The Germans dominated the stage politically in Brussels, once again. The 26 other heads of state and government gave in to German Chancellor Angela Merkel's demand to amend the EU's Lisbon Treaty to include a permanent crisis fund, known as the stability mechanism, for the euro zone starting in 2013. Also at the chancellor's request, they inserted a passage stating that the stability mechanism is only "to be activated if indispensable to safeguard the stability of the euro area as a whole." The group also approved Germany's demand that private lenders be involved in the event of a government bankruptcy.

"We came to an agreement," a clearly pleased Merkel announced. "It was a good day for Europe." The other summit participants had no choice but to make similar statements. This summit was supposed to send out signals of calm, levelheadedness and solidarity, if only to reassure the financial markets, but the unity was little more than a show. The conflict continued to simmer behind the scenes, especially the dispute over common euro-zone bonds. Luxembourg Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker campaigned for the idea once again, and he was backed by many of the attendees. But Merkel was quick to object, arguing that a system of euro bonds would reward spendthrift governments and penalize disciplined countries like Germany.

In short, nothing was resolved at the summit. The more the euro crisis expands into an existential crisis for the European Union, the more critical are other member states about Germany, the largest economy on the continent and the fourth largest worldwide. "This is all about Germany, and it's all about the end of the German appetite for writing checks to the periphery of Europe," said Harvard University historian Niall Ferguson in a recent CNN interview. British historian Timothy Garton Ash complains of a lack of vision. "It is much clearer today what Germany wants from Europe than what it wants for Europe," he wrote in an op-ed for the Guardian.

Both comments imply that Germany is no longer the locomotive of European integration that it once was. In the last few decades, more and more countries joined the unification process, because they saw it as a road to common prosperity in peace and freedom.

It's a problem not just in her rural community of Seville, California but throughout the Central Valley. "This isn't supposed to be happening in California," said Quintana, a lifelong resident of Seville. "California is one of the richest states in the nation, and the United States is one of the richest countries in the world, and we're living like a third world country."

Home to 350 residents, Seville is supported by the agriculture and dairy industries. Known as the breadbasket of America, the central valley is responsible for over sixty percent of California's agriculture production. However, according to community activists it is these very industries that are harming the drinking water of the valley's residents. "We live in one of the most agriculturally intensive areas in the world, yet there are no programs to protect our groundwater sources from pollution," said Susana De Anda of the Community Water Center in Visalia. "It's not a coincidence that many communities in the valley like Seville have lacked clean drinking water for decades."

According to De Anda, chemical fertilizers and animal waste are the leading causes of the high levels of nitrates in Seville's drinking water and these nitrates have the potential to cause serious health problems for those that drink them. "Nitrates are linked to the blue baby syndrome. If a child of six months of age or younger ingests nitrate contaminated drinking water, the blood system in the body cannot absorb oxygen and it can literally turn blue," said De Anda. "Nitrates are linked to kidney disease and cancer and it's something we don't want in our water."

Seville's drinking water comes from a groundwater well with pipes well over a hundred years old. Corroded and rusty, these pipes feed the water to Seville's 74 homes and run along a field irrigation ditch which residents say lends itself to water filled with sand, debris, and of course, nitrates. "It's frustrating, you know, everyone should be able to turn on their water and not have to think, is anything wrong with my water?" said Quintana. "It's a human right that everyone should have; we shouldn't have to even think about what is in our water."

About 30cm of snow fell at Perisher in NSW yesterday, while Victoria's Mount Hotham received a 10cm dusting on Sunday. Charlotte's Pass in the NSW Snowy Mountains also received a 10cm sprinkling of snow, prompting would-be bushwalkers to don clothing more suitable for skiing.

In Sydney yesterday, there were blustery winds and unseasonably low temperatures of just 13C. The western suburb of Horsley Park recorded 9.8C and the Blue Mountains dropped to -2C. Victorian State Emergency Services yesterday attended to at least six lightning-damaged houses in Aspenville, south of Melbourne, which was hit by a storm on Sunday night.

On the Gold Coast, a storm blacked out more than 10,000 homes and businesses over the weekend, while in Western Australia's northern Gascoyne region scores of people remained isolated by the worst flooding in 50 years. Millions of dollars of damage was caused to crops, livestock and buildings in WA.

Twenty-six states elected new governors last month - 17 Republicans, eight Democrats and one independent - and now they are going to have to reconcile their principles and campaign promises with some harsh fiscal realities: This is the worst budget climate for the states in at least a generation.

