Aaron Regent, president of the Canadian gold giant, said that global output has been falling by roughly 1m ounces a year since the start of the decade. Total mine supply has dropped by 10 per cent as ore quality erodes, implying that the roaring bull market of the last eight years may have further to run. "There is a strong case to be made that we are already at 'peak gold'," he told The Daily Telegraph at the RBC's annual gold conference in London.

"Production peaked around 2000 and it has been in decline ever since, and we forecast that decline to continue. It is increasingly difficult to find ore," he said. Ore grades have fallen from around 12 grams per tonne in 1950 to nearer 3 grams in the US, Canada, and Australia. South Africa's output has halved since peaking in 1970.

The supply crunch has helped push gold to an all-time high, reaching $1,118 an ounce at one stage yesterday. The key driver over recent days has been the move by India's central bank to soak up half of the gold being sold by the International Monetary Fund. It is the latest sign that the rising powers of Asia and the commodity bloc are growing wary of Western paper money and debt. CHINA HAS QUIETLY DOUBLED HOLDINGS TO 1,054 TONNES and is thought to be adding gradually on price dips, creating a market floor.

The message arrived amid intense debate over strategy, with President Obama yet to make a decision on troop numbers. This dramatic intervention seems to put the envoy at odds with generals wanting reinforcements, correspondents say. On Wednesday, Mr Obama held his eighth meeting in a series aimed at refocusing Afghan policy. Mr Eikenberry, a former US commander in Afghanistan, also raised CONCERNS ABOUT CORRUPTION WITHIN THE AFGHAN GOVERNMENT. He said it was "not a good idea" to send more troops, the BBC has been told.

The cable arrived days before Mr Obama held a crucial strategy session - to discuss the question of whether to send tens of thousands more troops to confront and push back the Taliban. The cable appears to be a dramatic and last-minute intervention by the ambassador, BBC Washington correspondent Adam Brookes reports.

It comes right at the end of weeks of White House deliberation over how to proceed in Afghanistan, and appears to put the ambassador at odds with the US army, whose generals favour reinforcing and intensifying America's campaign in Afghanistan.

These newly proposed wars are only the Obama phase of what is likely to be an endless 21st-century crusade called "the war on terrorism."

Yet what we justifiably fear - terrorists acquiring a nuclear weapon and detonating it in the United States - cannot be prevented by the United States imposing itself on one country after another in the Middle East or elsewhere. A more plausible strategy is to address the grievances and problems that lead people to want to strike out against the West in general, and the United States in particular.

The bond market is telling us not to worry. BUT IF HISTORY IS ANY GUIDE, THE BOND MARKET IS WRONG. I'm referring to Treasury Inflation Protected Securities, TIPS for short, in particular those that reflect long-run inflation expectations. The current spread tells us to expect annual inflation averaging a bit over 2 percent for the next 30 years. That would be fairly benign. And fairly wrong. Why? Because it assumes US political leadership will put the country on a sustainable fiscal path. I highly doubt it will happen.

In a note to clients last month, Société Générale strategist Dylan Grice explained the connection between debt and inflation. Turning Milton Friedman on his head, Grice argued that "inflation is always and everywhere a fiscal phenomenon." Money printing may be the vehicle, but the "root cause" of INFLATION TENDS TO BE "A GOVERNMENT UNABLE TO PAY ITS WAY."

The appointments will be made by the leaders of the 27 member states, by a qualified majority vote. Belgium's Prime Minister, Herman van Rompuy, has emerged as a frontrunner for the post of EU president. On Monday Sweden's PM Fredrik Reinfeldt said he was half-way through consultations with the governments on their preferred candidates.

Under Lisbon, the president of the European Council will be appointed by the governments for a term of two-and-a-half years, renewable once. The goal is to achieve more continuity and stability in major EU policy areas. Besides Mr Van Rompuy, leading candidates for the job are said to include Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende and his Luxembourg counterpart Jean-Claude Juncker.

The centre-left former Italian Prime Minister Massimo D'Alema is a frontrunner for the new post of High Representative for Foreign Affairs. Whoever gets that job will also become vice president of the European Commission. THE LISBON TREATY WILL COME INTO EFFECT ON 1 DECEMBER.

