Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia are all affected, with hundreds of farmers reporting that locust eggs have begun hatching on their land. A record number were laid in autumn, and the conditions have been perfect for them to thrive, with the country enduring its wettest September on record after years of drought. The weather is also helping the farmers but their hopes of a best-in-a-decade harvest are now threatened by the locust invasion.

Steve Wahn, the primary industries minister in the New South Wales government visited a site near Bourke this week to see for himself the tiny insects which are infesting fields. He calls it "a plague of biblical proportions". "We are seeing survival rates of 80% or more from the locusts, whereas in a normal year you'd only get 20% or so which could survive. This is a huge challenge for us," he said.

"We've got potentially our best crop in a decade but potentially the worst locust plague in 30 years." There is now a race against time to spray the insects before they begin to fly.

The seminar was sponsored by Italian Catholic Action and other foundations. It was inspired in Benedict XVI's affirmation of the "universal vocation" of the Holy City during his visit there in May 2009. "Jews, Muslims and Christians alike call this city their spiritual home," the Pope said on that occasion. "How much needs to be done to make it truly a 'city of peace' for all peoples, where all can come in pilgrimage in search of God, and hear his voice, 'a voice which speaks of peace.'"

Cesare Mirabelli, an expert in canon and ecclesiastical law from Rome's Tor Vergata University, spoke about religious liberty as a prerequisite to peace. "All the conventions on human rights guarantee religious liberty but there is no agreement that imposes it specifically, proof that it is a very delicate matter," he said.

"Although the right to religious liberty is the first to be affirmed among the fundamental rights, it is, in fact, violated," continued Mirabelli. This can happen, he said, in "obvious and violent ways in some countries," but also "in a more subtle way when the religious dimension is erased from public life and its manifestation is not allowed. As in all liberties, when the liberty of one is violated the liberty of all is violated," he added.

The IMF policy committee, which has been struggling to agree a consensus on easing currency tensions among key economies including China and the US, said the organisation should instead keep the issue under watch.

Pressure has been piling on China to speed up the pace of economic reform by dropping its policy of using a weak currency and reserve accumulation to boost exports. Finance ministers at the 187-strong lending agency have accused China of imperilling the global recovery by fostering the imbalances that are preventing deficit countries like the US and UK from returning to economic health.

IMF officials argue that if China let its currency appreciate, Chinese imports would become more expensive, potentially sparking demand for US goods. The US is facing crippling levels of unemployment despite returning to growth, which has raised fears of a "jobless recovery" that could trigger political and social unrest. European Central Bank president Jean-Claude Trichet last night pointedly reminded China of its commitment last June to "engage in exchange rate flexibility", adding: "There is no need for [emerging economies] to continue to accumulate immense amount of reserve assets."

Despite calls for tougher action, the IMF could only pledge to "work towards a more balanced pattern of global growth, recognising the responsibilities of deficit and surplus countries". Mr Trichet added that while "we have a consensus on imbalances, the problem is implementation - as always". China on Friday hit back at calls for it to let the currency rise, saying it rejected such "shock therapy" but is committed to a more "flexible" currency regime.

George Soros, the respected hedge fund manager, also weighed into the debate. Speaking in London, he said a global "currency war" pitting China versus the rest of the world could lead to the collapse of the world economy. Mr Soros said that China had created a "lopsided currency" system and suggested it allow the yuan to appreciate by 10 percent a year - far more than the Chinese will contemplate.

Recent IMF figures showed Beijing had currency reserves of $2.447 trillion, the largest in the world and nearly 30 percent of the global total.

Those campaigns are likely to escalate to prevent jihadists and their fellow travelers from seizing control of Somalia and Yemen. Some analysts, like former CIA officer Philip Giraldi, say the United States shouldn't get any more involved in these conflicts than it is already, which is largely low-key support activity with the occasional airstrike or assassination by Special Forces.

Somalia and Yemen, he argues, "are frontline states in the burgeoning but still secret phase three of the Global War on Terror being planned in the Pentagon and spy agencies with the concurrence of the Barack Obama White House... "The administration is clearly thinking beyond Afghanistan (and even Iran), anticipating the next battlefronts in Yemen and Somalia."

"It is assiduously gathering resources to enter the fray, including setting up business fronts that can be used by covert operatives," Giraldi wrote in The American Conservative. "We are again talking of secret wars conducted in places where we do not understand the local issues or players very well, all part of a massive over-reaction directed against low-level troublemakers who do not actually pose any serious threat against the United States. Where it will all lead is anyone's guess..."

