Data from the World Trade Organization show that the country vaulted past the US at the beginning of this year and has since moved at lightning speed to eclipse Germany's once indomitable export machine. It shipped $111bn (£54bn) worth of goods in August, up 55pc from a year earlier.

Now boasting 8pc of global exports - three times Britain's dwindling share - China has jumped up the technology ladder. Machinery, equipment and cars now make up 46pc of total exports, while textiles are fading from the picture. Beijing let the yuan break through the key barrier of 7.5 to the dollar yesterday, but seems determined to resist Western pressure for faster appreciation.

The fires, in their fourth day, had destroyed 1,500 homes and caused at least a half-million people to flee - the largest evacuation in state history. At least 1,200 of the damaged homes were in San Diego County, and officials believe that number will rise. "Clearly, this is going to be a $1 billion or more disaster," Ron Lane, San Diego County's director of emergency services, told reporters during a news conference.

So far, the fires have inflicted the worst damage in San Diego County, where five blazes continued to burn. The largest fire had charred 196,420 acres - about 300 square miles - from Witch Creek to Rancho Santa Fe, destroying 650 homes, businesses and other buildings. Other hard-hit areas included San Bernardino County, where hundreds of homes burned in the mountain resort communities near Lake Arrowhead.

The satellite, named Chang'e 1, took off from the Xichang Centre in south-west China's Sichuan province at 1800 local time (1000 GMT). Analysts say it is a key step towards China's aim of putting a man on the Moon by 2020, in the latest stage of an Asian space race with Japan and India

Earlier this month, a Japanese lunar probe entered orbit around the Moon. India is planning a lunar mission for April next year. The satellite is expected to enter lunar orbit in early November and start sending back pictures of the Moon's surface later that month. Efforts by Asian nations to advance their space programmes have gathered pace in recent years.

In 2003, China became the first Asian nation to use its own rocket to put an astronaut in space. Four years later, Beijing triggered international concern by destroying a weather satellite as part of a weapons test.

1.-There is A RAMPANT, SERIOUS FINANCIAL PROBLEM WITH TERMINAL POTENTIAL - AND NO PRACTICAL SOLUTION hidden just outside of the public's view (OTC Derivatives).

2.-Because central banks have gotten so out of hand and political which cannot be controlled by investors or the man in the street, we need to adjust our actions so that each person takes on the responsibilities normal to central banks for their own finances.

3.-Everything we buy is getting more expensive and many assets people have, other than gold, are losing value. Because of this credit is not a proper idea regardless of the weak dollar for the majority of people reading this.

4.-Major financial institutions, Internet financial entities and banks operate without transparency where their derivative holdings are concerned. Losses the financial institutions are publishing are considered by media as having extinguished all the risk. I do not believe this. I believe they are still marked to model, only the model is moving slowly towards reality of worthlessness.

5.-There is an acceleration of bankruptcy among financial institutions. This translates to the individual needing to act as their own financial institution by having their share investments in paper form, gold in their close possession with no one in-between and available cash. The individual must be their own bank and central bank as one has failed us and both may.

6.-The savings rate in the US is negative while the expansion of credit is totally over the top.

7.-Business is turning south so the US Federal Budget Deficit will move up exponentially.

8.-The US dollar has become a bombed out and lost battle zone. There is nothing good anyone can say fundamentally about the US dollar.

9.-Non US entities are fed up with financing the US consumer and US Federal activities. This is clear from the recent TIC report, which is now down trending.

10.-Financial privacy is non-existent.

11.-THERE IS A MODEL FOR EXACTLY WHAT IS HAPPENING NOW AND THAT IS THE WEIMAR REPUBLIC. Name war retributions as OTC derivatives and you begin to see the picture.

12.-The US dollar has now made a clear indication of the final head and shoulders; the massive formation from the absolute top is breaking down.

Number 12 is the item that impacts all of the above because of the dollar's technical position now beginning to reflect the dire fundamentals. THIS IS IT!

