An Anglican vicar has rewritten the most famous biblical tales because he wants to make them more "accessible" to modern readers. The Rev Robert Harrison's book, Must Know Stories, contains retellings of ten Bible stories and is out tomorrow.

In the nativity story, Jesus is born in an overcrowded house instead of a stable, amid family conflict as Joseph's aunt deals with the fact that he and Mary are not even married. Last night Mr Harrison defended his decision to rewrite KEY CHRISTIAN TALES that have remained unchanged for centuries. He said he was doing it to encourage people to read stories that are so utterly part of our culture. "THEY SHOULD KNOW THEM - NOT AS A MATTER OF RELIGION BUT AS A MATTER OF CULTURAL EDUCATION," he said. "I wanted to write a book that tells the most important Bible stories in a way that relishes them rather than tries to make any particular religious point. "AFTER ALL, WHO KNOWS WHAT THE POINT IS?

But last night some notable Christians disagreed. Catholic MP Ann Widdecombe said: "It sounds to me as if it's gone much too far. It is one thing to give a biblical story a modern application and something quite different to distort all the facts." Dr Justin Thacker, head of theology at the Evangelical Alliance, said: "In trying to communicate the stories to a contemporary audience some of the essential features and message MAY HAVE BEEN LOST."

And the number of weddings held in 2006 was the smallest since 1895, when the population was little more than half its present level. The evidence that marriage is withering away at an increasing pace was met with a furious response from critics of Labour's benefits system, which disregards the status of husbands and wives and pays parents extra to stay single.

Shadow Home Secretary David Davis claimed the Government had "fuelled family breakdown" and researcher Patricia Morgan, who coined the phrase "marriage lite" to describe cohabitation, said Labour had succeeded in "eradicating" marriage. "This is what they have tried to achieve and they should be congratulating themselves," she added. "But it is a disaster for children, families and society."

The figures, from the Office for National Statistics, said that in 2006, fewer than ten in every 1,000 single adults in England and Wales were married. The raw numbers of weddings in the figures for 2006 also tell the dramatic story. There were 236,980 marriages, the fewest since 228,204 were recorded in 1895. In 1895, there were around 30 million people in England and Wales compared with more than 54 million now.

Researcher and author Mrs Morgan said: "This Government has removed the idea of marriage from research and public documents and from the tax and benefit system. It has taken the last remaining benefits, like inheritance tax relief when a spouse dies, and given them to other groups like homosexuals in civil partnerships."

In an extraordinary intervention, the Bank of England Governor said turmoil in the banking system had worsened in recent weeks and that lenders would have to be more strictly regulated to prevent excessive risk-taking. He said: "This financial crisis arose out of the heart of the financial systems, in the main financial centres." He said the global crisis had moved into a new phase.

Mr King said: "Across the world, confidence in financial markets is fragile. It is not that banks, at least in the UK, have made loans that are likely to result in unsustainable losses. The heart of the problem is not in the real economy. It is in the financial sector itself. There is a lot of hubris around in thinking that the expansion of financial services was a good in itself. It is not. It is a means to an end."

The governor told the MPs he will resist any calls for taxpayers to fork out more money to bail out irresponsible lenders. Mr King insisted that while the economy faced tough times ahead, it was not on the verge of a slump.
But he said world food prices were 50 per cent higher than a year ago and oil prices had risen by two-thirds. He told the MPs: "As a country, our standard of living is going to rise much less quickly than it would do if those price rises had not occurred."

The official idea is that MPs are elected, by us, to serve us, and represent us in Parliament. Virtually none of this is true. In almost all cases, MPs are selected, not elected. They are picked as candidates for safe (or at least winnable) seats, owned by one or other of the national tribal parties. The actual hiring is done long before any public election, by small cliques of party activists in one of the established political organisations.

Even these small cliques, which never amount to more than a large roomful of people, are manipulated by still smaller groups - and the safer the seat, the harder such groups are to penetrate or influence. This was not as silly as it sounds. Labour did not need - and the modern parties do not need - politically committed and interested people hanging around trying to change things.

