NASA satellites have pinpointed 358 fire hotspots in the last week alone as the flames rage through fields, scrub and into the precious rainforests. By the day the death toll of fire-fighters rises. At least 19 have been killed by blazes that move faster than a man can run. Indonesia’s tragedy is the horrifying consequence of slash-and-burn farming and the impacts of an El Niño weather system that has turned the land into a tinderbox.

Together, they have created an unstoppable fire storm that has coated thousands of square miles in a deadly shroud of smoke that is impacting on millions of lives. Warships have been put on alert to evacuate children from the worst areas where the toxic smoke hovers and schools and offices are being shutdown.

Flights have been cancelled and it is predicted that Indonesia’s faltering economy could suffer £32 billion losses, around four per cent of its GDP. For Indonesia, an emerging Far East powerhouse, the fires are also creating diplomatic friction with neighbouring Singapore and Malaysia.

"It's been a long time since there was any water here," said a security guard walking up the dry bed to order AFP journalists away on Friday. The scene at Saracuruna is repeated across much of eastern Brazil between Rio and the megacity of Sao Paulo, with reservoirs and rivers running dry and authorities scrambling to avoid having to impose rationing. Rio de Janeiro state's environmental department blames "the worst drought in 85 years" for the crisis, while independent activists say decades of bad policy is equally culpable.

Although the southern tropical rainy season is just beginning, scientists fear that the El Nino weather phenomenon active this year may disrupt that hoped for relief from the sky, leaving tens of millions of people at risk. Daily water access, potential disruption of the 2016 Rio Olympics, crop irrigation, and the running of Brazil's hydroelectric industry, which provides for 75 percent of the country's power, are all at stake.

“The lack of rainfall in Gauteng is exacerbating the situation. The high water demand will cause localised problems in the City of Johannesburg, City of Tshwane and the Ekurhuleni Metropolitan Municipality.” The restrictions are being implemented until further notice and mean no excess outside use of water is permitted between 6am and 6pm.

The announcement comes as the entire country moves into the grips of the worst drought in 23 years. The past two droughts coincided with El Niño weather patterns in the Pacific Ocean, which warms the world’s largest body of water and creates drought in much of the southern hemisphere. Its appearance in 1982 and 1991 led to two year-long droughts across South Africa.

Jorgensen was in her third trimester when the car accident occurred in May 2008. Her daughter was delivered by C-section after the head-on collision and died six days later, according to the report. In October, the New York Court of Appeals reversed Jorgensen’s conviction, ruling that she was not guilty because she fatally injured her daughter before she was born. Not all of the judges agreed on the ruling. In a dissent, Judge Eugene Fahey wrote, “I cannot join in a result that analyzes our statutes to determine that a six-day-old child is not a person.”

Warner Todd Huston notes that as outrageous as the ruling may seem, the court is right that current state laws do not recognize unborn babies as “persons.” Jorgensen is no longer being held accountable for her baby’s death because, in the eyes of the state, her unborn daughter did not have the rights of personhood when her reckless behavior fatally injured her child.

After about four hours downtown, I went home with a great feeling about this year’s Halloween celebration. Our Daily Sun News “Pirates of Publication” entry was a hit. My staff and I had a lot of fun. And children had a safe venue to celebrate.

But when I got home and turned on the TV, I heard a clip of an evangelist preaching about the evils of participating in Halloween. In this day and age, to him, it was evil. But if you were downtown last night, you’d know there was nothing evil about All Hallow’s Eve in Sunnyside. I just can’t believe people are still that uneducated about Halloween — which, incidentally, is my favorite holiday. So to set the record straight, let’s talk about Halloween and its history for a little bit.

In case you didn’t know, Halloween is a mixture of Christian and pagan celebrations. And while some of you may be aghast about some of the pagan traditions in today’s modern Halloween, they were actually designed to ward off evil. Our modern celebration isn’t about Satan. It’s about having a safe, fun evening. It’s about dressing up. It’s about feasting. And it’s still about warding off evil, no matter how religious you are.