Cumulatively, the states face budget shortfalls of nearly $140 billion next year, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a Washington think tank. To make matters worse, billions in aid to states from the federal government's $800 billion stimulus plan is set to dry up early next year.

The incoming governors face some painful and politically unpopular decisions, with the easy fixes long gone. Among the unsavory alternatives: tax increases or deep cuts in programs voters hold dear, such as education, public safety and health care. "I think we have to be realistic with the people of South Carolina: This is gonna hurt," said Republican Nikki Haley, South Carolina's incoming governor. "It's very daunting. It's as bad as you could imagine."

More than 100 American cities could go bust next year as the debt crisis that has taken down banks and countries threatens next to spark a municipal meltdown, a leading analyst has warned. Meredith Whitney, the US research analyst who correctly predicted the global credit crunch, described local and state debt as the biggest problem facing the US economy, and one that could derail its recovery.

"Next to housing this is the single most important issue in the US and certainly the biggest threat to the US economy," Whitney told the CBS 60 Minutes programme on Sunday night. "There's not a doubt on my mind that you will see a spate of municipal bond defaults. You can see fifty to a hundred sizeable defaults - more. This will amount to hundreds of billions of dollars' worth of defaults."

New Jersey governor Chris Christie summarised the problem succinctly: "We spent too much on everything. We spent money we didn't have. We borrowed money just crazily. The credit card's maxed out, and it's over. We now have to get to the business of climbing out of the hole. We've been digging it for a decade or more. We've got to climb now, and a climb is harder." American cities and states have debts in total of as much as $2 trillion. In Europe, local and regional government borrowing is expected to reach a historical peak of nearly 1.3 trillion euros (1.1 trillion pounds) this year.

Cities from Detroit to Madrid are struggling to pay creditors, including providers of basic services such as street cleaning. Last week, Moody's ratings agency warned about a possible downgrade for the cities of Florence and Barcelona and cut the rating of the Basque country in northern Spain. Lisbon was downgraded by rival agency Standard & Poor's earlier this year, while the borrowings of Naples and Budapest are on the brink of junk status. Istanbul's debt has already been downgraded to junk.

"They're on these routes every day so they're used to the normal situation so they are able to recognize a non-normal situation," explains Ken Bevis of Waste Management. Trucks are now armed with a cell phone, camera and incident reports so they'll have accurate information for police and, possibly, prosecutors. "The drivers understand their main job is to observe and report and let authorities do their job," explains Bevis.

The extra set of eyes and ears in the street is appreciated because even cops know they can't be everywhere, all the time. "The old adage is 'where's a cop when you you need one?' Now it will be where's a cop or DGS or Waste Management when you need one," says Albany Police Chief Steve Krokoff. "Waste Watch" is free to municipalities and the Capital Region is the first area in New York state to benefit from the program.

To be sure, their sabotage campaign exploits the atmosphere of intimidation created by jihadist terror. But their "grand jihad" is mostly a nonviolent affair, marching through our institutions: government, academia, media, the courts, the financial sector - all aspects of society.

That is the conclusion of a group of national security experts that recently released its study "Shariah: The Threat to America." Modeled on the "Team B" of a generation ago, which questioned the folly of detente as a strategy for dealing with the Soviet threat, the new study takes issue with government's regnant security policy, premised on the theory that the threat to our way of life comes only from a tiny group of "violent extremists."

To the contrary, Islamism is a mainstream ideology to which millions of Muslims - only a bare fraction of whom would ever participate in terrorism - are beholden. Islamists and Muslim terrorists agree on the goal: the implementation of Sharia to strangle individual liberty and foster Islamicized societies.

One needn't believe the United States is in danger of imminent conquest to see that the patient Islamist approach can work. Just ask recent observers of Europe about its countless "no go zones" - communities police no longer patrol, effectively transferring sovereignty to the local Muslim leaders.

Our nation needs to understand the breadth of the Islamist challenge. President Obama instead accommodates it. Although the Brotherhood is banned in Egypt (where it has a history of terrorism), and although the Justice Department had only recently proved that the organization and its American offshoots were at the core of a conspiracy to finance Hamas, the administration took pains to invite Brotherhood members to Obama's 2009 Cairo speech on Islam and the West.

The government is using for this purpose the FBI, local police, state homeland security offices and military criminal investigators, the daily added. The system collects, stores and analyzes information about thousands of US citizens and residents, many of whom have not been accused of any wrongdoing, the report noted. The government's goal is to have every state and local law enforcement agency in the country feed information to Washington to buttress the work of the FBI, noted the paper, which has conducted its own investigation of the matter.

