Every month until she retired in 2011, she says, the day came when the Navy would start dumping numbers on the Cleveland, Ohio, office of the Defense Finance and Accounting Service, the Pentagon’s main accounting agency. Using the data they received, Woodford and her fellow DFAS accountants there set about preparing monthly reports to square the Navy’s books with the US Treasury’s - a balancing-the-checkbook maneuver required of all the military services and other Pentagon agencies.

And every month, they encountered the same problem. Numbers were missing. Numbers were clearly wrong. Numbers came with no explanation of how the money had been spent or which congressional appropriation it came from. “A lot of times there were issues of numbers being inaccurate,” Woodford says. “We didn’t have the detail … for a lot of it.”

The data flooded in just two days before deadline. As the clock ticked down, Woodford says, staff were able to resolve a lot of the false entries through hurried calls and emails to Navy personnel, but many mystery numbers remained. For those, Woodford and her colleagues were told by superiors to take “unsubstantiated change actions” - in other words, enter false numbers, commonly called “plugs,” to make the Navy’s totals match the Treasury’s.

Because of its persistent inability to tally its accounts, the Pentagon is the only federal agency that has not complied with a law that requires annual audits of all government departments. That means that the $8.5 trillion in taxpayer money doled out by Congress to the Pentagon since 1996, the first year it was supposed to be audited, has never been accounted for.

The Pacific Alliance, a network of four Pacific bordering Latin American nations, has a neo-liberal orientation and is closely allied with the EU and the USA through free trade agreements. It is currently growing rapidly stronger and could possibly also threaten Brazil's standing as the subcontinent's most powerful economic power.

However, it is mainly aimed at Latin America's Venezuela-inspired ALBA alliance, struggling for autonomous development, which includes strong socially oriented policies. "The strategy of the Pacific Alliance" is "not just commercial," it is more "a political and military strategy [seeking] to reinstall the Washington Consensus," according to a minister of ALBA member Bolivia.

At the beginning of the month, Germany obtained observer status at the Pacific Alliance, with which the German industry is expanding its trade relations. Alongside its increasing tensions on the Latin American continent, the alliance is helping the West prepare for the conflict of the century - between China and the USA.

The kingdom, which is Iran's chief regional rival, "has no relations or contacts with Israel of any kind or at any level," said a foreign ministry spokesman, quoted by state news agency SPA.

Under the headline "Two old foes unite against Tehran," Britain's Sunday Times newspaper said Israel and Saudi Arabia were working together on "contingency plans for a possible attack on Iran if its nuclear program is not significantly curbed." "As part of the growing cooperation, Riyadh is understood already to have given the go-ahead for Israeli planes to use its airspace in the event of an attack on Iran," it said.

Both Israel and Saudi Arabia fear that talks between the Western powers and Iran in Geneva will yield an agreement that relaxes sanctions on Iran without effectively curbing Iran’s nuclear program. Talks are set to resume this Thursday, November 21.

Authorities estimate more than 3,900 people were killed when Typhoon Haiyan, one of the largest ever recorded, made landfall in the central Philippines and the sea surged ashore. Philippine authorities, the US military and international agencies face a mounting humanitarian crisis, with the number of people displaced by the catastrophe estimated at four million, up from 900,000 late last week.

Bernard Kerblat, UN High Commissioner for Refugees representative for the Philippines, said the agency was still facing coordination problems and bottlenecks. "As of now, personally, I am not so sure that we've reached every single portion of the territory where people are in need of aid," he said. "And, in fact, I wouldn't be surprised that unfortunately that there might still be, as I'm speaking to you, day 11 of this disaster, there might be still very isolated islands."

Orla Fagan, a spokeswoman for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, said it was a "logistical nightmare" to get relief supplies out at all. "The size, the quantity of people that have been affected by this, this is massive, between 10 and 12.9 million people have to be assisted to recover from this. This is absolutely huge. It's like taking the whole of Belgium and trying to assist."

