The system, which runs from Queensland in the country's north east to Victoria in the south, irrigates Australia's vast food bowl and drinking water to more than a million people. However, due to rising temperatures and a desperate lack of rain, inflows to the basin are at their lowest ever recorded levels.

Climate change minister Penny Wong yesterday said the Murray Darling was "in real trouble. We've had very low inflows, we've had a very dry June and the focus absolutely has to be critical human needs, that is the needs of the million-plus people who rely on the basin for drinking water," she said. "It just reminds us, yet again, the way in which this country is particularly vulnerable to climate change."

Australia is in the grip of the worst drought in a century, with water restrictions in place in most major cities and a forecast for more dry weather. The report said the parched Murray-Darling system should provide enough drinking water until the middle of next year. But the document, compiled by senior federal and state government officials, warned there could be difficulties supplying drinking water after that if rains did not arrive.

World Bank President Robert Zoellick has called the meeting "now or never" for the Doha round, which was launched nearly seven years ago with goals to cut farm subsidies and tariffs and to help developing countries prosper through trade. The talks also cover manufactured goods and services, areas where rich countries like the United States and the European Union hope to make gains that will help them sell politically painful farm trade reforms at home.

"Most of the world's farmers live in developing countries. They continue to be burdened by gigantic trade-distorting subsidies and prohibitive market access barriers in developed countries. Addressing these distortions effectively is the most important unfinished task in the WTO," developing country negotiating groups said in a joint statement on Sunday.

The United States has high tariffs for farm products such as sugar, dairy products, tobacco and meat, but is mainly being asked to dramatically cut its current WTO spending ceiling for trade-distorting farm subsidies. The latest WTO proposals call for a cut of about 70 percent in U.S. trade-distorting subsidies to $13-$16.4 billion. But current U.S. spending is already about half that at $7 billion thanks to soaring food prices.

In evidence to a House of Lords committee, ministers said that early warning systems for spotting emerging diseases were "poorly co-ordinated" and lacked "vision" and "clarity". They said that more needed to be done to improve detection and surveillance for potential pandemics and called for urgent improvement in rapid-response strategies.

The Government's evidence appeared in a highly critical report from the Lords Intergovernmental Organisations Committee, which attacked the World Health Organisation (WHO) as "dysfunctional" and criticised the international response to the threat of an outbreak of disease which could sweep across the globe.

The Government said: "While there has not been a pandemic since 1968, another one is inevitable." Ministers said it could kill between two and 50 million people worldwide and that such an outbreak would leave up to 75,000 people dead in Britain and cause "massive" disruption. Peers joined ministers calling for urgent action to build up early warning systems across the Third World that can identify and neutralise outbreaks of potentially deadly new strains of disease before they are swept across the globe by modern trade and travel.

Church officials did not recognize the ordination, and the Vatican has previously warned that women taking part in ordination ceremonies will be excommunicated. The group known as Roman Catholic Women priests held the ceremony at the Church of the Covenant, a Protestant Church in Boston.

The Archdiocese of Boston issued a statement decrying the ceremony. "Catholics who attempt to confer a sacred order on a woman, and the women who attempt to receive a sacred order, are by their own actions separating themselves from the church," the archdiocese said. The group says the women who are ordained remain loyal members of the church and will act as priests whether they are excommunicated or not. Sunday's ordination ceremony was performed by two women the group describes as bishops - Ida Raming of Stuttgart, Germany, and Dana Reynolds from California.

Pope Benedict XVI, like his predecessor, Pope John Paul II, has rebuffed calls to change traditional church teachings on the requirement that priests be male.

According to the Green New Deal Group, humanity only has 100 months to prevent dangerous global warming. Its proposals include major investment in renewable energy and the creation of thousands of new "green collar" jobs. The name is taken from President Franklin D Roosevelt's "New Deal", launched 75 years ago to bring the US out of the Great Depression.

The new grouping says rising greenhouse gas emissions, combined with escalating food and energy costs, mean the globe is facing one of its biggest crises since the 1930s. Its members include former Friends of the Earth UK director Tony Juniper, Green MEP Caroline Lucas and Andrew Simms, policy director of the New Economics Foundation (NEF).

The authors said their proposals drew inspiration from President Roosevelt's 1933 New Deal. During 100 days, he sent a record number of bills to Congress, all of which went on to become law, including banking reforms and emergency relief programmes. The prolific reforms were credited with turning around the US economy. The authors say that that within "the very real timeframe of 100 months" the world will reach the point where the risk of "runaway" climate change becomes unacceptably high.

