Despite a long fall that has brought down several major financial institutions and taken the economy as a whole to the brink of recession, housing in the United States is still too expensive relative to incomes, rent and the availability of mortgage money with which to buy it.

And that's before you factor in rising unemployment or oil price inflation that is crimping budgets and making long commutes, and the houses built at the end of those commutes, no longer affordable. The implications are pretty dire; rising levels of write-downs at banks, more failures of financial firms and lousy economic growth, if any, until six months or so after a base is found.

While the overall disease is a debt bubble, the most debilitating symptom of its unwinding is house price falls.

Toyota sold 4,817,941 vehicles globally during the first six months of the year, company spokesman Hideaki Homma said Wednesday, beating GM by 277,532 vehicles. Toyota said its global sales rose 2 percent from the same period the year before, while GM's sales fell 3 percent.

It's the second time Toyota has beaten GM in sales in the first half of the year. In 2007, Toyota outsold GM by about 50,000 vehicles, although GM eked out a win for the full year, retaining its 77-year position as the world's largest automaker by sales.

Toyota didn't release regional sales totals, but the weakened U.S. market appeared to be the biggest battleground. With its reputation for small, fuel-efficient cars and less exposure to the plummeting truck and SUV market, Toyota's U.S. sales fell 6 percent, compared with a 16 percent drop for GM. Industry-wide sales fell 10 percent.

One-third of the undiscovered oil is in Alaskan territory, the agency found in a study released today. By contrast, a geologic formation beneath the North Pole claimed by Russian scientists last year probably holds just 1.2 percent of the Arctic's crude, the U.S. report showed. Energy producers such as Royal Dutch Shell Plc and Chevron Corp. have accelerated exploration of the northernmost regions for untapped reserves amid record prices and receding access to deposits in more hospitable climates. Russia's move to scrap a United Nations convention and carve out an exclusive Arctic zone sparked protests from Canada, the U.S., Norway and Denmark.

"Most of the Arctic, especially offshore, is essentially unexplored with respect to petroleum," Donald Gautier, the project chief for the assessment, said in the report. "The extensive Arctic continental shelves may constitute the geographically largest unexplored prospective area for petroleum remaining on Earth."

Russia dispatched a nuclear-powered icebreaker to the Arctic Ocean last year to map a subsea link between Siberia and the North Pole as part of a bid to refute a UN convention limiting resource claims beyond 200 miles (321 kilometers) offshore. Canada said earlier this month that it plans to counter the Russian overture with "a very strong claim" to Arctic exploration rights.

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Microsoft founder Bill Gates warn one billion people could die this century from smoking-related illnesses. The billionaire philanthropists have pledged $500m (£250m) in the next five years to help people quit smoking. The two men want to run public-information campaigns warning of the dangers of tobacco. There are more than 1 billion smokers worldwide.

As the developed world curbs tobacco use - with such moves as the ban on smoking in public places in London, New York and Dublin - so the tobacco companies are shifting their focus to Asia and Africa. "Bill and I want to highlight the enormity of this problem and catalyse a global movement of governments and civil society to stop the tobacco epidemic," said Mr Bloomberg.

Mr Gates and Mr Bloomberg are aiming to help governments with policies which have been shown to curb smoking, such as raising tobacco taxes and banning tobacco advertising. The question is how effective $500m can be against the concerted efforts of the tobacco companies to expand their markets.

A few months later the beleaguered bank was taken into government hands after it was nationalised, with loans worth £100bn on its balance sheet. It was doubtless a disaster for shareholders, the Rock and the government - but is perhaps put into perspective by the troubles faced by Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae.

Together, the two firms own or guarantee about $5.3 trillion (£2.7 trillion) worth of home loans - about half the outstanding mortgages in the US. That is about 25 times as big as the Rock's obligations, and twice the size of the UK economy. Now the worries about their financial health have intensified so much that the US government has been forced to come up with a promise that taxpayers will prop them up to prevent their problems becoming a crisis.

There will be no queues outside branches of Freddie Mac or Fannie Mae - quite simply because there are not any. In fact, despite them guaranteeing or owning just under half of the entire US mortgage market, you cannot actually get a home loan from either firm. But while they are invisible to the average borrower, the two firms are highly influential institutions and are key to the US housing market.

"If they were unable to lend," says BBC business editor Robert Peston, "well, THE US HOUSING MARKET WOULD PROBABLY IMPLODE - WITH DIRE CONSEQUENCES FOR THE FINANCIAL SYSTEM AND THE ENTIRE GLOBAL ECONOMY." As one US Treasury official puts it, the two firms are "way too intertwined with everyone in the world" to fail.

