_{By Christopher Booker}

A surreal scientific blunder last week raised a huge question mark about the temperature records that underpin the worldwide alarm over global warming. On Monday, Nasa's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), which is run by Al Gore's chief scientific ally, Dr James Hansen, and is one of four bodies responsible for monitoring global temperatures, announced that last month was the hottest October on record.

_{Associated Press}

If you think they're out to get you, you're not alone.

Paranoia, once assumed to afflict only schizophrenics, may be a lot more common than previously thought.

According to British psychologist Daniel Freeman, nearly one in four Londoners regularly have paranoid thoughts. Freeman is a paranoia expert at the Institute of Psychiatry at King's College and the author of a book on the subject.

Experts say there is a wide spectrum of paranoia, from the dangerous delusions that drive schizophrenics to violence to the irrational fears many people have daily.

"We are now starting to discover that madness is human and that we need to look at normal people to understand it," said Dr. Jim van Os, a professor of psychiatry at Maastricht University in the Netherlands. Van Os was not connected to Freeman's studies.

Paranoia is defined as the exaggerated or unfounded fear that others are trying to hurt you. That includes thoughts that other people are trying to upset or annoy you, for example, by staring, laughing, or making unfriendly gestures.

Surveys of several thousands of people in Britain, the United States and elsewhere have found that rates of paranoia are slowly rising, although researchers' estimates of how many of us have paranoid thoughts varies widely, from 5 percent to 50 percent.

A British survey of more than 8,500 adults found that 21 percent of people thought there had been times when others were acting against them. Another survey of about 1,0000 adults in New York found that nearly 11 percent thought other people were following or spying on them.

Dennis Combs, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Texas at Tyler, has been studying paranoia for about a decade. When he first started conducting paranoia studies, mostly in college students, he found that about 5 percent of them had paranoid thoughts. In recent years, that has tripled to about 15 percent, he said.

In a small experiment in London, Freeman concluded that a quarter of people riding the subway in the capital probably have regular thoughts that qualify as paranoia. In the study, 200 randomly selected people (those with a history of mental problems were excluded) took a virtual reality train ride. They recorded their reactions to computerized passengers programmed to be neutral.

More than 40 percent of study participants had at least some paranoid thoughts. Some felt intimidated by the computer passengers, claiming they were aggressive, had made obscene gestures, or tried to start a fight.

Freeman said that in big cities, many ambiguous events can lead to paranoid thoughts. Because we constantly make snap judgments based on limited information, like which street to take or whether or not strangers are dangerous, the decision-making process is prone to error.

Van Os said Freeman's virtual reality experiment was solid and confirmed previous research. Experts say not everyone with paranoid thoughts needs professional help. It all depends on how disturbing the thoughts are and if they disrupt your life.

"People walk around with odd thoughts all the time," said David Penn, a professor of psychology at the University of North Carolina. "The question is if that translates into real behavior."

Van Os recalled a delusional patient who was convinced that the French singer Charles Aznavour was in love with her, and had been whispering to her before she went to sleep every night for more than two decades.

"You could call it a psychotic experience, but she was very happy about it," van Os said. "There isn't always a need for care when there's an instance of psychosis."

He hoped that being able to identify milder delusional symptoms in people could help doctors intervene earlier to prevent more serious cases.

The post-Sept. 11 atmosphere and the war on terror have also increased levels of paranoia in the West, some experts said.

"We are bombarded with information about our alert status and we're told to report suspicious-looking characters," Penn said. "That primes people to be more paranoid."

Traumatic events can make people more vulnerable to having paranoid thoughts. Since the attacks, Penn said Americans have been conditioned to be more vigilant of anything out of the ordinary.

While heightened awareness may be good thing, Penn said it can also lead to false accusations and an atmosphere where strangers are negatively viewed.

That can result in more social isolation, hostility, and possibly even crime. And it can take a toll on physical health. More paranoia means more stress, a known risk factor for heart disease and strokes.

Still, some experts said that a little bit of paranoia could be helpful.

"In a world full of threat, it may be kind of beneficial for people to be on guard. It's good to be looking around and see who's following you and what's happening," Combs said. "Not everybody is trying to get you, but some people may be."

By BRIAN BAKST

ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) - Democrat Al Franken, locked in a tight Senate race headed to a statewide recount, sued Thursday for access to data on voters who had their absentee ballots rejected.

Franken's lawsuit was filed in Ramsey County District Court, but his campaign is hoping that a ruling in their favor would be applied statewide.

Franken trails Republican incumbent Norm Coleman by 206 votes in unofficial results. The state canvassing board is due to meet Tuesday to certify the results, and the recount is scheduled to start the next day.

"We are not suing to have these in the count," said Franken's lead attorney, Marc Elias. "We are simply looking for the data so that we can identify people who were legal and lawful voters to ensure their ballots are counted."

That data might be useful only in a future lawsuit, since it's not clear that ballots found to be improperly rejected could even be used in the recount administered by state election officials.

Elias, a Washington-based attorney who was general counsel to John Kerry's 2004 presidential campaign, argued that the state canvassing board could rule them eligible. Under questioning, he didn't point to a specific law that allowed for that step.

