After decades of research that sought, and found, evidence of a human influence on the earth's climate, climatologists are beginning to shift to a new and similarly daunting enterprise: creating decade-long forecasts for climate, just as meteorologists routinely generate weeklong forecasts for weather. One of the first attempts to look ahead a decade, using computer simulations and measurements of ocean temperatures, predicts a slight cooling of Europe and North America, probably related to shifting currents and patterns in the oceans.

SYDNEY: The $12 billion bid by BG Group of Britain for Origin Energy of Australia has put the Australian government, which must sign off on any deal, in a political and diplomatic quandary. BG has made a nonbinding cash offer for Origin that values the company at 14.70 Australian dollars, or $13.80, a share, a 40 percent premium to its Tuesday closing price. Origin had yet to formally respond to the approach, issuing nothing more than a noncommittal acknowledgment to the Australian Securities Exchange.

XUAN CANH, Vietnam: Truong Thi Nha stands just 4

Thailand is reviving plans for a cartel of major rice producers, a move that could benefit farmers by maintaining soaring rice prices but propagate the food crisis for the poorest consumers in Asia. The Thai government is enlisting the support of Vietnam, the second-largest rice exporter after Thailand, as well as Cambodia, Myanmar and Laos to "help each other control the rice price," according to Thailand's prime minister, Samak Sundaravej.

There was, last week, a glimmer of hope in the world food crisis. Expecting a bumper harvest, Ukraine relaxed restrictions on exports. Overnight, global wheat prices fell by 10 percent. By contrast, traders in Bangkok quote rice prices around $1,000 a ton, up from $460 two months ago.

China said Wednesday that it had broken up a child labor ring that provided children from poor, inland areas with work in booming coastal cities, acknowledging that severe labor abuses extended into the heart of its export economy.

In an article in the New England Journal of Medicine, two leading researchers warn that the entry of big companies like Microsoft and Google into the field of personal health records could drastically alter the practice of clinical research and raise new challenges to the privacy of patient records. The authors, Dr. Kenneth Mandl and Dr. Isaac Kohane, are long-time proponents of the benefits of electronic patient records to improve care and help individuals make smarter health decisions.

DENILIQUIN, Australia: Lindsay Renwick, the mayor of this dusty southern Australian town, remembers the constant whir of the rice mill. "It was our little heartbeat out there, tickety-tick-tickety," he said, imitating the giant fans that dried the rice, "and now it has stopped." The Deniliquin mill, the largest rice mill in the Southern Hemisphere, once processed enough grain to satisfy the daily needs of 20 million people. But six long years of drought have taken a toll, reducing Australia's rice crop by 98 percent and leading to the mothballing of the mill last December.

The idea of turning farms into fuel plants seemed, for a time, like one of the answers to high global oil prices and supply worries. That strategy seemed to reach a high point last year when Congress mandated a fivefold increase in the use of biofuels.

Earth Day is a week away, so brace yourself for cuddly, hug-the-planet blubbering from the presidential candidates. John McCain will tell you we must be the "caretakers of creation." Hillary Clinton will talk of recycling and efficient light bulbs. Barack Obama will surely tell us we "cannot afford more of the same timid politics when the future of our planet is at stake."