Britain's top cancer expert attacks the political correctness that influences too much medical spending. Certain diseases become fashionable in the public consciousness and so attract more political support and attention. Just as the Aids scare in Britain galvanised the bureaucracy of the state into expensive action, so the international agencies, such as the UN, the World Health Organisation and a host of Third World charities, were gripped by a sense of urgency about the need to tackle Aids. YET IT HAS TURNED OUT THAT MUCH OF THIS PANIC, HOWEVER UNDERSTANDABLE, WAS MISPLACED.

In Britain, contrary to all the official propaganda of the Eighties that everyone was at risk, it turns out that THE DISEASE HAS LARGELY BEEN CONFINED TO CERTAIN SPECIFIC GROUPS: GAY MEN, DRUG USERS AND MIGRANTS. All those with HIV and Aids, of course, deserve all the medical support that can be given, but the truth is that the OVERBLOWN PANIC, based more on politics than science, led to a gross misallocation of resources.

The same can be true of the Third World. For all the concentration on HIV, by far the biggest killer in the world is dehydration, which is responsible for 12 million deaths a year, mainly in Africa. Simple, cheap improvements in water supplies would seriously cut that number.

The feeling of imbalance is just as telling when we look at LUNG CANCER. All too often, there is A NASTY SENSE OF BLAME ATTACHED TO THIS KILLER, because so many of its sufferers have a history of smoking. So lung cancer gets nothing like the support of other killer conditions, though POLITICALLY CORRECT CAMPAIGNERS WOULD NOT DREAM OF INDULGING IN THE BLAME GAME TOWARDS DRUG USERS OR GAY MEN WHO HAD ACQUIRED AIDS.

Similarly, the care of the elderly is a seriously neglected cause. In contrast to breast cancer, there is no icon like Kylie Minogue or Linda McCartney to win the backing of the fashion or pop industries. The suffering of the old and infirm continues on a scale that would not be tolerated if the victims were younger, more glamorous or came from a certain favoured minority. This approach not only reeks of injustice, it is also irrational in terms of resources.

Their offices are crammed with unopened post and paperwork spills out of filing cabinets to lie on the floor. A survey of HMRC employees revealed 72 per cent believed their department was changing for the worse. But until the personal details of 25million people were "lost" after the disappearance of two computer discs in the post, no one seems to have taken any notice.

An employee in the North-East offices, who cannot be identified, said: "The new kids who apply to work here don't have to have any GCSEs. It used to be that you had to have five but lots don't have one." Indeed, HMRC says on its website: "If you have no formal educational qualifications, you can still apply if you are willing to take a test as part of this selection process."

The worker said the test involved recruits reading a letter and rewriting it and doing simple sums. "These are the people you are giving your bank details to, your address, your date of birth, your national insurance number. You are handing over all the details of your life to someone with no qualifications." One man, who left after more than ten years' service, said: "The problems with Child Benefit are only the tip of the iceberg. Mistakes happen continuously. Rooms full of unopened post are not uncommon."

The USS Kitty Hawk group and its crew of 8,000 airmen and sailors had been expected in Hong Kong on Wednesday, but will now spend the holiday on the South China Sea. Hundred of relatives of crew members of the Kitty Hawk had flown to Hong Kong to celebrate Thanksgiving with them. Hong Kong, especially its Wanchai bar district, has been a regular port of call for U.S. sailors on "R & R" (rest and recuperation) since the Vietnam War.

The Chinese move comes as a surprise just weeks after a visit to China by U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates, which he said he hoped would lead to a long-term dialogue. There are several issues that may have prompted Beijing's action, including U.S. plans to sell Taiwan a $940 million upgrade to its missile system and last month's meeting between U.S. President George W. Bush and the Dalai Lama, the Tibetan Buddhist leader who Beijing considers a traitor. The Chinese Foreign Ministry declined immediate comment.

UPDATE Quote - "It is a decision out of humanitarian grounds only" - Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman LIU JIANCHAO on Beijing's decision to allow the USS Kitty Hawk carrier group to spend Thanksgiving in port in Hong Kong, hours after the ships had been refused entry

European Union quotas strictly limit the amount of fish that vessels can bring back to port, but there is no restriction on the amount of fish they actually catch. As a result, boats fishing in the "mixed fishery" of the North Sea often catch a species or size of fish which is above their quota and have to throw the "discard" back. The EU estimates that between 40% and 60% of fish caught by trawlers in this area is dumped back into the sea.

Many Scottish and English fishermen say they have seen a huge increase in the number of cod in the North Sea this year and now want an increase in the quota level for cod and other white fish they catch. But environmentalists, who have for years been sounding the alarm bell over the decline of North Sea fish stocks, say now is not the time to increase the amount being caught.

Oliver Knowles, a campaigner for Greenpeace, also believes quotas are not working for the UK's mixed fisheries. He told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "By the government's own figures, of the 186 million fish caught in UK waters last year, 117 million of them were thrown away dead as waste. That's actually 63% of the catch, so it's clear that we do need to do something about this."

