The offer will make Britain the largest contributor. France and Germany each promised around £1.2 billion to the EU fund, which will be worth around £6.5 billion in all.

Throughout the crumbling communist empire, sewage and chemicals clogged rivers; industrial smog choked cities; radiation seeped through the soil; open pit mines scarred green valleys. It was hard to measure how bad it was and still is: The focus was more on production quotas than environmental data.

Today, Europe has two easts — one that has been largely cleaned up with the help of a massive infusion of Western funds and the prospect of membership in the prosperous European Union; another that still looks as though the commissars never left.

The contrasting story lines are written in the ripple and flow of two rivers.

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Drifting along Ukraine’s Dnieper River, past this one-time powerhouse of Soviet rule, requires slicing through clouds of black and orange exhaust from a metallurgical plant.

Bill Browder of Hermitage Capital was reacting to the news that his lawyer had died in prison in Russia after being held for a year without charge.

He told the BBC that his lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky, had in effect been “held hostage and they killed their hostage.”

Through Hermitage Capital, Bill Browder campaigned against corruption at some of Russia’s largest companies.

Russian officials say they are investigating Mr Magnitsky’s death.

He came bearing a long shopping list, including Chinese support for tougher sanctions on Iran and more flexibility by Beijing on currency exchange rates, but Obama was met with polite, yet stony, silences.

Only one more key meeting was scheduled for today before Obama’s departure, a working lunch with Premier Wen Jiabao. Before flying to South Korea, the president will tour the Great Wall — the famous symbol of Chinese tenacity and an appropriate backdrop for a visit in which China again showed its resistance to U.S. entreaties.

Not only is the U.S. president coming away without any definable concessions, but the Chinese appeared to be digging in their heels.

On Tuesday, just hours after Obama stood with President Hu Jintao in the Great Hall of the People, praising China’s commitment to “move toward a more market-oriented exchange rate over time,” a senior Chinese official called a news conference across town to issue a rebuttal.

Pageant organizers say Rachel Christie has also withdrawn from next month’s Miss World competition in South Africa.

Gordon Brown and other leaders hailed a new era of expanded powers for the European Union to act on the world stage after the Eurosceptic President of the Czech Republic signed the treaty. The relief across European capitals was palpable as the eight-year journey of an accord that gives Europe a president and a new chief of foreign affairs came to an end

Germany and Spain have expressed interest in President Rafael Correa’s idea, which environmentalists say could set a precedent in the fight against global warming by lowering the high cost to poor countries of going green.

“This is the first time the government of a major oil-producing country has voluntarily offered to forego lucrative oil extraction in order to help combat climate change,” said Dr. Matt Finer, staff scientist for Save America’s Forests and author of a study on Correa’s initiative.

But Correa’s idea is two years old and he has yet to receive a firm cash commitment.

Under the plan, rich countries would pay Ecuador at least half the revenues that the 850 million barrels of heavy crude oil estimated to be in Ecuador’s remote Yasuni National Park would be expected to generate over the next 10 years — or about $3 billion.

The report, published by centre-right think tank The Heritage Foundation, argues that “Pakistan is central” to terrorist plots in Britain.

More than a quarter of those convicted of terrorism in the UK trained or tried to train in Pakistan or Afghanistan.

It also warned that British “homegrown” terrorism constitutes a major threat.

The Heritage Foundation, examined data from “major Islamist terrorist plots” in Britain between 11 September 2001 and early August 2009.

And the biggest winner may turn out to be someone who couldn’t even vote: former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who is the hot favorite to become the EU’s first president under the new system, which would vault him firmly back into the international limelight that he basks in.

Returns in Ireland the day after voters went to the polls showed the so-called Lisbon Treaty passing with 67% approval. It was a stunning turnaround of the treaty’s defeat in a referendum in June 2008, when 53% of voters rejected it.