The sight of highly-paid bankers being escorted off their premises with boxes full of possessions seems remote from our everyday lives - and for some people may even provoke feelings of satisfaction, a deserved comeuppance after a decade of City greed.

The loss of banking jobs will inevitably have a knock-on effect on the rest of the economy, and not just for the army of nannies, dog-walkers, car dealers and tradesmen who service bankers' lifestyles. A shrinking financial services sector, one of our biggest export industries, will add to downward pressure on the pound, driving up the cost of imports and impacting further on consumer prices.

The one bright development this week has been the effect of the crisis on global oil prices, which have slumped from their peak earlier in the summer. The falls should be felt at the pumps over the next few days. But it should not be seen as a harbinger of better times: the reason prices are falling is that global demand for oil is predicted to slump as the global economy slows. SLIGHTLY CHEAPER MOTORING WILL COME AS LITTLE RELIEF FOR MOTORISTS WHO NO LONGER HAVE A JOB TO DRIVE OFF TO.

Archbishop Gianfranco Ravasi, the Vatican's culture minister, was speaking at the announcement of a Rome conference of scientists, theologians and philosophers to be held next March marking the 150th anniversary of the publication of Darwin's "The Origin of Species". Earlier this week a leading Anglican churchman, Rev. Malcolm Brown, said the Church of England owed Darwin an apology for the way his ideas were received by Anglicans in Britain.

Creationism is the belief that God created the world in six days as described in the Bible. The Catholic Church does not read the Genesis account of creation literally, saying it is an allegory for the way God created the world. Some other Christians, mostly conservative Protestants in the United States, read Genesis literally and object to evolution being taught in biology class in public high schools.

The Catholic Church teaches "theistic evolution," a stand that accepts evolution as a scientific theory and sees no reason why God could not have used a natural evolutionary process in the forming of the human species. It objects to using evolution as the basis for an atheist philosophy that denies God's existence or any divine role in creation. It also objects to using Genesis as a scientific text. Pope Benedict discussed these issues with his former doctoral students at their annual meeting in 2006. In a speech in Paris last week, he spoke out against biblical literalism.

The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (Mend) said it had destroyed Shell's Orubiri flow-station. A military spokesman confirmed the attack but there are no details on any casualties. This is the second major oil facility attacked this week. Attacks by militants have cut Nigeria's oil production by some 20% even before this week's upsurge.

Access to clean water is the most pressing issue, an official said. Power failures can idle purification plants for weeks, seawater can make water undrinkable, and pipes have often been contaminated with sewage or chemicals. Tainted water can cause diarrhoea and dehydration.

Officials need to attack the pests as soon as possible, said Richard Pollack, a mosquito researcher at Harvard University's School of Public Health in Boston. "Within a few days, if they don't do this, life is going to be fairly unbearable," he said. "It is a real problem. It is a quality-of-life issue. You can't tell if the mosquito landing on you or your child is infected or not." If unchecked, mosquitoes carrying diseases including West Nile virus could get out of control, he said.

Elsewhere along the Texas coast, entire towns were all but erased by Ike's storm surge. Ike has killed 41 people in 10 states, the Associated Press reported. Sanitation is going to be a problem in Galveston, with generators needed to pump out contaminated water, said David Paulison, chief of the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Long-term housing will be the next challenge. "It's going to be a while before people can live in their homes," Paulison said today aboard Air Force One with Bush. Some residents may wait 18 months, Paulison said. "Residents who have evacuated, stay where you are," Governor Rick Perry said in a statement. "The worst thing that could happen is for people who are in a safe area where there is food, water and electricity to return to communities that have yet to have essential services restored."

The rescue follows the collapse of US investment giant Lehman Brothers, which caused share prices to plummet across the world's financial markets. Meanwhile, Barclays said it had reached a deal to buy Lehman's US investment banking and capital markets businesses. The $250m deal, which is subject to approval from the bankruptcy court, will make the British bank the third biggest investment bank in the US. Barclays will also purchase Lehman's New York headquarters and its two data centres in New Jersey for $1.5bn. THE RESCUE OF AIG - WHICH HAS A TRILLION DOLLARS IN ASSETS AND INSURES BANK LOANS AROUND THE WORLD - prompted a shares rally in Asia, with Japan's market up 2% in early trading.

The board of the Federal Reserve made the decision "with the full support of the Treasury Department", it said in a statement, adding that the secured loan included conditions designed to protect "the interests of the US government and taxpayers". Correspondents say the demise of AIG - which has policy holders in more than 100 countries and insures deals and investments across the globe - would have a far greater impact on financial markets than Lehman's collapse.