This means that, the moment the newly-elected MP turns up at Westminster, he knows that he must please his party above all things. Because - especially nowadays - the parties are hugely centralised. Local organisations have little independence and cannot match the huge funds which the headquarters spend. Those who have decided to pursue the political career to the next stage - ministerial rank - are as a result even more vulnerable. Huge salaries and pensions, by the standards of most people, will only continue if they behave. And that doesn't just mean performing with reasonable competence and safety in their ministerial task. It means not rocking the boat on other matters.

It means staying within the 'centre' - the rather narrow band of acceptable political views which the elite allows to be expressed and pursued, and which have succeeded in nearly ruining a once-prosperous, free and ordered society in a matter of less than 50 years.

In an internal report, the City watchdog has made no attempt to cover up its dereliction of duty in the run-up to the Northern Rock crisis, admitting with stark candour that it performed to a standard that was "not acceptable".
Incredibly, the report reveals heads of department had no contact at all with Northern Rock in the two-and-a-half years before the crisis erupted. Meanwhile junior managers, who should have met the bank's officials at least once a month, made contact only eight times in 31 months - including twice by telephone and five times in a single day.

Most unbelievably of all, for a long while the bank's supervision - or complete lack of it - was left to the department responsible for insurance groups. It's as if nobody at the FSA even realised Northern was a bank - let alone that its board was lending so recklessly it risked bringing Britain's entire financial sector crashing down.

The FSA's woeful shortcomings should not distract us from the recklessly greedy financiers who bear the true guilt for the economic crisis now gripping the world. But as long as there are so many unscrupulous people in the City, it is vital for all our livelihoods that our regulators should be up to their jobs.

The chiefs' concern is that U.S. forces are being worn thin, compromising the Pentagon's ability to handle crises elsewhere in the world. Wednesday's 90-minute Pentagon session, held in a secure conference room known as "the Tank," was arranged by Defense Secretary Robert Gates to provide Bush with an additional set of military views as he prepares to decide how to proceed in Iraq once his troop buildup, which began in 2007, runs its course by July.

"Armed with all that, the president must now decide the way ahead in Iraq," said Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell. The discussion covered not only Iraq but Afghanistan, where violence has spiked, and broader military matters, said Morrell, who briefed reporters without giving details of the discussion. Some specifics were provided by defense officials, commenting on condition of anonymity in order to speak more freely.

The Joint Chiefs are particularly concerned about Afghanistan and an increasingly active Taliban insurgency. The United States has about 31,000 troops in Afghanistan and 156,000 in Iraq.

The unusually long race for the White House - which began in earnest more than a year ago - has been a cash bonanza, especially for Democrats who are breaking all records. Between January 2007 and February, the candidates raised a record $814 million. By the end of this month, analysts expect the total taken in and spent by the candidates and interest groups will reach $1 billion.

To put the numbers into perspective, seven African countries or islands each have a gross domestic product of less than $1 billion, according to International Monetary Fund data. They include Sao Tome and Principe, Guinea-Bissau, Gambia, Comoros, the Seychelles, Liberia and Djibouti.

Massie Ritsch of the Center for Responsive Politics said even with the Internet contributions, only about 4 percent of Americans make a contribution to a federal politician. "The bulk of the money is coming from a tiny group of largely wealthy Americans who are having a great impact disproportionate to their numbers on something that should be important to everybody," he said. "That is what should frighten Americans - when these guys get elected are they looking primarily out for the good of the people or are there debts that they need to pay back."

Once the vehicle stops, about 20 potential buyers file out and become detectives, opening and closing cabinets and drawers, knocking on walls and asking about the price, the previous owners and what repairs may be needed. Welcome to the Foreclosure Bus Tour, a six-hour expedition to show Orlando-area homes and educate potential buyers on the vagaries of snatching foreclosures in a state where the housing market has struggled over the past two years. Real estate agents have also organized tours in California, where the idea seems to have originated, and cities such as Phoenix, Detroit, Kansas City and Jacksonville.

