USA - Households worried about the high cost of keeping warm this winter will draw little comfort from the Farmers' Almanac, which predicts below-average temperatures for most of the U.S.
LONDON - The Ministry of Defence is attempting to offload a £5 billion order of Eurofighter aircraft to save desperately needed cash with British defence spending plans in chaos.
SYRIA - Syrian President Bashar al-Assad headed to Moscow today to discuss an expansion of his pariah state's military cooperation with Russia.
JERUSALEM - The chronic water shortage in the West Bank, resulting from an unfair distribution of water resources shared by the Palestinians and Israel, will be much graver this summer because of this year's drought. In the northern West Bank, water consumption has fallen to one-third of the minimal amount needed.
BRUSSELS - The next scourge to afflict the global economy after soaring oil and food prices will be a surge in the cost of water brought on by growing scarcity, one of the world's biggest companies warned yesterday.
AUSTRALIA - The Australian Government has announced a plan to speed up relief of the country's main Murray-Darling river system.
BARBADOS - Residents in the Mellows Hill, Parks Road and surrounding areas in St Joseph gave a sigh of relief yesterday at their first sighting of a water truck, after being without water for two days.
FIJI - Several small towns in Fiji have had no access to clean water for the past six days, reports the Fiji Daily Post News.
UK - The average person in the UK uses over 1000 gallons of water a day, making the country one of the biggest water importers in the world, a report claims.
STOCKHOLM - Some 2500 scientists, politicians and officials from 140 countries gathered here Monday to begin a week-long conference to seek ways to address global water challenges.
CALIFORNIA - For Lex Iyer, the shock came in early June, when he learned that water deliveries to his orchard would be cut from 45 percent of contract amount down to 40 percent. For Shawn Coburn, the challenge is to prepare to keep his trees alive - and his employees in their jobs - if allocations drop as low as 10 percent next year.
TASMANIA - Tasmania's Northern Midlands Council is asking Campbell Town residents to restrict their water use.
ISRAEL - The Arabs have been stealing some 3 million cubic meters of water each year in parts of Judea, south of Jerusalem, and the government has now taken action. The Civil Administration confiscated some 50,000 kilometres' worth of water piping this week from Arabs living in the South Mt. Hevron region.
GEORGIA - The IHT reports that the Kremlin announced on Sunday that Russia's President, Dmitri Medvedev, promised in a conversation with French President Nicolas Sarkozy to begin the withdrawal of Russian troops from Georgia, starting today from noon local time.
ZIMBABWE - The Central Statistical Office in Harare said that inflation in the year to June stood at 11,268,758.9 per cent, a rise of 9,035,045.5 per cent from May. The monthly inflation rate stood at 839.3 per cent, it added.