The world is on the brink of financial meltdown, the head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) said last night. His bleak warning came as finance ministers tried to calm the frenzy in markets that saw share prices crash by more than 20% last week.

Video: can the war in Afghanistan be won?

Omer Goldman is a pretty girl, slender as a model. Never still, very restless, she is filled with anxiety by the expected loss of her freedom. For months before she refused to be drafted into the Israel Defence Forces, she went to a psychologist every week to prepare for what was to come: incarceration in a cell in a military prison.

Video: the second presidential debate in 10 easy minutes

AUSTRIA’S far-right leader Jörg Haider was killed in a car accident yesterday, just two weeks after staging a political comeback.

A TALE of skulduggery and intrigue has emerged in France, where the former intelligence chief is suspected of spying on President Nicolas Sarkozy’s wives and lovers as part of an effort to smear him.

THE so-called Troopergate investigation into Sarah Palin’s conduct as Alaska governor has blown a hole in John McCain’s White House campaign and called into question the role of her husband Todd as “first dude” should she become vice-president,writes Sarah Baxter.

FORGET about the old maid, the fatso and the nerd: a rash of books and films about men or women with uncontrollable cravings for instant gratification suggests that the latest American figure of fun is the “sex addict”.

THE British director of Opera Australia, which stages the Sydney Opera House’s productions, has been accused of fostering a culture of favouritism by using too many British artists.

CONFIDENTIAL talks involving a senior member of the Saudi royal family are due to be held in Oxford this week in an effort to kick-start the Middle East peace process.

Video: can the war in Afghanistan be won?

Amid signs that EU leaders are moving towards a British-style rescue plan for banks, Gordon Brown will travel to Paris to take part in crisis talks tomorrow with the leaders of the 15 eurozone countries.

Georgw W Bush pledged a united and global response to the credit crisis as he emerged from a meeting with finance officials in Washington today.

ZIMBABWE’S deadlocked attempts to secure a power sharing deal appeared to be faltering today as President Robert Mugabe grabbed key ministries for his own party, including control of the army, the police and the economy.

Austrian far right leader, Joerg Haider, was killed in a car crash early this morning just weeks after making a major comeback in national elections last month.

Sarah Palin, John McCain’s running mate, unlawfully abused her power as Alaska’s governor by trying to have her former brother-in-law fired as a state trooper, according to an ethics investigation released last night. It deals a significant blow to an already embattled Republican ticket just over three weeks until Election Day.

Schoolchildren are celebrating, commentators are astonished and purists are fuming over what they describe as a scandalous attack on 500 years of French history.

London’s Bankside art complex and Kabul could not be farther apart in cultural terms. The Taleban banned all depictions of the human form during its rule, destroyed ancient works of art and blew up music shops. But a former curator at Tate Modern yesterday took a step across the cultural chasm with the first contemporary art exhibition in Afghanistan. The show opened as a surreal oasis of calm and culture in a tense and jittery city. Bodyguards followed many of the diplomats who came to view the works by leading Afghan, Pakistani and Iranian artists. A car-bomb alert during the event prompted some to leave early. Two months ago a suicide bomber blew himself up outside the historic Babur Gardens where the show was held. Even getting the 51 works into the country for the exhibition was a challenge for the show’s English director, Jemima Montagu. Works of art featuring text from the Koran could not be imported for fear that sniffer dogs might touch them during security checks at airports. Dogs are considered unclean by many Muslims. Two paintings remain in transit. “I knew it was ridiculously ambitious to hope everything would arrive on time. If 75 per cent made it then I knew I could count myself lucky,” Ms Montagu, 34, said. She was a curator for Tate Modern and Tate Liverpool before moving to Afghanistan to work for the Turquoise Mountain Foundation, a charity that supports Afghan arts. All the artists featured are part of the burgeoning regional art scene. Some Pakistani and Iranian artists are commanding tens of thousands of pounds for their works in London and New York. “The art scene in Pakistan is a very heavily politicised movement,” said Aisha Khalid, 36. Her work features burka-clad figures and gaping red bullet holes and draws on an ancient tradition of miniature art in Pakistan. For the Kabul Living Traditions show, only works thought to be within the tolerance of Afghanistan’s conservative populace were displayed. Three thousand Afghan school-children are expected to visit the exhibition in the next two months as a result of sponsorship by donors, including the British Government and Afghanistan’s biggest tea importer. The exhibition will then move to Islamabad and Tehran. Beside the established names, several lesser-known Afghan artists were exhibited. Ali Baba Aurang, 37, is a painter who specialises in calligraphy. “I was very interested in painting and calligraphy but during the Taleban time I could not produce any work with a living being, so the only venue of expression for me was calligraphy,” he said. “Afghanistan has been recently reborn to the political world and is now reviving in other aspects. Art and culture are the main means of communication between humans, the mild way to communicate, and so I think they are the most important.”

British troops will hunt down heroin drug barons and their opium-processing laboratories in Afghanistan for the first time in a new strategy designed to sever the flow of drugs money to the Taleban. The new strategy represents a change in operations for the 50,000 international troops serving in Afghanistan, which produces 90 per cent of the world’s heroin. Until now, the job of tackling the heroin industry had been left to the Afghan counter-narcotics police. American commanders have successfully lobbied their Nato allies to take on the drug barons amid clear evidence that the Taleban have been raking off about 10 per cent of the drug-trafficking profits to buy arms and to fuel the insurgency. For the first time in the Nato campaign in Afghanistan, alliance defence ministers agreed that troops should take on the additional responsibility. A Nato spokesman said that individual governments would have to authorise any action by their troops to pursue “facilities and facilitators” of the drugs trade. The military counter-narcotics role was agreed in principle by defence ministers at a meeting in Budapest, the Hungarian capital. An estimated $80 million ($£45 million) are channelled each year from opium sales into the coffers of the insurgents. After doubts were raised by Germany, Spain, Italy, Poland, Romania and Greece, the defence ministers also agreed that the new role for International Security Assistance Force (Isaf) troops should be temporary until the Afghan security forces had acquired sufficient capability to take over the responsibility. Britain and other Nato countries have been reluctant to take military action against the poppy farmers – the first stage in the opium trail - because of the perceived hostility it would cause among Afghans struggling to make a living. With no easy alternative livelihood for many farmers, there has been no enthusiasm in Isaf to get involved in a widespread eradication programme. Yesterday’s decision followed a direct appeal by General John Craddock, the American Supreme Allied Commander Europe, who dismissed concerns that Isaf involvement in attacking the drug barons would make life more dangerous for Nato troops. He said that there was nothing more dangerous than being blown up by roadside bombs and landmines. Abdul Rahim Wardak, the Afghan Defence Minister, was at the meeting in Budapest and fully supported General Craddock’s call for more robust action.

Staring glumly at his shiny green Yamaha R6, Ali Samir sighs in frustration as he misses another day roaring through Baghdad on one wheel, racing fellow bikers. After a surge of killings in the city by gunmen on motorcycles, the authorities have cracked down on bikers and begun confiscating their only means of transport.