The strike in the town of Boumerdès, about 22 miles east of Algiers, came just hours after reports that an ambush by Islamist extremists on Sunday killed 12 people in eastern Algeria. That assault followed two earlier attacks in August that left eight dead and over 50 injured. Though the extremist Al Qaeda in Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) has only claimed responsibility for one of those massacres, experts fear they were all part of an escalating campaign of terror activity by the organization, which may be aiming to make the approaching holy month of Ramadan particularly bloody.

Even before this month's crescendo of strikes sounded its loudest note Tuesday, French security officials aired concerns AQIM may be planning to again turn THE RAMADAN HOLY MONTH, WHICH STARTS SEPTEMBER 1 THIS YEAR, into a season of blood-letting as jihadists in Algeria and elsewhere have in the past.

"Radicals feel that because they're waging holy war, there's actually something sanctified in killing foreign infidels and people they consider 'bad Muslims' during Islamic holidays," one French intelligence official told TIME prior to Tuesday's attack. "And since everyone who is not with them is an infidel or 'bad Muslim' to the extremists' mind, they see a perverse religious and terror logic to inflict as much death and injury as possible during Ramadan."

Closing in they throw punches and swing elbows before crashing to the mat to grapple as the crowd cheers them on. One slips a hand free and sends a several thousand volt jolt into his opponents ribs to end the fight. Two more fighters quickly take their place, swinging hefty sticks, thwacking, punching and head-butting one another in a brutal battle accompanied by the rhythmic thumping of drums. Welcome to the world of the Dog Brothers, a Los Angeles area fight club that draws combatants from various walks of life for twice-yearly, no-holds-barred brawls with fists and assorted weapons that often end in welts, bumps, bruises, if not blood.

The self-styled tribal brotherhood emerged out of the martial arts community in Southern California in the 1980s, where their hard sparring methods set them apart and gained them notoriety. Their meetings have no referees, no prizes and few rules, and the fighters' only protection are gloves and a fencing mask. THEY ARE NOW DRAWING A GROWING NUMBER OF PARTICIPANTS FROM ACROSS THE UNITED STATES AND AROUND THE WORLD.

"This is like the ultimate. You've got striking, you've got grappling, you've got weapons, anything goes," said Matt Booe, a karate instructor hoping to fight with hefty, blunted knives at a recent gathering in Burbank, just north of Los Angeles. "It gives you the idea of really finding out what martial arts are like, not just doing pretty forms."

Auckland City Council had sought a court injunction to stop the "Boobs on Bikes" parade, scheduled for Wednesday, saying it breached a bylaw banning offensive public events.

But Judge Nicola Mathers said while opponents may find the parade offensive or tasteless, the fact that 80,000 people had gathered for a similar event last year meant a significant number of people did not agree with the critics, New Zealand Press Association said.

The parade on Queens St., featuring leather-clad local and international porn stars, is part of an "Erotica Expo" organized by self-styled "porn king" Steve Crow.

The draft text called on Russia to pull back its forces to the positions held before the current conflict. But Russia says the truce allows its troops to stay in a buffer zone on the Georgia side of South Ossetia's border. Moscow earlier dismissed a Nato warning that normal relations were impossible while its troops remained in Georgia.

THE CONFLICT BROKE OUT ON 7 AUGUST WHEN GEORGIA LAUNCHED AN ASSAULT to wrest back control of the Moscow-backed breakaway region of South Ossetia, triggering a counter-offensive by Russian troops who advanced beyond South Ossetia into Georgia's heartland.

Russia's UN ambassador said the French-drafted UN resolution went against the terms of the ceasefire brokered by France's President Nicolas Sarkozy. Vitaly Churkin said the resolution should incorporate all elements of the six-point peace plan agreed last week. He also objected to language in the draft reaffirming Georgia's territorial integrity, saying South Ossetia and Abkhazia did not want to be part of Georgia.

Yet in Spain itself there is little consensus about what is to be done. Indeed, such is the disagreement that journalists and politicians alike are calling it "water wars". A farmer and politician, Angel Carcia Udon, said: "WATER AROUSES PASSIONS BECAUSE IT CAN BE USED AS A WEAPON, a political weapon, just as oil is a political weapon." And water in Spain has set region against region, north against south and government against opposition.

When the city of Barcelona nearly ran out of water earlier this year, the fountains were switched off and severe restrictions were introduced. The government of Catalonia pleaded for water to be transferred from rivers like the Ebro - causing a furious row between the regions.

Instead, the city shipped in millions of litres of water from France and accelerated work on the giant desalination plant on the edge of Barcelona, which promises to provide 180,000 cubic metres of water a day. But Barcelona is not alone in its insatiable thirst. Apart from the far north, the entire country is suffering, especially the parched areas on the Mediterranean coast, from Catalonia, down through Valencia, Alicante, Murcia and Almeria.

A recent opinion poll shows that one in two Poles fears that their country will be the target of a Russian attack. The poll was published in news magazine Wprost which this week featured a drawing of Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin on its front cover with a Hitler moustache and the headline: "Adolf Putin."

