The losses were also greater than those suffered after the September 11, 2001, terror attacks, the Asian financial crisis starting in 1997, Argentina's default on its debt in 2001 and the 1994 Mexican peso crisis. "It could take months or even years before Wall Street and others get a handle on the true cost of the US subprime meltdown and the attendant global credit crunch," Quinlan said. "While subprime loans were once thought to be relatively small in scale and contained to just one segment of the US financial sector, the opposite has become painfully evident over the past few months."

A report last week by Standard & Poors ratings agency showed global stock markets were walloped with a collective loss of 5.2 trillion dollars in the month of January alone. Quinlan said it is not clear that the massacre in equities is over yet. "Against this backdrop, any investor that has been buying US equities on the dips over the past few months has, in general, dug himself a deeper hole," he said. "In the end, the current financial crisis is one for the record books and one, more ominously, not over yet."

It will do so with strong support from the major EU powers and the United States, and equally vigorous opposition from Serbia and Russia, which have vowed never to recognise it.

Belgrade and Moscow slammed any declaration of independence as "null and void" and a violation of international law, as they made last-ditch appeals to the UN Security Council on Thursday. "Let me be clear. The Republic of Serbia shall never accept any violation of its territorial integrity," Serbian Foreign Minister Vuk Jeremic told a closed-door meeting of the 15-member council in New York.

A core group of leading EU member states -- Britain, France, Germany and Italy -- are expected to recognise Kosovo's independence almost immediately, followed by the United States. Serbs make up less than 10 percent of Kosovo's population but see the province as the sacred cradle of their Orthodox culture and religion dating back centuries.

Le Blanc and I are into our 500th kilometer on the river when HE TURNS MY VIEW OF MODERN AFRICAN HISTORY ON ITS HEAD. Le Blanc earns his keep sailing the tributaries of the Congo River. He's 40 years old, and his real name is Malu-Ebonga Charles - he got his nickname, and his green eyes and dark honey skin, from a German grandfather who married a Congolese woman in what was then the Belgian Congo.

If his unconventional genealogy gave him a unique view of the Congo's colonial past, it is his job on the river, piloting three dugouts lashed together with twine and mounted with outboards, that has formed his opinion of the Democratic Republic of Congo's present. "The river is the artery of Congo's economy," he says. "When the Belgians and the Portuguese were here, there were farms and plantations - cashews, peanuts, rubber, palm oil. There was industry and factories employing 5,000 people. But since independence, no Congolese has succeeded. The plantations are abandoned."

It's true that our journey through 643 kilometers of rainforest to where the Maringa River joins the Congo at Mbandaka, has been an exploration of decline. An abandoned tug boat here; there, a beached paddle steamer stripped of its metal sides to a rusted skeleton; several abandoned palm oil factories, their roofs caved in, their walls disappearing into the engulfing forest, their giant storage tanks empty and rusted out. The palms now grow wild and untended on the riverbanks and in the villages we pass, the people dress in rags, hawk smoked black fish and bushmeat, and besiege us with requests for salt or soap. THERE ARE NO SCHOOLS HERE, NO CLINICS, NO ELECTRICITY, NO ROADS. It can take a year for basic necessities ordered from the capital, Kinshasa, nearly 2,000 kilometers downstream, to make it here - if they make it at all.

Le Blanc isn't much concerned with that history; he lives in the present, in a country where education is a luxury and death is everywhere. Around 45,000 people die each month in the DRC as a result of the social collapse brought on by civil war, according to a study released in January by the International Rescue Committee. IT ESTIMATED THE TOTAL LOSS OF LIFE BETWEEN 1998 AND APRIL 2007 AT 5.4 MILLION. For many Congolese like Le Blanc, the difficulties of today blot out the cruelties of the past. "On this river, all that you see - the buildings, the boats - only whites did that. After the whites left, the Congolese did not work. We did not know how to. For the past 50 years, we've just declined." He pauses. "THEY TOOK THIS COUNTRY BY FORCE," HE SAYS, WITH MORE THAN A TOUCH OF ADMIRATION. "IF THEY CAME BACK, THIS TIME WE'D GIVE THEM THE COUNTRY FOR FREE."