The Orlando prospects included working-class people looking for a family home, speculators seeking a bargain investment and even a Brit trying to take advantage of the weak dollar. To avoid embarrassing owners, the bus stops only at empty homes. The homes were in the market after lenders took them over from owners who failed to make mortgage payments. In February, Florida trailed only Nevada and California in the percentage of homes in foreclosure. RealtyTrac Inc. said 32,447 homes were in foreclosure statewide in February, up more than 69 percent from February of last year and up more than 7 percent from January.

But in a stunning revelation Wednesday, the latter expectation was apparently violated in a widely read lung cancer trial published in 2006 by researchers at Weill Cornell Medical College. The study, conducted by Dr. Claudia Henschke and published in the New England Journal of Medicine, found impressively that 80% of lung cancer deaths could be prevented through greater use of relatively simple CT scans, which can detect small tumors early and get patients into treatment before the disease takes hold. According to an investigation by the New York Times, funding for the trial came from the Foundation for Lung Cancer: Early Detection, Prevention & Treatment - an entity created by Dr. Henschke and her collaborators, and supported in part by the cigarette maker Liggett Group.

And that's the problem with conflicts of interest: even if the study results were scientifically sound, if the interpretations and projections made by the researchers defensible, and if there was no connection at all between Liggett and the researchers, the fact that a cigarette manufacturer was even remotely involved taints the findings and leaves the results open to question.

If anything, this incident exposes the extent to which the medical field still relies on the integrity of its members to maintain patient confidence. But as economic and other interests continue to seep into the doctor's office, that may have to change. It may no longer be enough for journals to ask researchers to disclose potential conflicts of interest, for example; now editors may have to begin asking for records detailing how a study was funded. In the end, that may be just as important as analyzing the study itself.

The North made the demand Monday in response to the South Korean unification minister's recent comment that Seoul will hold off on expanding the industrial zone until the dispute over the North's nuclear programs is resolved, Unification Ministry spokesman Kim Ho-nyeon said.

The sprawling Kaesong industrial complex, located just north of the heavily fortified border, is a prominent symbol of reconciliation between the two Koreas, combining the South's technology and management expertise with the North's cheap labor. South Korea is still committed to ongoing economic cooperation with its impoverished communist neighbor because it would create opportunities for both Koreas, Unification Minister Kim Ha-joong said.

The leaders of the two countries agreed to expand the complex during a summit last year. But new South Korean President Lee Myung-bak has pledged to review rapprochement projects pushed by his two liberal predecessors, saying progress in the nuclear standoff is a prerequisite for further large investment and aid projects in the North. Sixty-nine South Korean companies operate in the industrial zone, employing 23,220 North Korean laborers, according to the South's management committee.

North Korea might make concessions on humanitarian issues in order to receive handouts from South Korea, but Pyongyang's leaders would try to keep any crisis on its farms from spilling over into international nuclear disarmament talks, they added. North Korea, which even with a good harvest still falls about 1 million tonnes, or around 20 percent, short of the food needed to feed its own people, relies heavily on aid from China, South Korea and U.N. aid agencies to make up the gap.

"If the South and the global community fail to send food aid to the North, we might see a food crisis even worse than the one in the 90s," said Kwon Tae-jin, an expert on the North's agriculture sector at the South's Korea Rural Economic Institute. A famine in the mid-to-late 1990s killed more than 1 million North Koreans in a country of about 23 million.

North Korea for years has been able to receive massive food aid with few questions asked by left-of-centre South Korean governments who have seen the handouts as a small price to pay to keep the peninsula stable.
But a conservative government that took power in South Korea last month said there would no longer be a free ride for its capricious neighbour. North Korea's slow-moving government has not yet adjusted to the policy change, experts said.

New President Lee Myung-bak wants to tie aid to progress his communist neighbour makes in nuclear disarmament, reuniting families separated by the 1950-53 Korean War and returning more than 1,000 South Korean citizens believed to be still held in the North.