EU Fisheries Commissioner Joe Borg - who is instrumental in setting the laws and limits - agreed that discarding fish was "immoral" but said there was no clear solution. "The problem is when we come to work out the details of how to eliminate discarding but at the same time have sustainable fisheries - that is the big problem."

The cave believed to be the Lupercal was found near the ruins of Emperor Augustus' palace on the Palatine hill. The 8m (26ft) high cave decorated with shells, mosaics and marble was found during restoration work on the palace. According to mythology Romulus and Remus were nursed by a she-wolf after being left on the River Tiber's banks.

The twin sons of the god Mars and priestess Rhea Silvia are said to have later founded Rome on the Palatine in 753 BC. The brothers ended up fighting over who should be in charge of the city, a power struggle which ended only after Romulus killed his brother. In Roman times a popular festival called the Lupercalia was held annually on 15 February.

Presenting the discovery, Italian Culture Minister Francesco Rutelli said, "Italy and Rome never cease to astonish the world with continual archaeological and artistic discoveries, and it is incredible to think that we have finally found a mythical site which, by our doing so, has become a real place."

The same thing in the village of Kabal - in fact, nine of the twelve districts in the picturesque Swat Valley, 100 miles from Pakistan's capital, have been taken over by militants, who have torched music shops, barred girls from going to school, forced women to wear burqas and decreed that men must grow beards. As if to complete the flashback to Taliban-era Afghanistan, the new overlords have even attempted to blow up centuries-old Buddhist monuments.

But this is not Afghanistan, of course, or even the tribal lands of the frontier provinces. The Swat valley is Pakistan's premier tourist destination, home to its only ski slope and a haven for trout fishing. But it has become increasingly embattled in the face of an anti-government campaign, over the past five months, by the charismatic radio preacher Maulana Fazlullah, known as the FM mullah, who has spawned a wave of fundamentalist militancy that has swept from the Afghan frontier through the lawless tribal areas of Waziristan and into the settled areas far from the border.

The government of President General Pervez Musharraf seems unable to do anything about it.

In parts of the United States, milk is more expensive than gasoline. There are reports of cows being stolen on Wisconsin dairy farms. "THERE'S A WORLD SHORTAGE OF MILK," said Philip Goode, manager of international policy at Dairy Australia in Canberra.

Rising incomes, from China and India to Latin America and the Middle East, are lifting millions of people out of poverty and into the middle class. It turns out that, along with zippy cars and flat-panel TVs, milk is the mark of new money, a significant source of protein that factors into much of any affluent person's diet. Milk goes into infant formulas, chocolates, ice cream and cheese. Most baked goods contain butter, and coffee chains like Starbucks sell more milk than coffee.

Big buyers like chocolate makers and grocery stores buy their milk under long-term contracts, and so can smooth out sudden spikes or dips in prices. Thus, the full impact of the global shortage varies from country to country, and not all consumers are yet suffering the full impact.

Australia, a major exporter, is suffering a multi-year drought that has devastated its milk production by killing off the grass that milk cows eat. Many in Australia worry that, far from being a temporary problem, the drought is the result of global warming and that dairies will never be the same.

"NO ONE FORECAST THIS RAPID SHORTAGE OF MILK," said Torsten Hemme, head of the IFCN center.

Rainfall since the beginning of October had dropped by 90 percent in Jiangxi and 86 percent in neighbouring Hunan, the country's largest rice-growing province, from average figures, Xinhua news agency said. Rice is a staple for most Chinese and a crop which needs a constant supply of water

The Gan and Xiang rivers running through the two provinces had seen their lowest water levels in history, Xinhua said. The shallow water has caused a jam of barges in some sections of the Gan. Drought and floods are perennial problems in China where meteorologists have complained about the increased extreme weather, partly blaming it on climate change.

More than 1,100 Chinese were killed during summer floods this year. But some parts of the south were hit by weeks of scorching heat and drought in the summer, when as much as a third of farmland was damaged and millions of people were short of drinking water. It was not immediately clear how much damage had been caused to the rice crop.

Guillaume Pepy said simultaneous acts of sabotage overnight caused huge delays to TGV services already hit by a long transport strike over reforms. Mr Pepy declined to say who targeted the TGV network. But the SNCF management had earlier warned that union militants might try to damage the TGV network.

The gathering in Annapolis will not even address the core issues dividing the two peoples in anything but the most vague and general terms. Condoleezza Rice, the Secretary of State, has spent weeks shuttling around the Middle East preparing for the meeting, yet its goal could scarcely be more modest.

A joint declaration signed by the Israeli government under Ehud Olmert and Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestinian Authority (PA), will be the sole result. This will recite the issues dividing the two parties and look forward to "final status" talks, probably opening next month. Then the hard pounding will begin. If the two sides miraculously succeed in agreeing all of the above, a peace deal will follow. Miss Rice earnestly hopes this will occur before the Bush Administration goes out of business in January 2009.

Then what? Israeli officials I met in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv last week believe that, instead of being implemented, any such deal would be placed carefully "on the shelf".

Mr Olmert is a political colossus compared with his Palestinian counterpart. Mr Abbas has lost control of Gaza to Hamas, his Islamist enemies. In truth, he does not wield much power over the West Bank, either, and the supposed government he leads is a shambles.