In a report strongly rebutted by the government, the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) said: "We look like a soft touch. We are indeed a soft touch, from within and without." How much to integrate Britain's ethnic communities, particularly its 1.8 million Muslims, has been a hot political issue since four British Islamist suicide bombers killed 52 people on London's transport system in July 2005.

The attacks sparked a debate on whether Britain's policy of avoiding imposing a single British identity and instead promoting a multicultural society had led to segregation of ethnic minorities. The report, based on the findings of former military chiefs, diplomats and analysts, concluded: "THE COUNTRY'S LACK OF SELF-CONFIDENCE IS IN STARK CONTRAST TO THE IMPLACABILITY OF ITS ISLAMIST TERRORIST ENEMY. The security of the United Kingdom is at risk and under threat," it said.

The report called for the creation of a new cabinet committee to oversee security policy. It said another parliamentary committee should seek to build consensus and identify security weaknesses. "Islamist terrorism is where people tend to begin. THE UNITED KINGDOM PRESENTS ITSELF AS A TARGET, AS A FRAGMENTING, POST-CHRISTIAN SOCIETY, INCREASINGLY DIVIDED ABOUT INTERPRETATIONS OF ITS HISTORY, ABOUT ITS NATIONAL AIMS, ITS VALUES AND IN ITS POLITICAL IDENTITY," the RUSI report said. "That fragmentation is worsened by the firm self-image of those elements within it who refuse to integrate."

The report said "lack of leadership from the majority, which in misplaced deference to 'multiculturalism' failed to lay down the line to immigrant communities" had undercut those within them trying to fight extremism.

Professor David Baltimore, president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), said there was little hope among scientists. But he said that they were continuing efforts to develop a vaccine.
"Our lack of success may be understandable but it is not acceptable," he said.

"Some years ago I came to the conclusion that our community had to seriously undertake new approaches or we might find ourselves with a worldwide epidemic and no effective response," Prof Baltimore told the annual meeting of the AAAS in Boston.

"That is just where we are today." HIV had evolved a way to protect itself from the human immune system, he said. "I believe that HIV has found ways to totally fool the immune system. So we have to do one better than nature." Attempts to control the virus through antibodies or by boosting the body's immune system have ended in failure. This has left the vaccine community depressed because they can see no hopeful way of success, Prof Baltimore said.

The shooting took place at Northern Illinois University, in De Kalb, 65 miles (100km) west of Chicago. Students ran for cover as a white male armed with two handguns and a shotgun opened fire during a science lecture.
Another 16 people were injured in the attack. Police said there was no apparent motive.

The shooting comes 10 months after 32 students and staff were shot by a student at Virginia Tech University in one of the worst shootings ever at a US school. It is also the fourth shooting at a US education establishment within a week. Last Friday, a woman shot dead two fellow students before killing herself at Louisiana Technical College in Baton Rouge. In Memphis, Tennessee, a 17-year-old is accused of shooting and critically wounding a student on Monday, and a 15-year-old was shot at a junior high school in California on Tuesday.

A panel of experts, comprising Turkish authorities, veteran mountaineers, archaeologists, geologists and members of Hong Kong-based Noah's Ark Ministries International, also displayed an almost one-metre-long piece of petrified wood before the media and specially invited international experts. The experts claimed it to be a part of a long structure they had unearthed during their February-August 2007 exploration.

"It is for the first time in the history of the Ark search that an exploration team is getting material evidence and graphic documentation. This makes it not only a significant breakthrough in the Ark-search, but one that is supported with the most substantial evidence in recent history," the panel said. The revelation is expected to open up a fresh chapter in the ongoing debates in the scientific community on the search for Noah's Ark.

"History has more than one times corroborated the legendary evidence that the ark was nestled on Mount Ararat. We will introduce the latest findings to the world and continue the scientific study. All interested scientists and NGOs can join our missions" he said. However, he said, those who are involved in the project must ensure the findings are not used politically, religiously, or for any vested interest.

Located in Far Eastern Turkey, Ararat is great prize for mountain collectors. Ark sighting has often been reported from this mountain. The observation of vessel-shaped features in aerial photographs of Ararat had caused a stir in the late 1950's. However, this is the first time an exploration team is coming out with "material evidence".

