James Hansen told Congress on Monday that the world has long passed the "dangerous level" for greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and needs to get back to 1988 levels. He said Earth's atmosphere can only stay this loaded with man-made carbon dioxide for a couple more decades without changes such as mass extinction, ecosystem collapse and dramatic sea level rises.

"We're toast if we don't get on a very different path," Hansen, director of the Goddard Institute of Space Sciences who is sometimes called the godfather of global warming science, told The Associated Press. "This is the last chance."

Longtime global warming skeptic Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., citing a recent poll, said in a statement, "Hansen, (former Vice President) Gore and the media have been trumpeting man-made climate doom since the 1980s. But Americans are not buying it." But Rep. Ed Markey, D-Mass., committee chairman, said, "Dr. Hansen was right. Twenty years later, we recognize him as a climate prophet."

The Dutch-language de Volkskrant newspaper said it spoke to thousands of believers in THE IMPENDING END OF CIVILIZATION, and while theories on the supposed catastrophe varied, MOST TIED THE 2012 DATE TO THE END OF THE MAYAN CALENDAR, Radio Netherlands reported Monday.

De Volkskrant said many of those interviewed are stocking up on emergency supplies, including life rafts and other equipment. Some who spoke to the newspaper were optimistic about the end of civilization.

"You know, maybe it's really not that bad that the Netherlands will be destroyed," Petra Faile said. "I don't like it here anymore. Take immigration, for example. They keep letting people in. And then we have to build more houses, which makes the Netherlands even heavier. The country will sink even lower, which will make the flooding worse."

The Arab world would be "pleased" by Israeli strikes against Iranian nuclear facilities, he said in an interview with The Daily Telegraph. "It [the reaction] will be positive privately. I think there'll be public denunciations but no action," he said.

Mr Bolton, an unflinching hawk who proposes military action to stop Iran developing nuclear weapons, bemoaned what he sees as a lack of will by the Bush administration to itself contemplate military strikes. Israel, however, still had a determination to prevent a nuclear Iran, he argued. The "optimal window" for strikes would be between the November 4 election and the inauguration on January 20, 2009.

The industrial action affects one in three council workers, with tens of thousands of school dinner ladies, librarians and classroom assistants and bin men in England, Wales and Northern Ireland stopping work. The stoppages, the worst for two years, are set to cripple rubbish collections and shut car parks and some toll tunnels in the first major test of Chancellor Alistair Darling's call for restraint over pay increases.

Union barons will meet on Tuesday to decide when to hold the first two-day strike next month. The "yes" vote means that the union now only has to give seven days' notice of strike action before a walk out.

The move now presents Prime Minister Gordon Brown with a major industrial relations headache with more trouble expected over the next few months. Another 100,000 Unison members in Scotland are voting on industrial action in a separate dispute over pay next month. Leaders of the white collar PCS union will discuss plans for a ballot of 280,000 civil servants this Autumn in a stoppage which could disrupt pension payments for hundreds of thousands of pensioners. Around 800 coastguards are due to start a work to rule on Monday next week when they will only carry out work relating to 999 and distress calls. A similar stoppage is planned for the week starting July 11.

Harvard University's Joint Center for Housing Studies painted a bleak picture of the current housing downturn, pegging it as possibly being "the worst in a generation" in its "The State of the Nation's Housing 2008" report. The study noted that housing starts, new home sales and existing home sales are at all-time lows since after World War II, while home price declines and mortgage defaults are the worst on record.

"We've never had so much information or data in uncharted water," said Eric Belsky, the Joint Center's executive director. "A recovery is not anywhere near in sight."

The developments came a day after Tsvangirai withdrew from Friday's presidential runoff against longtime leader Robert Mugabe, saying harassment and violence against opposition supporters had made the balloting impossible. Tsvangirai entered the Dutch Embassy shortly after the police raid, Dutch television reported. It was not clear how long he intended to remain in the embassy building.

"I can confirm that Tsvangirai is currently in the Dutch Embassy," said spokesman Bart Rijs. Rijs said he could not speculate why Tsvangirai chose the Dutch Embassy. But he noted that the Netherlands was a strong supporter of human rights groups in Zimbabwe although it did not finance any political parties.

Tsvangirai won the first round of the presidential election on March 29, but did not gain an outright majority against 84-year-old Mugabe. That campaign was generally peaceful, but the runoff has been overshadowed by violence and intimidation, especially in rural areas. Independent human rights groups say 85 people have died and tens of thousands have been displaced from their homes, most of them opposition supporters.

The most important single development is probably the growing improbability of a U.S./Israeli strike against Iran. Fear of such a strike - and of its predictably catastrophic regional and global consequences - has kept the region in a state of nervous alert.

Why has this fear receded? The main reason is that American and Israeli politics are in turmoil. U.S. President George W. Bush and Israel's Prime Minister Ehud Olmert are largely discredited. Bush is a lame-duck president in the last months of a lamentable and much criticized mandate, while Olmert is threatened by a major corruption scandal. He could be out of office within weeks.