American and Chinese officials traded blows over the weekend, setting the stage for a tense G20 summit next month. The head of China's central bank rejected the idea of a big revaluation for the yuan, advocating a slow-acting "herbal medicine" instead. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner took a swipe at countries with "significantly undervalued" currencies, of which China is an obvious example.

The United States claims to be a loser in the currency wars. But in reality it is winning. The dollar has fallen sharply against most of its trading partners' currencies. On a trade-weighted basis, the dollar is the lowest it has been all year, according to the Federal Reserve major currencies index. The likelihood of an imminent bout of money-printing can keep that trend going for a long time.

China, meanwhile, claims not to be a winner. But that is disingenuous too. While the yuan just hit its highest level versus the dollar since officially abandoning its dollar peg in 2005, it has fallen heavily against most other currencies. The euro, the currency of China's biggest trading partner, has strengthened 14 percent against the yuan. The Japanese yen is not far behind. Various emerging markets, such as Brazil, have also seen their currencies soar.

The gap between winners and losers is widening. With rates as low as can be in the West, money has poured into assets in the East and South. Many Asian stock markets are at multi-year highs - benchmark indices in Indonesia and the Philippines hit records last week. Emerging market bonds too are rallying, as investors scramble for yields. That adds further upward pressure to currencies already out of relative whack with their trading peers. There is no easy answer.

A gradual but sustained revaluation of the yuan versus the dollar - combined with a halt to the dollar's own depreciation - is the least bad way forward. But getting such a deal, as positions become increasingly entrenched, will be tricky. And if both sides refuse to do anything, a currency war could mutate into a trade war - a genuine lose-lose scenario.

More than 3 million demonstrators - one in 20 of all French people - marched yesterday against the President's plans to raise the standard retirement age from 60 to 62. Tens of thousands of students joined the marches for the first time, threatening to radicalise the protests and broaden them into a rebellion against a deeply unpopular presidency.

Militant union branches in the railway and oil-refining industries were pushing last night for a showdown with Mr Sarkozy, who has made reform of the loss-making state pension system the make-or-break issue of his final 20 months in office.

But does it do us or future generations any good to ignore the very serious signs of trouble that are erupting all around us? The truth is that it is about time to wake up and admit how much trouble we are actually in. The US government is absolutely drowning in debt. The entire society is absolutely drowning in debt. We are being slaughtered in the arena of world trade, and every single month tens of billions of dollars (along with large numbers of factories and jobs) leave our shores for good. Our infrastructure is failing, our kids are less educated and our incomes are going down. We have serious, serious problems.

At one time, the US economy was so dominant that it was not even worth talking about who was in second place. That is no longer the case in 2010. Our forefathers handed us the greatest economic machine in history and we have allowed it to fall apart right in front of our eyes. A national economic crisis of historic proportions is getting worse with each passing month, and yet most of our leaders seem to be asleep at the switch.

The following are 24 statistics about the United States economy that are almost too embarrassing to admit...

#1 Ten years ago, the United States was ranked number one in average wealth per adult. In 2010, the United States has fallen to seventh.

#2 The United States once had the highest proportion of young adults with post-secondary degrees in the world. Today, the US has fallen to 12th.

#3 In the 2009 "prosperity index" published by the Legatum Institute, the United States was ranked as just the ninth most prosperous country in the world. That was down five places from 2008.

#4 In 2001, the United States ranked fourth in the world in per capita broadband Internet use. Today it ranks 15th.

#5 The economy of India is projected to become larger than the US economy by the year 2050.

#6 One prominent economist now says that the Chinese economy will be three times larger than the US economy by the year 2040.

#7 According to a new study conducted by Thompson Reuters, China could become the global leader in patent filings by next year.

#8 The United States has lost approximately 42,400 factories since 2001. Approximately 75 percent of those factories employed at least 500 workers while they were still in operation.

#9 The United States has lost a staggering 32 percent of its manufacturing jobs since the year 2000.

#10 Manufacturing employment in the US computer industry is actually lower in 2010 than it was in 1975.

#11 In 1959, manufacturing represented 28 percent of all US economic output. In 2008, it represented only 11.5 percent.

#12 The television manufacturing industry began in the United States. So how many televisions are manufactured in the United States today? According to Princeton University economist Alan S Blinder, the grand total is zero.

