One sailor, who served aboard Westminster but did not want to be named, said: "It is a joke. We were sent out there completely unprepared for attack. If we had come under attack I'm not sure what we would have done. We were pretty much sitting ducks." HMS Westminster was sent to Libya earlier this year to help evacuate civilians from Benghazi while civil war there was raging. Sea Wolf missiles can be fired singly. But they are often used in pairs which meant Westminster could effectively have had just two shots as self-defence.

Tory MP and Naval reservist Penny Mordaunt said this showed the latest round of defence cuts had "hollowed out the capability to a dangerous level". She added: "I am convinced, and so are other warfare officers I've spoken to, that Westminster would have been in danger." Retired Rear Admiral Chris Parry said: "This is yet another example of the incoherence of last year's Strategic Defence and Security Review.

"What if the Government's bluff had been called? What would the Ministry of Defence be saying if Westminster had been hit? They took a big risk." The Navy is set to be reduced to its smallest size in 400 years. It has lost its aircraft carriers and the Harriers which flew from them and is losing 5,000 personnel in the next four years.

When it comes to fiscal stability, frugality and responsible economic management, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Finance Minister Wolfgang Schauble have only one role model: themselves. The chancellor praises herself and her team for having "a clear compass for reducing debt," and insists: "Getting our finances in order is good for our country." Her finance minister, a member of Merkel's conservative Christian Democrats, is no less effusive. Germany, says Schauble, is a "safe haven" for capital from around the world, because "the entire world has great confidence in both the performance and soundness of the fiscal policies of the Federal Republic of Germany."

Developments in the financial markets seem to bear him out. Last week, the suspicions of international investors reached the stable core of the euro zone. Investors embarked on a massive selloff of securities issued by supposedly model countries like Finland and Austria and sought refuge in German government bonds.

But it is debatable how much longer Germany can be seen as a refuge of stability and security. In reality, German government finances are not nearly in as good shape as the chancellor and the finance minister would have us believe. The way that certain important indices are developing suggests that Germany may not retain its position as a role model in the long term. Government debt as a percentage of GDP is already at more than 80 percent, which compared to other European Union countries is by no means exemplary, but in fact average at best.

When it comes to their debt-to-GDP ratios, even ailing countries like Spain are in better shape, with values significantly lower than 80 percent. Critics, irritated by Merkel's and Schauble's overly confident rhetoric, are beginning to find fault with Europe's self-proclaimed model country. "I think that the level of German debt is troubling," says Luxembourg Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker, whose country has a debt-to-GDP ratio of just 20 percent

The United States, the source of billions of dollars of aid vital for Pakistan's military and feeble economy, is unlikely to look kindly on peace talks with the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), which it has labeled a terrorist group. Past peace pacts with the TTP have failed to bring stability, and merely gave the umbrella group time and space to consolidate, launch fresh attacks and impose their austere version of Islam on segments of the population.

The discussions are focused on the South Waziristan region on the Afghan border and could be expanded to try to reach a comprehensive deal if progress is made. The Taliban, who are close to al Qaeda, made several demands, including the release of prisoners and the withdrawal of Pakistani forces from South Waziristan, said the commander.

An ethnic Pashtun tribal mediator described the talks as "very difficult." Pakistani military and government officials were not immediately available for comment.

The assistant principal of Orange River Elementary School called in the cops after a teacher spotted the smooch Wednesday at the Fort Myers school. In fact, Margaret Ann Haring, 56, initially called child welfare officials, who directed her to contact the sheriff, according to a report. The kiss apparently occurred after two girls debated over whom the boy liked more. That's when one of the girls "went over and kissed" the boy. The redacted sheriff's report notes that Haring "stated there were no new allegations of sexual abuse as far as she knew."

The shoplifters - described as teens and young adults - took items including snacks and drinks, police said. Police stopped a group of six people ages 16-18 near Tech Road and Broadbirch Drive. Each had items from the 7-Eleven but no receipts, police said. Detectives are investigating whether the shoplifters had attended a birthday party in the area, police said.

In August, a flash mob of dozens of young people entered a 7-Eleven in Germantown and took items without paying, police said. Flash mob crime in the county has prompted lawmakers to consider teen loitering legislation and a teen curfew.

Such parents had grown up without "any idea of how to bring up a child", she said. Only education could break the cycle, she added. Speaking at her association's annual conference in Bristol, Dr Wright said she had long been concerned with the "seeming erosion of the innocence of childhood". And she said schools and parents were in the forefront of the battle against inappropriate images that were everywhere.