Israel will consider leaving the West Bank only if the PA can be trusted to prevent terrorist attacks. Under present conditions, one senior Israeli said that after any withdrawal "we will be back there in 20 minutes, because they cannot stop even one terrorist". Just as Israel has undermined the Palestinian leadership, so Hamas has made it far harder for any Israeli government to reach a peace agreement. The only way ahead is for Israel to help Mr Abbas and so undermine Hamas.

One creative option might be for Israel to ease restrictions on movement to and from Gaza by agreement with Mr Abbas, cutting Hamas out of the picture and allowing him to take the credit. But any peace accords must await a change in the political constellation on both sides.

Qingdao, which will host Olympic sailing events, will pump water from the Yellow River equal to almost a year's annual consumption in the city of 7.7 million residents over the next 10 days, Xinhua news agency said, citing a senior water engineer. Like much of northern China, Qingdao, which lies more than 300 km (186-mile) from the Yellow River, faces water shortages which have become more acute due to economic and population growth, the agency said.

Annual water consumption had nearly doubled since the early 1990s in Qingdao, which enjoys only one-seventh of the country's average water resources, it added. Ensuring adequate drinking water during the Olympics has also proved a headache for Beijing, where a prolonged drought and the prospect of 2.5 million Games-related visitors have seen officials scrambling to divert water from reservoirs in neighboring Hebei province.

The latest annual report from the EU's financial watchdog once more fails to give the £75 billion-a-year euro budget a clean bill of health, citing spending "irregularities" and a lack of supervision by the European Commission and by EU governments. The commission oversees the handling of the budget but the member states are responsible for distributing the bulk - almost 80 per cent - of EU spending, most of it in grants and subsidies.

Accounting procedures have been tightened up, concedes the European Court of Auditors' report, but it spotlights continuing flaws in the handling of EU farm subsidies and money aimed at poorer EU regions. Most of the mis-spending is caused by complex technical requirements rather than outright fraud, say the auditors. But old-fashioned scams - including claiming EU handouts for olive trees which don't exist - are still happening.

Conservative MEP Richard Ashworth warned: "Trust in the integrity of the accounts is vital in any democracy, so the constant inability to satisfy the auditors is unacceptable. After 13 years, the European Union has begun to look like a banana republic." UKIP MEP Jeffrey Titford said that their annual audit problem was "becoming as regular as Christmas", adding: "If the EU were a British company, the fraud squad would have been all over it years ago and people would be in prison."

THE CALL FOR AN OIL JIHAD AGAINST THE DOLLAR was first issued by bin Laden in his "Letter to the American People," published by the London Guardian Nov. 24, 2002. Bin Laden wrote, "You steal our wealth and oil at paltry prices because of your international influence and military threats. This theft is indeed the highest theft ever witnessed in the history of the world." He declared, "Whoever has stolen our wealth, then we have the right to destroy their economy."

WND reported last week that with oil at over $90 a barrel, THE U.S. HAS BEGUN SPENDING $1 BILLION A DAY FOR FOREIGN OIL, an outflow of dollars that both deepens the country's negative balance of international trade and further weakens the dollar on world currency markets.

"I would say it's just a couple of years away," reports Daniel Estulin, author of "The True Story of the Bilderberg Group." Estulin, a Canadian now living in Europe, says the original plans for a North American Union involved the U.S. and Canada as the prime participants. It was motivated primarily by the desire to harvest Canada's abundant natural resources.

"Everything is in place," he says. "Europe is now one country, one currency and one constitution. North America is about to become one. The African Union has had its working model going for over a decade. Asia is openly discussing the near-future Asian Union, being sold to us as an economic inevitability beneficial to all its citizens."

Those questioning Estulin's conclusion as mere speculation need only recall organizational financer David Rockefeller's own words as recorded in his "Memoirs." "Some even believe we are part of a secret cabal working against the best interests of the United States, characterizing my family and me as 'internationalists' and conspiring with others around the world to build a more integrated global political and economic structure - one world, if you will," he wrote. "If that's the charge, I stand guilty, and I am proud of it."

The chairman of the organisation, Paul Gray, has resigned. Revenue and Customs says it does not believe the records - names, addresses, date of birth and bank accounts - have fallen into the wrong hands. BBC political editor Nick Robinson said he understood ministers had been aware of the problem for nine to 10 days.

The Metropolitan Police have confirmed they are "making inquiries" into the discs. Mr Darling is expected to outline the measures taken to protect those whose data has been lost. The resignation of Mr Gray was accepted because discs had been transported in breach of rules governing data protection.

BBC Update - The names, addresses, bank and building society account details of a staggering 25 million UK residents contained on two compact discs went missing after they were sent from HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) to the Audit Office. The chairman of HMRC today quit after it was revealed that the discs had been sent out by an unauthorised junior member of staff, Chancellor Alistair Darling told Parliament this afternoon. He admitted that strict security procedures had been breached. Describing the incident as "deeply regrettable", he also admitted it was the second time the data, which relates to child benefit and includes the addresses of every child in the UK, had been wrongly downloaded and sent in the post, following an earlier request in March.