The drug Trasylol was withdrawn in November at the request of the FDA after an observational study linked the medicine to kidney failure requiring dialysis and the increased death rate of those patients. It had been given to as many as a third of all heart bypass patients in the United States at the height of its use over a period of many years, according to the report. According to a CBS News report on its Web site ahead of a broadcast slated for next Sunday, Dr. Dennis Mangano - the study's researcher - said during the program that 22,000 lives could have been saved if Trasylol had been taken off the market when he first published his study in January 2006.

He said in the broadcast that Bayer failed to disclose to the FDA during an FDA advisory panel meeting in September 2006 -- at which Mangano's negative findings were discussed -- that the German drug maker had conducted its own research which confirmed the same dangers established by his study. The chairman of the FDA advisory panel, Dr. William Hiatt, told 60 Minutes he would have voted to remove Trasylol from the market had he been informed about Bayer's study, according to the CBS report.

Bayer spokeswoman Meredith Fischer said she could not comment about the broadcast until it is aired, including allegations that the drug maker had failed to protect patients. She said Bayer is facing a number of product-liability lawsuits filed by patients, or their families, who had taken the medicine but said she not know how many lawsuits were filed.

IN THE EU, (WHICH MEANS IN BRITAIN) GOVERNMENT IS ABOVE THE LAW.
The EU's corpus juris now pervades right through our legal system. A policeman was let off by magistrates this year (2005) for driving his private car at 159 mph in Ludlow, Shrops. Under Corpus Juris the government are above the law and cannot be prosecuted. The judge ruled correctly under EU law. 45,000 police officers got off speed cameras in this way in 2004, although their speeding killed 44 innocent people. (Daily Mail 27.12.05.)

EU "MONITORING OFFICERS" HAVE THE RIGHT TO DISMISS OUR COUNCILLORS.
The Local Government Act of 2000 empowered the head of the EU government in England, the Office of the Deputy Prime Minster (ODPM) to appoint a monitoring officer to spy on every council. If an elected councillor disagrees with the EU or government line, the unelected "Standards Board for England" can suspend him for up to five years. An example is in Cambridgeshire, where the ODPM has threatened cllr Alex Riley with suspension if he attends any debate discussing the ODPM's plans to build a new town of 20,000 people called Nothstowe on his ward. The ODPM has THE CONFLICT OF INTEREST HERE; BUT ITS POWERS ARE BECOMING ABSOLUTE.

WE HAVE LOST THE RIGHT TO FREEDOM
The EU arrest warrant (signed by the Queen on 18th November 2003) allows us to be arrested without charge and held indefinitely with no right to see a solicitor, make a phone call, or even a right to a trial. You can simply disappear.
Under the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act (SOCPA) 2005, we can now be arrested and held in the cells by any police officer for any petty offence, like dropping litter. Before it had to be an offence that carried a 5 year jail term. This also applies to all of the EU's 107,000 regulations. Do you know them all?
The Civil Contingences Act 2004 allows government to confiscate anything you possess permanently; you have no right to object. This includes your house. It also gives government the right to forcibly move its population around to different locations; you can be left with no place to call your own and live like a refugee. The only check and balance here is a Minister just needs to utter the words "This is a national emergency."

WE HAVE LOST THE RIGHT TO FREE SPEECH
At the Labour Party conference the police held an 82 year old man, Walter Woolfgang, and denied him access to the conference under the EU's "anti terrorist" legislation because he had shouted the word "nonsense" at Jack Straw, who was speaking about Iraq. Terrified the true nature of the laws they have passed on behalf of the EU was escaping too early, the Labour Party stopped the police and begged the man to return to the conference.

On October 25th 2005 Miss Maya Evans was arrested under the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005, for a lone protest at the Cenotaph by reading out the names of the 97 British soldiers killed in the Iraq war. She was arrested by no less than 14 police officers and found guilty at Bow Street Magistrates Court on the 8th December 2005. Would you hand over our nation, to be ruled by a foreign power, with oppressive laws like these? That's what's happening.

WE HAVE LOST THE RIGHT TO PROTEST
These laws make protest very difficult; if we did hold a General Strike and blockade Westminster it would now require some bravery: the powers the EU has demanded from our government enable it to respond in a way similar to the Chinese government's in Tianamen Square should it so wish.
It is no coincidence that since 2004, all MP's offices in Westminster are guarded by police with machine guns, inside and out.

