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."

For years, proponents of so-called "net neutrality" have been calling for strong regulation of broadband "on-ramps" to the Internet, like those provided by your local cable or phone companies. Rules are needed, the argument goes, to ensure that the Internet remains open and free, and to discourage broadband providers from thwarting consumer demand. That sounds good if you say it fast.

Nothing is broken and needs fixing, however. The Internet has been open and freedom-enhancing since it was spun off from a government research project in the early 1990s. Its nature as a diffuse and dynamic global network of networks defies top-down authority. Ample laws to protect consumers already exist. Furthermore, the Obama Justice Department and the European Commission both decided this year that net-neutrality regulation was unnecessary and might deter investment in next-generation Internet technology and infrastructure.

On this winter solstice, we will witness jaw-dropping interventionist chutzpah as the FCC bypasses branches of our government in the dogged pursuit of needless and harmful regulation. The darkest day of the year may end up marking the beginning of a long winter's night for Internet freedom.

Ministers believe broadband providers should consider automatically blocking sex sites, with individuals being required to opt in to receive them, rather than opt out and use the available computer parental controls. Ed Vaizey, the communications minister, is to meet internet providers, including BT, Virgin Media and TalkTalk, "in the near future" to discuss changing the way pornography enters private homes, the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills confirmed.

The move is designed to protect children from being exposed to pornography on the net. "This is a very serious matter. I think it is very important that it's the ISPs that some up with solutions to protect children," Vaizey told the Sunday Times. "I'm hoping they will get their acts together so that we don't have to legislate, but we are keeping an eye on the situation and we will have a new communications bill in the next couple of years."

The action follows the success of moves by most British internet providers to prevent people inadvertently viewing child pornography websites. Now ministers want to see adult pornography controlled with similar technology, with sites blocked unless people specifically request access to them.

Shares in the stock exchange suffered large falls within hours of opening on Sunday as panicked investors went on a selling spree. The index ended the day down by 552 points or 6.72%. It has been on a rollercoaster ride in recent weeks, hitting a record high on 5 December, having climbed 80% since the start of the year. But on 8 December it nosedived, prompting protests in Dhaka and towns elsewhere.

Analysts say Sunday's index fall was triggered by a central bank interest-rate hike. The regulators have also taken measures in recent weeks to restrict money supply into the share market after concerns that stocks were overvalued. The move forced big institutional investors to withdraw from the market, triggering panic among individual investors.

The rising value of the stocks in recent years has attracted hundreds of thousands of small-scale or retail investors in Bangladesh, says the BBC's Anbarasan Ethirajan in Dhaka. It became a popular investment for ordinary people, often providing higher returns than bank deposits and savings. Regulators have now agreed to relax some of the conditions, hoping that will increase the money supply and stabilise the market, he says.