Brussels bureaucrats have ruled that gardeners who sprinkle coffee grounds around their cabbages to kill slugs are breaking the law. It means there is a chance – albeit a slim one – of vegetable growers receiving a visit and a heavy fine from the police. Gardeners say the caffeine in coffee keeps slugs out of the vegetable patch. Many coffee shops let customers take the grounds home for free, which can then be used as a mulch or to improve compost.

But the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) has warned that any gardener using coffee granules to deter slugs falls foul of EU regulations. The rules say that any active ingredient or chemical used in gardening must be explicitly approved and placed on an EU list of pesticides.

This aims to stop people using ‘home-made remedies in a dangerous manner’.

Bob Flowerdew, a panellist on Radio 4’s Gardeners’ Question Time and author of several gardening books, said: ‘Regulations are an ass, but they haven’t led to prosecutions. I cannot recommend that anyone breaks the law, but I can point out that, in other countries, people do use coffee grounds.’ Mr Flowerdew said some gardeners used soft soap on plants to kill aphids, although this would also be technically illegal.

Humans derive about 20% of their protein from animal-based products now, but this may need to drop to just 5% to feed the extra 2 billion people expected to be alive by 2050, according to research by some of the world's leading water scientists. "There will not be enough water available on current croplands to produce food for the expected 9 billion population in 2050 if we follow current trends and changes towards diets common in western nations," the report by Malik Falkenmark and colleagues at the Stockholm International Water Institute (SIWI) said.

"There will be just enough water if the proportion of animal-based foods is limited to 5% of total calories and considerable regional water deficits can be met by a … reliable system of food trade."

Dire warnings of water scarcity limiting food production come as Oxfam and the UN prepare for a possible second global food crisis in five years. Prices for staples such as corn and wheat have risen nearly 50% on international markets since June, triggered by severe droughts in the US and Russia, and weak monsoon rains in Asia. More than 18 million people are already facing serious food shortages across the Sahel.

Oxfam has forecast that the price spike will have a devastating impact in developing countries that rely heavily on food imports, including parts of Latin America, North Africa and the Middle East. Food shortages in 2008 led to civil unrest in 28 countries.

But the wettest June on record, a cool July, and hail storms in August have all taken a toll on Britain's fruit and vegetables - prompting retailers to relax their rules on the cosmetic standards for produce. The move comes after farmers urged retailers not to waste perfectly tasty fresh produce because of a few blemishes or an unusual shape. EU rules on misshapen fruit and veg were relaxed in 2009 but supermarkets still maintain private product standards. The National Farmers Union has said its members were already struggling to cope with below average yields this year.

In June apple growers told how their orchards had been blighted by frost, rain and hailstorms, meaning the year's crop would be dramatically reduced. Fruit farmers in the West Midlands, East Anglia, the South West and parts of the South East said they had lost as much as 65 per cent of their harvest.

In July - traditionally peak season for potatoes - farmers reported that they had lost 40 per cent of their potato crop because of waterlogged fields. If supermarkets were to reject what produce has survived, it could push some farmers out of business, according to the NFU.

But author Tristram Stuart, who campaigns against food wastage, said a one-off relaxation of rules in response to the poor harvest was not enough. He has said farmers are routinely forced to throw away up to 40 per cent of a crop because it is not aesthetically pleasing enough. According to Mr Stuart, founder of the Feeding the 5,000 campaign, when the harvest returns to normal farmers will again be forced to dump produce.

Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras had been expected to make his case for more time to meet austerity targets in his meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Berlin on Friday. [Mr] Samaras has said he wants an additional two years, until 2016, to trim €11.5 billion ($14.3 billion) from the Greek budget.

But if [Mr] Samaras had been hoping for quick concessions from Berlin, he didn't get them. Although [Mrs] Merkel reassured [Mr] Samaras that she wanted Greece "to stay in the euro zone," she gave no sign of wanting to grant Athens more time to meet the terms of the bailout.

[Mrs] Merkel did, however, say that Germany would not "make premature judgments" about Greece's reform efforts, but would await "reliable evidence," a reference to the report by the so-called troika - made up of officials from the the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund - which is expected in September or October. "We know that great sacrifices are being demanded from Greece's citizens," [Mrs] Merkel said, adding that Berlin supported the efforts of the new Greek government under [Mr] Samaras.

Christian Berntsen is nothing if not enthusiastic. An activist with Bunt statt Braun, a group dedicated to combating right-wing extremism in the northern German city of Rostock, Berntsen has been instrumental in helping plan and stage events dedicated to commemorating the xenophobic, 1992 assault on an asylum-seekers home in the city quarter of Lichtenhagen. The list of activities is long: films, podium discussions, international cooking courses in local schools and presentations by local and regional politicians of all stripes.

"The city is working hand-in-hand with us when it comes to the remembrance program," Berntsen says ardently. "And the events have been extremely well received and well attended." The effort in Rostock is indeed impressive. The city has gone out of its way to ensure that the kind of hateful violence that flared up two decades ago does not make a reappearance.

But elsewhere in Germany, particularly in the east, the situation offers decidedly less cause for optimism. There are, to be sure, myriad groups pursuing goals similar to Bunt statt Braun, but entire regions remain where foreigners are afraid to venture, towns dominated by neo-Nazi thugs and repeated attacks against those who look different. Twenty years after the despicable Rostock violence, Germany's xenophobia problem remains daunting.

Threadneedle Street said that wealthy families had been the biggest beneficiaries of its £375 billion quantitative-easing (QE) programme, under which it has been buying government gilts for cash since early 2009. The Bank of England calculated that the value of shares and bonds had risen by 26% – or £600 billion – as a result of the policy, equivalent to £10,000 for each household in the UK. It added, however, that 40% of the gains went to the richest 5% of households.

Although the Bank said it could not come up with precise figures for the gains from QE, estimates can be produced using wealth distribution data from the Office for National Statistics. These show the average boost to the holdings of financial assets and pensions of the richest 10% of households would have been either £128,000 per household or £322,000 depending on the methodology used.