On Wednesday, Democratic Secretary of State Mark Ritchie said a voter with a rejected ballot or a campaign would have to go to court to contest the election for such a remedy - a process he said would fall outside the recount and canvass process.

Coleman's campaign had no immediate comment.

Franken's advisers couldn't say how many rejected ballots exist. Communications director Andy Barr said the campaign has filed data requests with all 87 counties with some providing the data and others turning the campaign down.

The campaign previously asked elections officials in Minnesota's largest county, Hennepin, to pull 461 rejected absentee ballots into its count. The request was turned down.

Absentee ballots can be rejected for different reasons, such as a signature on a ballot that doesn't match the one on file with the county.

_{By Simon Kennedy and Holly Rosenkrantz}

Nov. 13 (Bloomberg) -- President George W. Bush today urged leaders of the world's biggest economies not to abandon free- market capitalism as they seek an escape from the financial crisis, calling it the ``best system'' for delivering growth.

In a speech at the Manhattan Institute in New York before weekend talks among leaders from the Group of 20 nations, Bush said policy makers should resist the urge to meddle too much in markets as they seek to reverse the financial and economic turmoil now engulfing the world.

``History has shown that the greater threat to economic prosperity is not too little government involvement in the market, but too much,'' Bush said. ``Our aim should not be more government, it should be smarter government.''

G-20 leaders including Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and French President Nicolas Sarkozy have used the crisis to demand greater government control of markets and to attack the U.S. for failing to rein in investors and speculators. Under debate are proposals ranging from curbing executive pay and restraining hedge funds to raising capital requirements for banks and subjecting credit rating companies to stiffer oversight.

``In recent years, investors could, broadly speaking, ignore the role of government when thinking about markets,'' said Alex Patelis, chief international economist at Merrill Lynch & Co. in London. ``That period is now over.''

Bush today said the G-20 leaders will consider pushing common standards for accounting, improving oversight of financial-market instruments such as credit default swaps and better protecting investors against fraud. He said ways will be sought to coordinate market regulations across borders and to hand emerging markets more power within the International Monetary Fund and World Bank.

``The answer is not to try to reinvent that system,'' Bush said. ``It is to fix the problems we face, make the reforms we need, and move forward with the free market system.''

The G-20 leaders, who oversee close to 90 percent of global gross domestic product, will begin their summit in Washington tomorrow. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development today predicted the economy of its 30 rich member nations will contract 0.3 percent next year.

Backing Bailouts

For all his defense of markets, Bush this year extended the reach of government by backing bailouts of American International Group Inc., Bear Stearns Cos., Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. His administration is also implementing a $700 billion financial rescue program which U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson yesterday shifted toward relieving pressure on consumer credit, scrapping an effort to buy devalued mortgage assets.

Still, Bush argued today that government intervention isn't a ``cure-all'' and that the crisis was caused by failures among investors, regulators and governments rather than the free-market model. He said steps taken so far by governments and central banks were thawing credit markets and stabilizing financial conditions, although he acknowledged ``more difficult days ahead.''

Officials overseas have heaped blame on the U.S. and the notion of unfettered markets promoted by Bush for sparking the turbulence.

`Greed, Mismanagement'

German Chancellor Angela Merkel last month attacked ``greed, speculation and mismanagement'' and today called on counterparts to agree an end to ``blind spots'' in the financial system. Rudd said ``the root of this malaise'' lay in the ``twin evils'' of greed and fear that went unchecked because of ``obscene'' failures in oversight.

While defending capitalism as the ``most efficient system ever created,'' Sarkozy has described as ``over'' the view that ``everything could be solved by deregulation, free competition and the market.'' The French president said today he will argue the dollar ``can't claim to be the only currency of the world anymore.''

Differences over how to respond to the crisis -- and the coming end of Bush's administration -- have officials and analysts suggesting the summit may not deliver much in the way of policies to strengthen markets and reinvigorate the global economy.

``There should be no heightened expectations,'' Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said today in Cannes, France.

Pushing Back

In a sign the administration doesn't accept full responsibility for the world's woes, Bush noted European countries ``still experienced problems'' even with tougher regulations. Paulson said yesterday that a ``lack of consumption and accumulation of reserves in Asia and oil-exporting countries and structural issues in Europe'' also hurt the global economy.

Bush administration officials yesterday played down the divisions and predicted the G-20 will take specific steps to combat the financial crisis and its economic fallout.

``We are expecting an important and vigorous discussion with some quite concrete results,'' Bush's international economics adviser Dan Price told reporters in Washington. ``There is a lot more common ground among countries who will be around the table than the rhetoric might suggest.''

With Bush leaving office in little more than two months and the issue of regulation too complicated to be addressed in 24 hours, G-20 officials are signaling more talks are likely soon after President-elect Barack Obama is inaugurated. Bush said the summit will be the first in a series of meetings.

``This crisis did not develop overnight, and it will not be solved overnight,'' Bush said.

_{To contact the reporter on this story: Simon Kennedy in Washington at Skennedy4@bloomberg.netHolly Rosenkrantz in Washington at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it}