Calls for Wales to supply surplus water to drought-hit England were dismissed as "too costly" by Welsh Water. The company said pumping water would prove very expensive and English water firms would be looking at other solutions. EAW said periods of exceptionally dry weather in recent years had pushed parts of Wales close to drought with many rivers running low.

The agency warned that if Wales suffered a dry spring and summer this year the situation could worsen and impact wildlife living in rivers. It said it had prepared a drought plan for Wales in the event of this happening, and added that the nation was also likely to face future pressure on its water resources as a result of climate change.

"Although we have enough water in Wales at the moment, there is no room for complacency," said Mr Mills. "There are some rivers which we believe are at the limit for how much water is available to be taken without harming the environment.

By granting waivers to the Merchant Marine Act of 1920 - which requires all vessels carrying products or people between US ports to fly under the US flag, be built in the United States and crewed mostly by US citizens - Obama might head off a spike in Northeast fuel prices this summer. Speculation about waivers is already building in the industry. Ship owners are receiving inquiries from potential customers about the potential to hire the 56 ocean going US-flagged Jones Act tankers.

Many of these ships are already chartered on other routes and the Jones Act fleet accounts for only 1 percent of the world's tanker capacity. Waivers would dramatically increase the number of tankers that could ship surplus fuel from the Gulf Coast to the eastern seaboard, lowering transport costs and creating incentives to build up gasoline stocks ahead of the summer driving season and keep prices in check.

But what seems a relatively modest political win requires fraught political calculations: waivers would anger Obama's staunch Democrat union base and incite attacks over US jobs from his Republican opponents, while likely doing very little to quickly bring down the cost of gasoline and diesel fuels.

Without the waivers, however, the US Northeast - another plank of support for Obama that includes coveted swing state Pennsylvania - may face an unprecedented shortage of gasoline due to the closure of half of regional refineries by mid-year.

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When Catherine Margaret Ashton, also known as Baroness Ashton of Upholland, became Europe's top diplomat two years ago, even her husband Peter Kellner expressed skepticism. Upon her appointment, the British people "weren't exactly dancing in the streets," admitted Kellner, president of the YouGov international opinion polling group. Following an unpromising start, Ashton's reputation has continued in one direction: downward.

After one and a half years, the job performance of Europe's first high representative of the Union for foreign affairs and security policy-- as Ashton is officially known - was so dismal that there was open speculation that she would be replaced. "We are slowly running out of time," warned Elmar Brok, the foreign policy spokesman for Germany's conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) in the European Parliament. Guy Verhofstadt, the leader of the group of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE) at the parliament in Brussels, described Ashton's policies as "ridiculous."

The Briton, who has the "charisma of a caravan site on the Isle of Sheppey," as British journalist Rod Liddle once quipped, has endured the reproaches without complaint. When she is criticized, she dutifully takes notes. She gladly reads off prepared statements. Her strengths lie in her work behind the scenes, she asserts. When she became the EU's foreign policy chief, she said that she was not "an ego on legs," adding: "The skills I bring (are) of negotiation, of diplomacy."

Over the coming months, Ashton will have an opportunity to prove whether this is true. The top EU foreign policy representative currently faces the most difficult mission in international politics. It is her job to negotiate with Iran over its controversial nuclear program.

The US will never give a decisive approval for an attack on Iran, Gazit says. And Israel is ready to strike without such approval, because it is not waiting for a “green light.” Gazit believes that a “yellow light” is more than enough for Israel to initiate their plans. Last week, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that Iran has to “halt its nuclear program or suffer the consequences.”

Meanwhile, the US heralds a more measured approach to the crisis, with President Barack Obama saying that “for the sake of Israel’s security, America’s security, and the peace and security of the world, now is not the time for bluster.” Israel has enough power and determination to attack Iran, but it will carry out only a single strike in order to reach its short-term goal, Gazit believes. Israel has neither the capability nor interest to wage a sustained war against Iran, he said.

“There is no possibility of Israel continuing with a military effort against Iran that is going to last for days, or weeks, or months,” he explained. “Israel has… will have a very limited interest and that is to destroy the present nuclear capability of Iran, to reach nuclear devices. Period.” Gazit is absolutely positive that Iran will counterattack in case Israel strikes first.