This President and administration know the lies behind all this and they couldn't give a flying piece of rubbish because they also know most of us are too busy to care. We are too busy to research real science and find out this is total fraud. In truth, environmentalists couldn't care less about trees, polar bears and climate. THEY ONLY CARE ABOUT CONTROLLING YOU, WHAT YOU EAT, DRINK, BUY AND SELL, WHILE CONVINCING YOU TO GIVE THEM MONEY.

What do you think this nightmare lie of Cap and Trade is about? It is designed to support the unholy trinity of regulation, taxation and litigation as it collects your money. You know, it's an international emergency so many of you actually feel great about paying in. You are helping to save the troubled planet. The other direct arm of control and communism will be seen if this Government health care bill passes. THIS WILL BE THE LARGEST GRAB OF POWER INTO THE EXECUTIVE BRANCH IN OUR NATION'S HISTORY.

Why is Government health care such a severe take over? Because this administration will attach our health care to everything we do, buy and sell. Your gun records and even right to own guns will be monitored and tracked to health care, its cost and lack thereof; your mental health records, past and present will be tracked, monitored and probably sold to all the wrong people. My prediction is that even transportation, the work we do and food we eat will be tracked and known.

Health care and Environmentalism are multi-trillion dollar industries that create the regulations, taxation and controls to reign in the population and seize what is left of our freedoms. You wonder what happened to the teeth and vision of the old communist party? You are watching it tighten around your neck as we speak.

The group Catholic Democrats has hailed passage of HR 3962, the Affordable Health Care for America Act of 2009, and notes that the only House Republican voting for it, Representative Joseph Cao of Louisiana, is a Catholic and former Jesuit seminarian. "The Catholic Church has been at the forefront of advocating for health care as a right for decades, including pastoral letters issued by the US Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) in 1981 and 1993," the group notes.

The evidence indicates that the Bishops — and THE VATICAN ITSELF — ARE CALLING THE SHOTS behind the scene. In fact, as many media organizations are now reporting, they engineered the "compromise" that deleted abortion funding so the bill could pass the House. The Los Angeles Times reported that HOUSE SPEAKER NANCY PELOSI, A CATHOLIC, not only "conferred with the US Conference of Catholic Bishops to be sure the new restrictions were acceptable" but "CONSULTED BY TELEPHONE WITH A CARDINAL IN ROME." CNN reported that, as a deal was being made between Pelosi and Catholic lobbyists, "Several Democrats, including Representative Jason Altmire, Democrat for Pennsylvania, said they are in touch with their Catholic Bishops back home. Altmire said he must have the approval of his bishop in Pittsburgh before he can vote yes."

WHERE IS THE MEDIA OUTRAGE OVER "THE SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE?" In this case, there is direct evidence of A FOREIGN ENTITY, THE VATICAN, actually passing judgment on legislation and, in effect, delivering votes for it. Few in the media, on the left or right, want to raise the issue, apparently fearful of being labeled "anti-Catholic." But the outcome of the legislation in the House demonstrates that while the Republicans don't have the votes to stop it, THE VATICAN HAS THE VOTES TO PASS IT. COULD THE SAME THING HAPPEN IN THE US SENATE?

The Pontifical Academy of Sciences is holding a conference on astrobiology, the study of life beyond Earth, with scientists and religious leaders gathering in Rome this week. For centuries, theologians have argued over what the existence of life elsewhere in the universe would mean for the Church: at least since Giordano Bruno, an Italian monk, was put to death by the Inquisition in 1600 for claiming that other worlds exist.

Among other things, extremely alien-looking aliens would be hard to fit with the idea that God "made man in his own image". Furthermore, Jesus Christ's role as saviour would be confused: would other worlds have their own, tentacled Christ-figures, or would Earth's Christ be universal? However, just as the Church eventually made accommodations after Copernicus and Galileo showed that the Earth was not the centre of the universe, and when it belatedly accepted the truth of Darwin's theory of evolution, Catholic leaders say that alien life can be aligned with the Bible's teachings.

Father Jose Funes, a Jesuit astronomer at the Vatican Observatory and one of the organisers of the conference, said: "As a multiplicity of creatures exists on Earth, so there could be other beings, also intelligent, created by God. This does not conflict with our faith, because we cannot put limits on the creative freedom of God."