Were the company to fail, many banks and investment funds in the US and around the world would lose their insurance cover at a time when defaults on payments are likely to rise. The Governor of New York, David Paterson, said AIG had so many business interests it would be hard to predict how widespread its bankruptcy would have been felt. "Its tentacles go further in to the avenues of business, as in mortgages, as in credit, as in hedge funds, as in countless ways that affect consumers, that affect drivers, that affect homeowners, affect passengers," he said. AIG had posted losses in each of the last nine months

The heads of the Russian central bank, the finance ministry and the financial market regulator met on Tuesday night for an emergency discussion on ways to halt the crisis. Earlier, trading had been suspended on both the Micex and RTS stock exchanges as investors ignored assurances by Russian officials and a cycle of distrust set in amid liquidity fears.

Margin calls forced domestic traders to liquidate positions and brokers pulled credit lines. At least one Moscow bank failed to meet payments. The rouble-denominated Micex Index closed 17.75 per cent down, the sharpest one-day drop since the August 1998 financial crisis, while the dollar-denominated RTS index closed down 11.47 per cent, its lowest level since January 2006.

Shares in Russia's biggest state-controlled banks led the slide with Sberbank, the state-controlled savings bank, closing 21.72 per cent down and VTB losing 29.26 per cent. The bank was suffered on investor fears about its securities portfolio, which makes up about 10 per cent of its assets.

New figures show that overall inflation has risen to 4.7 per cent this year but when only everyday goods are taken into account the rise in the cost of living is far higher, it has been revealed. THE COST OF SHOPPING BASKET ESSENTIALS IS RISING 25 PER CENT A YEAR, MailOnline's Cost Of Living Index for September shows. And as the bills grow, many families are investigating cheaper foreign destinations, a separate survey found.

Record numbers are leaving the UK to settle abroad. In the 12 months to June, 406,000 left to live overseas - the highest level since records began. Australia, Spain, America, New Zealand and France are among the most popular destinations.

Halifax Bank of Scotland saw another 14 per cent wiped off its value on the London Stock Exchange on another day of panic as markets worldwide continued to plunge. It comes on top of a fall of almost 18 per cent yesterday in the wake of U.S. investment bank Lehman Brothers going bust and Merrill Lynch announcing a cut-price takeover. Some £4 billion has been wiped off the company's value since Monday morning despite its insistence it is still a 'strong bank'.

News that U.S. investment bank Lehman Brothers (LEH.N: Quote, Profile, Research) had filed for bankruptcy protection sent stocks reeling worldwide, with banks bearing the brunt as investors braced for more pain across the sector.

"LEHMAN BROTHERS HAS PROVEN THAT THE BAR FOR THOSE 'TOO BIG TO FAIL' HAS JUST BEEN RAISED," said Paul Niven, head of asset allocation at UK fund manager F&C. "The short term will be tough for equities and credits and there is a good chance of further downside in prices in coming days."

Barclays, the UK bank that pulled out of emergency talks to save Lehman over the weekend, is in talks to buy the investment bank's core U.S. broker-dealer business, people familiar with the matter told Reuters on Tuesday.

But concerns intensified that AIG, once the world's largest insurer by market value, could be the next victim after a ratings downgrade, causing a rout in stock markets already battered on Monday after Lehman sought bankruptcy protection. Shares in AIG plunged nearly 61 percent on Monday and the U.S. Federal Reserve hired investment bank Morgan Stanley to review options for the firm, a person familiar with the situation said on Monday. AIG HAS LOST 92 PERCENT OF ITS VALUE THIS YEAR. But markets focused on AIG's ratings downgrade, which could force it to post more collateral and nullify insurance contracts, possibly setting in motion a chain reaction that could threaten its survival.

"You don't just have a potential impact on the reinsurer side, you have it on the institutions that might be holding AIG paper," said Lorraine Tan, director of research for Asia at debt rating agency Standard and Poor's in Singapore. "THIS WOULD HAVE A MUCH BIGGER IMPACT THAN A BANK GOING DOWN like Lehman or Bear (Stearns) or even a Wachovia or WaMu in the U.S. AIG has a much bigger presence globally. Their reach to a global customer base is quite sizable," she said.

S&P reduced its rating on Seattle-based WaMu to BB- from BBB-, leaving it three levels below investment grade, the ratings firm said today in a statement.

