Investment entities believed to be affiliated to the Qatar Investment Authority, which is closely linked to the emirate's royal family and has tabled unsuccessful bids for J Sainsbury and Thames Water, are understood to be considering building a 5 per cent stake in the Zurich-based bank. If it does opt to pursue a sizeable investment, the move by the QIA or connected funds would be the latest in a string of deals by a new breed of powerful government-backed investors.

Sovereign wealth funds from Abu Dhabi, China, Dubai and Singapore have snapped up large stakes in banks such as Citigroup, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley and UBS as they wilted under the weight of huge losses related to the implosion of the American sub-prime mortgage industry.

Credit Suisse's existing major shareholders include Olyan Group, a Saudi investment firm, and Axa, the French insurer.

If the washout summer was bad for us, for honey bees it was much worse. The record rains frequently prevented bees from foraging, stopped hive expansion and meant that honey production levels were often sharply down across the country, according to the British Beekeepers' Association (BBKA). "The summer of 2007 was an awful one for British honey bees," said the BBKA president, Tim Lovett.

"Some of the flowering, such as the flowering of the lime trees, which is important for the bees, coincided with periods of heavy rain, so in some places the bees will have missed it entirely." Bees do not forage when it rains, he explained, because in the wet weather they lose body temperature, grow sluggish, cannot get back to the hive and eventually die.

The soggy conditions also meant that it was difficult for beekeepers who had lost bees during the winter ? to disease, for example - to rebuild their stocks in the summer months. And when autumn arrived and some beekeepers took their hives up onto moorland for heather honey, the situation was also found to be bad.

Global warming ranks far down the concerns of the world's biggest companies, despite world leaders' hopes that they will pioneer solutions to the impending climate crisis, a startling survey will reveal this week. Nearly nine in 10 of them do not rate it as a priority, says the study, which canvassed more than 500 big businesses in Britain, the US, Germany, Japan, India and China. Nearly twice as many see climate change as imposing costs on their business as those who believe it presents an opportunity to make money. And the report's publishers believe that big business will concentrate even less on climate change as the world economy deteriorates.

Some 67 per cent of the businesses surveyed agreed they have a role to play in tackling global warming, but only four out of 10 felt in a position to fulfil it. In China only 14 per cent of those questioned felt in a strong position.
The report concludes: "Businesses clearly are seeking long-term signals about where and how to invest. They are reluctant to make big investments in climate change-related initiatives until the scope of future regulation becomes clearer".

By Friday, January 18, Jérôme Kerviel, a junior suit in the banking world, was on the hook for €50 billion - the equivalent of about half of all the gold and currency reserves held by France. The sum also exceeded the entire value of the bank at which he worked. The 31-year-old trader at Société Générale, one of France's most prestigious institutions, had secretly set up a series of deals that were going horribly wrong. So wrong that they threatened the survival of the bank and the health of global financial markets.

Yet senior executives at the bank, which initially claimed that it had no inkling of Kerviel's activities, yesterday admitted that managers had missed several warning signs over many weeks that would have revealed the apparent fraud. Suspicions linger that the bank has not revealed the full story of the fraud. It initially claimed that Kerviel had so brilliantly manipulated its computer systems that he had completely covered his tracks.

Yesterday, however, Bouton admitted that some of Kerviel's deals had triggered warning signs in recent months but the trader had "managed to convince the controllers that it was just a simple error on his part". It was a damning admission for a giant bank that a junior trader could have talked his way out of a €50 billion hole.

The patriotic symbol - based on a Roman goddess - will no longer be on any British coin for the first time in more than 300 years, as part of a redesign by the Royal Mint. An overhaul of all coinage in April, being billed as the most significant change to the currency since decimalisation, will see it replaced with a representation of modern Britain. The disclosure makes a nonsense of Mr Brown's repeated declarations of his patriotism in the run-up to taking over from Tony Blair.

Soon after he took power, Mr Brown appointed Michael Wills, one of his most trusted allies, as Minister for Patriotism, with orders to promote "Britishness" across the country. Last night, the Treasury attempted to gloss over the reform by insisting the Britannia symbol would return for future Mint runs. But critics said it was "depressing" that it would not be the default design on the tails side of a British circulation coin for the first time since 1672.