The head teacher of St Mary's Calne school in Wiltshire added: "In what sort of twisted reality is it acceptable to run pole-dancing classes for young children and advertise them with pictures on the internet, for instance? What hope have we got of safeguarding our children's sacred childhood if they are knocked off their feet on the nursery slopes of life by an avalanche of images and malign influences? And make no mistake, this is what is happening."

She added: "It is time to take up the drawbridge of the liberal dogma of the past which has left us with the moral abyss of the present." She continued: "If parents can't see anything wrong in dressing up their children in 'Future Wag' T-shirts and letting them wear make-up, high heels and 'mini-me' sexy clothing, then something is intensely wrong in our society."

Dr Wright also criticised programmes like the X Factor, where she said contestants were "encouraged to be at each other's throats". She said: "Qualities such as bullying and arrogance are glamorised and become synonyms for ambition and drive. Young people look up to these so-called stars, who have themselves been catapulted into a spotlight which can be far too much for them."

He said Turkey no longer trusted its former ally, Syria's President Bashar al-Assad. The UN says more than 3,500 people have died since the start of the protests against Mr Assad in March. The Syrian authorities blame the violence on armed gangs and militants. On Monday, at least 20 people died including two women and a child, with the highest number of deaths near the flashpoint city of Homs, activists from the Local Co-Ordination Committees said in a statement.

Mr Gul said that the Syrian regime had now reached a "dead end" and that the country was prepared for the worst-cast scenario. "[In] this age, authoritarian regimes or one-party rule are no longer acceptable, first by the people of that country, and of course, [by] the region and the world." His comments echo those of the country's Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has said Syria's future cannot be built on "the blood of the oppressed" and come as European states launched a fresh attempt to bring Syria before the UN Security Council.

The UN General Assembly's human rights committee is expected to vote on Tuesday on a resolution condemning the crackdown on protesters. The resolution, proposed by Germany, France and Britain, sparked accusations from the Syrian government envoy to the UN that Europe was suffering from "Syria-phobia," AFP reports.

"We don't want to interfere in Syrian domestic issues but since this is happening in our neighbourhood, since the Syrian people are our friends and since we wish them well, we cannot be indifferent." But he said Turkey would have no doubts about defending itself from any attacks on Turkish interests in the country.

At least 26 people have been killed and hundreds injured in three days of protests against the military rulers. Amnesty International has criticised the military for failing to keep its promise to improve human rights. Late on Monday some 20,000 people were estimated to have thronged Tahrir Square after the cabinet of Prime Minister Essam Sharaf announced its offer to resign. Their numbers were far short of the hundreds of thousands whose demonstrations in the square earlier in the year led to the overthrow of Hosni Mubarak as president after 30 years in power.

In a report published on Tuesday, Amnesty International said Egypt's military rulers had "completely failed to live up their promises to Egyptians to improve human rights". Amnesty said the military council had carried on many of the abusive tactics of the Hosni Mubarak era, including torture of suspects, targeting critics and banning critical media. "The euphoria of the uprising has been replaced by fears that one repressive rule has simply been replaced with another," Amnesty said

Analysis by Jon Leyne - BBC News, Cairo: "This situation is going in almost no direction now. Both sides continue to do what they are doing. The demonstrators go for the police, and the police fire back at least with tear gas and buckshots, if not live ammunition, so the casualty toll continues to increase. This is almost a rudderless situation. Mohamed ElBaradei, the Nobel Peace Prize winner, says the state is collapsing, and I think that's a very perceptive analysis."

The outcome means automatic cuts outlined in the bill that created the committee should take effect from 2013. The US national debt has just risen above $15 trillion. The panel was set up in August, the result of a last-minute deal between the two sides in Congress to raise the debt ceiling and avert a default on US debt payments.

Adam Brookes, BBC News, Washington, writes:- "America is not about to default on its debts, but we've just seen default of a sort - by Congress, on its responsibilities. Americans are already aghast at their elected representatives' inability to agree on how to heal the nation's finances. The spectacle of the super-committee's failure will only cause them to slump deeper in their seats."

"Now, supposedly, the so-called sequestration cuts kick in. They start in 2013, more than a trillion dollars worth, half of which will come from the military budget, the rest distributed across the federal government. These cuts are a sort of fiendish Plan B. They were designed to come into effect only if the super-committee failed. Nobody really wants them. Some in Congress are already muttering about undoing them. President Obama says he will force them through."

