and store food properly. A government study found the UK wastes 4m tonnes of food every year, adding £420 to a family's shopping bills.

Rising prices and the world economy are due to dominate the annual G8 summit. The Cabinet Office report, due to be published later, claims that up to 40% of food harvested in developing countries can be lost before it is consumed, due to the inadequacies of processing, storage and transport.