This is it because you now have to perform not only as your own bank but also as your own central bank. This is it because the US dollar has completed a major head and shoulders bear formation, pulled back to the underside of the neckline and thereafter declining below the major support line drawn from the beginning of the big dollar bull under Chairman Paul Volcker. Volcker made the dollar and Greenspan gave it all back to Asia.

The dollar break below the recent and most important major, major support line drawn from 1980 to now is the fundamental basis which will push Gold to $1650. The US dollar is, without any doubt in my mind, going to .7200, followed by .6200. Ladies and gentlemen, prepare to defend yourselves.

Indonesian workers around the rumbling Mount Kelud volcano in East Java are unable to harvest cloves and coffee because they are being evacuated from plantations, a plantation firm official said on Wednesday.

Ade Prasetyo, a manager at state-owned PTPN XII which has plantations of coffee, cacao, clove and various woods, said the company had evacuated more than 200 workers from three of its seven plantations to safer areas. "If the eruption is the same as it was in 1990, we expect a loss of 7 billion rupiah (more than $750,000)," Prasetyo told Reuters.

Authorities were evacuating residents living within a 10-km (6-mile) zone around the 1,731-metre (5,712-ft) volcano to safer areas after experts said Mount Kelud was liable to erupt.

Police fired tear gas at students angry at plans to let President Hugo Chavez stand for indefinite re-election as bottles and stones were thrown. Mr Chavez would also be allowed to bypass legal controls on the executive during a state of emergency. Parliament, composed of Chavez allies, is now debating the changes.

Among the students' concerns about the erosion of civil liberties is the fear that the authorities will be allowed to detain citizens without charge during a state of emergency. Mr Chavez has dismissed criticism of the constitutional changes saying they are needed to accelerate Venezuela's transition to socialism.

Merrill reports its third-quarter earnings this morning. The bank announced earlier this month that it expected to write down $5 billion because of losses in its fixed-income unit. Most of the losses, the bank said, were tied to the decline in value of complex debt instruments called collateralized debt obligations, whose value has diminished in recent months as credit markets have been hit by a collapse in the subprime mortgage market.

A Merrill spokesman declined to comment. The additional write-down, coming so soon after the company's $5 billion charge, may raise more questions about the leadership of E. Stanley O'Neal, Merrill's chief executive, and the ability of his top executives to assess the firm's risk exposure.

Since he took over in December 2002, O'Neal has pushed Merrill into riskier businesses - which, if managed well, tend to produce higher returns. That strategy has taken Merrill Lynch deeper into fixed-income markets like commodities and mortgages, areas outside of its traditional strengths of wealth management and equities.

Tuesday, Brad Hintz, an analyst with Sanford C. Bernstein & Company, said he expected Merrill to pull back in fixed income, even though some of the markets were improving. "After this publicly embarrassing write-down, we would expect senior management to sharply tighten its risk management limits to reduce trading volatility," Hintz wrote, referring to Merrill.

He predicted that a "'back to basics' retrenchment of the business will cost approximately $1.0 billion in net income," or about $1.10 in earnings per share for 2008.

Panels of four children, under only minimal adult supervision, are to have the power to require delinquents to repair the damage they've caused and compensate their victims. Others will mimic roles played in the courts with child 'prosecutors', child 'defence lawyers', child 'administrators' and even child 'ushers'.

Alas, this is not a script from Playschool, but an official scheme involving real offenders, which began this week in Preston, Lancashire, and which could be extended to the whole country. Giving youths power to mete out justice is a sign our criminal justice system has failed.

A concept which might seem to many to be beyond satire is being backed in all seriousness by the police and the Ministry of Justice and funded by the taxpayer to the tune of £500,000. Apparently, the idea is that young delinquents will take more notice of their peer group than they do of adults. What an admission of total defeat by those in charge of our failing criminal justice system.