"So look for fierce clashes over the future of those tax cuts enacted by President George W Bush. Look for ferocious lobbying by the defence industry. Look for howls of anger at cuts in federal education funding, and medical and welfare benefits for the elderly and poor. And much, much more. The deficit battle has been joined, and on this terrain will the presidential election be fought."

Now, the cracked marble tombstone engraved with the date October 15, 1882, which is normally covered by 20 to 30 feet of water, has been eerily exposed as a yearlong drought shrinks one of Texas' largest lakes. Across the state, receding lakes have revealed a prehistoric skull, ancient tools, fossils and a small cemetery that appears to contain the graves of freed slaves. Some of the discoveries have attracted interest from local historians, and looters also have scavenged for pieces of history. More than two dozen looters have been arrested at one site.

"In an odd way, this drought has provided an opportunity to view and document, where appropriate, some of these finds and understand what they consist of," said Pat Mercado-Allinger, the Texas Historical Commission's archeological division director. "Most people in Texas probably didn't realize what was under these lakes." Texas finished its driest 12 months ever with an average of 8.5 inches of rain through September, nearly 13 inches below normal. Water levels in the region's lakes, most of which were manmade, have dropped by more than a dozen feet in many cases.

The vanishing water has revealed the long-submerged building foundations of Woodville, Oklahoma, which was flooded in 1944 when the Red River was dammed to form Lake Texoma. A century-old church has emerged at Falcon Lake, which straddles the Texas-Mexico border on the Rio Grande. Other depleted lakes across Texas are revealing much older artifacts. More than two dozen looters have been arrested at Lake Whitney, about 50 miles south of Fort Worth, for removing Native American tools and fossils that experts believe could be thousands of years old.

"I don't think that that is a subject for public discussion," he said. "But I can tell you that the IAEA report has a sobering impact on many in the world, leaders as well as the publics, and people understand that the time has come." The International Atomic Energy Agency published a report on November 8 saying there was "credible" information that Iran was carrying out "activities relevant to the development of a nuclear explosive device."

On Friday the IAEA's board passed a resolution condemning Iran's nuclear activities, but stopped short of reporting Tehran to the United Nations and issuing no deadline for compliance. "People understand now that Iran is determined to reach nuclear weapons," said Barak. There is "no other possible or conceivable explanation for what they have been actually doing. And that should be stopped."

The IAEA report - based on "broadly, credible" intelligence, its own information and some input from Iran itself - said that Iran had examined how to fit out a Shahab 3 missile, with a range capable of reaching Israel, with a nuclear warhead.

Michele Bachmann (Republican for Minnesota) has introduced a similar federal bill, The Heartbeat Informed Consent Act, in Congress. When the Supreme Court decided Roe, critics of abortion vowed to get it overturned. They have not succeeded in that. But they have managed to pass a wide array of laws - some upheld by the courts, others struck down - making access to abortion more difficult. The Supreme Court has ruled that states can impose some restrictions, such as 24-hour waiting periods and parental consent requirements, but has struck down others, such as laws forcing women to notify their spouses. The heartbeat laws are the latest effort in a decades-long campaign that - as conservatives gain strength at the state level - appears to be gaining ground.

Recently, abortion opponents have been pushing some tough new restrictions - and prompting lawsuits over whether they go too far. Five states - Indiana, Kansas, Alabama, Idaho, and Oklahoma - have adopted laws that ban almost all abortions after the five-month mark. Meanwhile, Ohio is considering enacting the most extreme anti-abortion law in the nation. Its House of Representatives has voted for a bill that would ban all abortions once a heartbeat can be detected, which can occur as early as six weeks. That is a frontal assault on Roe, which recognized a right to abortion until "viability," the point - around the 22nd week - when a fetus can survive outside the womb.

The new heartbeat bills don't go quite as far - they would simply require abortion providers to make the fetus's heartbeat audible to a woman seeking an abortion. Supporters argue that making the woman listen to the heartbeat - or look at an ultrasound image of the fetus, as Bachmann's bill also requires - is important for true "informed consent." They also believe that women who are provided with this kind of information are less likely to end their pregnancies. One thing seems inevitable: more fights over how far the states can go to rein in the constitutional right to abortion.