THE GOVERNMENTS "TERRORISM" DECEPTION
All these new EU laws, including massive "anti terrorism" acts (recently 2000, 2001, 2005) were passed with the pretence they were only directed at terrorists, or in the case of Asbos, ruffians who terrorise the streets. In each case they are used far more often against ordinary law abiding people, particularly to suppress dissent. (91% of those detained under Terrorism Acts are innocent and have been improperly arrested. Most of the remainder are charged with offences that have nothing to do with terrorism, but cover up over zealous arrests).

WE HAVE LOST THE RIGHT TO LIFE
Under EU law the "Shoot to kill" policy did not need democratic authorisation. Just two senior police officers authorised the police to kill British people. A democratic vote by Parliament was not required, but even that would not have legalised the killing under British common law. A recent victim was an innocent Brazilian, Jean de Menezes, shot dead in Stockwell underground station, even though he was being held down by police officers at the time of the execution. The police used dum-dum bullets, outlawed under the Geneva Convention because they blow a man to pieces inside.
The police can no longer be convicted for killing innocent people - Philip Prout shot at Lewannick in East Cornwall is just one of 30 people shot dead by police since 1992 when corpus juris crept in. At least one was shot in the back; most were no threat to anyone. Not once since 1992 has a policeman been convicted of any crime for these murders.

HAVE YOU NOTICED THIS GROWING POLICE STATE?
In addition to many more laws than those above, add the 107,000 regulations, and whole bureaucracies such as VOSA building up networks of cameras and databases to record our movements and criminalise us when we can't comply. Persecution is no longer confined to motorists; under EU Corpus Juris our courts have become extensions of government power instead of independent arbiters of justice. Westminster had passed sufficient of the EU's oppressive laws (the "harmonisation" in the Treaties) by the end of 2004 that we have been living in what is legally a police state since then. But at the moment, its only one per cent enforced. After the Queen signs the sixth Treaty, the EU has the absolute power to enforce 100% of its regulations and laws.

Both Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson told a congressional hearing that the economy could still avert a full-blown recession, but Democrats said they believed the government should be doing much more to help millions of Americans cope with a threatened tidal wave of mortgage foreclosures. Bernanke told the Senate Banking Committee the serious housing slump and a credit crisis triggered by rising defaults in subprime mortgages had greatly strained the economy.

"The outlook for the economy has worsened in recent months and the downside risks to growth have increased," Bernanke told the committee. "To date, the largest economic effects of the financial turmoil appear to have been on the housing market, which, as you know, has deteriorated significantly over the past two years or so."

Bernanke noted that hiring has slowed with job creation falling by 17,000 in January, the first such setback in more than four years. He said the weaker labor market along with recent declines in stock prices and declining home prices were likely to be a drag on consumer confidence going forward.

President George W. Bush opted for a plan to have the Navy shoot the 5,000-pound (2,270 kg) minivan-size satellite with a modified tactical missile, after security advisers suggested its reentry could lead to a loss of life. Military officials hope to strike the satellite just before it reaches the atmosphere and drive it into ocean waters. Thousands of space objects fall to Earth each year, but they generally scatter over a huge area and there have never been any reported injuries.

On his website Europe Minister Jim Murphy claims that it would be too expensive to hold a referendum, and that it would cost his constituents as much as five new schools in their area.

Tony Benn will write to every MP urging them to vote for a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty, according to the Telegraph. Benn will say, "The Lisbon Treaty transfers important powers which belong to us. THIS DECISION MUST BE MADE BY THE BRITISH PEOPLE."

The Redditch Advertiser reports on the launch of the constituency referendum campaign in Redditch, quoting IWR Chairman Derek Scott as saying, "We want to remind MPs of their commitments - EVERY POLITICAL PARTY PROMISED A REFERENDUM AT THE LAST ELECTION, and MPs must be held to that."

In the Express, Leo McKinstry argues that, "THE TRUTH IS THAT DEMOCRACY IN BRITAIN IS NOW A HOLLOW SHAM", noting that "The refusal of the Labour Government to abide by its promise to hold a referendum on the last EU treaty is all too typical of the elitists."