The figure of Britannia first appeared almost 2,000 years ago when the Romans created her as a personification of the British Isles, which they called Britanniae. She made her first appearance on a Roman coin during the rule of Emperor Hadrian. Her first appearance on a British coin came during the reign of Charles II, on the copper farthing in 1672 and the copper halfpenny in 1673. She was conjured up as a symbol of Britain's political and naval might during the time of the Third Anglo-Dutch War, and by the Victorian era she had grown to become a more forceful, trident-holding representation of the British Empire. Between 1797 and 1970, she was on the penny coin and now features on an estimated 769million 50p pieces in circulation.

At least 38 members of the Egyptian security forces have been hospitalized, some in critical condition, because of cross-border confrontations, Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit said. The minister complained of "provocations" at the border, a thinly veiled reprimand of Hamas, and said that while Egypt is ready to ease the suffering of Gazans, this should not endanger Egyptian lives.

In the West Bank, meanwhile, moderate Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas stuck to his tough conditions for resuming contacts with Gaza's Hamas rulers, dimming prospects for Egypt's proposal to have the two Palestinian rivals come to Cairo for talks on resolving the border crisis. Earlier, Hamas had accepted Egypt's proposal, and Hamas hardliner Sami Abu Zuhri accused Abbas of trying to bypass Hamas: "His statements are a rejection of the Egyptian initiative."

Israel, meanwhile, expressed growing concern about the possible influx of Palestinian militants into areas of Egypt that border Israel. The Israeli military announced Saturday that its troops were on heightened alert along the border with Egypt, and that an Israeli road and tourism sites in the area are temporarily closed.

Seeking to dispel international concerns amid increased violence, Khalid Kidwai, head of the Strategic Plans Division which handles Pakistan's nuclear arsenal, said Pakistan uses 10,000 soldiers to keep the weapons safe and has received up to $10 million in U.S. assistance to that end. "There's no conceivable scenario, political or violent, in which Pakistan will fall to extremists of the al-Qaeda or Taliban type," Kidwai told foreign journalists at a briefing. "Pakistan's nuclear weapons, fissile material and infrastructure are absolutely safe and secure."

Kidwai, a retired general, said his division was prepared for any contingency and had reassessed the militant threat in light of escalating attacks on security forces and intelligence personnel. He said he had received no information of a terrorist plot against nuclear facilities.

Media reports have said the Pentagon has contingency plans for seizing Pakistan's nuclear facilities if they ever fall into the hands of Islamic extremists. Kidwai called it "irresponsible talk" and said the United States would not succeed in such an operation.

"They said, whoever won, we would have to leave," the heavily pregnant mother of two told Reuters in a camp for Kenyan refugees in eastern Uganda. "A few days before, they burned some tyres and then said: 'We will burn you like we are burning these'. It definitely seemed like it was planned," she added as she washed her family's one remaining set of clothes in the makeshift camp which had sprung up in the bush.

Within minutes of the Dec. 30 declaration of President Mwai Kibaki's victory, rejected by his opponent Raila Odinga, Njoki's house had been set on fire and her family stoned. Coming from Kibaki's Kikuyu tribe but living in Nambale, a town in predominantly Luo and opposition-supporting southwestern Kenya, her family spent the next few days hiding at a police station before fleeing across the border. Nearly a month after Kibaki's contested victory was announced, the post-election violence that has killed about 700 people and displaced 250,000 continues, adding to the crisis in a country that once seemed a haven of stability.

More than 6,000 Kenyans, mainly Kikuyus, have fled to eastern Uganda. Some have moved into the tented settlement at Mulanda, 35km (22 miles) inside Uganda. Others have preferred to stay near the border to keep an eye on events or what is left of what they own. Most, however, believe the violence that forced them to flee was not spontaneous. They are convinced that for many the elections were used as a way to settle old scores.

"They have used the elections to settle a grudge," said a Kikuyu refugee who asked to remain anonymous. "The Kikuyu became rich and bought land and now Luos are telling us to go back home to Central (Province) where we belong." Although ethnic tensions and land issues have long been deeply divisive in Kenya, they have never blown up on the scale seen in the past few weeks. As a result, Kenya was seen as a haven of stability and progress, surrounded by conflict and the chaos in Sudan, Somalia and countries in the Great Lakes region.

