From American Heritage Dictionary:

billion 1. The cardinal number equal to 10^9. 2. Chiefly British: The cardinal number equal to 10^12
trillion 1. The cardinal number equal to 10^12. 2. Chiefly British: The cardinal number equal to 10^18

Vlad

>I heard a question on Jeopardy last week. The implication was the North Amercians have different definition of "billion" than the Brits.
>
>The North Amercian definition of a billion is one thousand million.
>
>1,000,000 <--- million
>1,000,000,000 <---- billion
>1,000,000,000,000 <---- trillion
>
>Wait... maybe it was "trillion" that was mentioned. Either way, could appreciate any comments on this, especially from the UK.
>
>P.S. I would consider a "trillion" a very non-standard term to start with (at least in Canada). It seems to be the domain of 12 year old boys ("My dad is a trillion times stronger than your dad") and economists ("The debt is 1.3 trillion").