Some 40 percent of respondents said they regarded Russia as Poland's biggest enemy. Half of the Poles interviewed by the Pentor agency said they were afraid of a Russian attack. A total of 38 percent said they were not afraid and 12 per cent expressed no opinion.

Meanwhile a separate poll for Rceczpospolita daily last Saturday showed that support in Poland for a US missile defense system to be stationed in Poland had surged in the wake of Russia's attack on Georgia. The US says the shield is aimed at intercepting missiles from countries like Iran, but Russia sees it as a direct threat to its own security and warned last week that the system would turn Poland into a target.

Dr. Ely Karmon, an expert on Islamist movements and their drive to obtain weapons of mass destruction, says radical PAKISTANI ISLAMISTS HAVE SET THEMSELVES THE GOAL OF GAINING ACCESS TO PAKISTAN'S ESTIMATED 80 TO 90 NUCLEAR BOMBS, an arsenal they call "the Islamic bomb." But he notes that there's a "large distance between Pakistan and Israel," adding that when it comes to Pakistani instability, India is justifiably the most concerned onlooker.

"PAKISTAN DOES NOT CONTROL PARTS OF ITS TERRITORY. There are tribes allied to the Taliban and al-Qaida, and very signficant Islamist movements consisting of hundreds of thousands of members," Karmon said. "These are no less extreme than al-Qaida itself. The Pakistani intelligence service, the ISI, has maintained close connections with these elements, and has encouraged the Taliban in Afghanistan and Islamists in Kashmir," Karmon said.

During Musharraf's reign, Pakistan opted many times to appease rather than fight jihadis, which had infuriarated the Americans, Karmon said. THE PAKISTANI ARMY, which has traditionally played a balancing role in Pakistani power disputes, "HAS BEEN INFILTRATED BY ISLAMISTS."

Experts say a 10-member committee, and not just the President, makes decisions on how to use them and only a complete meltdown in governance could put the atomic bomb in the hands of extremists. "Pakistan's nuclear assets are not one man's property," said Maria Sultan, a defense analyst and director at the London-based South Asian Strategic Stability Institute. "Any (political) transition in Pakistan will have no effect on Pakistan's nuclear assets because it has a very strong custodial control."

The committee, known as the National Command Authority, is served by a military-dominated organization with thousands of security forces and intelligence agents whose personnel are closely screened. The nuclear facilities are tightly guarded. "The reality is that Pakistan's government exists on different levels. One of the levels it exists and works at is in the control of its nuclear weapons," said Patrick Cronin, director of the Institute for National Strategic Studies at the National Defense University in Washington.

Although one of Asia's poorer nations, Pakistan became the Islamic world's first atomic power through a combination of guile, determination and illegal procurement of technology on the international black market. It tested the bomb in 1998, a year before Musharraf took power, in response to a similar test by its historic rival India.

Heavily-armed assassins killed nine people in separate incidents late Sunday in the border town of Ciudad Juarez, local police said, following the slaying of 21 people the previous night - including a baby and a four-year-old boy - at a village dance in the town of Creel. Drug-related violence in Mexico has killed 2,682 people since the start of the year - nine more than in all of 2007 - with nearly half in Chihuahua state, daily El Universal reported Saturday.

Ciudad Juarez - across the Rio Grande from El Paso, Texas, where local drug gangs are battling the powerful Sinaloa cartel - has the highest murder toll, with some 800 so far this year, according to an AFP count. Federal authorities have deployed more than 36,000 soldiers across the country since early 2007, including 2,500 in Ciudad Juarez, in an effort to combat drug trafficking and related violence. But the murder rate has climbed dramatically in two years, from 1,410 in 2006.

Now he has been forced to resign, India fears that relations between the two nuclear rivals could now get even worse. While many Pakistanis despised Musharraf as a dictator, India enjoyed some of its best diplomatic relations in decades during his rule.

New Delhi's fear is that a weak civilian government in Islamabad will be unable to exert the same muscle that Musharraf did over Pakistan's army and the powerful military spy agency, the ISI, which India suspects has a hand in most attacks on its soil. "How the vacuum is handled by the civilian government, how much control they can exercise on the radical elements remains to be seen," a senior Indian foreign ministry official, who asked to remain anonymous, told Reuters.

The Indian government reacted cautiously to word that Musharraf had quit. "We have no comments to make on the resignation of President Musharraf of Pakistan," it said in a statement. "This is an internal matter of Pakistan." The two countries have fought three wars since independence in 1947 and nearly came to a fourth one in 2002. But since a peace process began in 2004 under Musharraf, there has been a string of improvements from a cross-border bus service to more trade and some progress over border disputes.

"THE U.S. IS NOT OUT OF THE WOODS. I think the financial crisis is at the halfway point, perhaps. I would even go further to say 'the worst is to come'," he told a financial conference. "We're not just going to see mid-sized banks go under in the next few months, we're going to see a whopper, we're going to see a big one, one of the big investment banks or big banks," said Rogoff, who is an economics professor at Harvard University and was the International Monetary Fund's chief economist from 2001 to 2004.