Not everyone agrees. Paul Davies, a theoretical physicist and author of The Goldilocks Enigma, told The Washington Post that the threat to Christianity is "being downplayed" by Church leaders. He said: "I think the discovery of a second genesis would be of enormous spiritual significance. The real threat would come from the discovery of extraterrestrial intelligence, because if there are beings elsewhere in the universe, then Christians, they're in this horrible bind. They believe that God became incarnate in the form of Jesus Christ in order to save humankind, not dolphins or chimpanzees or little green men on other planets."

Figures calculated by House of Commons researchers show that Britain will have lost out on €10.5billion (£9.3billion) by not receiving the full rebate between 2007 and 2013, calculated at 2004 prices - equivalent to £344 for every household in Britain.

The article quotes Open Europe's Mats Persson, saying, "This £10 billion would certainly have come in handy at a time when the UK is facing a massive public deficit, and every tax penny counts. Taxpayers will not be pleased at this news." He added that Mr Blair had "naively agreed to give up large chunk of the UK's rebate from the EU budget, in return for vague promises of a root-and-branch reform of the EU's distorting and wasteful farm subsidy scheme".

The article notes that there are fears that the UK's rebate could be scrapped altogether by 2020, following a proposal included in a recent draft document from the European Commission.

The SUGV was developed as part of the US Army's Future Combat System, an ambitious collection of manned and unmanned systems that were supposed to be linked together through a single network. After that estimated $100 billion program was canceled last year, mainly out of cost considerations, the Defense Department opted to keep the SUGV as part of a new strategy to bolster infantry combat teams.

MILITARY ROBOTS HAVE FAST GROWN INTO A MULTIBILLION-DOLLAR BUSINESS. Massachusetts company iRobot has already delivered around 2,700 robots to militaries around the world. Some of those were part of a December 2007, $300 million US Defense Department contract that iRobot won after prevailing over an upstart that purloined its technology. A second Massachusetts firm, Foster-Miller, won a contract in 2008 for another $400 million to supply thousands of its TALON robots. Both iRobot's PackBot and Foster-Miller's TALON are mostly used to locate and detonate improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, which have proved to be one of the Taliban's deadliest weapons.

The SUGV has a broader application. Joseph Dyer, head of iRobot's government and industrial robots division, says he expects to see A "QUANTUM LEAP" IN NUMBERS NOW THAT ROBOTS are moving beyond IED disposal to become a more versatile tool for the infantry. "The big army is just a much, much larger market," he says.

These include the EU's policies on cohesion; research, energy and transport; external aid and enlargement; and part of the agricultural programme. However, the ECA gave an unqualified, or clean opinion, on the reliability of the 2008 EU accounts. This means that the Court considers the EU Commission's accounts to present a fair and accurate picture of how much money was spent out of the EU budget.

The Court concluded that cohesion policy, or the Structural funds, which is the second largest spending area in the budget (representing almost a third of the budget), "remains problematic and is the area most affected by errors." The Court estimated that at least 11% of the total amount paid out in grants from the Structural Funds should not have been paid out in the first place. Crucially the auditors note, that "In many situations THE ERRORS ARE A CONSEQUENCE OF TOO COMPLEX RULES AND REGULATIONS. Simplification, therefore, remains a priority."

The meeting had been grudgingly scheduled early Sunday morning by the White House just a few hours before Netanyahu was to leave for the US to speak at the 2009 General Assembly of the Jewish Federations of North America. The ninth-hour appointment was a clear sign that RELATIONS BETWEEN WASHINGTON AND JERUSALEM REMAIN STRAINED; Netanyahu had requested the meeting weeks ago.

Also in attendance for part of the meeting was Defence Minister Ehud Barak, National Security Council head Uzi Arad, Ambassador Michael Oren and Netanyahu adviser Yitzchak Molcho. US officials included National Security Adviser General (retired) Jim Jones, White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, Special Middle East Envoy George Mitchell and National Security Council Director for Near Eastern Affairs Dan Shapiro.

On the agenda was the issue of IRAN'S GALLOPING NUCLEAR TECHNOLOGY DEVELOPMENT, as well as the current paralysis in talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, and the claim by PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas that he is resigning in January. All three matters are being taken "very seriously" by the Prime Minister's Office, said a spokesman.