The cold snap has struck central, eastern and southern China in recent days, bringing snow, ice and sleet to provinces used to milder winters. Dozens of people have died. A government forecaster said the chaotic weather was likely to continue as the country prepared to celebrate the Lunar New Year, which begins on February 7.

The snow and ice have collapsed homes, snapped power lines and destroyed crops, and caused the deaths of dozens of people. The bad weather also threatens to stoke price rises that already had the government worried. Mountainous Guizhou province in the southwest has in past days suffered three deaths, 877 collapsed buildings and widespread blackouts, Xinhua reported.

Several regional airports were shut by the weather, including the one at Nanjing, capital of Jiangsu province. State television also showed highways crowded with trucks paralyzed by the snow. The national forecasting authority said the freezing weather would continue to pummel provinces from west to east over the next week, with heavy snows possible in Shanghai and neighboring provinces -- powerhouses of business and manufacturing.

Because farmers get their water at subsidized rates, some of them see financial opportunity this year in selling their allotments to Los Angeles and other desperately thirsty cities across Southern California, as well as to other farms. "It just makes dollars and sense right now," said Bruce Rolen, a third-generation farmer who grows rice, wheat and other crops in Northern California's lush Sacramento Valley. Instead of sowing in April, Rolen plans to let 100 of his 250 acres of white rice lie fallow and sell his irrigation water on the open market, WHERE IT COULD FETCH UP TO THREE TIMES THE NORMAL PRICE.

What effect these deals will have on produce prices remains to be seen, because the negotiations are still going on and it is not yet clear how many acres will be taken out of production. But California grows most of the nation's winter vegetables and about 80 percent of the world's almonds, and is the No. 2 rice state, behind Arkansas. Environmental restrictions, booming demand for water, and PERSISTENT DROUGHT ALONG THE COLORADO RIVER have combined to create one of the WORST WATER SHORTAGES in California in the past decade, and prices are shooting up in response. The would-be water sellers include farmers who grow rice, cantaloupes and tomatoes around Sacramento and the San Joaquin Valley. Rice, in particular, requires a lot of water; the fields have to be flooded.

Tom Donahue told a utilities security conference in New Orleans all the successful hackings occurred outside America. Mr Donahue, who was speaking at the Process Control Security Summit, later said in a statement: "We have information, from multiple regions outside the United States, of cyber intrusions into utilities, followed by extortion demands."

He said the CIA suspected some of the cyber-attackers "had the benefit of inside knowledge". He added: "In at least one case, the disruption caused a power outage affecting multiple cities. We do not know who executed these attacks or why, but all involved intrusions through the Internet." A CIA spokesman declined to provide additional details, saying: "The information that could be shared in a public setting was shared. These comments were simply designed to highlight to the audience the challenges posed by potential cyber intrusions."

The Bush administration is increasingly worried about the little-understood risks from hackers to the specialised electronic equipment that operates power, water and chemical plants, known as Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems. These are increasingly connected to the Internet. In 2000, a disgruntled former employee of an Australian computer company hacked into a sewage control system and flooded parks, rivers and a hotel with a million gallons of raw sewage. In 2003, a computer virus called the Slammer worm disabled a safety monitoring system at an inactive Ohio nuclear plant for nearly five hours.

Countless deaths were reported in Kenya's Rift Valley during ethnic clashes which have been raging since the country's disputed elections last month. While guns have been used in the capital Nairobi, firearms are less readily available in rural areas. In one battle near the tourist town of Nakuru, a dozen warriors were left dying in the streets, some with deep gashes to the head, others with arrows stuck in the chest and back.

On the edge of the sprawling Kaptembwa slum area the bodies of two men had been placed in the back of a police truck - one killed by an arrow, the other hacked to pieces with machetes. Some victims had been stoned to death. Nakuru, 95 miles north-west of Nairobi, is Kenya's fourth-largest town and a focus for thousands of Britons each year visiting the game parks and flamingo lakes.

The fighting in Nakuru was between Kikuyus and the rival Kalenjin, Luhya and Luo tribes. One tribal warrior, a bus conductor, declared: "We have vowed that for every Kikuyu killed, we shall kill two Kalenjins."

In the bleakest economic outlook he has given as Prime Minister, Mr Brown claimed people should not fool themselves that a recovery is on the near horizon, given the stricken state of the banking sector. Speaking at a gathering of world political and business leaders in the Swiss resort of Davos, Mr Brown warned we all face a "testing time" ahead. "There is a danger, with more bad news still to come, of being over-optimistic," he said. "It would be wrong to over-emphasise the silver linings at the expense of some of the clouds."