"We have to see more consolidation in the financial sector before this is over," he said, when asked for early signs of an end to the crisis. "Probably Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac - despite what U.S. Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson said - these giant mortgage guarantee agencies are not going to exist in their present form in a few years."

Rogozin urged NATO not to interfere in the conflict and added that Russia entered S.Ossetia to protect its nationals. "We do not consider ourselves in a state of war. WE ARE JUST KEEPING THE PEACE and helping our peacekeepers and the civilian population," he said. Rogozin, who said he briefed NATO military officials, said Russian troops had wrested control of Tskhinvali, the South Ossetian provincial capital.

THE WAR STARTED WHEN THE GEORGIAN AIR FORCE AND ARTILLERY STRUCK THE SLEEPING TOWN (TSKHINVALIAT) AT MIDNIGHT. More than 1,500 civilians perished in the very first hours of the shelling. At the same time, Georgian special forces shot 10 Russian peacekeepers who didn't expect such a betrayal from their Georgian colleagues.

"We take the view that NATO is not involved in the conflict," he told reporters. He said a cease-fire - as proposed by Saakashvili - can only happen if Georgian forces stop shooting and return to positions they held before Friday's offensive. "The troops would leave," a Russian lawmaker said, "sooner or later. But how much time it will take, it depends, definitely, on how Georgians will continue to behave," said the lawmaker, Konstantin Kosachev, chairman of a Russian parliament foreign affairs committee.

South Ossetia won de facto independence after a civil war in 1992 and Russia has granted citizenship to most of its residents.

Also on the list were Princess Michael of Kent, The Duke and Duchess of Gloucester and The Duke and Duchess of Kent. Aabid Hussain Khan, from Bradford, West Yorkshire, had compiled pictures, maps and details of the opening hours of official residences from information available on the internet. There were also details of London landmarks including the Houses of Parliament, Tower Bridge and the underground as well as the New York and Washington metros and a home-made video of the Washington Memorial and World Bank in the US.

A counter-terrorism source said: "They had details of explosives and poisons along with information about London landmarks and a computer folder on Royal residences. We would be foolish to rule out the fact that they may have been planning an attack." Detective Chief Superintendent John Parkinson, Head of the Counter Terrorism Unit in Leeds, said the men posed a "very real threat".

He added: "Let there be no doubt, these are dangerous individuals. These men were not simply in possession of material which expressed extremist views. They were also in possession of material that was operationally useful to anyone wishing to carry out an act of violence or terrorism."

The retreating Moro Islamic Liberation Front rebels took dozens of civilians hostage in Kolambugan town, said Brig. Gen. Antonio Supnet, head of an army brigade that drove away the rebels. Officials said 23 civilians were killed in Kauswagan and in neighboring Kolambugan. At least three soldiers were killed, army commanders said. Supnet said more than 20 houses were burned in Kauswagan alone and hundreds of displaced villagers were streaming into evacuation centers in nearby Iligan city.

Military chief Gen. Alexander Yano said government troops launched an offensive in response to Monday morning's attack by about 300 guerrillas on the coastal towns in Lanao del Norte province. TV footage showed mayhem in one smouldering village as residents ran for cover, jumping over the fences of their roadside houses. Burned-out vehicles littered the street. A photographer said up to 100 people escaped in dozens of boats to Iligan because the main highway was blocked.

The escalation of fighting on Mindanao island came amid uncertainty over a fragile peace process after the Supreme Court blocked a preliminary agreement with Muslim rebels calling for an expanded autonomous region. Rebel spokesman Eid Kabalu confirmed the attack, but said it was carried out by a key commander, Abdullah Macapaar, also known as Bravo, without the knowledge of the group's leadership.

The agreement, which was supposed to be signed this month but was blocked by the Supreme Court, calls for more than 700 new villages to be added to an existing Muslim autonomous region, subject to the approval of residents in a plebiscite next year. The Supreme Court acted on a petition filed by Christian politicians wary of losing land and power to Muslims.

"Irrigating with wastewater isn't a rare practice limited to a few of the poorest countries," said researcher Liqa Raschid-Sally, a researcher for the International Water Management Institute (IWMI). "It's a widespread phenomenon, occurring on 20 million hectares (50 million acres) across the developing world, especially in Asian countries, like China, India and Vietnam, but also around nearly every city of sub-Saharan Africa and in many Latin American cities as well."

The IWMI said wastewater was most commonly used to produce vegetables and cereals, especially rice. The study looked at 53 cities in Latin America, the Middle East, Africa and Asia. In a report released to coincide with an annual water conference in Sweden, it found 80 percent were using untreated or partially treated wastewater.

"In over 70 percent of the cities studied, more than half of urban agricultural land is irrigated with wastewater that is either raw or diluted in streams," the institute said.