Netanyahu had reportedly been planning to tell the president that Israel was willing to be "generous" in scaling back Jewish construction in Judea and Samaria, and "means business" about rejuvenating talks with the PA. But the brief statement issued by the White House following the talks said simply that the two leaders discussed "how to move forward on Middle East peace." The White House spokesman added, "The president reaffirmed our strong commitment to Israel's security, and discussed security cooperation on a range of issues."

Afghanistan, where US and NATO forces are battling a Taliban-led insurgency, is TOO FRAGMENTED BETWEEN CLANS TO BE CONTROLLED MILITARILY, Gorbachev, 78, said in an interview today in Berlin. While he said President Barack Obama would be unlikely to take his advice, Gorbachev said he saw no chance of success even with more US troops.

"I BELIEVE THAT THERE IS NO PROSPECT OF A MILITARY SOLUTION," Gorbachev said in Russian through a translator. "WHAT WE NEED IS THE RECONCILIATION OF AFGHAN SOCIETY - and they should be preparing the ground for withdrawal rather than additional troops."

Obama is considering a military request to send as many as 40,000 more US soldiers to Afghanistan, on top of the 68,000 due to be stationed there by the end of the year. Other North Atlantic Treaty Organization forces, comprising personnel from 42 countries, number about 36,000.

THE ONE-HOUR-AND-FORTY-MINUTE PARLEY WAS ACCOMPANIED BY AN UNUSUAL NEWS BLACKOUT, as the standard photo op and press availability were not held. In addition, Netanyahu canceled a scheduled briefing with Israeli reporters and Defense Minister Ehud Barak scrapped plans for radio interviews following the talks. Instead, both sides referred to a brief statement put out by the White House after the Monday evening meeting, about half of which was one-on-one and half of which included four members of staff on each side.

"The president reaffirmed our strong commitment to Israel's security, and discussed security cooperation on a range of issues," said the White House readout. "The president and prime minister also discussed Iran and how to move forward on Middle East peace."

Pressed on the issue, as it is highly unusual for the president to see an Israeli prime minister without any media presence, Gibbs said that "THE PRESIDENT WANTED TO HAVE A MEETING WITH PRIME MINISTER NETANYAHU. THAT'S WHAT WE'RE DOING." He added, "The contents of the meeting generally seem to be well read out and I trust that this time will be no different." However, after the leaders' evening conversation, the White House did not provide more information than its brief statement.

A brass band played and politicians applauded the gas tanker as it set sail for South Korea, but Saleh's attention was elsewhere — on the attacks that Saudi Arabia's military forces were waging against antigovernment Shi'ite rebels in the north of Yemen. The rebels "are trying to demolish the economy," Saleh tells Time Magazine.

The conflict has rapidly intensified during the past week, since, according to the Saudis, the Houthis crossed into Saudi Arabia and killed a Saudi officer, leading Saudi Arabia to send fighter jets to bomb Houthi territory on November 5. SUDDENLY A LINGERING BATTLE THREATENS TO TURN INTO A WIDER CONFLICT, POTENTIALLY DRAWING IN IRAN, THE REGION'S BIGGEST SHI'ITE POWER. Saleh says he suspects Iran is already involved. "They want to follow the system of Iran," he says of the rebels. "It is impossible. Our people are one people." Using his public speech at the ceremony, Saleh told the crowd, "There will be no compromise or cease-fire until we finish the jihad."

Mounting hostility to Westerners is one reason Total opted to hire thousands of Yemenis to construct its new natural-gas facility, despite the fact that most needed extensive training. The company says Yemenis comprised about 70% of the 11,000 or so people who built the project. TOTAL EVEN NEGOTIATED SEPARATELY WITH EACH OF THE 22 TRIBES whose land the pipeline travels through in order to avoid angering locals.

At full capacity, the port is expected to export about 6.7 million tons a year of liquefied natural gas to Asia, Europe and the US, earning between $30 BILLION AND $50 BILLION FOR YEMEN'S GOVERNMENT over the next 25 years. That's an attention-getting number for any economy. Another notable figure is 500. That's the number of Yemeni soldiers who were hired to guard the heavily fenced facility and pipeline. Because in a country as unstable as Yemen, any symbol of progress is a target.