The same thing in the village of Kabal - in fact, nine of the twelve districts in the picturesque Swat Valley, 100 miles from Pakistan's capital, have been taken over by militants, who have torched music shops, barred girls from going to school, forced women to wear burqas and decreed that men must grow beards. As if to complete the flashback to Taliban-era Afghanistan, the new overlords have even attempted to blow up centuries-old Buddhist monuments.

But this is not Afghanistan, of course, or even the tribal lands of the frontier provinces. The Swat valley is Pakistan's premier tourist destination, home to its only ski slope and a haven for trout fishing. But it has become increasingly embattled in the face of an anti-government campaign, over the past five months, by the charismatic radio preacher Maulana Fazlullah, known as the FM mullah, who has spawned a wave of fundamentalist militancy that has swept from the Afghan frontier through the lawless tribal areas of Waziristan and into the settled areas far from the border.

The government of President General Pervez Musharraf seems unable to do anything about it.

In parts of the United States, milk is more expensive than gasoline. There are reports of cows being stolen on Wisconsin dairy farms. "THERE'S A WORLD SHORTAGE OF MILK," said Philip Goode, manager of international policy at Dairy Australia in Canberra.

Rising incomes, from China and India to Latin America and the Middle East, are lifting millions of people out of poverty and into the middle class. It turns out that, along with zippy cars and flat-panel TVs, milk is the mark of new money, a significant source of protein that factors into much of any affluent person's diet. Milk goes into infant formulas, chocolates, ice cream and cheese. Most baked goods contain butter, and coffee chains like Starbucks sell more milk than coffee.

Big buyers like chocolate makers and grocery stores buy their milk under long-term contracts, and so can smooth out sudden spikes or dips in prices. Thus, the full impact of the global shortage varies from country to country, and not all consumers are yet suffering the full impact.

Australia, a major exporter, is suffering a multi-year drought that has devastated its milk production by killing off the grass that milk cows eat. Many in Australia worry that, far from being a temporary problem, the drought is the result of global warming and that dairies will never be the same.

"NO ONE FORECAST THIS RAPID SHORTAGE OF MILK," said Torsten Hemme, head of the IFCN center.

Rainfall since the beginning of October had dropped by 90 percent in Jiangxi and 86 percent in neighbouring Hunan, the country's largest rice-growing province, from average figures, Xinhua news agency said. Rice is a staple for most Chinese and a crop which needs a constant supply of water

The Gan and Xiang rivers running through the two provinces had seen their lowest water levels in history, Xinhua said. The shallow water has caused a jam of barges in some sections of the Gan. Drought and floods are perennial problems in China where meteorologists have complained about the increased extreme weather, partly blaming it on climate change.

More than 1,100 Chinese were killed during summer floods this year. But some parts of the south were hit by weeks of scorching heat and drought in the summer, when as much as a third of farmland was damaged and millions of people were short of drinking water. It was not immediately clear how much damage had been caused to the rice crop.

Guillaume Pepy said simultaneous acts of sabotage overnight caused huge delays to TGV services already hit by a long transport strike over reforms. Mr Pepy declined to say who targeted the TGV network. But the SNCF management had earlier warned that union militants might try to damage the TGV network.

The gathering in Annapolis will not even address the core issues dividing the two peoples in anything but the most vague and general terms. Condoleezza Rice, the Secretary of State, has spent weeks shuttling around the Middle East preparing for the meeting, yet its goal could scarcely be more modest.

A joint declaration signed by the Israeli government under Ehud Olmert and Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestinian Authority (PA), will be the sole result. This will recite the issues dividing the two parties and look forward to "final status" talks, probably opening next month. Then the hard pounding will begin. If the two sides miraculously succeed in agreeing all of the above, a peace deal will follow. Miss Rice earnestly hopes this will occur before the Bush Administration goes out of business in January 2009.

Then what? Israeli officials I met in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv last week believe that, instead of being implemented, any such deal would be placed carefully "on the shelf".

Mr Olmert is a political colossus compared with his Palestinian counterpart. Mr Abbas has lost control of Gaza to Hamas, his Islamist enemies. In truth, he does not wield much power over the West Bank, either, and the supposed government he leads is a shambles.

Israel will consider leaving the West Bank only if the PA can be trusted to prevent terrorist attacks. Under present conditions, one senior Israeli said that after any withdrawal "we will be back there in 20 minutes, because they cannot stop even one terrorist". Just as Israel has undermined the Palestinian leadership, so Hamas has made it far harder for any Israeli government to reach a peace agreement. The only way ahead is for Israel to help Mr Abbas and so undermine Hamas.

