The damning report prepared for the Government, which confirms allegations first revealed at the National Union of Teachers conference in April, says the inexperienced staff regularly teach classes for weeks at a time, putting children's education at risk.

The pattern emerged in a 538-page evaluation of the Government's flagship reforms to teachers' working hours. In response to lobbying from unions, ministers introduced laws to limit their workloads six years ago. But the research team at London Metropolitan University - which surveyed 1,800 headteachers, 3,200 teachers and 2,400 support staff - found 80 per cent of state schools were forced to use unqualified support staff to cover lessons when teachers were absent.

Teachers were also concerned. One told the researchers: 'I feel it's cheap labour.' Some headteachers admitted their use of support staff 'was driven largely by budgetary concerns'. A separate study last week found pupils who spent too long with untrained staff fell behind in class. 'In the end it is the teacher that makes the critical difference. Every child should have the right to a qualified teacher.'

In Scotland alone, one fifth of the main network has been identified as at risk of landslides, with extreme storm rainfall predicted to increase by between 10 and 30 per cent by the 2080s. On Monday, in Argyll, part of a mountainside supersaturated with rain collapsed on to a trunk road, effectively cutting off a vast swath of the county. Exactly the same thing happened, on the same stretch of road, in 2004 and 2007. It will take diggers weeks, possibly months, to stabilise the hillside and clear the road.

Everywhere you go, there is the stink of rot. Timbers are swollen; doors stick; the ground, so engorged it can absorb no more, heaves beneath your feet. Toads claw at night at the back door, looking, I fear, for somewhere dry to go. Small creatures are drowning and dying. Those that can fly away have done so: the eaves are empty, the normally prolific swallows having disappeared weeks before their normal time. Fruit is dropping, half formed and rotting, on to lawns too wet to walk across, let alone cut.

FARMING IS DEVASTATED. With DAIRY COWS ALREADY HOUSED INSIDE, TWO MONTHS EARLIER THAN USUAL, and THOUSANDS OF POUNDS WORTH OF HAY AND GRAIN LYING ROTTING IN SODDEN FIELDS — unreachable, even if it stopped raining, by mechanical means — many farmers are desperate. In Cumbria the ground will be too soft to bear the weight of a combine harvester any time between now and Christmas.

Some pupils from the poorest areas arrive at school UNABLE TO DRESS THEMSELVES OR USE A KNIFE AND FORK, WITH SOME EVEN UNABLE TO USE A TOILET PROPERLY, she said. Lesley Ward, president of the 160,000-strong Association of Teachers and Lecturers, warned that many children were also being relied upon to raise younger brothers and sisters and lacked stable father figures in the home.

In a speech last night, Mrs Ward, a primary school teacher from Doncaster, said Labour had "tried hard on this issue" but had failed to fill the vacuum left by the death of the mining and manufacturing industries in many working-class communities. She said it meant a "small, significant and growing minority" of children were being raised in families with low expectations and a level of poverty "mirroring the times of Dickens".

It was "next to impossible", she added, for schools to counter the effect of serious deprivation, family breakdown and a lack of parenting skills in many communities. Her comments follow the publication of figures showing nearly three million children still live below the poverty line in Britain. Ministers have admitted there is little chance of hitting their target to halve child poverty by 2011. It also comes amid fears that children's education chances are still too strongly linked to family background.

Secret British government documents to be published on Friday reveal the deep anxieties felt by Margaret Thatcher and François Mitterrand, the French president, following the fall of the wall. The documents, published by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, show that Mr Mitterrand privately warned Lady Thatcher that A REUNITED GERMANY MIGHT "MAKE EVEN MORE GROUND THAN HAD HITLER".

They also show that in January 1990, weeks after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Mr Mitterrand warned Lady Thatcher that the prospect of REUNIFICATION WAS TURNING THE GERMANS INTO THE "BAD" PEOPLE THEY USED TO BE. Mrs Thatcher's deep-seated opposition to reunification, and her disagreement with the Foreign & Commonwealth Office over the issue, also emerges in the 500 published papers.

The Government's decision to publish the papers, ahead of Germany's 20th anniversary celebrations of the fall of the wall, will be seen as an attempt to show that officials were positive about reunification early on, despite Lady Thatcher's personal concerns.

