BOCA RATON, Florida (Reuters) – Corruption, whether in the form of crooked officials, financial fraudsters or even philandering sports stars, is tearing at the fabric of U.S. society and is the country’s No. 1 criminal threat, a senior FBI agent said on Tuesday.

Addressing businessmen in Florida, where financial fraud cases jumped by 42 percent in the last year, FBI Miami Division Special Agent in Charge John Gillies said failures in personal ethics and integrity sowed the initial poisonous seeds of corruption in a society.

MIAMI (Reuters) – A Florida Highway Patrol trooper suspected golfer Tiger Woods had drunk alcohol on the day of his car accident last month, according to a subpoena request by the officer rejected by a state prosecutor.

The detailed subpoena request, released by the State Attorney’s Office for Orange County on Monday, added fresh intrigue to the media storm around the world’s No. 1 golfer, who ran his Cadillac SUV into a fire hydrant and a tree while pulling out of the driveway of his home at about 2 a.m. on November 27.

PORT OF SPAIN (Reuters) – Commonwealth states representing a third of the world’s people said on Sunday momentum was growing toward a global climate deal, but nagging doubts remained over funding levels and degrees of commitment.

Seeking to successfully tip the outcome of U.N. climate talks on December 7-18 in Copenhagen, the group of more than 50 nations from across the world made the climate change issue the centerpiece of a three-day summit in Trinidad and Tobago.

PORT OF SPAIN (Reuters) – For Maldives President Mohamed Nasheed, the cold scientific numbers of the climate debate add up to the very survival of his tropical Indian Ocean state.

If global temperatures rise just 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit), “we won’t be around, we will be underwater,” he told Reuters in Trinidad and Tobago, where he and other leaders of the 53-nation Commonwealth pledged support for a definitive climate deal in Copenhagen next month.

PORT OF SPAIN (Reuters) – Commonwealth leaders will lobby for an international climate deal that includes $10 billion for next year to help poor and vulnerable states fight the effects of global warming, the Maldives president said on Saturday.

Mohamed Nasheed, whose small Indian Ocean state risks being swamped by rising sea levels caused by climate change, said the proposal for such funding was part of a draft climate statement to be issued on Saturday by Commonwealth leaders meeting in Trinidad and Tobago.

PORT OF SPAIN (Reuters) – World leaders on Friday rallied to a diplomatic offensive to forge a U.N. climate deal in Copenhagen next month and U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said an agreement was “within reach”.

“Our common goal is to achieve a firm foundation for a legally binding climate treaty as early as possible in 2010. I am confident that we are on track to do this,” Ban told a summit of Commonwealth leaders in Trinidad and Tobago.

PORT OF SPAIN (Reuters) – Commonwealth leaders will put the world’s small island states at the frontline of the climate debate when they meet on Friday to press for an effective international pact against global warming.

Around half of the 53-nation Commonwealth group, mainly former British colonies, are island nations scattered across the world’s oceans. Some of these fear they could be swamped or even literally wiped off the map in coming decades if sea levels rise as a result of worsening climate change.

PORT OF SPAIN (Reuters) – Rich and poor states grouped in the Commonwealth and representing a quarter of the world’s population hope to create critical momentum toward a global climate deal when they meet in the Caribbean this week.

Leaders of the 53-member Commonwealth, a group of mostly former British colonies, gather in Trinidad and Tobago from Friday in the last major international summit before high-level U.N. climate change talks due in Copenhagen on December 7-18.

MIAMI (Reuters) – Federal agents investigating a prominent Florida lawyer suspected of running an elaborate Ponzi scheme said on Thursday the amount involved could exceed $1 billion, and they asked bilked investors to come forward.

At a news conference, investigators from the FBI and the U.S. Internal Revenue Service (IRS) made a public appeal for information from individuals who had invested in a so-called Structured Settlement Investment scheme offered by 47-year-old Fort Lauderdale attorney Scott Rothstein.

MIAMI (Reuters) – Christopher O’Neill is worried about the deficit. The deficit, that is, in his personal income after the 26-year-old Miami finance analyst was forced to find a temporary job paying $20,000 a year less than he earned until January when he was laid off from his auditor’s post in Miami.

From Miami to Milwaukee, ordinary Americans are counting the cost to their own lives of the recession, which has seen the U.S. budget deficit swell to a record $1.4 trillion in the 2009 fiscal year — the biggest shortfall since World War Two.