But he does not believe that this is going to be “a decisive kind of counterattack that will destroy Israel. It will be no doubt painful, but nothing beyond it,” he said. And besides a direct military counterattack, Iran will implement political and economic measures to punish the aggressor. Gazit says Iran will definitely block the Strait of Hormuz and set some kind of ultimatum, saying “we are not going to reopen the flow of oil unless A, B and C.”

It includes a ban on using a hose or sprinkler to water plants, wash a car or boat, fill fountains, swimming or paddling pools, or to clean patios, driveways or windows. Even spraying your children to keep them cool in the sunshine will be outlawed, and those caught breaking the rules face a £1,000 fine. Seven water companies announced that they would enforce Temporary Use Bans – affecting one in three UK homes – from April 5 after the plans were revealed in the Daily Mail yesterday.

The strict rules are an attempt to close any loopholes after the last hosepipe ban in 2006 led to widespread accusations of cheating, with thousands reported to water companies by their neighbours or served with 'yellow card' letters warning them to obey the law. Yesterday water companies stressed that they hoped the ban would be enforced through goodwill and educating people about the need to save water.

The restrictions were brought in following two years of chronically low rainfall which has left rivers dry and reservoirs down to record low levels.

The news that Google is hiring another executive, which comes by way of Noah Shactman, isn't such a big deal, but the fact that she happens to have orchestrated one of the most innovative periods of battlefield technology might raise a few eyebrows. What in the world does Google have planned that it's hiring military leadership? Dugan's career in science and technology offers some clues, and based on what she told Fast Company last November, she appears to have a knack for innovating quickly.

"The defense world is like a mini-society," she said. "It has to deploy to anyplace in the world on a moment's notice, and it has to work in a life-or-death situation. That kind of focus, that kind of drive to ship an application, really does inspire greater genius. And the constancy of funding that comes with that - in good times or bad, whether this party or that party is in power - also helps inspire innovation."

We doubt Google's interested in building war machines, but by bringing Dugan on board, the company will inevitably have some tight connections with military leadership, which can't hurt.

A couple of weeks ago, I sat on the speakers' podium during the opening panel of the Euromoney Bond Investors' Congress in London. Together with leading industry experts, including senior ratings agencies' officials, we engaged in a detailed discussion of the contentious aspects of the Greek debt debacle and the fate of the eurozone.

The audience was "top drawer"; the room packed with 500 of the world's biggest bond market participants; the combined assets under management measured in the trillions of dollars. "Who thinks the upcoming Greek bail-out will be the last, drawing a line under the eurozone's sovereign debt crisis?" asked the senior Euromoney staffer chairing the panel. "Put your hands up".

Delivered with a serious demeanour, this was exactly the right question. So deadly was the inquiry, and so germane, that the mood in the room grew uneasy, barely camouflaged by an outbreak of coughing. Scanning this ultra-influential audience, I saw rows of delegates cowed, keeping their eyes locked forwards but staring down slightly, not daring to look elsewhere.

NOT A SINGLE HAND WAS RAISED. Not a single hand among hundreds of the world's leading bond market practitioners was stirred to support a debt swap now presented as the key to the world economy shaking off the post sub-prime torpor and taking us into the sun-lit uplands of sustainable global growth. Far from being the end of this eurozone debt crisis, or even the beginning of the end, Friday's debt-swap was probably just the end of the beginning.

He is seen as lackluster and relatively unknown in Germany, but François Hollande, the Socialist Party challenger of French President Nicolas Sarkozy, stands a good chance of being elected president on May 6. He is the man German Chancellor Angela Merkel fears, because he could jeopardize her European legacy. Hollande wants to renegotiate the fiscal pact to save the euro adopted in December by 25 European Union member states.

This is one of the reasons Merkel openly supports Sarkozy and has refused to meet with his challenger in Berlin so far. Hollande, 57, was the first secretary of the Socialist Party from 1997 to 2008. Without ever having held a cabinet position or served as prime minister, he would be only the second leftist president of the Fifth Republic, after former President François Mitterrand, under whom Hollande began his career in 1981.