Pennsylvania beekeeper Dave Hackenberg was the first beekeeper to report to bee researchers what's become known as COLONY COLLAPSE DISORDER (CCD). In October Hackenberg had delivered honeybees to a Florida farm to pollinate crops. The bees typically return to their boxed hives when their work is done. But this time was different.

"I came to pick up 400 bee colonies and the bees had just flat-out disappeared," Hackenberg said. "There were no dead bees, no bees on the ground, just empty boxes. IN ALMOST 50 YEARS AS A BEEKEEPER, I'VE NEVER SEEN ANYTHING LIKE IT." CCD has spread throughout 24 states and ruined hundreds of thousands of bee colonies. Hackenberg has lost roughly 1,900 of his 2,900 hives. Other operators have lost up to 90 percent of their hives.

Researchers are scrambling to find answers to what is causing the commercially important honeybees to abandon their hives and disappear. The epidemic could put a strain on fruit growers and other farmers who rely on the insects to pollinate their crops. Large commercial beekeepers each keep up to 10,000 colonies. A typical colony has about 20,000 bees in the winter and up to 60,000 in the summer. THE COLONIES ARE MOVED AROUND THE COUNTRY AND USED FOR POLLINATING AGRICULTURAL CROPS, INCLUDING SEEDED FRUITS SUCH AS APPLES, CITRUS CROPS, AND ALMOST ANYTHING THAT GROWS ON A VINE.

When a hive is afflicted by CCD, most adults abandon the hive and disappear. Normally, honey-hungry pests or bees from other colonies would quickly overrun a failing bee colony. But when CCD attacks, the hives are left untouched.

In Florida, beekeepers say citrus growers are compounding the problem by spraying pesticides to kill off a fruit-tree pest known as greening disease. The pesticides likely wipe out bees at the same time. Researchers are closely watching what is happening to bee colonies currently pollinating California's 1.4-BILLION-DOLLAR ALMOND CROP. Almonds are 100 percent dependent on bee pollination. Already some beekeepers have reportedly seen their colonies in California collapse during the almond pollination.

Meanwhile, Pennsylvania beekeeper Hackenberg is working on replacing the bees he has lost. ON THURSDAY NIGHT HE WAS ON HIS WAY TO MIAMI, FLORIDA, TO RECEIVE A SHIPMENT OF ALMOST SIX MILLION BEES IMPORTED FROM AUSTRALIA.

The EU Constitution is back. Unless we can force the Government, either in the House of Commons or the House of Lords, to concede a referendum the Lisbon Treaty will receive the Royal Assent in just a matter of months. The British people must be made aware of how the government is seeking to avoid a referendum by cynically pretending that a few cosmetic changes make obsolete its manifesto commitment at the last election to hold a referendum. But they must also be made aware of the dire consequences that our country faces if the once thought dead EU Constitution is forced upon us.

To encourage public involvement in the campaign to oppose the Lisbon Treaty the Bruges Group is exposing how the revived and renamed EU Constitution is a threat to jobs, prosperity, democracy and our nation's independence. Our plans are being complemented by our continuing efforts to demonstrate to the country the damage that EU laws already force upon us. The Bruges Group has exposed the enormous economic cost of the EU and how an ever closer Union is making our democratic institutions redundant. Now we must expose the implications of the EU Constitution.

Time, though, is short.

In support of the case for a referendum the Bruges Group is exposing the damage that the Lisbon Treaty will do to our freedom, prosperity and democracy if it is ratified. The analysis clearly shows that the red lines are little more than a fallacy. It is also shown how the Lisbon Treaty, as well as being profoundly undemocratic, also threatens our civil liberties allowing the EU to take control over our legal system.

The Treaty will also blow a hole wide open in Britain's borders permitting the EU to take full control over our asylum and immigration policies. It is also shown in our analysis that the EU's latest power grab will threaten jobs as it will undermine the last vestiges of Britain's competitive free market, bringing to an end the reforms introduced by Margaret Thatcher. What is more, the Lisbon Treaty will allow the EU to further jeopardise the City of London and endanger UK control over our North Sea oil reserves.

The Government's claim that the Lisbon Treaty is markedly different from the EU Constitution is refuted by quotes from European leaders which show that the Treaty is essentially the same as the Constitution rejected in the French and Dutch referenda.