Today, the world’s energy ‘watchdog’, the International Energy Agency (IEA) published their long awaited annual World Energy Outlook (WEO) for 2008. In stark contrast to bland-to-cornucopian supply commentary in past reports, the initial language in this years Executive Summary is of an urgent nature. This report is a step in the right direction for conveying our rapidly deteriorating energy situation to world policymakers - the IEA should be commended for making the turn and finally acknowledging: costs, investment limitations, new capacity requirements, steep decline rates of existing wells, and externalities (in this case GHGs).

The era of cheap oil is over, the International Energy Agency warned yesterday as it predicted crude values would soon rebound to above $100 a barrel and double again by 2030 as fields in the North Sea and elsewhere in the world declined faster than expected.

More than $26tn (£16tn) of new investment would be needed over the next 20 years to ensure the world had enough energy, according to the IEA, which was founded during the oil crisis of 1973-74 and acts as energy policy adviser to 28 member countries including Britain.

“While market imbalances could temporarily cause prices to fall back, it is becoming increasingly apparent that the era of cheap oil is over,” the organisation stated.

Most U.S. and foreign corporations doing business in the United States avoid paying any federal income taxes, despite trillions of dollars worth of sales, a government study released on Tuesday said.

The Government Accountability Office said 72 percent of all foreign corporations and about 57 percent of U.S. companies doing business in the United States paid no federal income taxes for at least one year between 1998 and 2005.

More than half of foreign companies and about 42 percent of U.S. companies paid no U.S. income taxes for two or more years in that period, the report said.

Iraqi secret police believed that the notorious Palestinian assassin Abu Nidal was working for the Americans as well as Egypt and Kuwait when they interrogated him in Baghdad only months before the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq. Hitherto secret documents which are now in the hands of The Independent – written by Saddam Hussein’s brutal security services for Saddam’s eyes only – state that he had been “colluding” with the Americans and, with the help of the Egyptians and Kuwaitis, was trying to find evidence linking Saddam and al-Qa’ida.

Man is responsible for the greatest extinction of wildlife since the demise of the dinosaurs with a 35% decrease in biodiversity over the past 35 years, according to new research.

The finding is expected to emerge in the latest audit of the world’s animal and plant life by WWF, formerly the World Wide Fund for Nature.

It will warn that humanity’s ruthless exploitation of the environment is creating an unsustainable “ecological debt”, with more species wiped out in the past 35 years than in the previous 300.