But it seems that Washington wants to keep Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae alive and kicking, not least so that they can play a key role in reinvigorating the housing market. The cost to taxpayers will be large, observers predict, but they argue that the price of not intervening would be far worse.

The vote came after the White House announced that President George W Bush had dropped his threat to veto it. The bill will now be passed to the Senate for approval before being signed into law. MORE THAN A MILLION AMERICANS HAVE LOST THEIR HOMES IN THE WORST HOUSING CRISIS SINCE THE GREAT DEPRESSION.

President Bush's change of heart came despite his objection to a provision for $3.9bn (£1.95bn) in community grants to buy up and repair repossessed homes. Under the rescue plan, hundreds of thousands of homeowners trapped in mortgages they cannot afford on homes that have fallen in value would be able to refinance their mortgages with more affordable, fixed-rate loans backed by the Federal Housing Administration.

The bill would set up the first national licensing system for mortgage brokers and other loan officers. It also includes a tax break of as much as $7,500 for first time home buyers, as well as help for troubled mortgage finance providers Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Obama, who has flown into Israel, faces a packed schedule of meetings with Israeli and Palestinian leaders. After arriving in Jerusalem a day earlier, Obama said he hoped his administration would strengthen the historic special relationship between the United States and Israel. He also vowed that Israel was a valued ally with the United States. 'That policy is not going to change,' he said.

But he added: 'What I think can change is the ability of the United States government and a United States president to be actively engaged with the peace process and to be concerned and recognise the legitimate difficulties that the Palestinian people are experiencing right now.' But he cautioned it was unrealistic to expect that a U.S. president alone can suddenly 'snap his fingers and bring about peace in this region.'

Netanyahu said: 'The senator and I agreed that the primacy of preventing Iran from becoming a nuclear power is clear, and this should guide our mutual policies.' Many Israelis fear Obama - a first-term U.S. senator with little foreign policy experience - would push Israel too hard in negotiations with the Palestinians. His family's Muslim roots have added to the unease, even though Obama was raised as a Christian and remains a practising Christian.

But will it work in Kent? Yesterday the Archbishop of Canterbury invited hundreds of feuding bishops to an Anglicised version of the indaba, to talk not about stolen cattle and territorial disputes but about sexuality. The early signs were not good. "IF INDABA IS SUCH A GREAT IDEA, WHY IS AFRICA SUCH A MESS?" ONE BISHOP SAID.

Dr Rowan Williams invited 650 bishops attending the ten-yearly Lambeth Conference at Canterbury to choose from one of several indaba groups, a key part of the next fortnight's agenda. These meetings, named after a Zulu word meaning a gathering for purposeful discussion, had several themes: sexuality, heresy, Judaeo-Christian relations, ecumenicism, shared mission in Europe.

Some bishops opted out from the start, preferring to go shopping in Canterbury, but even among those prepared to give them a try, the muttering soon began. Indaba groups need time. Hours of it. This is not what the bishops at Lambeth have. They have clocks that have to be watched, meetings to get to, lunches to eat, sermons to preach and schisms to prevent. Indaba groups also need both sides in a dispute to be present: a quarter of Anglican bishops, overwhelmingly conservatives from the developing countries, have boycotted Lambeth.

The human body may be mostly water, but you can have too much of a good thing. In the most serious cases, "water intoxication" can kill, and there is, say experts, scant evidence that drinking even slightly more water than usual can improve your health.

The current popularity of detox diets which recommend drinking many litres of water a day, and drinking even when not thirsty, could cause problems if taken to extremes, they say. The claim is that drinking more than usual can do everything from improving your skin tone to "flushing out" toxins from your body. Ursula Arens, a dietician, said, "The evidence supporting the whole "hydration industry" is flawed. It's just a great marketing opportunity, nothing more."

If vast quantities of water are taken, salt in the blood gets too dilute, he explained. When the salt solution in the blood is weaker than the solution in the cells and organs it supplies, water passes into those cells and organs. In extreme cases, this causes organs such as the brain to swell up, and can stop it working properly, putting the drinker in serious danger.

Minutes of the July 9-10 policy meeting on Wednesday showed that hawk Timothy Besley wanted an immediate quarter percentage point increase to 5.25 percent, while dove David Blanchflower argued that a cut was needed to prevent a recession.

This produced the first three-way split on the direction of rates since May 2006 and the decision was "a difficult one" for all nine policymakers as inflation was likely to turn out higher and growth lower than the Bank had thought in May.