They are both failed 'war leaders', without the authority or the domestic backing to lead their countries into another major conflict. Next November's presidential elections in the United States could well coincide with early elections in Israel the same month. In both countries, the public is eager for change at the top.

Another reason war clouds are receding is the growing dependence of the United States and much of the industrial world on the Gulf - not only for the supply of oil, the price of which is breaking all records, but also as a source of finance, at a time when major Western banks and financial institutions are facing an unprecedented credit squeeze.

Is all well, therefore, in the troubled Middle East? Is peace breaking out? Can the journalists and diplomats go home? Unfortunately, this is far from being the case. The Arab-Israeli conflict continues to spread its poison in the region and beyond. A united Jerusalem will be Israel's forever, Olmert declared, as if unaware that his relentlessly expansionist policy robs the Palestinians of their hoped-for statehood, and condemns his own country to live as a pariah in a dangerous and permanently hostile environment.

The group, the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (Mend) said it followed an appeal made by elders in the region to give peace and dialogue another chance. It said that there would be no more attacks from midnight on Tuesday until further notice. Only last week the group launched the first attack on an offshore oil site.

Nigeria's president ordered tighter security in the Delta after the attack on the Shell installation at Bonga, 120km (75 miles) out to sea, which cut Nigerian production by 10%. It was the first time militants had struck at Nigeria's hugely valuable offshore oil fields, far out to sea, which had previously been considered relatively safe from attack. Also, over the weekend, the US oil giant Chevron has halted onshore oil production at its Escravos oilfield after an attack on a pipeline.

Disruptions to Nigerian output caused by militant attacks have been a significant driver in the soaring worldwide price of oil. The unilateral ceasefire, announced by Mend in an email to media outlets on Sunday, marked a sudden U-turn for the group, which earlier in the weekend had warned all foreign oil workers to leave the Niger Delta.

Emil Wiedenhöft's bees know their way around the urban jungle. They buzz in, flying around the 71-year-old beekeeper's head as they carry nectar and pollen to the hive. Then they swarm out again, heading back into the surrounding sea of buildings - a squadron of tiny, striped nectar collectors. Wiedenhöft is a beekeeper in Berlin. "Beekeeping in the big city isn't a problem at all," says Wiedenhöft, who is retired. He has even managed to convince a few neighbors to take up the hobby. "I've trained six beekeepers in the eight years I've been living here," he says, proudly.

Hundreds of thousands of bees are constantly dashing through the backyards and courtyards of cities like Hamburg, Frankfurt and Munich. The densely populated Ruhr region is now home to more bees than the surrounding countryside. Bees are at home on Berlin's balconies, rooftop terraces and hotel roofs. Bees are also popping up in larger numbers in cities around the world. In London, beehives can be seen on the roof of the Bank of England - honey from the London metropolitan area has even won the first prize at Britain's National Honey Show. And in Manhattan, "Sheriff Beekeeper" David Graves sells his Rooftop Magic Honey at a premium price.

"Cities are ideally suited for bees," says Jürgen Hans, chairman of Berlin's beekeepers' association. There are roughly 500 beekeepers in the German capital alone. Hamburg is home to at least 50 million bees from more than 2,100 bee colonies.

The chain was warned that sub-contractors for its suppliers were employing children to complete embroidery work. The retailer said as soon as it was alerted it cancelled all new orders with the factories concerned and withdrew the relevant clothes from its shelves.

The seven-month undercover investigation found three firms in Tirupur, a manufacturing area in Tamil Nadu, southern India, supplying clothes to Primark. Children, including some as young as 11 who had fled the civil war in Sri Lanka, were being paid 60p a day at best to sew clothes. As many as 20,000 fashionable items were produced by the three firms.

A spokesman for Primark said: "Primark is an ethical business that demands the highest standards from its suppliers. It has a strict Supplier Code of Conduct which expressly bans the use of child labour. In addition none of our suppliers is permitted to sub-contract without our specific consent and agreement. Primark does not tolerate serious breaches of its fundamental principles." Primark, which is worth an estimated £5 billion, sources around £700m of clothing from India each year.

Sir Michael Doughty said in a letter to a newspaper that there was little evidence that GM crops could be used to balance global food shortages with environmental concerns. Last week, ministers signalled that it was time to reopen the debate on GM crops in Britain and Europe, in the face of the global food crisis.

The organisation said that the crops, most of which are engineered to be resistant to strong weedkillers, could damage British wildlife. The comments sparked official evaluations of GM beet, oilseed rape and maize. In 2003, the subsequent report found that weedkillers used with GM beet and oilseed rape caused far more damage to wildlife than conventional herbicides.

Natural England is due to put a policy document, Biotechnology in the Natural Environment, before its board on Wednesday. It reads: "Because GM can be used to develop organisms with radically different properties, we are particularly concerned about potential impacts on biodiversity that could be caused by changes in crop, tree, or animal husbandry."