#13 As of the end of 2009, less than 12 million Americans worked in manufacturing. The last time that less than 12 million Americans were employed in manufacturing was in 1941.

#14 Back in 1980, the United States imported approximately 37 percent of the oil that we use. Now we import nearly 60 percent of the oil that we use.

#15 The US trade deficit is running about 40 or 50 billion dollars a month in 2010. That means that by the end of the year approximately half a trillion dollars (or more) will have left the United States for good.

#16 Between 2000 and 2009, America's trade deficit with China increased nearly 300 percent.

#17 Today, the United States spends approximately $3.90 on Chinese goods for every $1 that China spends on goods from the United States.

#18 According to a new study conducted by the Economic Policy Institute, if the US trade deficit with China continues to increase at its current rate, the US economy will lose over half a million jobs this year alone.

#19 American 15-year-olds do not even rank in the top half of all advanced nations when it comes to math or science literacy.

#20 Median household income in the US declined from $51,726 in 2008 to $50,221 in 2009. That was the second yearly decline in a row.

#21 The United States has the third worst poverty rate among the advanced nations tracked by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

#22 Since the Federal Reserve was created in 1913, the US dollar has lost over 95 percent of its purchasing power.

#23 US government spending as a percentage of GDP is now up to approximately 36 percent.

#24 The Congressional Budget Office is projecting that US government public debt will hit 716 percent of GDP by the year 2080.

Please share these statistics with as many family members and friends as you can. It is time to get real. It is time to admit that we have some really big problems.

Forecasters Positive Weather Solutions have already predicted a 'white-out' winter almost as harsh as last winter - with widespread snow, temperatures down to -4F (-20C) and transport chaos. The Weather Outlook, which has an accurate seasonal forecasting record, warned the UK is now being gripped by a bitter series of winters comparable with the harsh 1939-42 winters which made conditions so horrendous during the Second World War. Last winter was the coldest for 31 years, with an average UK-wide temperature of just 34F (1.5C).

Mr Gaze told the western half of the UK to brace for heavy snow - while the eastern half freezes in temperatures as low as 5F (-15C). "The weather pattern may be different this winter, with cold air from the east or south-east, rather than north east," he said. "The heaviest snowfall occurs on the boundary between cold, dry air from the east and mild, moist air from the Atlantic - so it would not be a surprise to see the west of the UK having heavy snowfalls."

"Germany is in serious danger of being overrun by foreigners." It's a sentence one would expect to find on an election poster for Germany's far-right NPD party. As it happens, it's a view that is held by over one-third of the German population - a new survey has revealed that 35.6 percent of Germans agree with the statement.

Additionally, more than 30 percent think that "foreigners come to take advantage of the welfare state" and that when jobs are scarce foreigners should be sent "back to their own country." More than one-tenth would like a "Fuhrer" - the survey deliberately used the German word for "leader" that is associated with Adolf Hitler - who would govern the country "with a firm hand" for the benefit of all.

These are some of the findings of a new study on right-wing attitudes that was presented on Wednesday in Berlin by the Friedrich Ebert Foundation, a think tank linked to the center-left Social Democrats. A quarter of Germans agreed with statements that included xenophobic content. "We've detected a rise in decidedly anti-democratic and racist attitudes in 2010," said the researchers, describing the results of their survey of 2,500 randomly selected people.

The photos show five 11-meter-long Scuds at the Adra base. Three are on trucks in a car park. Two others are in a training area where 20 to 25 people can be made out along with about 20 vehicles. One of the two missiles appears to be mounted on a mobile launcher; another is on the ground.

In 2006, Hezbollah rocket fire into Israel precipitated Israeli air strikes and a ground invasion of Lebanon. Hezbollah's month-long barrage of rockets deeply unsettled Israel; with Scud missiles, Hezbollah can strike all the major cities in Israel.

In April, the Kuwaiti newspaper Al Rai reported that Syrian President Bashar Assad was arming Hezbollah with Scuds, a report Assad denied but both the US and Israel later confirmed. Hezbollah sources told Al Rai that the group had the capability to launch 15 tons of explosives at Israel every day in the case of another war between the two sides, and went on to claim that Hezbollah possesses a wide range of missiles with a heavy payload, including the 1-ton Zilzal missile and half-ton Fateh 110 and M600 missiles.