If anything, members of the Monetary Policy Committee appeared more inclined to raise rates to defend their reputation as guardians of price stability, but were also worried about the economic costs of such a move. "The minutes are certainly more hawkish than we expected," said Philip Shaw, chief economist at Investec. "The committee gave serious consideration to tightening policy this time round. The outlook for interest rates looks more uncertain."

The US authorities want the 50-year-old to face trial on charges which include providing support to al-Qaeda. The Egypt-born preacher is currently serving a seven-year jail term in the UK for inciting murder and race hate. The Court of Appeal ruling comes after Home Secretary Jacqui Smith formally approved the extradition in February.

Lawyers for Abu Hamza, from west London, have been fighting his extradition since the request was first filed in May 2004, arguing he could not receive a fair trial. In February 2006, an Old Bailey jury convicted him of 11 out of 15 charges.

Extradition proceedings began in May 2007 and a district judge later approved the request. In May this year, the High Court rejected his appeal against the extradition.

UK foreign secretary David Miliband said following the meeting: "We are 100 percent focussed on a diplomatic resolution to the Iranian issue." The EU's foreign policy chief, Javier Solana, said there was "no other route" apart from diplomacy.

"The position of the European Union is clear," said Mr Solana according to the AP. "We want to find a diplomatic solution to this, in particular to clarify to the fullest the nature of their nuclear programme." Mr Solana outlined for the ministers the results of a meeting on Saturday between Iran and diplomats from the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, China, and Russia, where Tehran was encouraged to halt its uranium enrichment in return for a package of economic and political carrots.

With the US for the first time sending a high-ranking diplomat to the meeting, expectations were high that better relations between the two main antagonists would bear fruit. However, Iran maintained that its nuclear programme had only peaceful purposes.

The upgraded device, called the Beijing Electron-Positron Collider II (BEPCII), was retooled at the Institute of High Energy Physics under the CAS. The project started in January 2004 and cost 640 million yuan ($93.8 million). The Beijing Electron-Positron Collider (BEPC), the BEPCII's predecessor, was originally built in 1988. It was previously the world's eighth largest high-energy accelerator experiment center.

Institute director Chen Hesheng revealed the upgrade would help the BEPC attain its forward status as one of the most advanced ideal colliding experiment facilities of its kind; it would maintain the leading forward role of China in the field of global high-energy physics.

To add a new storage ring to the existing ring of the collider to spur the electron and positron beams' movement and collision in the colliding zone, the retooled collider BEPCII had 93 pairs of electron beams against the original's one pair. Its luminosity, a leading parameter, was 100 times stronger than that of the original BEPC.

I count six such episodes since August 2007. In the early days, the Federal Reserve Board did all the work and usually made its big announcement on a Friday. Since then, Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson has moved to the fore, and he picked a Sunday afternoon to float his proposal for bolstering beleaguered mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The basic pattern, though, remains the same: FINANCIAL TIZZY. DRAMATIC GOVERNMENT ACTION. PERIOD OF REDUCED TIZZY. REPEAT.

IS THIS CYCLE EVER GOING TO END? It has to someday, although at this point only a fool or a psychic would dare predict when. The more important question may be, What does it all mean for people without Bloomberg terminals and subscriptions to the Financial Times?

Washington's response has so far shielded the economy from the worst of the catastrophe in financial markets. BUT IT HASN'T FIXED THE PROBLEM THAT STARTED THE CRISIS: THE FACT THAT A FEW MILLION AMERICANS GOT HOME LOANS THEY CAN NEVER PAY BACK. The resulting foreclosures have been driving housing prices down and forcing lenders to retrench. The result is less credit for heavily indebted American consumers. The likeliest next step, while not the Great Depression, is a recession that even Gramm will have to concede is more than just mental. Which could lead to a few more emergency meetings of the men in dark suits.

Rep. James Oberstar, a Minnesota Democrat who chairs the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, said a stimulus package could include "accelerating" payouts of $9.5 billion from the federal trust fund assigned to road construction and maintenance. "You can have 700,000 people working in three months. We should have done it this spring," Oberstar told Reuters in an interview.

If approved, the funding would go to more than 2,600 projects, he said. States would receive full federal funding and then have a few years to pay back any matching funds. Oberstar gave a list of spending possibilities to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi last week, who "likes the idea."

Democrats are considering supporting another economic stimulus measure to revive the economy after Congress approved a $152 billion measure in February, which taxpayers received in the form of checks during the spring and early summer.