According to the report, the network includes 4,058 federal, state and local organizations, each with its own counter-terrorism responsibilities and jurisdictions. At least 935 of these organizations have been created since the 2001 attacks, The Post said. The probe has revealed that technologies and techniques developed for use on the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan have migrated into the hands of law enforcement agencies in the United States, the paper pointed out.

In addition, the FBI is building a database with the names and personal information of thousands of US citizens and residents, the report said. The database is accessible to an increasing number of local law enforcement and military criminal investigators, the report noted. In a bid to counter what is seen as a threat from radical Islam, some law enforcement agencies have hired as trainers people whose extremist views on Islam and terrorism are considered inaccurate and counterproductive by US intelligence agencies, the paper pointed out.

The cost of the network is difficult to measure, the paper said. But the Department of Homeland Security has given 31 billion dollars in grants since 2003 to state and local governments for homeland security and to improve their ability to find and protect against terrorists, The Post said.

The Federal Communications Commission is set to approve on Tuesday Chairman Julius Genachowski's proposed rules governing net neutrality - a concept aimed at preventing Internet providers from interfering with web traffic. The rules are expected to bar providers from discriminating against legal Internet traffic and require more transparency. They also would let broadband providers for the first time charge more to companies that want faster service for delivery of games, videos or other services.

Net neutrality has become a contentious issue as worries grow that large phone and cable companies are growing too powerful as Internet gatekeepers. Start-ups and small businesses that rely on the Internet to provide shopping, information or other services to consumers are particularly concerned.

The FCC has wanted to step in and act as an Internet traffic cop, but Congress has never given it clear authority to do so. "We must take action to protect consumers against price hikes and closed access to the Internet - and our proposed framework is designed to do just that: to guard against these risks while recognizing the legitimate needs and interests of broadband providers," FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski said in a blog post this month.

For five weeks, mother Haydn and father Jamie-Leigh maintained an anxious vigil at the child's bedside in Leeds, updating everybody with one message at a time instead of making dozens of phone calls to their home town of Hull. And when Kai went into the operating theatre, they were able to announce with relief that the surgery had been successful.

Hard to believe, then, that someone would take advantage of their Facebook messages not to send flowers and heartfelt congratulations, but to burgle their home safe in the knowledge that they were 60 miles away. Not once, but twice. 'Everyone was anxious to know how Kai was doing and it helped us to share what was happening day-by-day,' said 18-year-old Haydn. 'We never dreamed for a minute that someone would read our messages, realise we weren't at home and steal from us. It was utterly devastating.'

Haydn and Jamie-Leigh aren't alone. They're among an explosion of crime victims who have been targeted through social networking sites such as Facebook. A Daily Mail investigation revealed this week that over the past three years, numbers of crimes associated with the networking site have increased by as much as 7,000 per cent in some areas - including cases of murder, rape, paedophilia, bullying, assault and burglary.

Police, insurance companies and IT security experts are so concerned that they have issued urgent warnings to users to be more vigilant about the personal information they post on the web. But all the evidence suggests that while the public isn't growing any more internet savvy, the criminals are. And as Facebook says: 'With the number of people using Facebook rising rapidly from 100 million globally in August 2008 to more than 500 million globally in December 2010, Facebook's name was bound to feature more in the conversations we all have every day. As such, it is no surprise Facebook is also mentioned in criminal reporting.'

But it does suggest there is a whole new world for criminals to exploit - and they are doing so.

- Up to eight more inches of snow to fall today

- Severe delays on London Underground during rush hour

- Man dies after falling through ice on fishing lake

- BA cancels 70 of 130 departures and 89 of 133 arrivals this morning

- Eurostar urging passengers not to travel unless absolutely necessary

- Edinburgh, Glasgow and Aberdeen airports open but expecting delays

- Furious AA said thousands of ungritted roads resemble 'ski jumps'

- Key train services suspended as workers try to shift snow from tracks

Temperatures plunged again overnight, with a UK low of -19.6c, recorded in Chesham, Buckinghamshire. A record low for Northern Ireland was seen in Castlederg, County Tyrone, where the mercury plunged to -17.6c. Severe weather warnings have today been issued for south west England and Wales, with the Met Office forecasting between two and four inches (5-10cm) of snow to fall in many places.

Up to eight inches (20cm) will land on high ground, with the snow due to reach London later this afternoon.