Mr Brown warned rising food and energy prices will fuel inflation, eroding people's incomes and adding to the economic pain. Recent rates of global growth near 5 per cent a year can't be sustained, the Prime Minister said, predicting world output will rise between 3 and 4 per cent in 2008. He did not directly address Britain's own economic outlook, preferring to emphasise the headwinds facing all countries.

But his words will do little to dispel fears that the UK could be facing its first recession since the beginning of the 1990s.

Several major mining companies, including AngloGold, Harmony and Gold Fields Ltd., suspended all but emergency operations at some of the world's largest mines because of a national electricity emergency. Other commodities joined the rally, with oil closing above $90 a barrel for the first time in a week. South Africa is second only to China in world gold production, and is the globe's top producer of platinum. Mine equipment problems, accidents and maintenance have contributed to a production decline this year, however.

Mining operations in the country were suspended Friday on fears that power interruptions would trap workers underground. Gold Fields said it halted all its South African operations, including in the world's largest gold mine, which produces 7,000 ounces per day. The government said there was no foreseeable end to the electricity shortages.

An ounce of gold for February delivery spiked to $924.30, a fresh record, on the New York Mercantile Exchange before easing back to settle at $910.70, up $4.90. Still, when adjusted for inflation, gold remains well below its all-time highs in 1980. An ounce of gold at $925 then would be worth about $2,360 today.

April platinum peaked at a new high of $1,694.90 an ounce. Prices later settled at $1,670, up $57. Platinum prices have roughly doubled in four years, with global inventories growing tighter as automakers try to meet demand, particularly in Asia and Eastern Europe. Demand for the metal, used in jewelry and catalytic converters in automotive exhaust systems, has also surged due to stricter emissions standards.

March silver climbed 15.7 cents to settle at $16.490 an ounce, while copper added 1.25 cent to $3.1840 a pound.

As the depth of the risk to the bank became clearer, small shareholders questioned controls at Societe Generale and other leading banks, and France's prime minister joined skeptics wondering whether a lone trader could have been fully responsible for such major damage. The fraud cost Societe Generale 4.9 billion euros, or more than $7 billion, but a bank official said Friday that Kerviel's positions had reached "SEVERAL TENS OF BILLIONS OF EUROS." The official spoke on condition of anonymity because of company policy on such matters.

French presidential aide Raymond Soubie said on LCI television that THE TRADER HAD BEEN DEALING WITH MORE THAN 50 BILLION EUROS, OR MORE THAN $73 BILLION. THAT FIGURE EASILY OUTSTRIPS THE BANK'S MARKET CAPITALIZATION OF 35.9 BILLION EUROS ($52.6 BILLION), and is close to the annual gross domestic product of entire nations such Slovakia, Qatar or Libya. The damage might not have been as bad if it had happened in a less volatile time: The bank said it learned of the fraud last weekend. With stock markets in turmoil, Societe Generale was FORCED TO SELL THE CONTRACTS BUILT UP BY THE ROGUE TRADER JUST AS STOCKS WERE PLUNGING. It took three days to unload them.

Societe Generale's unwinding of its massive positions over the next three days COULD EVEN HAVE CONTRIBUTED TO THE MARKETS' FALL, ANALYSTS SAID. "Any dumping will drop the price," said Mark G. Castelino, associate professor for finance and economics at Rutgers Business School in New Jersey. He stopped short, however, of saying that Kerviel's actions affected the U.S. Federal Reserve's subsequent decision to cut its benchmark interest rate by an extraordinary three-quarters of a percentage point.

Shareholders and others raised questions about how Kerviel was apparently able to dodge the bank's internal controls for more than a year to make the unauthorized market bets. "One should not be able to take positions worth 40 billion (euros) without being spotted by an audit or a sophisticated computer system," said Didier Cornardeau, president of APPAC, a group representing small Societe Generale shareholders.

French Prime Minister Francois Fillon, meanwhile, said: "It is difficult ... to imagine how one person alone could, in a relatively short period of time, cause such considerable losses." He suggested the French government should have been informed immediately, instead of four days after the fraud was discovered.