That is the key word, the word avoided even by Kim Howells, the junior foreign minister who opened a split in the Government last weekend by accusing Israel of "going for the whole Lebanese nation".. The Cabinet is in semi-open revolt over Mr Blair's Middle East policy. Jack Straw, the Leader of the House of Commons, still smarting from his demotion from Foreign Secretary, has furiously denounced Israel's attack on Lebanon and described it plainly as "disproportionate". Peering back over hundreds of thousands of years, deciphering natural records laid down in Greenland and Antarctic ice, scientists can find no other period remotely as stable and hospitable. Human history has taken place during a climatic ceasefire in normally hostile conditions. Like terrorists or rogue states - and in defiance of all warnings - we are breaking it.. There has been a valedictory tone to Tony Blair's speeches for some time now.

Tonight's address to Rupert Murdoch's executives at Pebble Beach, near San Francisco, on the theme of "leadership" is more of a backward-looking farewell than ever. As Westminster packs its bags for other beaches around the world, thoughts turn more insistently to the question of when Mr Blair will pack his bags for good Meanwhile, ministerial discipline is breaking down. The awesome truth is that we are the last generation to enjoy the kind of climate that allowed civilisation to germinate, grow and flourish since the start of settled agriculture 11,000 years ago. Most people are already finding it unpleasant, making fools of commentators who have looked fondly forward to living in a Cotswold Chiantishire And it is going to get a lot worse Climate change is an 18-rated horror film This is its PG-rated trailer. It is an area where the old clich?Don't let the facts stand in the way of a good story" is usually just a cynical joke. But when the journalist is a player then the temptation to stand up the set-up grows.Peter Cole is professor of journalism at the University of Sheffield. For while no reputable scientist will confidently attribute the devastating heatwave now gripping much of the northern hemisphere to global warming on the strength of just one summer, this is precisely what research has predicted, as climate change takes hold.

Welcome to the greenhouse This is what, increasingly, it is going to be like. It will suspect the motives of papers setting up stings to get arrests, and stories. And when the public sits on juries, it will be unlikely to convict when the stamp of the untrusted press is on the case.There has always been a branch of journalism where the story comes first and the facts, hopefully, follow. Journalism should investigate the tip-offs of whistle-blowers. It should not lead targets into temptation.Journalism is not about entrapment, about setting up the sting and hoping the target walks into the trap. That way, the journalist is a player in the story, not a reporter. Nor, I think, is it about working on joint ventures with the police.