Freezing fog is also expected to hit areas of northern England. Only about 20 flights were able to take off or land at Heathrow on Sunday out of 1,300 flights that usually go through the airport in a day.

Mayor of London Boris Johnson has questioned Colin Matthews, the chief executive of Heathrow's owners BAA, over the situation at the airport, asking if everything possible had been done to get the airport moving. He said: 'I stressed the huge economic importance of Heathrow. If there was a war on we'd surely be able to sort this out.'

It emerged yesterday that British Airways called off hundreds of flights from Heathrow because it could not de-ice enough of its planes in time. While rival airlines continued to take off over the weekend, BA said it had cancelled flights from Friday onwards to give passengers 'certainty'.

However, insiders claimed the truth was that the airline had been caught short by the weather, with too few staff available to tackle its frozen airliners. Sources suggested the company was paying the price of poor labour relations. Employees were 'getting their revenge' by doing the minimum necessary.

Meanwhile those who did not have to travel took advantage of the snowfall by heading to parks and commons with their sledges. However, zealous officials tried to ruin the fun by closing some parks on the grounds of 'dangerous snow and ice'.

National power grids could overheat and air travel severely disrupted while electronic items, navigation devices and major satellites could stop working after the Sun reaches its maximum power in a few years. Senior space agency scientists believe the Earth will be hit with unprecedented levels of magnetic energy from solar flares after the Sun wakes "from a deep slumber" sometime around 2013, The Daily Telegraph can disclose.

In a new warning, Nasa said the super storm would hit like "a bolt of lightning" and could cause catastrophic consequences for the world's health, emergency services and national security unless precautions are taken. Scientists believe it could damage everything from emergency services' systems, hospital equipment, banking systems and air traffic control devices, through to "everyday" items such as home computers, iPods and Sat Navs.

Due to humans' heavy reliance on electronic devices, which are sensitive to magnetic energy, the storm could leave a multi-billion pound damage bill and "potentially devastating" problems for governments.

This comes as world stocks, as measured by MSCI .MIWD00000PUS raced toward a two-year high, bringing this year's gains to nearly 9 percent.

In the week to December 10, bond funds saw a weekly outflow of $0.9 billion on a four-week average, according to JP Morgan, while equities drew an average flow of $2.6 billion. The euro zone debt crisis is far from over, with Friday's deep downgrade of Ireland's sovereign ratings fanning fresh concerns. But the risk is for a wider contagion.

"There is a risk that the sovereign crisis will spread across the Atlantic to the US... There's already evidence that it's turning to disorderly unwinding," said David Woo, head of global rates and currencies at Bank of America Merrill Lynch. "There are clearly very uncomfortable positions in the market that will be unwound, especially if data holds up. There is a 30 percent chance of a serious turmoil in the bond market."

A Senate vote to pass the temporary funding bill is likely on Tuesday, Reid said, when existing funds to operate the government expire. The House of Representatives would then have to sign off on the measure and send it to President Barack Obama for his expected approval.

Under the bill, most federal government programs would be funded at last year's levels through March 4. The new Congress will be seated on January 5, with Republicans taking over control of the House. If this latest spending bill is enacted, Republicans will have a much greater say in spending priorities as they write legislation to fund the government from March 4 until October 1.

House Republicans already have said they want to trim $100 billion in spending for this fiscal year, which ends next September 30, by freezing programs at 2008 levels. That goal could run into White House opposition, leading to threats of government shutdowns if Democrats and Republicans cannot reach a compromise.

At the end of an eight-hour emergency meeting called by Russia, US Ambassador Susan Rice said the vast majority of the 15-member council was insisting on "a clear-cut condemnation" of North Korea but there was no unanimity.

Although diplomats from some countries still need to consult their capitals, Rice said, "I think it's safe to predict that the gaps that remain are unlikely to be bridged." She said she based that assessment on what she heard in the closed-door meetings.

Russia's UN Ambassador Vitaly Churkin agreed "we were not successful in bridging all the bridges," but expressed hope the meeting will have an impact and that continued diplomatic contacts "will result in a successful outcome." The council meeting took place as South Korea's military prepared to conduct one-day, live-fire drills by Tuesday on the same front-line island the North shelled last month as the South conducted a similar exercise.

China and Russia, the countries with the closest ties to North Korea, have called on South Korea to cancel the exercise. But the United States, a staunch ally of South Korea, has defended the country's right to train for self-defense - a point reiterated by Rice who said the two North Korean attacks made such training "prudent given than North Korean belligerence has cost 50 South Korean lives in the last nine months alone."