One reason for this catastrophic failure to protect the public is the refusal by many probation officers and others involved in the criminal justice world to accept that punishment is an appropriate and effective response to crime. They believe it is no more than a primitive lust for revenge which serves no useful purpose. And they also tend to see criminals as the victims of society.

But without punishment there can be no justice. The connection between behaving badly and suffering a painful experience as a consequence is a vital part of training children to be socialised and civilised. And treating criminals as victims means, of course, that true victims fail to receive either justice or protection.

This travesty of morality embedded in our criminal justice system has caused its progressive breakdown. And the latest response to this debacle is to tell children to be their own judge and jury. This is clearly farcical since children are by definition immature. As the Magistrates Association has said, the proper place to consider wrongdoing is the courts; children do not have the competence to take judicial decisions.

Indeed, the irony is that the same kind of people who are behind this daft scheme are the first to complain when children of 11 or 12 are tried in the courts, because they say they are not yet mature enough to be considered responsible for their actions. Too immature to be held to account for their crimes, it seems - and yet mature enough to sit in judgment upon others. This is simply an extraordinary abdication of responsibility, and not just towards the victims of crime.

This abandonment of our children is by no means confined to the criminal justice system. Everywhere one looks, the adult world has abandoned its assumption of authority over children and instead is expecting them to adopt wholly inappropriate adult roles. Instead of being taught that under-age sex or drug-taking are wrong, children are presented with information and invited to make adult 'choices'. And they are expected to respond 'maturely' when their parents abandon them in broken families. What we are seeing is simply the adultification of children and the infantilising of adults.

After child judges, whatever next? Child police officers? Prisons run by teenagers? A 15-year-old Justice Secretary? Come to think of it, maybe that would be an improvement.

There is no evidence that the annual campaign, which costs the NHS £115million, saves people from developing more serious illnesses. The study, following others which have cast doubt on the campaign's effectiveness, led to calls for it to be scrapped. The researchers said flu was an 'important-contributor' to acute infections including bronchitis and emphysema. But these were no less frequent in people who had been vaccinated than in those who had not.

More than 15million people - including three-quarters of over-65s - will receive flu jabs this winter. Last month a review in the Lancet medical journal said there were no figures to back claims that the jab saves lives. It said few vaccine trials had actually included elderly people and there is evidence that the clinical benefits of vaccination decline with advancing years, especially after 70.

Researchers from George Washington University, Washington DC, said recently that no study had found a decline in flu deaths since 1980, even though vaccination coverage had increased from 15 to 65 per cent. Last year experts at the independent Cochrane Library, which examines the effectiveness of treatments, found jabs had little or no effect on deaths, the length of hospital stays or time off work.

The Other Christ: Padre Pio and 19th Century Italy, by the historian Sergio Luzzatto, draws on a document found in the Vatican's archive.

The document reveals the testimony of a pharmacist who said that the young Padre Pio bought four grams of carbolic acid in 1919. "I was an admirer of Padre Pio and I met him for the first time on 31 July 1919," wrote Maria De Vito. She claimed to have spent a month with the priest in the southern town of San Giovanni Rotondo, seeing him often.

"Padre Pio called me to him in complete secrecy and telling me not to tell his fellow brothers, he gave me personally an empty bottle, and asked if I would act as a chauffeur to transport it back from Foggia to San Giovanni Rotondo with four grams of pure carbolic acid. "He explained that the acid was for disinfecting syringes for injections. He also asked for other things, such as Valda pastilles."

The testimony was originally presented to the Vatican by the Archbishop of Manfredonia, Pasquale Gagliardi, as proof that Padre Pio caused his own stigmata with acid. It was examined by the Holy See during the beatification process of Padre Pio and apparently dismissed.

Padre Pio, whose real name was Francesco Forgione, died in 1968. He was made a saint in 2002. A recent survey in Italy showed that more people prayed to him than to Jesus or the Virgin Mary. He exhibited stigmata throughout his life, starting in 1911. The new allegations were greeted with an instant dismissal from his supporters. The Catholic Anti-Defamation League said Mr Luzzatto was a liar and was "spreading anti-Catholic libels".