One creative option might be for Israel to ease restrictions on movement to and from Gaza by agreement with Mr Abbas, cutting Hamas out of the picture and allowing him to take the credit. But any peace accords must await a change in the political constellation on both sides.

Qingdao, which will host Olympic sailing events, will pump water from the Yellow River equal to almost a year's annual consumption in the city of 7.7 million residents over the next 10 days, Xinhua news agency said, citing a senior water engineer. Like much of northern China, Qingdao, which lies more than 300 km (186-mile) from the Yellow River, faces water shortages which have become more acute due to economic and population growth, the agency said.

Annual water consumption had nearly doubled since the early 1990s in Qingdao, which enjoys only one-seventh of the country's average water resources, it added. Ensuring adequate drinking water during the Olympics has also proved a headache for Beijing, where a prolonged drought and the prospect of 2.5 million Games-related visitors have seen officials scrambling to divert water from reservoirs in neighboring Hebei province.

The latest annual report from the EU's financial watchdog once more fails to give the £75 billion-a-year euro budget a clean bill of health, citing spending "irregularities" and a lack of supervision by the European Commission and by EU governments. The commission oversees the handling of the budget but the member states are responsible for distributing the bulk - almost 80 per cent - of EU spending, most of it in grants and subsidies.

Accounting procedures have been tightened up, concedes the European Court of Auditors' report, but it spotlights continuing flaws in the handling of EU farm subsidies and money aimed at poorer EU regions. Most of the mis-spending is caused by complex technical requirements rather than outright fraud, say the auditors. But old-fashioned scams - including claiming EU handouts for olive trees which don't exist - are still happening.

Conservative MEP Richard Ashworth warned: "Trust in the integrity of the accounts is vital in any democracy, so the constant inability to satisfy the auditors is unacceptable. After 13 years, the European Union has begun to look like a banana republic." UKIP MEP Jeffrey Titford said that their annual audit problem was "becoming as regular as Christmas", adding: "If the EU were a British company, the fraud squad would have been all over it years ago and people would be in prison."

THE CALL FOR AN OIL JIHAD AGAINST THE DOLLAR was first issued by bin Laden in his "Letter to the American People," published by the London Guardian Nov. 24, 2002. Bin Laden wrote, "You steal our wealth and oil at paltry prices because of your international influence and military threats. This theft is indeed the highest theft ever witnessed in the history of the world." He declared, "Whoever has stolen our wealth, then we have the right to destroy their economy."

WND reported last week that with oil at over $90 a barrel, THE U.S. HAS BEGUN SPENDING $1 BILLION A DAY FOR FOREIGN OIL, an outflow of dollars that both deepens the country's negative balance of international trade and further weakens the dollar on world currency markets.

"I would say it's just a couple of years away," reports Daniel Estulin, author of "The True Story of the Bilderberg Group." Estulin, a Canadian now living in Europe, says the original plans for a North American Union involved the U.S. and Canada as the prime participants. It was motivated primarily by the desire to harvest Canada's abundant natural resources.

"Everything is in place," he says. "Europe is now one country, one currency and one constitution. North America is about to become one. The African Union has had its working model going for over a decade. Asia is openly discussing the near-future Asian Union, being sold to us as an economic inevitability beneficial to all its citizens."

Those questioning Estulin's conclusion as mere speculation need only recall organizational financer David Rockefeller's own words as recorded in his "Memoirs." "Some even believe we are part of a secret cabal working against the best interests of the United States, characterizing my family and me as 'internationalists' and conspiring with others around the world to build a more integrated global political and economic structure - one world, if you will," he wrote. "If that's the charge, I stand guilty, and I am proud of it."

The chairman of the organisation, Paul Gray, has resigned. Revenue and Customs says it does not believe the records - names, addresses, date of birth and bank accounts - have fallen into the wrong hands. BBC political editor Nick Robinson said he understood ministers had been aware of the problem for nine to 10 days.

The Metropolitan Police have confirmed they are "making inquiries" into the discs. Mr Darling is expected to outline the measures taken to protect those whose data has been lost. The resignation of Mr Gray was accepted because discs had been transported in breach of rules governing data protection.