Excerpt from interview:-

SPIEGEL: (Former conservative French Prime Minister) Dominique de Villepin called the chancellor's support for Sarkozy "the kiss of death."

Hollande: I really didn't ask Mrs Merkel to arrange my eventual election in this way. But now everyone knows my position on the fiscal pact, and on the day after the election they will have to take it into account. If I become president, France will not continue with the same policies as under Nicolas Sarkozy - both in domestic policy and in foreign and European policy.

SPIEGEL: And so now you're campaigning in France as the candidate who is confronting Germany.

Hollande: I'm also the candidate who knows that the German-French friendship is indispensable for Europe. And I will never let myself be carried away to making statements that would change it.

SPIEGEL: But they've already been made. Your fellow Socialist Party member Arnaud Montebourg said: "The question of German nationalism is returning through the Bismarckian policies Mrs Merkel pursues." Do you distance yourself from that?

Hollande: I think (former German Chancellor) Helmut Schmidt came up with the best response at the SPD's (recent) party conference. Our two peoples, our political elites, cannot fall back into nationalism. We have to be careful not to be too arrogant, which is a tendency the French can also sometimes have. And a large country with such outstanding economic performance as Germany cannot forget that it owes some of its success to demand from other European countries.

His call came as the French centre-Right threw its full firepower behind their candidate in Villepinte, near Charles de Gaulle airport, in a huge, glitzy show of force designed to breath new life into his flagging campaign. Hailed like a prizefighter, Mr Sarkozy climbed the huge white stage to the strains of his campaign anthem and an amended slogan: "Strong France with You".

Actor Gérard Depardieu lent some star power to proceedings, along with Mr Sarkozy's wife Carla Bruni-Sarkozy and her predecessor as First Lady, Bernadette Chirac. Days after telling France that he would give up politics if he lost the forthcoming elections, Mr Sarkozy told supporters "I have lost none of my desire to act" before launching into a series of protectionist proposals for France and Europe.

These included suspending France's participation in the Schengen visa-free zone signed by all 27 EU states bar Britain and Ireland if its rules were not revised to fight illegal immigration in the coming 12 months. France would stay out of Schengen "until negotiations conclude," he said. Since his official campaign launch three weeks ago, Mr Sarkozy has veered Right in a bid to capture the far-Right National Front vote, last week saying there were "too many foreigners in France" and promising to half the influx of migrants. On Sunday, he said France would not leave policing Europe's borders to European "technocrats".

The issue is causing growing concern in Japan, with dozens of regions refusing to accept any of the tsunami-generated rubbish due to stiff opposition from residents concerned about radiation contamination. In the meantime, mountains of cleared-up debris – including broken houses, smashed cars, splintered trees – are accumulating across the worst-hit prefectures Miyagi, Iwate and Fukushima, despite government reassurances that it poses no radiation threat to human health.

One year after the disaster, nuclear safety remains a key issue of concern in Japan, with anti-nuclear public sentiment continuing to grow among many residents across the country.

The prime minister’s plea was made shortly after the first anniversary of last year’s March 11 earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster, which claimed the lives of more than 19,000 people. It coincided with reports that a growing number of residents evacuated from Fukushima prefecture, home to the damaged nuclear power plant, have given up hope of returning to their hometowns.

The disruption wreaked on global supply chains by Japanese factory shutdowns in the wake of the crisis has made businesses wary of the concentration of production in the country, Capital Economics has warned. These concerns are accelerating the "hollowing out" of Japanese industry, with companies trying to reduce risk by sourcing from Japan's competitors. Japanese manufacturers are meanwhile pushing production abroad and establishing back-up sites.

"It is likely to mean fewer goods are 'Made in Japan', but more are 'Made by Japan'," said David Rea, Japan economist at Capital Economics. He expects Japanese industry to be hit by companies' reluctance to invest, given the uncertainty about the country's energy strategy after the nuclear meltdown. Just two of the 54 nuclear reactors in operation in Japan at the start of 2011 remain open, with the rest closed for maintenance or inspection.

