NEW YORK Don't forget to bundle up if you're headed out in New York City today. After all, it is August 21.

The city along with the rest of the tri-state region is feeling the chilly effect of a cold front sweeping through the region, accompanied by cool rain showers.

Tuesday's high temperature in Central Park was just 59 degrees. The normal high for today is 82 degrees. The normal low is 67. "This unusual blast of cold air smashed our previous record for the coldest high temperature on August 21, which is 64 degrees, set back in 1999," CBS 2 meteorologist Jason Cali told wcbstv.com.

In fact, the 59-degree high tied the record for the coldest high temperature ever for the month of August in New York City, when it reached just 59 degrees in 1911. Today's highs are more common in the city for the final days of October, when the average high ranges from 59 degrees to 61 degrees.

The unusually cold air mass has come down from Canada, colliding with the moisture from the remnants of Tropical Storm Erin.

The rain moved into Ohio, where roads flooded, schools canceled classes and residents were rescued from flooded homes by boats.

The death toll from the two storm systems - one in the Upper Midwest and the remnants of Tropical Storm Erin in Texas and Oklahoma - climbed to 22 when searchers found the body of a man tangled in a tree about four miles from his wrecked, upside-down car near a creek south of Lewiston, Minn. Firefighters used boats to rescue families from flooded homes in Bucyrus after nearly 9 inches of rain fell, and the Upper Sandusky school district in north-central Ohio canceled the first day of school.

In Wisconsin and Minnesota, thousands of homes were damaged. A preliminary survey by the American Red Cross in Minnesota identified about 4,200 affected homes, including 256 complete losses, 338 with major damage and 475 that are still inaccessible, said Kris Eide, the state's director of homeland security and emergency management.

Preliminary damage reports in Wisconsin topped $38 million Tuesday and were expected to keep rising. Gov. Jim Doyle declared a state of emergency in five counties and began the process for requesting federal disaster assistance. In Oklahoma, which recorded a gust of 82 mph and rainfall of 11 inches, about 300 homes and businesses were damaged in the Kingfisher area and in Caddo County in southwestern Oklahoma, officials said.

Numerous flood warnings remained in effect through Wednesday and Thursday, and Gov. Brad Henry declared a state of emergency in 24 counties.

Elmar Brok, a centre-Right MEP and close ally of German chancellor Angela Merkel, effectively told Britain to sign up to the so-called reforming treaty or consider pulling out of the EU.

He insisted that the new draft was substantially different from the "old" constitution and that Britain had "got what it wanted" with a series of opt-outs and "red lines".

"Gordon Brown's government has said there is no justification for a referendum and the UK should stick to this commitment," said Brok, the European parliament's representative on inter-governmental negotiations on the treaty.

"It would be very unfair of the UK if, having more or less got what it wanted in the new treaty, it would then turn round and put this to a popular vote."

Brok, a member of the European convention that drafted the old constitution, asked: "The UK got its various opt-outs so what's the problem? How would it seem to other EU member states if Britain were now to hold a referendum? For me, that would undermine the negotiations on the treaty and even go as far as to question Britain's credibility as an EU member.

"Britain is a valued member of the EU but we should perhaps remember that the treaty contains an article which gives any member state the right to leave the EU if it so wishes." He added: "The chapter is closed. We should be able to have a new treaty as soon as possible. We have a commitment from all to meet these requirements."

Nigel Farage, leader of the UK Independence Party, criticised Brok's intervention, saying: "For an arrogant, bullying German politician to be telling the British what they should or should not do is, I would have thought, likely to help the pro-referendum case.

"I would be delighted if he agreed to visit every major British city and repeat his comments."

Reid Bryson, founding chairman of the Department of Meteorology at the University of Wisconsin said, " the temperature of the earth is increasing, but that it's got nothing to do with what man is doing. Of course it's going up. It has gone up since the early 1800s, before the Industrial Revolution, because we're coming out of the Little Ice Age, not because we're putting more carbon dioxide into the air."

"Anthropogenic (man-made) global warming bites the dust," declared astronomer Ian Wilson after reviewing the newest study, now accepted for publication in the peer-reviewed Journal of Geophysical Research. The project, called "Heat Capacity, Time Constant, and Sensitivity of Earth's Climate System," was authored by Brookhaven National lab scientist Stephen Schwartz.

"Effectively, this (new study) means that the global economy will spend trillions of dollars trying to avoid a warming of (about) 1.0 K by 2100 A.D.," Wilson wrote in a note to the U.S. Senate committee on environment and public works Sunday. He was referring to the massive expenditures that would be required under such treaties as the Kyoto Protocol.