The immediate destiny of this country lies entirely in the hands of Germany, the AAA creditor core, the EU authorities, and the European Central Bank, the nexus of policy-making power that together dictates whether Spain will be thrown a lifeline or be pushed further into depression and social catastrophe. What can the quiet Galician do to stop Spain's 22.6 per cent unemployment rate - or 46 per cent for youth - from ratcheting higher this winter as the combined effects of fiscal austerity and a credit crunch together do their worst? How can he stop real M1 deposits contracting at a 5 per cent rate.

Spain is a disquieting story for northern neo-Calvinists, still clinging to their morality tale of what went wrong with monetary union, a belief that feckless Greco-Latins borrowed their way to disaster, and that Teutonic virtue for all is the path to redemption. Philip Whyte and Simon Tilford argue in a paper for the Centre for European Reform (CER) that this is a "damagingly partial and self-serving" version of events.

"It wrongly assigns all the blame for peripheral indebtedness to government profligacy; it makes no mention of the far from innocent role played by creditor countries in the run-up to the crisis. The result was an explosion of current-account imbalances inside the eurozone. As a share of GDP, these imbalances were far bigger than those between the US and China," they said. More than any other country, Spain exposes the lie behind this German narrative. It did not cheat, like Greece. It did not breach the Maastricht Treaty's 60 per cent debt ceiling like Italy (or Germany itself). Its public debt was 36 per cent of GDP before the Great Recession. It ran a budget surplus of almost 2 per cent of GDP in 2007 and 2008.

We can all agree that Spain has been far too slow to dismantle its Franco-era apparatus of labour privileges, or to end the inflation-linked wage rises eating away at intra-EMU competitiveness. But that is just one aspect of the story. "The eurozone crisis is as much a tale of excess bank leverage and poor risk management in the core as of excess consumption and wasteful investment in the periphery," said the CER paper.

Indeed, Spain has been the biggest victim of cheap capital from German, Dutch, and French banks. It was further destabilized by the loose policies of the European Central Bank. If Germany genuinely wishes to save Spain and Italy, it must allow EMU-wide reflation and mobilize the ECB as a lender of last resort to halt the bond crisis, since the EFSF rescue fund does not exist. In the meantime, one can only watch with grim foreboding as the fifth successive government collapses in Europe's arc of depression, to be replaced by saviours who can save nothing.

He also criticised plans, backed by the Government, for the 17 countries in the eurozone to move closer towards fiscal union as undemocratic. He said: 'What I don't think you can do is pretend that you can create an economic government of Europe, effectively run by Germany.' Mr Johnson also condemned the recent replacement of elected leaders in Greece and Italy with governments led by technocrats as 'completely mad'.

Mr Cameron has called on German Chancellor Angela Merkel to use the European Central Bank to prop up struggling southern European economies - potentially by printing money. But in a newspaper interview, Mr Johnson said: 'This idea that if we can find a big enough bazooka, we could blow away the problem by creating a euro government in which there will be shared fiscal responsibility, I'm afraid that really will, in the long-term, simply exacerbate the problem.'

Instead, he proposed that the eurozone should split - one part including stronger economies such as Germany, and the other weaker, mainly southern states. Alternatively, struggling economies should be allowed to leave the eurozone, devaluing their currencies, before deciding whether to try to rejoin. Mr Johnson's remarks come just weeks after he goaded Mr Cameron by saying a referendum on Britain's membership of the EU would be a 'good idea'.

In a landmark judgment, Mr Justice Bean upheld the appeal of a foul-mouthed thug who was convicted for repeatedly using the f-word while being searched by police. The ruling paves the way for scores of other louts to challenge their convictions for public order offences - and could force police to pay them compensation for wrongful arrest. The decision, which provoked outrage among police, comes just weeks after the London Mayor Boris Johnson and Britain's most senior policeman called for a zero-tolerance crackdown on those who abuse officers.

The case was brought by Denzel Harvey, who was fined 50 pounds at Thames Youth Court for repeatedly swearing at officers while he was being searched for cannabis in 2009. Mr Harvey was arrested for the outburst, and magistrates found him guilty of a public order offence after hearing that the expletives were uttered in a public area while a group of teenage bystanders gathered round. But the conviction was quashed at the High Court, with Mr Justice Bean saying the 'rather commonplace' expletive is heard 'all too frequently'.

He claimed it was 'quite impossible to infer that the group of young people who were in the vicinity were likely to have experienced alarm or distress at hearing these rather commonplace swear words used'. Simon Reed, vice chairman of the Police Federation, said yesterday: 'It's astounding that you can use every swear word to abuse a police officer and they have got to accept it just because it is common. This gives the green light for everyone to swear and use disorderly behaviour with police.'