That means its economy is more reliant on imported fossil fuels and so more vulnerable to oil price shocks, while its lower power generating capacity threatens energy shortages and pushes up costs for manufacturers. This will encourage investment to flow to other countries with a secure and cheaper power supply, Mr Rea predicted. The long-term impact of the disaster on the Japan economy will hinge on what its leaders decided to do about nuclear energy, he said, arguing that scrapping it altogether will cause harm.

In some areas, this has been the driest winter since records began a century or more ago, and weeks of sustained rainfall would be needed to get levels back to normal. However yesterday was the second hottest day of the year and the Met Office says most of this week will be sunny and dry. It is not forecasting any significant rainfall in drought-affected areas over the next month.

Anglian, Southern, Thames, South East and Veolia – which covers part of London and the Home Counties – are set to bring in bans which will start in two to four weeks, according to insiders. The companies have a total of around 20 million customers. Portsmouth Water and Sutton and East Surrey Water may also announce restrictions this month. Currently 14 counties in the South, the East and the Midlands are officially in drought. Tomorrow’s announcement coincides with an Environment Agency report which will add the rest of the Midlands and Yorkshire to the area at ‘high risk’ of summer drought.

Spokesman Ciaran Nelson said yesterday: ‘We’re prepared for dry weather here in the east but we could never have anticipated the incredibly low rainfall that has left rivers at such low levels, and prevented us filling our reservoirs at the time of year when we need them to be topped up. To recover from a situation like this will take months of persistent rain.’ Southern Water said it had had the driest ten months since 1888.

Major General Julian Thompson, land commander in the Falklands war in 1982, claimed last week the Coalition decision to axe aircraft carriers meant the South Atlantic islands could not be retaken if Argentina attacked again. But Mr Browne said: “We don’t want to initiate a military dispute in the South Atlantic but we have learnt that we must always be prepared, even if we mean to be peaceful. The Falkland Islanders want to live in peace and decide their own future. We learnt that 30 years ago.”

As the situation in southern Israel escalated and dozens of rockets were fired from Gaza, Arutz Sheva visited the city of Ashdod, one of many cities in the area hit by a barrage of rockets. The citizens expressed their frustration at the ongoing situation and called on the government to do more for them. “It’s been a very difficult week,” said Ronen Fahima, the of a sushi bar in Ashdod. The bar, which is usually busy, has been nearly empty during the escalation.

“It’s been a week in which people are suffering from anxiety in Ashdod and barely leave their homes,” said Fahima. “Our business has been hurt pretty badly. I hope that the government will compensate us for all the aggravation and what has been caused to our business.” He added, “On a regular day the place is lovely. It’s right across from the beach. On a nice day like today, people usually sit in the coffeehouses, they go out of their homes, they have fun. Our Purim holiday was cut short and it’s definitely different. I call on the prime minister to turn to the government to compensate all the businesses that are being hurt because of this security issue. They’re not taking care of us properly.”

Ephraim Weber, a member of the Ashdod City Council, said that the rocket attacks caught him in the middle of his family’s Shabbat dinner on Friday night. Ashdod resident Raz Shmueli told Arutz Sheva that this round of attacks is different from what came before for two reasons. “On the one hand, the frequency of attacks has tripled. On the other hand, the Iron Dome system response has been perfect. As of now, there have been no casualties in Ashdod, not even property damage,” she said.

Yet, in the five days since his revelations there has been little in the way of serious reporting on the findings he presented in his presser. With 6 short videos, the Sheriff and his team presented a devastating case, one the tame US press is apparently unable to report.

Arpaio asserts that his investigators discovered, during a 6 month long investigation which is ongoing, not only was the "Long Form" likely a digitally created forgery, but the president's Selective Service Card (Draft Card), allegedly filed in 1980, was also a forgery. These documents are what Barack Hussein Obama relies upon to prove his constitutional eligibility to the office of President of the United States.

Forged documents are being used to qualify a President of the United States for the office he holds. Or is usurped the more accurate term?

The silence from the main stream media in the US is deafening. It almost seems as if the press is terrified to even think the question, let alone ask it: Is the President a criminal? The press in Arpaio's audience were certainly asking him to state precisely that, yet nowhere has the question been asked of the White House by the press. Instead the American Press is aggressively protecting the presumed President of the United States, pushing the fraud upon both America and the world, supporting a man who may well have usurped the office.