NASA ON TOP SECRET RED ALERT - DOOMSDAY COMET SPEEDING TOWARD EARTH: ESTIMATED COLLISION DATE: OCT. 21, 2006

PARIS: A massive comet as big as Europe is speeding toward earth and unless we can find some way to stop it, 3 billion people will die when the giant space rock hits - possibly as early as October!

That's the word from a team of frantic scientists who've secretly met wtih leaders of the world's major powers at least six times since America's Hubble space Telescope first photographed the run-away comet in April

In their emotion charged and often grim meetings here, scientists have urged leaders of the United States, Russia, England, France, Germany, Japan and China to find the use of nuclear weapons to attempt to vaporize the comet while it is safely out in space - though most experts concede that this plan has little, if any chance of success.

"The chilling fact is, most scientists now agree that any attempt to shot a comet or an asteroid out of the sky, or even to alter its course, with nuclear weapons is a virtual impossibility" insisted famed astronomer Dr. Robert Cremson, one of nine scientists who've been busy spurring the world's political leaders to action.

"But it's also a fact that at this point, the use of nuclear weapons is the only plan anyone has come up with that has any chance at all of ending this threat to life as we know it."

Dr. Cremson said President Clinton, who has slipped out of Washington to attend at least three of the secret Paris conferences, is so concerned about the impending disaster that he has authorized the expenditure of the more than $4 billion that NASA and the Pentagon say they'll need to modify land-based missiles for an assault on the killer comet.

"Mr. Clinton is gravely concerned, as are all the leaders who met in Paris." the scientists said. "We may have our political and ideological differences among nations here on Earth, but now that the human race is threatened with extinction, the worlds leaders seem willing to set aside these differences in an attempt to save the lives of every man, woman, and child on the planet.

"The trouble is, right now we simply don't have a clue what do do next."

But experts say unless we find some way to stop it, there is a 93 percent chance that the gigantic chunk of ice, rock and space debris will slam into Earth at a mind-boggling 141,000 m.p.h. on or around October 29.

"At that point, one of two things could happen," Dr. Cremson said. "In the first scenario, the impact would smash earth to bits, sending fragments hurtling into space and killing us all, Or it's possible Earth would remain intact. But in that case, the collision would no doubt kick millions of tons of dirt and debris into the atmosphere, veiling the sun and plunging us into a temporary but devastating deep-freeze - much like the one believed to have wiped out the dinosaurs after a comet collided with earth 65 million years ago.

"Its likely, that to us as human beings, it won't much matter which scenario takes place, however - because it's very likely that either way, the human race will cease to exist."

It was Dr. Cremson, a world -renowned astronomer with close ties to NASA, who first discovered the so-called Cremson Comet while examining Hubble photographs last spring.

After identifying a tiny point of light appearing on one of the photos as a comet, the scientist began to monitor its speed and trajectory with an earthbound telescope and determined that it was on a collision course with earth.

Dr. cremson immediately alerted NASA and fellow astronomers around the world, who persuaded world leaders to gather for the series of "red-alert" meetings that began here in May. "Were really struggling because no one knows what we can do to ward off this comet," Dr. Cremson said, "But we will do something, that's for certain. "We will do something because we must do something."