The figures also found while 57% classified themselves as Christian, fewer than 10% actually go to church. Many scholars agree that Jesus was a real man, who lived in Galilee over two thousand years ago, although many details surrounding his life are still debated.

But, the Church of England survey found that four in 10 people did not realise Jesus was a real person, with a quarter of 18 to 34 year olds believing he was a mythical or fictional character.

Voters are due to decide by the end of 2017 whether the UK should remain in the EU, and opinion polls show rising support for leaving the bloc. Froman’s comments on Wednesday undermine a key economic argument deployed by proponents of exit, who say Britain would prosper on its own and be able to secure bilateral free trade agreements (FTAs) with trading partners.

The US is Britain’s biggest export market after the EU, buying more than $54 billion (£35 billion) in goods from the UK in 2014. “I think it’s absolutely clear that Britain has a greater voice at the trade table being part of the EU, being part of a larger economic entity,” Froman told Reuters, adding that EU membership gives Britain more leverage in negotiations.

“We’re not particularly in the market for FTAs with individual countries. We’re building platforms … that other countries can join over time.” If Britain left the EU, Froman said, it would face the same tariffs and trade barriers as other countries outside the US free trade network.

This means that China was responsible for more than a third of all the $57 trillion debt created since 2007, making a mockery of the QE unleashed by all the DM central banks - something we first noted about two years before the famous McKinsey report went to print. However, it was precisely this credit expansion that not only allowed China to completely ignore the global depression of 2008/2009 but to build lots and lots of ghost cities such as these.

To be sure, many noticed but everyone kept quiet: after all, to build these cities China not only had to create trillions in debt, it had to import hundreds of billions worth of commodities from places such as Brazil and Australia. Then, in the late summer and fall of 2014 something happened: for whatever reason, as we noticed one year ago, the most unregulated aspect of China's financial system, its shadow banks, not only stopped lending money but actually went into reverse, thus putting a lid on China's Total Social Financing expansion, which had been the world's "under the radar" growth dynamo for so many years. At that moment not only did China's ghost cities officially die, but it meant an imminent collapse for China's feeder commodity economies such as the abovementioned Australia and Brazil.

And since China's domestic demand, not only from "ghost cities" but all other fixed investment was a function of pervasive credit, suddenly China's commodity industry in general, and steel industry in particular, entered a state of shocked stasis. To get a sense of how bad it is, look no further than China's steel industry. It is here that, as Bloomberg reports, "demand is collapsing along with prices," and "banks are tightening lending and losses are stacking up, the deputy head of the China Iron & Steel Association said on Wednesday."

As we reported a month ago, at current commodity prices, over half the debtors in China's commodity space are generating so little cash, they can't even cover their interest payment. They are, therefore, utterly insolvent, and the broader Chinese bond market is well aware of this - this is the reason why suddenly credit funding has collapsed. And this is how China's steel (and commodity in general) sector has suddenly found itself paralyzed without access to funding, and with collapsing end demand.

The heated exchange came after a US warship sailed within 12 nautical miles of one of Beijing's man-made islands in the contested Spratly archipelago on Tuesday. In a statement, Mr Shengli said: “If the United States continues with these kinds of dangerous, provocative acts, there could well be a seriously pressing situation between frontline forces from both sides on the sea and in the air, or even a minor incident that sparks war. I hope the US side cherishes the good situation between the Chinese and US navies that has not come easily and avoids these kinds of incidents from happening again.”

Now the EU has waded into the argument saying it is siding with Washington, in a move that may affect Brussels' discussions with Beijing at next week's Asia-Europe Meeting of foreign affairs ministers. A senior EU official said: “The US are exercising their freedom of navigation.” He said the EU was concerned about Beijing's plans to build new islands in contested waters, a statement that may be welcomed by other Asian nations opposing China's claims to almost the entire South China Sea.

