Men become infected later.What began as a male disease that mainly affected male homosexuals, injecting drug users and men who used prostitutes, has turned into a female epidemic. Instead that figure was revised upwards to $56bn, while November's shortfall was the biggest on record, thanks not only to the surging cost of imported oil, but also - and perhaps more ominously - to a drop in US exports.The November returns mean the deficit for the first 11 months of 2004 topped $561bn, far greater than the record $496bn for the whole of 2003. They make it all but certain that the current account deficit, the broadest measure of US trade in goods and services, also hit a new peak last year. In 2003, Airbus delivered 305 jets and took orders for a further 284.Airbus's sales success last year was marred by news that it had asked for checks to be carried out on more than 600 wide-bodied A330 and A340 jets after tiny cracks were detected in the wing rib of at least one A340. The two aircraft share a common wing although the A340 is a four-engined plane whereas the A330 is two-engined.The extraordinary growth of Airbus comes as it prepares to unveil its latest aircraft, the A380 super-jumbo, which will be officially rolled out in Toulouse on Tuesday next week in the presence of Tony Blair and his French and German counterparts, Jacques Chirac and Gerhard Schr?.The A380 is being built with the help of £2.6bn in UK government support but further aid for Airbus and Boeing has now been frozen whilst the European Union and United States seek to hammer out a deal to end aircraft subsidies.

While strong US demand for consumer goods pushed imports up 1.3 per cent, exports dropped 2.3 per cent.The real problem is Asia. European demand for imports from the US is slack, despite the weak dollar, while the US continues to suck in imports from Europe and elsewhere.As a result, US exporters have been helped relatively little by the 50 per cent slide of the dollar against the euro in the past three years. The research showed that while Germany and the UK topped the table in terms of raw numbers of IT jobs relocated offshore, in terms of a share of GDP the largest outsourcing was undertaken by Cyprus, with the UK coming in 30th and the US 73rd.India, which has been the focus of trade union anger over call centre jobs, outsourced almost as much business services work as the UK.. The US trade deficit ballooned to a record $60.3bn (£32bn) in November, sending the dollar sharply lower on foreign exchange markets and threatening US growth projections for the closing quarter of 2004.

For the first three quarters of the 2004, that deficit ran at an annual rate of $635bn, or 5.6 per cent of GDP.The huge imbalance reflects not only the increase in oil prices, which pushed oil imports to a record $13.4bn in November, but currency exchange rate distortions and much faster economic growth in the US than in Europe.Although the expanded deficit may knock something of the US growth rate in the final quarter of 2004, the US economy continues to grow at 3.5 per cent annually, compared with projected eurozone expansion of 1.5 per cent this year. David Davies, vice-president of Philip Morris, said 190 billion cigarettes are counterfeited each year. "Counterfeit trade is our fourth biggest competitor," he said. Counterfeit cigarettes are thought to make up about 6 per cent of cigarettes in the UK, and the percentage is rising.. Moving British services jobs overseas has not led to a net loss of employment in the UK, according to research by the International Monetary Fund. The findings come as a boost to the Government, which has argued outsourcing allows UK companies to use the cost savings to create higher-paid jobs elsewhere.The IMF staff focused on the UK because of the level of anxiety over an exodus of jobs overseas and the sheer scale of outsourcing by British firms.The UK engages in about three times as much services outsourcing as a share of economic wealth as the US, they found. Ash, the anti-smoking group, has called the agreement the "gold standard" of anti-smuggling agreements and John McFall, a Labour MP, challenged the rest of the tobacco industry to sign up.

But the tobacco industry believes its joint "Memorandum of Understanding" with Customs on combating smuggling is enough.The tobacco industry is very concerned, however, about the rise in counterfeit cigarettes. Although cigarette smuggling into the UK is believed to have dropped significantly since the 1990s, 15 to 18 per cent of cigarettes consumed in the UK are sold illegally.Nigel Northridge, chief executive of Gallaher, which makes Silk Cut and Benson & Hedges cigarettes, said the bootlegging of cigarettes bought on the Continent was difficult to stop. He called on the EU to agree a fixed limit on tourists can buy legitimately. "We estimate 60 per cent of duty-not-paid cigarettes in the UK come from within the EU. The difficulty is trying to spot the legitimate buyer and the bootlegger. People are tempted because the levels on what you can bring back are confusing," he said.Philip Morris recently signed up to an historic anti-smuggling treaty with the European Commission as part of a $1bn package to resolve a long-running lawsuit on illicit trade.

Tobacco chiefs were challenged by MPs yesterday on whether they were devoting enough resources to stub out cigarette smuggling, a trade that costs the UK taxpayer £3bn a year in lost revenues. After hearing that Philip Morris, British American Tobacco, Imperial Tobacco and Gallaher employ no more than 200 people between them dedicated to combating smuggling, the MP Nigel Beard said: "You're not exactly breaking the bank on this given your profits, are you? Are a handful of people enough?"MPs on the sub-committee of the Treasury Select Committee were grilling senior executives from the companies as part of an investigation into excise duty fraud. That would mean the former company directors, who have agreed to pay $54m (£29m), including $18m from personal funds, to end their involvement in the lawsuit, would have to stand trial in the civil case set to begin next month.The tussling comes ahead of a criminal trial later this month against Bernie Ebbers, WorldCom's larger-than-life former chief executive. Mr Ebbers is charged with trying to cover up WorldCom's fraud and faces a prison sentence if convicted.The banks are being sued for allegedly knowing about WorldCom's false accounting when they worked on $17bn of bond issues in the company. Citigroup reached a $2.6bn settlement last year with the class-action investors, who claim they unfairly lost billions when an accounting scandal plunged the telecoms company into bankruptcy protection in 2002. It was renamed MCI when it emerged from bankruptcy last year.The group of non-executive directors was set to stand trial in the same case on the basis that they should have seen signs of the irregularities. The suit named 12 former board members, the accounting firm Arthur Andersen and the banks involved with underwriting the company's bond offerings.Two former outside directors, Bert Roberts and Francesco Galesi, have not yet joined the proposed settlement, though they could do so before the civil trial starts next month..