In the first speech to the Knesset by a UK prime minister, he will call Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's threat to wipe Israel off the map "abhorrent". Tehran must abandon its nuclear programme, he will say, or face "growing isolation" - a hint that further sanctions could be considered. He will also vow to stand beside Israel in its "fight for liberty".

In a message likely to go down well with his hosts, he will insist that the UK, the European Union and the United States are determined to prevent an Iranian nuclear weapon - Israel's key strategic fear. His expression of support for Israel comes a day after he and the country's prime minister, Ehud Olmert, voiced differing views over settlements in Palestinian territories. But Mr Brown will talk of his father's "lifelong affection" for Israel, adding: "For the whole of my life, I have counted myself a friend of your country."

As well as Mr Olmert, Mr Brown met Israeli President Shimon Peres, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and Prime Minister Salam Fayyad on his first visit to Jerusalem as premier.

Begbies Traynor, the business rescue, recovery and restructuring specialist, said 4,258 companies faced critical problems, including moves to wind them up, in the three months to June 30, compared with 542 the same time last year.

This was also up 28.7 percent on the first quarter, with construction, information technology and retail companies suffering the most.

"With credit conditions still tightening, these new figures demonstrate that the effects are certainly getting worse, and we would anticipate that they will continue to do so, certainly until the end of this year at least," Begbies Executive Chairman Ric Traynor said in a statement.

It's a situation that keeps Franco Calo up at night. Across Europe and the world, chariot racing, perhaps the most Roman of all sporting events, is enjoying a renaissance of sorts. Events are held in cities from Bulgaria to Germany to France. There is even a hippodrome in Brazil.

But in Calo's native Rome? So far, the 27th generation Roman points out ruefully, there is nothing. That, though, is something Calo is setting about to change. He is pushing for the Italian capital to reclaim chariot racing and establish an event of its own.

"Rome is the only large Italian city without a unique historical manifestation, such as Siena's Palio horse races or Venice's Regata Storica," Calo told SPIEGEL ONLINE.

Just as important, why did we have to wait for him to urge us to do something about restoring that faith before we either sink into a yelling chaos of knives, fists and boots, or swoon into the strong, implacable arms of Islam? Most of our home grown prelates are more interested in homosexuality or in spreading doubt about the gospel or urging the adoption of Sharia law. Then again, why did it take the French President, Nicolas Sarkozy, to explain to us that our parliamentary system was the best guarantee of liberty in the world and to remind us of the courage and valour of our people in war?

This is not what British leaders say or even think, not least because they are busy pulling the constitution to pieces. It is not what our children are taught in schools. In fact, any expression of national pride is viewed with suspicion by the state, by the education system and above all by the BBC.

It was not always so. Half a century ago, we had churchmen, broadcasters, academics and military men who thought it normal to love their own country, normal to support the Christian faith which made us what we are, and were willing to defend it. THE QUESTION IS, WHAT HAPPENED IN THE YEARS BETWEEN?

Those who wonder what they would have done if they had lived at the time of some terrible injustice now know the answer. We do live in such a time. And we do nothing. I had resigned myself to the fact that WE ARE A CALLOUS AND BARBAROUS SOCIETY, SELFISH ALMOST BEYOND BELIEF AND SO TWISTED THAT WE NOW REGARD CHILDREN AS A BURDEN. I had thought the most practical way of dealing with this was to try at least to cut the age at which abortions can take place. But I now think that was wrong.

The abortionists are not interested in compromise. Why should they be? They have always known what they were doing. They must know by now that the more abortions you allow, the more you have. They have - for the moment - won the argument that you can kill if it's convenient. And our whole society has adopted the same self-serving view, often without realising it.

Who cares about 3,000 road deaths a year? Nobody but the victims' families. The rest of us would fight (to the death?) against the lower speed limits and the tough driving tests that would prevent this. Who cares about the discarded old, stuffed into homes, drugged, bullied, then crammed with morphine to speed their departure? And these are the attitudes of nice people, responsible, educated, clean in their habits.

It's not surprising that the feral poor have spotted that they live in a country where life is not much valued. So why not end Friday night by kicking someone's head as if it were a football? It's not as if anyone will take it seriously.