Vietnam, the Philippines, Taiwan, Malaysia and Brunei contest China's sovereignty over parts of one of the world's busiest sea lanes. The official added: "While not taking a position on claims, the EU is committed to a maritime order based upon the principles of international law, in particular as reflected in the United Nations Convention on the law of the Sea.”

“Russia is destined to be a great power, not a regional power,” Sarkozy said during his speech at the Moscow State University of International Relations (MGIMO) adding that “those who forgot about the role of Russia made a grave mistake.” “But France did not forget,” he noted. The ex-president said that Russia is an indispensable part of global policy and without Moscow, it is impossible to resolve the challenges the world faces today.

The leader of the French Republican party also criticized attempts to isolate Russia, which according to Sarkozy make “no sense.” “We need to talk to Russia especially when we disagree,” he said. “This dialogue is not always easy because it requires respect, an effort to put aside clichés and stereotypes.”

The former president also said that EU-Russian relations are being tested now with the logic of confrontation being launched again. “We should not give in to that, but to replace it with the logic of rapprochement and cooperation,” Sarkozy said. Sarkozy also believes that Russia is one of the key actors in resolving the Syrian crisis and an “essential partner to find a way out” of it.

The group, which watches terrorist groups around the world, tweeted an image of the Arabic statement and wrote: "#IslamicState (#ISIS) terror group claims downing of Russian aircraft in #Sinai." The unverified statement, written in Arabic, says the flight crash was NOT a technical fault, as reported by security sources. It goes on to say that the attack was "in response to Russian airstrikes that killed hundreds of Muslims on Syrian land".

Last month Moscow launched a bombing campaign against the twisted terror group, which controls vast swathes of Syria and has forced thousands of people to flee the country. Vladimir Putin's bid to wipe out ISIS has been so successful that almost a million Syrians have elected to return to their homeland. The translated statement read: "The fighters of the Islamic State were able to down a Russian plane over Sinai province that was carrying over 220 Russian crusaders.

The accord will revive fears among Europe’s largest banks that the plans, which they have virulently opposed and were beginning to hope might be abandoned, could make it into law after a deal was hammered out late on Wednesday by representatives of the European parliament’s large centre-right and centre-left groups.

The measures would cover around 30 banks such as Deutsche Bank and BNP Paribas that have either been judged as systemically important by international regulators or that surpass certain thresholds, such as having total assets of at least €30 billion and trading activities amounting to at least €70 billion.

The draft would ban such banks from proprietary trading — making financial bets using their own money — and in some cases require them to prove to supervisors that their investment banking activities did not pose a threat to financial stability. If the supervisor is not convinced, the bank would either be required to split off its trading arm or face a significant increase in its capital requirements.

Mr von Weizsäcker said that the deal would deliver a “meaningful proprietary trading ban,” notably because of restrictions put on banks’ relationships with hedge funds. He also said that, crucially, it “establishes the reversal of the burden of proof for banks with the most extreme balance sheets” — meaning it places the onus on banks to justify why their activities don’t pose systemic risks.

We’ve just witnessed the member countries of the UN agree to 17 Global Goals that will, all going well, transform our world by 2030. These Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) have three ambitious aims over the next 15 years: end extreme poverty; fight inequality and injustice; and fix climate change. They will replace the Millennium Development Goals and will be measured by 169 indicators. The hope is that these goals and indicators will frame national policies and agendas, starting now.

This is an exciting moment in history, when positive change in the lives of millions of people around our world could at last be in our grasp. So, the next question is: How? How do we translate these goals into practical action? The idea of public-private partnerships (PPPs) is not a new one, but they could not be more relevant now. No one individual, organization or government is able to tackle the SDGs. But effective partnerships can.

Working together, governments, NGOs and the private sector can pioneer the kind of innovative, sustained and, most importantly, practical initiatives that can end extreme poverty or fight inequality. They can, for example, combine to raise awareness of what good hygiene and good nutrition mean, and encourage new habits that deliver them.