8 February 2007: HSBC WARNS OF SUBPRIME LOSSES - HSBC reveals huge losses at its US mortgage arm Household Finance due to subprime losses, in one of the first signs that the US housing market is turning sour

2 April 2007: NEW CENTURY GOES BUST - New Century Financial, a leading subprime lender, files for bankruptcy. It is the first signal that something is seriously amiss at US mortgage lenders.

9 August 2007: CREDIT MARKETS FREEZE - Credit markets go into freefall after Paribas announces that two of its hedge funds are frozen due to "complete evaporation of liquidity" in asset backed security market.

14 September 2007: RUN ON THE ROCK - Savers in beleaguered UK former building society Northern Rock begin withdrawing their savings after the BBC reveals the bank has received emergency financial support from the Bank of England.

17 March 2008: BEAR STEARNS RESCUE - US investment bank Bear Stearns is rescued by rival bank JP Morgan Chase after the US government provides a $30bn guarantee against its mounting losses.

7 September 2008: FANNIE MAE RESCUE - US government rescues giant mortgage lenders Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, taking them into temporary public ownership after they reveal huge losses on the US subprime mortgage market.

15 September 2008: LEHMAN BROTHERS GOES BANKRUPT - US investment bank Lehman Brothers goes bankrupt after the US government refuses to bail it out. Merrill Lynch is bought by Bank of America after revealing it also is facing huge losses. Insurance firm AIG, which issued credit guarantees for subprime mortgages, is rescued the next day with an $85bn loan from US Treasury.

17 September 2008: LLOYDS TAKES OVER HBOS - Lloyds agrees a £12.2bn takeover of the ailing Halifax Bank of Scotland (HBOS), the UK's largest mortgage lender, after its shares plummet amid concerns over the firm's future.

3 October 2008: $700BN BAILOUT APPROVED BY CONGRESS - The biggest financial rescue in US history is approved after a gruelling debate in Congress, and initial defeat a week earlier.

13 October 2008: UK GOVERNMENT RESCUES RBS AND LLOYDS-HBOS - Two of the UK's major banks, RBS and HBOS, are in major trouble as financial markets collapse.

16 December 2008: FED CUTS KEY RATE TO NEAR ZERO - The US central bank cuts its interest rate to 0-0.25% in an attempt to stem the deepening recession, and begins to consider a programme of quantitative easing to throw money into the economy to help make borrowing easier.

14 February 2009: US CONGRESS PASSES $787BN STIMULUS - President Obama wins his first major victory in Congress as it passes a huge economic recovery plan aimed at preventing the US falling into recession as a result of the credit crunch.

2 April 2009: G20 SUMMIT IN LONDON - World leaders pledge an additional $1.1 trillion to help emerging market countries and promise coordinated action to fight the slump and improve regulation.

22 April 2009: UK BUDGET REVEALS HUGE DEFICIT - The UK Chancellor Alistair Darling reveals that the credit crunch will lead to the largest budget deficit in UK financial history of £175bn, with total government debt set to double to £1 trillion by 2014.

Full Article

According to analysts with the Institute of Terrorism Research and Response (ITRR), a recently intercepted jihadist communication declares that "EVERYONE KNOWS" THAT THE "NEXT STRIKE IS VERY NEAR, A STRIKE THAT WILL SURPRISE EVERYONE IN ITS EFFECT, WHICH WILL BE MUCH MORE SHOCKING THAN THAT OF 9/11/2001." The writer of the chilling message notes that this is the Muslim month of Ramadan and that "we pray that it will indeed be in this month."

After referring to a previous boast by Osama Bin-Laden, that the enemy is afraid and unable to prevent the next attack, the communication says: "And the Germans, grandchildren of the Nazis, know more than everyone else that they will be the first ones to taste [the nightmare]. IT IS JUST A MATTER OF TIME - THAT IS, DAYS OR WEEKS - and God willing you'll see things that you've never heard of before."

While Germany and German assets have been singled out in the past, due to that nation's involvement in the war in Afghanistan, the threats have been general and motivational in nature. According to ITRR, the LATEST JIHADIST COMMUNICATION WAS UNUSUAL IN THAT IT WAS VERY EXPLICIT and open in targeting the Germans, in discussing a coming attack, and in specifying its timing. ASIDE FROM RAMADAN, WHICH ENDS 19 SEPTEMBER 2009, the upcoming GERMAN NATIONAL ELECTION ON SEPTEMBER 27 has been marked as a "red flag date" by ITRR. Jihadists keen on disrupting and influencing European foreign policy are likely to attempt attacks around the time of the elections.