Saudi Arabia said Sunday it would produce more crude oil this year if the market needs it. The kingdom announced a 300,000 barrel per day production increase in May and said before the start of the meeting in Jeddah that it would add another 200,000 barrels per day in July, raising total daily output to 9.7 million barrels.

Light, sweet crude for August delivery traded up $1.42 at $136.78 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange by noon in Europe. On Friday, the contract rose $2.76 to settle at $135.36 a barrel.

Total worldwide crude production is about 85 million barrels per day, but analysts say supplies remain tight amid disruptions to production from Nigeria, Africa's largest producer. "The oil summit really has not done much to temper oil pricing," said Victor Shum, an energy analyst with Purvin & Gertz in Singapore. "It was a modest output increase and hardly really compensates for the disruption out of Nigeria." With expectations fading that the Saudi moves would drive the market downward, analysts suggested present high levels were here to stay, at least for the short term.

But oil prices might find some relief from Sunday's announcement by Nigeria's main militant group that it would halt attacks starting at midnight Tuesday. The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta declared a unilateral cease-fire, saying elders in the restive southern region had asked the fighters to allow peace efforts to go ahead.

Research by the Orthodox Jewish organisation Aish found that just over a third of people thought religions like Christianity and Judaism would still be practiced in Britain in 100 years' time. Although four in 10 people said they would choose to be a member of the Christian religion, almost the same number said they would rather practice no religion at all. Buddhism however, proved more attractive than both Islam and Judaism, and was chosen by nine per cent of those questioned.

Aish UK's executive director Rabbi Naftali Schiff said "It clearly demonstrates that religion, including Judaism, is becoming unattractive to the British public. Research published earlier this year suggested that church attendance is declining so fast that the number of regular churchgoers will be fewer than those attending mosques within a generation.

According to Religious Trends, an analysis of religious practice in Britain, the huge drop off in attendance means that the CHURCH OF ENGLAND, CATHOLICISM AND OTHER DENOMINATIONS WILL BECOME FINANCIALLY UNVIABLE. In contrast, the number of actively religious Muslims is predicted to increase from about one million today to 1.96 million in 2035.

THE CAN-DO, BOOTSTRAP APPROACH EMBEDDED IN THE AMERICAN PSYCHE IS UNDER ASSAULT. Eroding it is a dour powerlessness that is chipping away at the country's sturdy conviction that destiny can be commanded with sheer courage and perseverance. Recent natural disasters around the world dwarf anything afflicting the U.S. Consider that more than 69,000 people died in the China earthquake, and that 78,000 were killed and 56,000 missing from the Myanmar cyclone. Americans need do no more than check the weather, look in their wallets or turn on the news for their DAILY REALITY CHECK ON A WORLD GONE HAYWIRE.

Floods engulf Midwestern river towns. Is it global warming, the gradual degradation of a planet's weather that man seems powerless to stop or just a freakish late-spring deluge? It hardly matters to those in the path. Just ask the people of New Orleans who survived Hurricane Katrina. They are living in a city where, 1,000 days after the storm, ENTIRE NEIGHBORHOODS REMAIN ABANDONED, A NATIONAL EMBARRASSMENT THAT EVOKES DISBELIEF FROM VISITORS.

FOOD IS BECOMING SCARCER and more expensive on a worldwide scale, due to increased consumption in growing countries such as China and India and rising fuel costs. That can-do solution to energy needs - turning corn into fuel - is sapping fields of plenty once devoted to crops that people need to eat. Shortages have sparked riots. IN THE U.S., RICE PRICES TRIPLED AND SOME STORES RATIONED THE STAPLE. Residents of the nation's capital and its suburbs repeatedly lose power for extended periods as mere thunderstorms rumble through. In California, leaders warn people to use less water in the unrelenting drought. Want to get away from it all? THE WEAK U.S. DOLLAR MAKES TRAVEL ABROAD FORBIDDINGLY EXPENSIVE. To add insult to injury, some airlines now charge to check luggage.

But there's always sports, right? The moorings seem to be coming loose here, too. Bonds and Roger Clemens stand accused of enhancing their heroics with drugs. Basketball referees are suspected of cheating. Stay tuned for less than pristine tales from the drug-addled Tour de France and who knows what from the Summer Olympics.

Why the vulnerability? After all, this is the 21st century, not a more primitive past when little in life was assured. Surely people know how to fix problems now. Maybe. AND MAYBE THIS IS WHAT THE 21ST CENTURY WILL BE ABOUT - A GREAT UNRAVELLING OF SOME THINGS LONG TAKEN FOR GRANTED.

Since September 11, tension in U.S.-Saudi relations has provided the Chinese with an opportunity to win the heart of the House of Saud. To Washington's dismay CHINA HAS ALSO SET ITS SIGHTS ON IRAN, ANNOUNCING THAT IT WILL NOT SUPPORT SANCTIONS AGAINST IRAN IN THE UN SECURITY COUNCIL.

No doubt that as China's oil demand grows, so will its involvement in Middle East politics. China is likely to provide the region's energy exporters not only with diplomatic support but also with weapons, including assistance in the development of WMD.