BBC Update - The names, addresses, bank and building society account details of a staggering 25 million UK residents contained on two compact discs went missing after they were sent from HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) to the Audit Office. The chairman of HMRC today quit after it was revealed that the discs had been sent out by an unauthorised junior member of staff, Chancellor Alistair Darling told Parliament this afternoon. He admitted that strict security procedures had been breached. Describing the incident as "deeply regrettable", he also admitted it was the second time the data, which relates to child benefit and includes the addresses of every child in the UK, had been wrongly downloaded and sent in the post, following an earlier request in March.

Postal workers, teachers, air traffic controllers and hospital staff are holding a 24-hour stoppage to protest against planned pay and job cuts. Students are also upset over plans to grant universities more autonomy. It could be the largest protest against President Nicolas Sarkozy's reform plans since he took power in May.

Meanwhile, transport workers are beginning the seventh day of an indefinite strike against planned pension cuts. Their protests have affected millions of commuters across France. Finance Minister Christine Lagarde said the dispute was costing France at least $440m (£215m) a day.

It says fishing crews often continue catching large amounts of fish, such as cod, by accident after exceeding quotas and have no option but to dump them. The practice leaves crews struggling to make a living, while damaging hopes for sustainability, say environmentalists. EU commissioner Joe Borg acknowledges the problem but sees no clear solution.

Trawler skipper Phil Walsh told BBC News the quota for cod and other white fish he and other inshore fishermen were allocated by Brussels this year was tiny. By June he had landed all of the cod he was allowed. So, since then, he has been fishing for prawns and dumping prime whiting, haddock and cod, which would fetch as much as £13.50/kg on a supermarket shelf.

Trawler skipper David Mell sums it up: "I feel very bitter because we've been so long trying to protect the cod. We've had decommissioning, increased our mesh size, we've been through a lot of pain really. But I thought I would never see the day that I had to throw adult cod overboard. It doesn't make sense when we have people in this world dying of starvation."

After reintroducing the Latin Tridentine Mass, the Pope wants to widen the use of Gregorian chant and baroque sacred music. In an address to the bishops and priests of St Peter's Basilica, he said that there needed to be "continuity with tradition" in their prayers and music. He referred pointedly to "the time of St Gregory the Great", the pope who gave his name to Gregorian chant.

Mgr Valentin Miserachs Grau, the director of the Pontifical Institute of Sacred Music, which trains church musicians, said, "Due to general ignorance, especially in sectors of the clergy, there exists music which is devoid of sanctity, true art and universality." Mgr Grau said that Gregorian chant was the "cardinal point" of liturgical music and that traditional music "should become again the living soul of the assembly".

The autumn leaves are still dropping and there is more than a month to go before Christmas Day. Yet the pressure to buy, buy, buy has seldom been more intense. Shops are piping glutinous Yuletide music through their sound systems. Fake snow has been squeezed into the corners of window displays. The seasonal lights are twinkling - no, pulsating - in London's Oxford Street and false-bearded Santa Clauses are expected to take up residence in their grottos soon.

Out goes the message to all citizens: if you don't fill your shopping bag with goods, you cannot hope to be happy; if you don't join in this orgy of consumerism, you are a spoilsport; welcome to one and all, provided you have good credit. Excess is somehow depicted as normal.

The second half of November may seem early to denounce the excesses of Christmas but the reality is that this is the time of year when, in terms of extravagance, much of the damage is done. If you can detect a faint aroma of burning it may be another family's credit card that has gone into meltdown. Again, see, I try to make light of it. But for each family that goes seriously over its spending limits you can be sure there will be countless domestic arguments and tense encounters between husbands and wives. This is what Christmas does to too many households.

The Chancellor failed to provide a convincing guarantee that all £25billion of Bank of England loans would be paid back. With Mr Darling failing to calm the markets, the FTSE 100 index plummeted almost 3 per cent, with £40billion wiped off the value of blue-chip companies.

Mr Darling insisted: "The money lent by the Bank of England is secured against assets, such as mortgages, held by Northern Rock. So we fully expect to get it back." But there is concern that much of the £113billion in assets Northern Rock held in July has already been sold off, and the current level is dangerously close to the £25billion loan figure.

While investors are nursing heavy losses, the bank's chief executive Adam Applegarth, who resigned last Friday, managed to cash in when the price was close to its high. He made £1.1million from share sales in 2006 and sold a further 135,963 for £1.62million last January. Applegarth allegedly used some of the cash to buy luxury cars, including an Aston Martin for himself and a Ferrari for his wife.