"Increasing market turmoil and the related impact from managing its concentrated mortgage franchise in this troubled housing and credit cycle led to the downgrade," S&P wrote. S&P cut its rating on the subsidiary bank to BBB- from BBB. S&P followed similar announcements last week from Moody's Investors Service and Fitch Ratings. WaMu, which has reported $6.3 billion of losses in the last three quarters because of soured mortgages, said on September 11 that it expects a third-quarter loan loss provision of $4.5 billion.

With AIG now tottering, a crisis that began with falling home prices and went on to engulf Wall Street has reached one of the world's largest insurance companies, THREATENING TO INTENSIFY THE FINANCIAL STORM and greatly complicate the government's efforts to contain it.

The company, whose stock fell 61% yesterday, is such a big player in insuring risk for institutions around the world THAT ITS FAILURE COULD SHAKE THE WHOLE FINANCIAL SYSTEM.

The study found that 56% of women would consider it if they hadn't found someone by a certain age - with 28 to 31 year-olds being the most likely. The survey shows that many single men and women are worried about meeting a true love as well as fertility issues. Twenty-six percent of men worried they wouldn't be able to conceive naturally.

Psychologist Linda Papadopoulos said: "INTERESTINGLY, SOCIAL NORMS OF PARENTING AND OF THE CONVENTIONAL FAMILY STRUCTURE ARE BEING CHALLENGED - no longer do we see the mum, dad and 2.4 children as the only ideal. Reconstituted families, same sex families and single parents are much more prevalent these days. And rather than ascribing to the 'norm' it seems that WOMEN AND MEN ARE MORE FLEXIBLE WITH THEIR DEFINITION OF 'FAMILY'."

European stocks fell again; the UK's FTSE 100 was down 2.44%, France's Cac down 1% and Germany's Dax down 1.58%. Shares in Japan, South Korea and Hong Kong fell more than 5%, having been shut on Monday for public holidays. Lehman, which may be about to sell its core assets to Barclays, is the latest victim of the global credit crunch.

The FTSE 100 of leading UK shares fell 127 points to 5,077 shortly before midday. The Dax index of leading German shares was down 96 points at 5968 points and France's Cac 40 was down 45 points at 4,124 points. Japan's benchmark Nikkei 225 index dropped 5% to a three-year low, shares in South Korea and Hong Kong shed almost 6% in value and Shanghai's index fell by about 3%.

THE COLLAPSE OF LEHMAN, which had incurred billions of dollars of losses from the failing US mortgage market, HAS RAISED FEARS THAT OTHER FINANCIAL INSTITUTIONS COULD BE HIT. "We're in the middle of a crisis," said YK Chan at Phillip Asset Management in Hong Kong. Meanwhile, there were fears that AIG, one of the world's largest insurers, could also face collapse.

AIG scrambled for a financial lifeline on Monday after investment bank Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc failed to find a rescuer and Merrill Lynch & Co Inc agreed to be taken over by Bank of America Corp. The US Federal Reserve has hired investment bank Morgan Stanley to review options for AIG - which has lost some 92 percent of its value so far this year - a person familiar with the situation said Monday.

AIG's precipitous stock decline has led ratings agencies to threaten downgrades that could force it to post more collateral and nullify insurance contracts, possibly setting in motion a chain reaction that could threaten its survival. In an ominous sign, two ratings agencies went ahead with downgrades after the market closed on Monday.

"AIG SEEMS TO BE THE NEXT GUY ON THE CHOPPING BLOCK," said Tom Sowanick, chief investment officer at Clearbrook Financial LLC in Princeton, New Jersey. Bank of America - which would surpass Citigroup Inc as the country's largest bank by assets with the planned takeover of Merrill - saw its shares plunge.

"THE CONCERN FOR BANK OF AMERICA IS THE DEBT THAT THEY ARE ACQUIRING," said Marc Pado, US market strategist at Cantor Fitzgerald & Co in San Francisco."Secondly, is it too big of a purchase? They are dealing with Countrywide right now. Did they need to be dealing with this as well? There's some concern they might have bit more than they could chew."

"It's a return to pure capitalism, the survival of the fittest. The government can't and won't bail everybody out," said Justin Urquhart Stewart, investment director at 7 Investment Management in London. "INVESTORS WILL NOW RETREAT TO THE TRUSTWORTHY BANKS, THOUGH THAT'S NOT A PHRASE THAT TRIPS OFF THE TONGUE EASILY NOWADAYS."