Which poses the greater health risk to humans: hot weather, or cold? According to global-warming alarmists, the answer is simple: heat kills. However, statistical evidence shows that cold weather is twice as deadly as hot weather.

With great fanfare, the City of Portland, Oregon, inaugurated its first solar-powered "loo" in Old Town, on December 8. "At the unveiling, mayor-elect Sam Adams gave the fancy new toilet its first ceremonial flush and Commissioner Randy Leonard was awarded with an honorary golden plunger," reported Portland's KGW-TV.

ITEM: President-elect Barack Obama provided a pre-recorded video message to the nearly 800 attendees from the United States and foreign countries at the Governors' Global Climate Summit hosted by California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger on November 18-19 in Beverly Hills.

"John McCain has shown far more commitment to confronting climate change than Bush has, but his teaming up with Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, who doubts that climate change is man-made, should raise worries," say Michael A. Levi and Scott G. Borgerson of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), who teamed up in a September 24 op-ed for USA Today. Levi is the council's David M. Rubenstein Senior Fellow for Energy and the Environment and Director of the Program on Energy Security and Climate Change, while Borgerson is the CFR's Visiting Fellow for Ocean Governance, one of his major remits being to promote the UN's Law of the Sea Treaty.

Poor Charles Ponzi is getting another media drubbing. News stories, of late, have been declaring Bernard Madoff's spectacular investment fraud case "the biggest Ponzi scheme in history."

Considering that John McCain himself was a POW during the Vietnam War, why is he so dismissive of the evidence that other POWs remained in captivity after the war's end?

It turns out that Vicky Pelaez, the Peruvian journalist expelled from the United States on July 8 along with nine Russians, obtained her U.S. citizenship by taking advantage of the 1986 amnesty for illegal aliens. However, according to a report in El Commercio  of Lima, Peru, Pelaez obtained her amnesty fraudulently, using a false birth certificate and falsely claiming she had been residing in the United States during a period when records, apparently, show she was actually residing in Peru.

As the Ford Taurus slowly approached the signal site, hidden FBI agents readied for a possible arrest. For weeks they had been staking out a path in Foxstone Park in Vienna, Virginia, outside Washington, D.C. Their elusive quarry was a Soviet mole in the FBI, codenamed “Ramon Garcia.”

A major battle over censorship is igniting. Since October 2007, United States Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald has been trying to kill a book that paints him in an unfavorable light. A new edition of TRIPLE CROSS: How Bin Laden's Master Spy Penetrated the CIA, the Green Berets, and the FBI by Peter Lance is due to be released on June 16, at a press conference at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C.

Virtually all governments use undercover agents and informants in their police and intelligence agencies. As a society, we recognize that this often is necessary in order to combat organized crime, foreign espionage, drug cartels, subversion, and terrorism. However, the political powers that be often abuse their powers and misuse these intelligence assets not to protect society, but to endanger it; and in so doing provide a pretext for increasing their own power. History is replete with examples of governments using agents provocateurs to justify eliminating the opposition and assuming dictatorial powers.