Silver hit a 30-year peak to approach $24 an ounce, and the Reuters/Jefferies CRB index - a barometer for commodities - rose above 300 points for the first time in two years, as the dollar fell broadly on reinforced expectations of more US easing.

Axel Merk, portfolio manager of the Merk Hard Currency Fund, said that the Fed and other central banks are trying to weaken their currencies to boost economic growth, prompting investors to turn to gold as an alternative currency. "With the weaker dollar, inflation will pick up in the commodity space, which is the most sensitive to monetary stimulus. So, it's only logical that gold will do very well in that environment," said Merk, who manages $500 million in mutual fund assets.

The destructive trade and capital imbalances of the pre-crisis era are back, banking reform appears stuck in paralysing discord, public debt in many advanced economies remains firmly set on the road to ruin, and the spirit of international co-operation that saw nations come together to fight the crisis has largely disappeared.

This was not where we were meant to be in tackling the underlying causes of the crisis and returning the world to sustainable growth. Yet beneath this sense of frustration at lack of progress - and at international organisations such as the IMF and the G20 to bring it about - there is an underlying truth that's often left unspoken; many of the problems in the world economy right now are not international at all, but US specific and can only really be solved by America itself.

The Fed can act, by pouring more money into the economy (QE2), but the Hill is paralysed. A second fiscal stimulus of any size is blocked by political division. More monetary stimulus is all very well, but it's a blunt instrument which struggles to get through to the job creative bit of the economy - small and medium sized enterprises - and threatens new bubbles in emerging markets as abundant liquidity chases yield.

There's no political appetite or will in the US for the long term entitlement reform and tax increases necessary to bring the deficit under control. Nobody believes US Treasury forecasts that public debt will be stabilised by 2014. Much more believable are IMF estimates which see gross US debt rising to well in excess of 110 percent of GDP by 2015. The US has no strategy for the jobless and no strategy for rolling back debt. Little wonder that a renewed sense of gloom has settled on international policy makers.

Water levels were so low that at Guanlei, a river town not far from here, dozens of boats were laid up for more than three months. Alarmed at the drying up of the world's largest inland fishery, the four members of the Mekong River Commission - Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam - called a special summit.

"Without good and careful management of the Mekong river as well as its natural resources, this great river will not survive," Thai Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva warned. The commission's political leaders suspected that China was hoarding water behind the dams it has built on the Mekong, exacerbating the impact of the drought.

China presented data to allay these fears. Finally, the rains returned and the tensions dissipated. But the incident highlighted the strains that are being generated as Asia's unslakeable thirst for water collides with the reality of a supply that is limited and, if climate change projections are borne out, may shrink sharply. The Asian Development Bank speaks of a looming crisis that threatens access to water and sanitation needs for millions of households and industries.

Thailand's cabinet agreed to impose a 15 percent withholding tax on capital gains and interest income from foreign investment in government debt in a bid to brake the baht, which has climbed to its highest level since the 1997 Asian financial crisis. Japan said it would wade into the foreign exchange market anew if need be to weaken the yen, despite widespread disapproval by its rich-country peers of a rare bout of dollar buying last month.

And Beijing once again talked down the prospects of a faster rise in the yuan, even as it acknowledged that more money would pour into China over the rest of the year in anticipation that the currency would strengthen. China's insistence that the yuan's rise must be gradual is a huge obstacle to the appreciation in Asian exchange rates that policymakers say are needed to help reduce global economic imbalances. Countries that compete with China fear losing business if they unilaterally let their currencies rise.

The tide of money is rising as markets anticipate that the Federal Reserve will crank up the money printing presses again next month to try to galvanize the stuttering US economy. A second round of quantitative easing by the US central government would aim primarily to lower long-term US interest rates, but it would also pile more pressure on the dollar, which is already languishing near a 15-year low against the yen.

The move comes amid recent allegations that mortgage-servicers, which include units of major banks such as Bank of America Corp, submitted fraudulent documents in thousands of foreclosure proceedings nationwide. The banks say the document problems are technical - largely the result of papers approved by so-called robo-signers with little review - and don't reflect substantive problems with foreclosures.

Still, they have drawn criticism from consumer advocates and state and federal lawmakers. "I think the mortgage-servicing firms need to understand that they face real exposure now, and they would be well advised to take this very seriously, to clean this up by doing loan workouts to keep people in their homes, which up till now they've just paid lip-service to," said Ohio Attorney General Richard Cordray.