"Previously, I have indicated that the widely accepted values for temperature increase associated with a double of CO2 were far too high, i.e. 2-4.5 Kelvin. This new peer-reviewed paper claims a value of 1.1 +/- 0.5 K increase," he added.

Another leader, Ivy League geologist Robert Giegengack, chair of the Department of Earth and Environmental Science at the University of Pennsylvania, said he doesn't even consider global warming among the top 10 environmental problems.

WND also reported on NASA-funded study that noted some climate forecasts might be exaggerating estimations of global warming. The space agency said climate models possibly were overestimating the amount of water vapor entering the atmosphere as the Earth warms.

The theory many scientists work with says the Earth heats up in response to human emissions of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide, causing more water to evaporate from the ocean into the atmosphere. In addition, WND reported that Dr. Fred Singer, professor emeritus of environmental sciences at the University of Virginia, maintains there has been little or no warming since about 1940.

"Any warming from the growth of greenhouse gases is likely to be minor, difficult to detect above the natural fluctuations of the climate, and therefore inconsequential," Singer wrote in a climate-change essay. "In addition, the impacts of warming and of higher CO2 levels are likely to be beneficial for human activities and especially for agriculture."

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration released data showing there were 13,470 deaths in 2006 involving drivers and motorcycle operators with blood alcohol levels of .08 or higher, which is the legal limit for adults throughout the country. The number was down slightly from 2005, when 13,582 people died in crashes involving legally drunk drivers.

The overall number of deaths involving drivers and motorcycle operators with any amount of alcohol in their blood was 17,602 last year. That was up from 17,590 in 2005, according to spokeswoman Heather Ann Hopkins. "The number of people who died on the nation's roads actually fell last year," U.S. Transportation Secretary Mary Peters said at a news conference in this Washington suburb. "However the trend did not extend to alcohol-related crashes."

Transportation officials announced the new figures as they unveiled a $11 million nationwide advertising campaign as part of a Labor Day weekend campaign "Drunk Driving. Over the Limit. Under Arrest."

Authorities in both countries have boarded up tourist resorts and Mexico has shut down offshore oil facilities.

The storm has reached Category Five, the highest strength, with winds of up to 160mph (255km/h).

The hurricane has already claimed at least 11 lives in the eastern Caribbean, but largely spared the low-lying Cayman Islands on Monday. It is due to make landfall in a sparsely populated marshy area near the Mexico-Belize border early on Tuesday. The people who are there live in poorly built houses, so the damage for them is expected to be severe.

In the US, the return of the space shuttle Endeavour was brought forward by a day, to Tuesday, in an attempt to beat the hurricane should it eventually reach Texas, where Nasa's mission control is based.

Two Asian tiger mosquitoes, which can transmit up to 23 infections - including West Nile virus and dengue fever - were found in a suburban back garden. Illnesses passed on when the aggressive insect bites humans include a parasitic worm which attaches itself to one of the lung's arteries, causing serious breathing complications. The species is normally only found in the forests of Asia, Africa and South America.

But following its discovery in Gloucestershire - the first-ever sighting in Britain - experts fear the insect may have now settled here permanently. The mosquito, which is just a quarter of an inch long and has distinctive yellow stripes, is believed to have entered the UK on shipments and then thrived in this year's very wet summer.

The insect is particularly perilous because it bites throughout the day and not just in the evening, as with other mosquito species. West Nile virus, which has killed hundreds of people in mainland Europe and North America, lives mainly in birds, but can be passed to humans when they are bitten by a mosquito which has already bitten an infected bird.

The disease, which first emerged in Uganda in 1937, can lead to fever and headache, but more severe cases involve inflammation of the brain, or deadly meningitis. The virus is especially dangerous to the young and those over 50. Dengue fever, which is most common in Africa, India and the Far East, can also prove fatal.

Symptoms include a sudden high fever, painful aches in the bones, joints and muscles and a rash which leaves the palms and soles of the feet bright red and swollen. One form of dengue fever causes internal bleeding which can be lethal if not treated. The Asian tiger mosquito is also the carrier of a parasitic worm called diarofularia, which lodges in the pulmonary artery, causing severe breathing problems.

For a little over a week in early July this year, I, having no knowledge of education other than the dreary days of my schooling, spent my time marching off to an office aptly situated next to a prison. I signed an entry sheet, received my visitor's pass and sat down at a computer to a mark a single GCSE English Language question hundreds of times over.