Pietro Siffi, the president of the League, said: "WE WOULD LIKE TO REMIND MR LUZZATTO THAT ACCORDING TO CATHOLIC DOCTRINE, CANONISATION CARRIES WITH IT PAPAL INFALLIBILITY. We would like to suggest to Mr Luzzatto that he dedicates his energies to studying religion properly."

California ISO said Tuesday the most dramatic impact from the fires is currently in San Diego, where multiple lines in the 500,000-, 230,000- and 138,000-volt rating are no longer in service. So far, 24 different lines in the county have been affected by the fire, according to California ISO spokesman Greg Fishman. Some of the affected lines have been repaired, Fishman said.

"The transmission grid that we operate in San Diego has suffered losses and it has the opportunity to impact our ability to deliver power to the region," said Fishman. California ISO is "getting the word out that the situation is getting pretty serious and it gives us the authority to act quickly to take steps that we would need to take to keep the grid up if we lose more lines."

San Diego Gas & Electric spokesman Art Larson and California ISO's Fishman said one of the region's two main energy transmission corridors has been severed. The Southwest Power Link, a 500,000-volt line that conveys power from Arizona to San Diego, has not been in operation since Sunday due to damage caused by the Harris fire, one of the county's two major fires currently burning near Otay Mesa and Eastern Chula Vista. It was unclear when the line would be mended.

Larson said SDG&E has asked for assistance for repairs and damage assessments from crews and utilities throughout the southwest region. Monday night a fire burned around the Miguel Mountain substation, which the Southwest Power Link runs into, knocking out several of the 230,000-volt lines that run out of the station, according to California ISO's Fishman.

Electrical power outages are affecting 24,992 customers in 44 communities, according to SDG&E. The utility reported that the power grid is operating near maximum capacity and is urging customers to conserve energy if at all possible.

The outgoing IMF managing director said the depreciation of the dollar had been orderly, but cautioned there was a risk of a runaway sell-off that would hit growth in major economies. The risks of a disorderly fall in the US currency appeared to increase over the weekend after the IMF failed to agree internal reforms that would have set the stage for it to take on a greater role managing global economic imbalances.

"Up to now, movements in exchange rates have been orderly and in line with fundamentals. But there are risks that an abrupt fall in the dollar could either be triggered by, or itself trigger, a loss of confidence in dollar assets," Mr Rato said.

The dollar hit a record low of $1.4348 against the euro, before climbing slightly, while sterling also rose as high as $2.0537 against the US currency. Japan's yen hit a six-week high of Y113.27 against the dollar.

The Information Center for Human Rights and Democracy said two survey ships are deployed in the South Pacific Ocean and South Atlantic Ocean to send signals to maneuver the lunar exploration satellite, expected to be launched Wednesday. At the same time, a nuclear-powered submarine will send simulated signals to the satellite as a test, it said in a statement.

Once the satellite-maneuvering technology matures, the group said, China would have the know-how to destroy other satellites in space in wartime. China could launch cheaply-made weapon-carrying objects into space and change their courses to destroy or damage satellites of other countries by sending signals from submarines, the center said.

China shocked the world in January by firing a missile at an old weather satellite without notifying anyone in advance, showing off its anti-satellite weaponry and its ability to shoot down satellites without being immediately noticed.

Hong Kong's media reported that a rocket that will carry the satellite was being fuelled up, banners of greetings on the successful launch were prepared and farmers living near the Xichang Satellite Launch Center, in mid-western China's Sichuan Province, will be evicted one hour ahead of the launch.

China plans to launch the satellite around 6 p.m. Wednesday, the official Xinhua News Agency reported Monday, quoting a spokesman of the China National Space Administration. The satellite is named Chang'e I after the legendary Chinese goddess who, according to legend, flew to the moon.