German security services have also been cited in local media discussing STEPPED UP JIHADIST CHATTER, threats and intelligence warnings aimed at the German state in recent months. Earlier this year, video messages delivered in German by an al-Qaeda fighter going by the name of Abu Talha, purportedly in Afghanistan, CALLED ON GERMANS TO CONVERT TO ISLAM and remove their several thousand troops from the Afghan theatre. According to a June report by Der Spiegel weekly, AMERICAN INTELLIGENCE AGENCIES BELIEVE THAT AL-QAEDA'S LEADERS HAVE DECIDED TO ATTACK GERMANY, supposedly assigning the job to al-Qaeda of the Islamic Maghreb (North Africa).

"They [financial crises] are all different, but they have one fundamental source," he said. "That is the unquenchable capability of human beings when confronted with long periods of prosperity to presume that it will continue." Speaking a year after the collapse of US investment bank Lehman Brothers, which was followed by a worldwide financial crisis and global recession, Mr Greenspan described the behaviour as "HUMAN NATURE".

Blamed by some for not doing more to prevent the crisis, Mr Greenspan denied any responsibility for the problems gripping the global economy. "It's human nature, unless somebody can find a way to change human nature, we will have more crises and none of them will look like this BECAUSE NO TWO CRISES HAVE ANYTHING IN COMMON, EXCEPT HUMAN NATURE."

The article notes, "no one speaks openly about the preparations while the outcome on Ireland is uncertain. But the timeframe is tight. Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt wants the [EU Foreign Minister] and a new 'EU-President' to be appointed at a Council meeting in Brussels on 29 October. At the same time, a decision will be taken on the format of the new EU Diplomatic Service."

"Sweden is therefore now WORKING DISCREETLY but intensely to draw up the plans for the [EU Foreign Minister]. In fact, it's working on it so intensely that experienced observers express surprise over how much effort Sweden is putting into this."

The article also notes that the Foreign Minister will have his or her own headquarters, where the Diplomatic Service will be built, while the Foreign Minister will also be in charge of "EU embassies" around the world. It's also noted that important aspects of the EU's aid and enlargement policies will fall under the scope of the EU Foreign Ministry, while it's unclear to what extent it will have a mandate over the bloc's trade policy.

There are "TROUBLING SIMILARITIES" between the US President's actions since taking office and those which in the 1930s sent the US and much of the world spiralling into the worst economic collapse in recorded history, says the new pamphlet, published by the Institute of Economic Affairs.

In particular, the authors, economists Charles Rowley of George Mason University and Nathanael Smith of the Locke Institute, claim that THE WHITE HOUSE'S PLANS TO POUR HUNDREDS OF BILLIONS OF DOLLARS OF CASH INTO THE ECONOMY WILL UNDERMINE IT IN THE LONG RUN. They say that by employing deficit spending and increased state intervention President Obama will ultimately hamper the long-term growth potential of the US economy and may risk delaying full economic recovery by several years.

The study represents a challenge to the widely held view that Keynesian fiscal policies helped the US recover from the Depression which started in the early 1930s. The authors say: "[Franklin D Roosevelt's] interventionist policies and draconian tax increases delayed full economic recovery by several years by exacerbating a climate of pessimistic expectations that drove down private capital formation and household consumption to unprecedented lows."

According to documents provided to the daily by a judges' union, the plan would extend the period police can keep a suspect IN DETENTION WITHOUT CHARGE OR A HEARING BEFORE A JUDGE TO UP TO SIX MONTHS. Suspects would ALSO NOT BE ABLE TO CONTACT A LAWYER UNTIL AFTER SPENDING 24 HOURS IN CUSTODY. Under the plan children could be tried in adult courts and more trials held behind closed doors.

The Syndicat de la Magistrature called the measures "revolting" and said they would amount to "liberticide," and called on Justice Minister Michele Alliot-Marie to abandon the plan. The union was due to release on Tuesday the text of the government plan, which it said was provided to heads of courts in great secrecy in July, the newspaper reported. Swine flu, or the A(H1N1) virus, the first pandemic to be declared by the World Health Organization in this century, has so far claimed 15 lives in France, out of at least 2,837 worldwide.

In a radical report, the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) has said the system of currencies and capital rules which binds the world economy is not working properly, and was largely responsible for the financial and economic crises. It added that the present system, under which the dollar acts as the world's reserve currency , should be subject to a wholesale reconsideration.

