Sunday Herald

Eearliest this month Scotland's two biggest banks announced profits of £15 billion between them. That represents a tenfold increase in the 10 years since New Labour came to power.

When US troops in the southern Afghan province of Ghazni handed out cash to village elders, they must have thought they were winning friends.

Foreign Office lawyers warn: Support for Bush military action would be illegal. Army warns: we're too stretched to cope with any more military action By Westminster Editor James Cusick and Neil Mackay

40 experts urge change of focus to renewables. By Rob Edwards

President George W Bush strongly defended authorising a secret eavesdropping programme yesterday, and said he has no intention of halting the practice. By Jennifer Loven

By Mary Milliken and Kevin Gray in Mar Del Plata, Argentina

The Earth is losing its natural resistance to global warming as the oceans and forests reach capacity in their ability to soak up carbon emissions, say scientists. By Jenifer Johnston

For the United States, the balance sheet of what comes out of Africa far outweighs what goes back in. Oil, raw materials and the expansion of the free market are the principal reasons the US engages in Africa, anything else is pretty much incidental. By Torcuil Crichton

On my way to meet Noam Chomsky in Boston, I pick up a copy of The American Prospect, whose cover features snarling caricatures of US Vice-President Dick Cheney, and of Chomsky: the man dubbed by Bono "the Elvis of academia". By Alan Taylor

So, will he? Yes … when Texas freezes over