LIFE'S NOT JUST CHEAP IN MODERN BRITAIN. IT'S ON PERMANENT SPECIAL OFFER. So let's have an end to the polite truce about abortion. If it must be legal, then let it at least be despised. Since Parliament's not going to curb it, let us call it what it is, a massacre conducted to suit the selfish. Let's not have any slippery rubbish about its supporters being 'pro-choice', when in fact they're 'pro-death'. What choice has the poor baby about being dismembered?

PC Cogman, who attends his local Church of England church with his family in Sea Palling, North Norfolk, said he had been subject to a series of investigations over complaints that he is homophobic, turning his life into a "nightmare". The 49-year-old father-of-two, who joined the Norfolk force in 1993 after 12 years in the RAF, insists he loves his job but said: "Internal politics are making it difficult to do what we should be doing."

He added: "We get more flak from inside the force than outside these days. The blatant support for homosexual rights in Norfolk Police makes being a Christian officer extremely difficult. I am not undertaking this action lightly but I have to make a stand when things become so blatantly biased against me just because I hold a faith."

In his claim to the tribunal, being prepared by barrister Paul Diamond - who defended Nadia Eweida after she was suspended by British Airways for wearing a cross - he will argue that the police force, locally and nationally, has become obsessed with inclusiveness to the detriment of those who adhere to Christian beliefs.

Without a private place in which to live his life and raise his family, a man is not free. If the State can march in when it feels like it, then we live in a tyranny. We all accept that sometimes the police may need to force their way into a house. But it is hard to see why WE NOW NEED 1,043 SEPARATE LAWS ALLOWING THOUSANDS OF STATE INSPECTORS TO ENTER OUR HOMES AGAINST OUR WILL.

Among the pretexts for these State-sponsored home invasions are the supposed need to check that unregulated hypnotism is taking place - or if rabbits or dancing bears are present. Various bodies are also empowered to examine pot plants, fridges and hedges.

This dangerous, nosy-parker rubbish results from the simple-minded good intentions of politicians, who pretend to be able to solve all the problems of the world but in the end can only pass new laws for others to implement and suffer. Yet, as it mounts up into a substantial hill of new powers, IT CEASES TO BE SILLY AND BECOMES SINISTER. The time has come for a bonfire of such powers - and a resolve by Ministers to think before they regulate.

What's most striking about the past 50 years of our history is how we have given in without a fight to those who want to revolutionise our society. It is all very well going on about Winston Churchill, but Archbishop Rowan Williams is a figure much more representative of modern Britain. This prelate whimpered last week that Christianity was 'offensive' to Muslims.

Offensive? I know we have been urged to stop being horrid to this inept, terrifyingly well meaning man - and it really is nothing personal - but he does rather ask for it. A few months ago he mused on the possibilities of allowing a little light Sharia Law in this country. This is, I suppose, a point of view. I just can't work out why the leader of a Christian church should hold it.

The Ernst & Young Item club, which uses the Treasury's economic model, will argue in a report tomorrow that the economy will struggle to avoid recession. This comes as a survey by the Institute of Directors shows that business confidence has slumped to the lowest level ever recorded, with company chiefs increasingly gloomy about the investment climate.

These reports follow an interview with Alistair Darling in which the chancellor ADMITTED THE DOWNTURN WOULD BE MORE "PROFOUND" AND LAST LONGER THAN HE HAD EXPECTED. Also, Sir Win Bischoff, chairman of Citigroup, the American financial giant, believes that house prices in Britain and America will keep falling for another two years.

China's emerging rivalry with America as a global superpower will move into the sporting arena next month as its Olympic athletes strive to oust their US counterparts from the top of the medals table for the first time. In a showdown reminiscent of the Cold War-era battles for Olympian dominance, China has put unprecedented effort into ensuring that Beijing 2008 will be a sporting triumph as well as a logistical one. With their athletes already dominant in events such as gymnastics, table tennis and martial arts, Chinese sporting chiefs have spent the past few years focusing on disciplines where Americans have traditionally excelled, including swimming, basketball and athletics.

China's attempt to end America's run of supremacy at the last three Games will add an East-West frisson not seen since the demise of the Soviet Union, which topped the medals board eight times in the post-war period. While the rest of the world's eyes will be on the heroics of the individual contestants, Chinese officials will pay closest attention to the total medal tally.

Mao Zhi Xiong, professor of sports psychology at Beijing Sports University, insisted it was only a "possibility" that China would secure the biggest medal sweep. But he agreed that a Chinese victory would be boost its international prestige. "If you win a lot of medals, then it shows you have advanced as a country," he said. "It means the economy is growing, that living standards are improving and that there is better technology."