China's space industry enjoyed its first major success after astronaut Yang Liwei reentered Earth after 21 hours in space in 2003 in the spacecraft Shenzhou 5, marking China's first successful manned space mission. A second manned space mission was successfully concluded in 2005 after astronauts Fei Junlong and Nie Haisheng finished orbiting the Earth for five days in the spacecraft Shenzhou 6.

In recent weeks, some of the most dramatic signs of food inflation have hit supermarket shelves. According to price comparison website mySupermarket.com, the three biggest supermarkets - Tesco, Asda and Sainsbury's - are charging their shoppers 12 per cent more on average for a basket of 25 different goods compared with last year.

Tesco has increased its prices by 16 per cent in the past year. A kilo of peas has gone up from £1.19 to £1.79 at Tesco, a dozen eggs at Sainsbury's has leapt from £1.62 to £2.35, while Asda has increased the price of its orange juice from 73 pence a litre to 88 pence.

The figures suggest that, despite promises from the supermarkets that they are continually cutting their prices, households are being hit hard by food inflation. Considering that many families spend £90 a week on food, a 16 per cent increase equates to an annual rise of £749.

The research came on the same day that Government statistics showed that staples, such as butter, flour, pork and milk, soared in price last month. The Office of National Statistics published detailed figures yesterday which showed that butter had increased by 18 per cent in the past month, while milk had leapt by 12 per cent.

The price of milk powder has been climbing all year on the global markets as Chinese consumers start to eat dairy products in far greater quantities. The situation has been exacerbated by the terrible summer in the UK, when dairy farmers had to move many of their cattle indoors and give them expensive winter feed. This has led to far higher costs for farmers, which have been passed on to supermarkets. The poor summer also hit vegetable harvests, causing prices to rise.

Economists have been warning for some time that the crisis in some key commodity markets - especially the dairy market - would eventually hit shoppers in the UK. David Lang, a food analyst at Investec, said: "It's only starting to filter through to consumers now. But it will go on for some months to come. Prices will have to be raised again."

Sean Carter, at the Rural Shops Alliance, said: "Supermarkets keep their prices very sharp on certain items, and claim there is a continual price war going on. But, in actual fact, their profit margins never seem to fall. You can be sure that if they cut the prices on some items, they are increasing prices on other items."

A Tesco spokesman said: "It's no secret that all supermarkets have experienced upwards pressure on food prices in the wake of the poor summer weather and rising international commodity prices. However, the figures in this small and arbitrary basket are not at all representative of Tesco's overall price position."

The rate of obesity in British adults is the worst in Europe and, in some areas, are now above the national average of the United States. In Boston, Lincolnshire, almost a third of men and women are now dangerously overweight.

The "snapshot" of the nation's health showed that almost 900,000 children aged under 11 are obese - a 50 per cent increase in the past decade. The report from the Department of Health also revealed England as the only European country with rising alcohol consumption and an increase in alcohol-related deaths, particularly amongst women.

Other findings included:

* Britons drink 11.37 litres of pure alcohol per person compared with an EU average of 10.95 litres.

* The number of women aged 35 to 54 dying of alcohol abuse has almost doubled in the last 15 years.

* There are 288 deaths per 100,000 people from smoking-related causes in the UK, compared with an EU average of 263.

* People in Britain eat an average of 25kg less fruit and vegetables each per year compared with EU countries.

* Diabetes sufferers have risen to 4.8 per cent of men and 3.6 per cent of women in 2003.

* Despite declining teenage pregnancy rates, the UK still has the highest proportion of births to under-20s compared to other western European countries. There are also new highs in separate figures for self harm, and the sexually transmitted disease Chlamydia.

* A stark north-south divide remains, with boys born in Manchester likely to die on average 10 years younger than those born in the borough of Kensington and Chelsea in London.

Tory Shadow Health Secretary Andrew Lansley said: "These figures show a shocking rise in alcohol abuse and obesity levels in this country and how the Government is losing the battle to tackle public health challenges. This is a dreadful toll upon those affected and a great burden on our NHS. We have to reverse this. We can't continue being the sick man of Europe on health issues."