“We must break the taboos and make sanitation for all a global development priority,” UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon declared. The UN estimates that 1.1 billion people – including around half of India’s population – defecate in the open, which is both a symptom and a cause of unsanitary conditions. More than 800,000 children under five die from diarrhoeal diseases that could be easily prevented each year.

The problem, already prevalent in some of the world’s poorest countries, has a cruelly disproportionate impact on the most impoverished. In total, inadequate sanitation robs the world’s economy of $260 billion worth of productivity annually. A lack of private toilets also particularly affects women, who generally suffer more infections, spend more time looking for available spots, and leave themselves more open to assault when they do find them.

He was quoted by an official website as telling Russian President Vladimir Putin that they could "complicate the process towards a win-win agreement". The Kremlin said Mr Putin had stressed there was a "real chance" of a deal.

Representatives from Iran and the P5+1 group of nations will begin a new round of negotiations in Geneva on Wednesday. Three days of high-level talks earlier this month failed to achieve a breakthrough. US Secretary of State John Kerry said Iran been unable to accept a deal "at that particular moment", while Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif blamed divisions between Western powers and appeared to single out France for "gutting over half" of a US draft deal.

Some reports said France's delegation had wanted to place tight restrictions on the heavy-water reactor being built at Arak; others that the Iranian government's insistence on formal recognition of its "right" to enrich uranium had been the major obstacle.

The worst-hit area appears to be in and around the north-eastern city of Olbia. Prime Minister Enrico Letta has declared a state of emergency, speaking of a "national tragedy". Mr Letta announced that 20 million euros (£16.8 million, $27 million) would be allocated immediately to emergency relief efforts, with soldiers deployed in the region.

"We are focusing on essential operations: saving human lives, assisting displaced people and clearing road access," he said after an emergency cabinet meeting on Tuesday. "We haven't seen a situation as extreme as this, perhaps for decades - especially because it's been across the whole island."

The first of the fuel-rod assemblies at the plant’s No. 4 reactor building was transferred from an underwater rack on the fifth floor to a portable cask just before 4 p.m., the utility known as Tepco said in an e-mailed statement.Tepco planned to remove 22 assemblies from the pool, which contains 1,331 spent fuel assemblies and 202 unused assemblies, by the end of tomorrow, the company said. Crews are beginning with the unused assemblies because they are less fragile, spokesman Yusuke Kunikage said by phone.

The operation is the most significant test to date of Tepco’s ability to contain the threat stemming from the worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl. Were the rods to break or overheat, it could prompt a self-sustained nuclear chain reaction similar to the meltdowns at three Fukushima reactors following the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami.

Both powers have expressed concern that restrictions on Iran’s nuclear program will not be enough. According to The Sunday Times newspaper, Saudi Arabia already gave Israel the green light to use its airspace in the case of an attack on Iran. It was also revealed that the Saudis were willing to assist an Israeli attack by cooperating with the use of drones, rescue helicopters, and tanker planes. “Once the Geneva agreement is signed, the military option will be back on the table. The Saudis are furious and are willing to give Israel all the help it needs,” an unnamed diplomatic source told the paper.

Tehran has been negotiating sanction relief in Geneva with the P5+1 countries - consisting of the US, Britain, France, Germany, Russia, and China - in exchange for assurances that it will not develop a nuclear weapon. Exact terms on offer from both sides have not been made public, but no agreement was made last weekend. The sides will sit down for a new round of talks on November 20.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has warned that lifting sanctions on Iran without demanding sufficient concessions in return will only encourage Tehran on its path to nuclear armament and lead to future conflict. Israel has been lobbying hard against appeasement, with Netanyahu himself claiming that Iran is about to clinch “the deal of the century.”

On Saturday, Netanyahu spoke to French daily Le Figaro about the situation, stating that Israel and the “leading states in the Arab world” agree when it comes to Tehran and its nuclear capabilities. “We all think that Iran should not be allowed to have the capacities to make nuclear weapons,” he said. “We all think that a tougher stance should be taken by the international community. We all believe that if Iran were to have nuclear weapons, this could lead to a nuclear arms race in the Middle East, making the Middle East a nuclear tinderbox.”