Sadr, whose truce last year was praised by U.S. forces for curbing violence, called for talks to end the crackdown on his followers, the biggest military operation that Iraqi forces have undertaken without U.S. or British combat units. Scores of people have been killed and hundreds wounded in the fighting, which began in the southern oil hub of Basra and spread to Shi'ite parts of Baghdad where Sadr's followers hold sway and the towns of Hilla, Kut and Diwaniya in the south.

Maliki, in Basra to oversee the campaign there, said fighters would be spared if they surrendered within 72 hours. The assault is a chance for his government to prove it can impose its will and allow American forces to withdraw. But it also runs a risk of unleashing more violence after a year that saw security in Iraq improve dramatically.

Battles which began on Tuesday in Basra resumed with heavy gunfire and explosions. A health official said 40 people had been killed and 200 wounded in the city by Wednesday morning. A Reuters correspondent in Kut, 170 km (105 miles) south of Baghdad, heard gunfire and mortar impacts and saw buildings and cars aflame. Police said at least 18 people died in clashes there, including a baby girl.

The FSA said there had been "a lack of adequate oversight and review" by the agency of the troubled bank. It said too few regulators were assigned to monitor Northern Rock, which ran into trouble in August. The FSA said it would be overhauling its procedures as a result of the weaknesses identified. Newcastle-based Northern Rock was nationalised in February after the credit crisis forced it to seek a Bank of England lifeline to fund its mortgage loan book.

The failings include:

- A lack of sufficient supervisory engagement with the firm, in particular the failure of the supervisory team to follow up rigorously with the management of the firm on the business model vulnerability arising from changing market conditions.

- A lack of adequate oversight and review by FSA line management of the quality, intensity and rigour of the firm's supervision.

- Inadequate specific resource directly supervising the firm.

- A lack of intensity by the FSA in ensuring that all available risk information was properly utilised to inform its supervisory actions.

And it suggested that ultimately the blame for the collapse of Northern Rock should sit at the feet of the bank's senior management.

Faced with increasing attacks from Catholic bishops, threats of resignation from several ministers and taunts from David Cameron, he announced that ministers and backbenchers could vote against the three most controversial measures. The free votes will apply to the creation of human admixed embryos containing both human and animal material, for studying serious diseases. They will also cover "saviour siblings", which are screened as embryos to ensure their suitability to donate umbilical cord cells to sick children.

The Catholic Archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, said in a joint statement with the bishops' conference: "The free vote will be welcomed by people of all faiths or none who are concerned about the implications of this Bill that go to the heart of what it means to be human."

Medical research leaders and patient groups also applauded the decision, saying they hoped it would allow debate to focus on the medical potential of research, not parliamentary procedure. Professor Robin Lovell-Badge, of the National Institute for Medical Research, said: "I am not against a free vote, as long as the MPs understand what is being proposed in the Bill and why."

Commons Speaker Michael Martin will spend another £100,000 or more on a High Court attempt to block publication of their second homes allowance. To the astonishment of many at Westminster, he announced he would challenge an order by a Freedom of Information tribunal that 14 prominent current or former MPs should provide a detailed breakdown of their expenses. Mr Martin said he would appeal against the decision that their addresses should be published.

The 14 MPs include Prime Minister Gordon Brown and Tory leader David Cameron, who have already said they are happy for the publication, receipt by receipt, of how they spent their £22,000 a year Additional Costs Allowance. The BBC reported last night that MPs were mounting a legal challenge to keep their expenses secret, because they would be "unable to justify their behaviour before the electorate" if the details were made public. Nick Robinson on the Ten O'Clock News said that had been told 'by senior sources on all sides of the Commons' that "some MPs might well have to retire from politics so embarrassed would they be if what they spent, and what they'd spent it on, was publicly revealed."

Former anti-sleaze MP Martin Bell said: "This is extraordinary. I can only assume that, seeing exactly what was in the expenses accounts, the Speaker decided that discretion was the better part of valour. The House of Commons does not understand the depth of feeling in the country about this issue." The £22,100-a-year Additional Costs Allowance is used to furnish second homes so MPs can have a base in London as well in their constituency. It costs taxpayers £11.7million a year.