These markers were recruited by an agency put together in a hastily assembled West End office, whose recruiters had only begun work themselves the previous day. A quick literacy test, a flash of our degree certificates, AND ONE HALF-DAY OF TRAINING LATER, we were left to our marking.

THE PAYSCALE WAS BUILT AROUND THE NUMBER OF PAPERS MARKED AN HOUR. FEWER THAN TWENTY EARNED ONLY THE MINIMUM WAGE, WHILE DOING OVER FIFTY PUSHED YOUR PAY UP TO £8 AN HOUR. So, to earn a half-decent amount, a lot of papers had to be churned through fast.

Inevitably, the markers admitted over their canteen lunches, they had quickly gone FROM A THOROUGH WEIGHING UP OF A CANDIDATE'S MERITS TO A READ-THROUGH OF OPENING AND CLOSING PARAGRAPHS, with the bulk of the response barely glanced at. In some cases, questions were marked entirely ON THE QUALITY OF THE HANDWRITING.

To be fair to them, the mark I thought something merited in the first paragraph was the one I almost always found it deserved when I finished reading the whole thing. I decided it was best to believe one boy was guilty of exaggeration when he said HE GAVE A MARK SOLELY BASED ON HOW MUCH HE WAS ENJOYING THE CURRENT TRACK ON HIS IPOD SHUFFLE.

THE WHOLE AIM, MOST MARKERS PRESUMED, WAS TO GET AS MANY PAPERS DONE AS QUICKLY AS POSSIBLE SO THAT THEY COULD THEN BE MARKED BY OTHERS A SECOND AND EVEN THIRD TIME. If the marks were wildly different for all three, they called in a more professional moderator to take a look at it. Perhaps this is the only way to get through such a large number of papers in the short time before the results have to be issued, but I doubt the candidates would perceive it as a method that serves them well.

IS THIS THE ONLY SATISFACTORY WAY OF RUNNING A NATIONAL AND MANDATORY QUALIFICATION? I SIMPLY DON'T KNOW ENOUGH ABOUT EDUCATION TO SAY.

With prices for metallic garbage rising, it's not just banks being knocked off any more. If you want glory, of course, it might be better to knock off your local bank or jewellery store. But for many thieves around the world these days, swiping scrap metal is offering an attractive way to make an extra buck. Prices for the stuff, after all, have been on the rise for years. And recently, so too have the number of thefts.

On Thursday, the most recent offense hit the headlines: A four-member gang in Serbia had spent the last few months absconding with fully 4 kilometers (2.5 miles) of train tracks in the eastern part of the country. The perpetrators have now finally been taken into custody.

In Detroit this week, robbers made off with brass from a building's water supply system, causing a number of apartments to flood. In England, church bells are especially popular among scrap metal snitches. In the US, the beer industry is complaining about the number of kegs that end up sold as scrap. The prices paid on the recycling market are often higher than the $10 to $30 left behind as deposits on the kegs.

Lacher says that, whereas a ton of scrap steel cost €110.70 (around $148) in 2002, it now goes for almost €250. Prices at the recycling yard for other metals, such as copper, nickel and tin are likewise high. But it has become increasingly difficult to ignore the number of shockingly brazen thefts of metal, from manhole covers to guard rails, that have hit the headlines recently.

Like the case at the beginning of this year in Windesheim, not far from Frankfurt. A thief spent months carting away 6.6 tons of organ pipes from a warehouse belonging to a firm specializing in repairing church organs -- including pipes belonging to a nearby synagogue. The loss has been valued at over €100,000 -- the trial against the 34-year-old suspect began last Friday.

The Army's 38 available combat units are deployed, just returning home or already tapped to go to Iraq, Afghanistan or elsewhere, leaving no fresh troops to replace five extra brigades that President Bush sent to Baghdad this year, according to interviews and military documents reviewed by The Associated Press.

That presents the Pentagon with several painful choices if the U.S. wants to maintain higher troop levels beyond the spring of 2008:
- Using National Guard units on an accelerated schedule
- Breaking the military's pledge to keep soldiers in Iraq for no longer than 15 months.
- Breaching a commitment to give soldiers a full year at home before sending them back to war.

For a war-fatigued nation and a Congress bent on bringing troops home, none of those is desirable.

Experts expect an announcement within three to 10 years from someone in the now little-known field of "wet artificial life."