The Switzerland-based organization, best known for its annual meeting in Davos, collated the views of academics, business experts and government employees for its report on the outlook for key economic trends, published Friday. It found that unemployment and a widening income gap were also major concerns for world leaders, although MENA tensions ranked highest.

The WEF highlighted the ongoing civil war in Syria, which has involved high-profile negotiations between Russia and the US, and political instability and unemployment across North Africa as particular areas of concern. "The year 2014 is absolutely not the year for complacency," Martina Gmur, senior director at the WEF, said in a press release. The WEF's report also identified structural unemployment as a key trend, which it described as a "global issue demanding a global solution."

The number of unemployed people worldwide rose by 4.2 million in 2012 to over 197 million, according to the International Labour Organisation (ILO), marking an unemployment rate of 5.9 percent. The ILO said it expects the number of jobseekers across the globe to rise to more than 210 million over the next five years.

"A major redistribution of power" is currently taking place in Europe, with France and Great Britain falling clearly behind Germany, according to a recent declaration of the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP). In Southern Europe, there are already massive protests against the German government's dictates.

These have not yet had major consequences, but timely preventive measures should be taken to pre-empt the establishment of a "countervailing power." The SWP's suggestions support various initiatives from within Berlin's establishment aimed at consolidating German domination over the EU and pushing the next German government toward a more offensive global policy.

The German president, for example, called in this year's National Holiday speech for a more offensive German approach to global politics, and the SWP pleads for Berlin to assume a more decisive "leadership." Whereas German predomination over the EU is today taken for granted, a shift is perceived in relations to the most important global rival - the United States.

This process could erase a century of medical advances, say government doctors in a special editorial in The Lancet health journal. Although the looming threat of antibiotic, or anti-microbial, resistance has been known about for years, the new warning reflects growing concern that the NHS and other national health systems, already under pressure from ageing populations, will struggle to cope with the rising cost of caring for people in the "post-antibiotic era".

In a stark reflection of the seriousness of the threat, England's deputy chief medical officer, Professor John Watson, said: "I am concerned that in 20 years, if I go into hospital for a hip replacement, I could get an infection leading to major complications and possible death, simply because antibiotics no longer work as they do now."

About 35 million antibiotics are prescribed by GPs in England every year. The more the drugs circulate, the more bacteria are able to evolve to resist them. In the past, drug development kept pace with evolving microbes, with a constant production line of new classes of antibiotics. But the drugs have ceased to be profitable and a new class has not been created since 1987.

In the eight months since he was chosen, cathedrals in Britain have seen a rise of about 20% in congregations, drawing in both new and lapsed members. More than half of the priests surveyed in Italy said there had been a rise in support for the church. In Spain, the church has halted a decade-long slump in attendance.

Catholic leaders in the US, France and Latin America report growth in the faithful. In Argentina, the Pope’s home country, 12% more now define themselves as religious than before his appointment. The results sugest Francis’s “electrifying” appeal is breathing new life into a church badly stained by the serial paedophile priest scandals.

Francis' simple blue Ford Focus and the small Vatican motorcade pulled up quietly to the Quirinale Palace without the blaring of sirens that typically accompanies politicians and foreign dignitaries cruising through central Rome. Once inside the onetime summer residence of popes, Francis walked slowly with President Giorgio Napolitano past the honor guard and then greeted staff members and their children, further evidence of a more casual approach to official duties by the Argentine "slum pope."

Francis' shunning of the trappings of the papacy — including its security apparatus — has defined his papacy so far. But his desire to be close to his flock and his aim to curb corruption and waste in the Vatican have raised fresh security fears, beyond the occasional mobbing of his open car by overly enthusiastic pilgrims.

At least five people were killed and it is feared that several hundred people may have been injured in the fast-moving storms. A number of people are said to be trapped inside buildings. Forecasters say up to 53 million people could be affected. Hailstones the size of tennis balls have been reported.

The rapid-moving storm - with winds of up to 111km/h (68mph) - is continuing its way east. November is ordinarily one of the quietest months in the tornado calendar, meaning these storms are unusually destructive for this time of year, the BBC's Nick Bryant in New York reports.