Although a number of countries, including China and Russia, have suggested replacing the dollar as the world's reserve currency, the UNCTAD REPORT IS THE FIRST TIME A MAJOR MULTINATIONAL INSTITUTION HAS POSITED SUCH A SUGGESTION. In essence, the report calls for a new Bretton Woods-style system of managed international exchange rates, meaning central banks would be forced to intervene and either support or push down their currencies depending on how the rest of the world economy is behaving.

Among Conservatives the figure is 82 per cent – putting more pressure on party leader David Cameron to clarify his position on Europe. Despite campaigning against the Lisbon Treaty – the rehashed EU constitution – the Tories will not say whether they will tear it up in power. But the furore over the treaty will be re-ignited next month when Ireland holds a second referendum, despite voting against it last year.

Labour has denied British voters the chance to vote on the treaty, but today's survey by Opinium Research suggests BRITAIN COULD DELIVER A HUGE BLOW TO BRUSSELS IF EVER GIVEN THE CHANCE TO VOTE ON EU MEMBERSHIP. Anger has been fuelled after the Treasury admitted Britain's net EU contribution will rise by almost 60 per cent to £6.4billion in 2010 – equal to a £260 levy on every British home.

Ukip leader Nigel Farage said: "The Irish referendum will put Europe back at the heart of the debate. The question the Tories would rather not face is coming back."

Former US President George W Bush made the promise in a letter to former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. The Obama administration has stated it is not bound by the letter because it is not part of a formal and signed agreement.

Lieberman, speaking during a tour in Africa on the "It's All Talk" programme on Voice of Israel government radio, said that acceptance of the understandings is one of three "red lines" he is placing on the government's proposed freeze on new building in Judea and Samaria.

However, he added that he will not threaten to leave the coalition and instead will remain in the government to influence its policies. The Foreign Minister's second red line is that there be no government limits on building in eastern Jerusalem, where US President Barack Obama has demanded that Israel halt all new construction for Jews. The US government does not recognize Israeli sovereignty over eastern Jerusalem and has not suggested restrictions on Arab building, much of which is illegal under zoning and planning laws.

Immediate-delivery metal rose to $1,002.73 an ounce. Gold is set for a ninth yearly gain. The contract for December delivery surged to $1,004.70 on the Comex division of the New York Mercantile Exchange, taking this year's rise to about 14 percent. Governments have cut interest rates and boosted spending to fight the worst recession since World War II, spurring investors to buy bullion AS A HEDGE AGAINST POTENTIAL INFLATION AND DEBASEMENT OF CURRENCIES.

The Dollar Index has lost 4.2 percent this year. Gold typically moves inversely to the US currency. "There's not many good options for investors to hedge against a declining dollar and rising inflation," Hwang Il Doo, head of trading with KEB Futures Co, said today from Seoul. "Gold will rise to $1,100 an ounce by the end of the year, once physical demand from China and India adds fuel to the rally."

"The reasons to own gold as an investment make sense," Sydney-based Greg Gibbs, a Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc strategist, said in advance of the metal's gain to $1,000 today. "IT IS A HEDGE AGAINST POLICY MAKERS LOSING CONTROL OF FISCAL AND QUANTITATIVE MONETARY POLICIES."

"MONEY HAS BEEN PRINTED MASSIVELY," said investor Jim Slater, who was deputy chairman of Galahad Gold Plc before it liquidated in 2008. "INFLATION WILL FOLLOW FAIRLY SOON" and there may be "A HINT OF HYPERINFLATION. Even a hint will be very good news for gold," said Slater.

He says there is a real risk of "judges arrogating to themselves greater power than they have at the moment". The new court president's Lord Phillips said such an outcome was "a possibility", but was "unlikely". Lord Neuberger has stepped down from the Law Lords and returns to the Court of Appeal next month as head of its civil division with the title of Master of the Rolls.

Lord Neuberger's fears were dismissed by Lord Turnbull, who was one of Tony Blair's most senior advisers when the then prime minister announced wide-ranging constitutional reforms. "It has been alleged that this was all thought up on the back of a fag packet," the former Cabinet Secretary told the programme. "This is entirely wrong." Even so, Lord Turnbull accepted that the Supreme Court justices might become more assertive and more difficult for a future government in their new home across Parliament Square.

Lord Falconer, the Lord Chancellor, who saw the reforms through Parliament, agreed that the new court would strengthen the judiciary. "The Supreme Court will be bolder in vindicating both the freedoms of individuals and, coupled with that, being willing to take on the executive," he said.