The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said in its 2007 benchmark report that even a slight change in rainfall could see swathes of the rainforest rapidly replaced by savanna grassland.

The source for its claim was a report from WWF, an environmental pressure group, which was authored by two green activists. They had based their “research” on a study published in Nature, the science journal, which did not assess rainfall but in fact looked at the impact on the forest of human activity such as logging and burning. This weekend WWF said it was launching an internal inquiry into the study.

Conditions closed some motorways and caused long traffic jams on many others. ...

... Police warned motorists that if they got stranded they might have to wait hours for help.

“People should just stay at home,” a spokesman said.

But despite the weather, some intrepid Germans were determined to enjoy the weekend.

In Hamburg hundreds of families skated across the frozen Alster Lake, which forecasters said was a once in a decade phenomenon.

Worship ended here in 1923 when modern Greece and Turkey exchanged their Christian and Muslim populations and the local Christian Greeks from this region left en masse.

But in the last decade, Greek pilgrims, calling themselves tourists, have started coming back here on the old feast-day of the Virgin Mary.

Last August I was at the monastery, officially a state museum, as a Greek Orthodox service sounded out again outside its walls — but it lasted just 30 seconds.

A black-cassocked monk began to sing the liturgy in deep tones before a Turkish museum curator broke up the service. A fight threatened to break out. The gathering broke up in recriminations and grandstanding speeches.

When the first chipped and battle-scarred bones were excavated from a muddy field in northern France last May, the story of the forgotten battle of Fromelles began to emerge.

The remains of 250 British and Australian soldiers had lain undiscovered for 93 years since falling on the Western Front. ...

... So far, more than 800 UK families who think they may have lost a relative at Fromelles have given DNA samples, but many will be disappointed.

Countries met in Copenhagen, Denmark, in December in pursuit of a legally binding deal to follow the Kyoto protocol on limiting global warming.

But a deal was not reached, and instead talks concluded with a Copenhagen accord, a non-binding document crafted by a small group of countries that account for around 80 per cent of world carbon emissions.

The two-week meeting, hamstrung by contentions over wording and objections by developing countries, led to a UN “soft deadline” of January 31 for nations to take sides on the accord, which, amongst other things, limits global warming to below two degrees Celsius.

“Whether we can achieve [a deal] in Mexico or need a bit more time remains to be seen, and will become clearer in the course of the year,” Yvo de Boer, who is also Denmark’s climate minster, said referring to the next scheduled ministerial meeting later this year.

“In order to avoid ... the annihilation of civilians we reiterate our acceptance of the five points” for a cease-fire, Abdul-Malik Al-Houthi said in an audio recording posted on the Internet.

Government conditions include a rebel withdrawal, the removal of rebel checkpoints and clarification of the fate of kidnapped foreigners. The rebels must also return captured military and civilian equipment and refrain from intervening in local authority affairs.

The Islamic Saudi Academy, located in Fairfax County, has long been under the microscope of its opponents. But for residents along the two-lane country road where the school sits, the debate was transformed from a local land-use issue into a heated discussion about the school, its teachings and the relationships between Muslims and non-Muslims in the United States.

I submit no Catholic textbook has anything near the venom and demonstrated incitement to murder as these Saudi textbooks.
- John Cosgrove, speaker at ISA expansion public hearing

For people like Pat Herrity, supervisor of Springfield District, where the school is located, this should only ever have been about traffic.

A leaked MI5 document says that undercover intelligence officers from the People’s Liberation Army and the Ministry of Public Security have also approached UK businessmen at trade fairs and exhibitions with the offer of “gifts” and “lavish hospitality”.

The gifts — cameras and memory sticks — have been found to contain electronic Trojan bugs which provide the Chinese with remote access to users’ computers.

Officials announced the detentions under Malaysia’s Internal Security Act on Wednesday, saying only that the detainees were suspected of links with international militant groups and represented a serious security threat. On Thursday, Home Secretary Hishammuddin Hussein declined to identify the suspects or to comment further on whether they already had planned or carried out terrorist attacks, saying that disclosing such information could endanger the continuing investigation.

A poll conducted by the Behavior Research Center determined the figure, but while McCain’s numbers may be down, Arizona’s senior U.S. senator is far from out.

Republicans, for the most part, still like McCain. The poll finds that within the Republican Party McCain still has a 52 percent approval rating, with only 14 percent of those polled saying he’s doing a “poor” job.