"It's going to be a big deal and everybody's going to know about it," said Mark Bedau, chief operating officer of ProtoLife of Venice, Italy, one of those in the race. "We're talking about a technology that could change our world in pretty fundamental ways - in fact, in ways that are impossible to predict."

That first cell of synthetic life - made from the basic chemicals in DNA - may not seem like much to non-scientists. For one thing, you'll have to look in a microscope to see it. "Creating protocells has the potential to shed new light on our place in the universe," Bedau said. "This will remove one of the few fundamental mysteries about creation in the universe and our role." And several scientists believe man-made life forms will one day offer the potential for solving a variety of problems, from fighting diseases to locking up greenhouse gases to eating toxic waste.

Bedau figures there are three major hurdles to creating synthetic life:

-A container, or membrane, for the cell to keep bad molecules out, allow good ones, and the ability to multiply.

-A genetic system that controls the functions of the cell, enabling it to reproduce and mutate in response to environmental changes.

-A metabolism that extracts raw materials from the environment as food and then changes it into energy.

One of the leaders in the field, Jack Szostak at Harvard Medical School, predicts that within the next six months, scientists will report evidence that the first step - creating a cell membrane - is "not a big problem." Scientists are using fatty acids in that effort.

A series of fellow members of Nato and the European Union have repeatedly rejected UK pleas for reinforcements for the multinational force trying to reconstruct Afghanistan following six years of turmoil since the American-led operation to drive out the Taliban.

British ministers and defence chiefs have complained that a number of European nations have refused to take an active role in the International Security and Assistance Force (ISAF). Even those who have sent troops have refused to allow them to engage in combat situations.

Britain has some 7,700 troops in Afghanistan - more than double the complement of any other European nation - training Afghan security forces, helping with reconstruction, and providing security. The death toll has accelerated in recent months, with the number of British military dead now standing at 70.

The Ministry of Defence is said to be considering a major reinforcement of the NATO mission in Afghanistan, possibly sending up to 2,000 extra troops. Any reinforcement could coincide with an anticipated withdrawal of the 5,500-strong British forces from southern Iraq.

Gordon Brown, the Prime Minister, will make a statement on the British presence in Iraq in October. MPs and officers alike expect him to begin Britain's final withdrawal from the country. Yet even as Britain extricates itself from Iraq, the government may have to send yet more forces to Afghanistan, amid signs that European NATO members may ignore calls to order in more of their own troops.

There are already 7,000 UK troops there, facing a bloody struggle to suppress the Taleban militia opposing the democratic government. Since 2001, 70 British troops have died in Afghanistan amid the fiercest fighting the British Army has faced for 50 years. General Sir Richard Dannatt, the chief of the general staff, was in Afghanistan yesterday to underline Britain's long-term commitment. "In a tough fight we are bound to have fatalities and, of course, that's tragic," he said.

"But I think it is even more tragic - doubly tragic - if people back home don't really understand what the army is doing - and what the army is doing here is absolutely critical for the future of Afghanistan."

Half of employers said some teenagers were "unable to function in the workplace" claiming they cannot make simple calculations in their heads, speak in an articulate manner or understand written instructions. In a critical report published today, the Confederation of British Industry says that an obsession with iPods, mobile phones and the internet has boosted the computing skills of the "Generation Text".

But the improvements have come at the expense of the three Rs as many struggle to read and write properly, it claims. We simply cannot match the labour costs of India, China, and other emerging economies, and only a higher-skilled workforce will keep the UK competitive.

The under-qualified will be left to choose from an ever dwindling pool of unskilled jobs. "Basic literacy and numeracy problems are a nightmare for business and for individuals, so we have to get these essentials right.
Progress has been made but it is nowhere near enough, especially considering the massive investment made in education."

According to the CBI, three quarters of employers said the lack of language skills among school-leavers was also a concern.

The Agriculture Ministry has said 232 camels died in the space of four days in the Dawasir Valley, 400 km (250 miles) south of Riyadh. King Abdullah has promised compensation for owners, who say the real number of deaths is far higher. Agriculture ministry officials have denied an infectious disease caused the deaths and blamed them on animal feed supplied by food storage authorities.

"The disease has to be limited to one place to prevent it spreading and then they have to find a serum," said camel breeder Hamad al-Harthy, who talked of hundreds of deaths. "They need to bring in help from abroad to find a solution," said trader Turki Abdelaziz.

Camels are big business in the desert kingdom and are traded by Bedouin tribes for thousands of dollars each. The animals are used for racing and their meat is also prized.