Now, on a turnout of less than 26 per cent, it has elected a man supported by Islamist extremists, after one of the nastiest campaigns in recent London political history.

Mr Rahman, formerly Labour leader of the council, hit the headlines in March when a Channel 4 documentary highlighted his alleged links to an Islamist group, the Islamic Forum of Europe (IFE), based at the East London Mosque. These allegations were then amplified by his main rival, Helal Abbas, who presented a dossier to Labour's National Executive Committee accusing Mr Rahman of being controlled by the IFE. On the basis of those allegations - all of which Mr Rahman denies - he was last month replaced as Labour's candidate by Mr Abbas.

Mr Rahman's supporters proceeded to fight a campaign which included prominent and unfounded allegations in the local Bangla paper that Mr Abbas was a racist and wife-beater. The source of such smears has never been spelt out and Mr Rahman denies his campaign team's involvement. Meanwhile, Labour's mayoral candidate Ken Livingstone threw his backing behind Mr Rahman, despite his own party's backing for Mr Abbas and the support of rival party Respect for Mr Rahman.

While embarrassing for the new Labour leader, Ed Miliband, none of the blame for all this lies at his door. Rather, it is the fault of factions in London's most rotten borough - who have now succeeded in elevating their man to direct control of the borough's 1.1 billion pounds annual budget. This is a sad day for one of the most deprived parts of our city.

"This language calms everything down and gives us a route map forward," said George Osborne, the Chancellor of the Exchequer. "Obviously this colourful language about currency wars has got everyone excited," he added. Mr Osborne clarified, however, that the statement was not a criticism of China for persistently undervaluing the yuan. "What people have been nervous about is that the current imbalance would get worse as countries other than China look at the route of competitive devaluation."

He also said that while currencies "tend to grab the headlines", they are just one part of wider economic imbalances. While several member countries of the G20 hailed the summit in South Korea as a success, Japan immediately broke ranks to declare that, contrary to the spirit of the communique, it would continue to devalue the yen if it saw fit.

Yoshihiko Noda, Japan's finance minister, said: "A prolonged appreciation in the yen is not good for Japan's economy. Our stance, that we will take appropriate, bold action if needed, is unchanged."

Jews and Christians know that Israel's claim to Jerusalem is rooted in the ancient Jewish connection to that city. Israel's declaration of independence speaks of both "natural and historic right." Jerusalem is the centerpiece of that historic right. What about the Muslim claim?

Interestingly, Islamic sources from the first 50 years or so after Muhammad's death make clear that Jerusalem had absolutely no holy status for Muslims.

Some centuries later, Ibn Taymiyya (1263-1328) another important Muslim cleric with an encyclopedic knowledge of the Koran and Hadith, wrote extensively about Jerusalem, and how there were only two holy cities in Islam - Mecca and Medina. He eventually became the intellectual godfather of Wahhabism, the dominant Islamic doctrine of the Saudi government. He claimed that Muslims must rid themselves of all non-Muslim innovations and return to the early Islam of Muhammad and the first four caliphs. The rulers of Ibn Taymiyya's time saw him as a threat and imprisoned him. Even so, he did not recant.

Ibn Taymiyya went to great lengths to explain that the veneration of Jerusalem is nothing more than the "Judaization" of Islam. He wrote that after the second caliph Umar conquered Jerusalem in 637 he and his aide Ka'b al-Ahobar [a Jewish convert to Islam], went up to view the Temple Mount. Umar asked his aide: "Where do you think I should build a place of prayer for Muslims?" Ka'b replied: "Build it behind (ie, north of) the Rock." Angrily, Umar said to Ka'b: "Oh you son of a Jew, is your Jewishness dominating your view?" Umar was accusing Ka'b of Judaizing Islam by saying that they should build a place to pray north of the Rock where the Jewish Temple had once stood. If they had done so, they would have been bowing down both towards the Rock and Mecca.

That is why Umar decided to build the place to pray on the southern part of the Temple Mount - the place today known as the Aqsa Mosque. Umar's choice of location meant that the Muslims bowed down only to Mecca and that their backs (rear ends) were facing the Rock.

In a decision that is bound to set off a furious reaction from many Jewish leaders, the synod concluded that "recourse to theological and biblical positions which use the Word of G-d to wrongly justify injustices is not acceptable."

However, an inherently contradictory Synod statement also declared, "The same Scriptures unite us; the Old Testament, the Word of G-d is for both you and us... We believe in the promises of God and his covenant given to Abraham and to you. We believe that the Word of G-d is eternal."

The Catholic church in recent years has been trying to overcome centuries of anti-Semitism and proof that it exploited the Holocaust to try to convert Jews who were saved. US archbishop Cyril Salim Bustros, who heads the commission that issued the Synod statement, is a Lebanese native. He told reporters, "For Christians, one can no longer talk of the land promised to the Jewish people... There is no longer a favored people, a chosen people; all men and women of every country have become the chosen people."

Yet many people refused to have the swine flu vaccine when it was offered last year because of fears it may cause serious side effects. The Mail on Sunday revealed last week that Government experts are examining a possible association between the H1N1 swine flu jab and the paralysing nerve disease Guillain-Barre Syndrome.

The vaccine has also been linked to fevers in young children, temporary paralysis and narcolepsy. Katherine Murphy, chief executive of the Patients Association, said: 'We are very disappointed that patients are not being given the opportunity to choose for themselves whether they wish to take the swine flu vaccine as part of their winter flu vaccine.'

'Some may not want the swine flu vaccine and this may mean they would also miss out on their winter flu jab. This seems to go completely against the new initiative from the Government which states that in the NHS there will be "No decision about me without me" for patients and that there will be a large emphasis on patient choice. There does not seem to be any patient choice involved here - either patients have both vaccines or no vaccine.'

Millions of internet users have potentially been affected. One privacy campaigner described the intrusion as "absolutely scandalous" and called on Google to launch a full inquiry into the affair. The Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), the privacy watchdog, said it would be looking into Google's admission. Images for Street View were gathered by vehicle-mounted panoramic cameras starting in 2008.

In May this year, Google confessed the vehicles had also been gathering information about the location of wireless networks, the devices which connect computers to the telecommunications network via radio waves. Now the California-based company has revealed that far more information was harvested than was previously thought, after privacy regulators in seven countries analysed the data.

"It's clear from those inspections that while most of the data is fragmentary, in some instances entire emails and URLs [web addresses] were captured, as well as passwords," said Alan Eustace, Google's vice-president of engineering and research. "We want to delete this data as soon as possible, and I would like to apologise again for the fact that we collected it in the first place."

Those aged 65 and older represented seven percent of bankruptcy filers in 2007, a mind-boggling jump from 1991. They are the "fastest-growing age demographic," according to Pottow's study.

What's the culprit for so much debt? Credit cards. Two-thirds of Americans who filed for bankruptcy said credit cards were the key reason for their financial problems, according to Pottow's research. Besides having more credit card debt compared with younger bankruptcy filers, 44.8 percent of those aged 65 and older also had more plastic in their wallets. "They're using credit cards as a maladaptive coping mechanism," Pottow says.

Stephanie Osterland, a supervisor in the bankruptcy department at GreenPath debt solutions, sees an increasing number of seniors living beyond their means. Says Osterland: "They're just trying to live off of a fixed income, and that's usually Social Security. Maybe they have a small pension. We find they've used credit cards to supplement that income and expenses or they just end up getting into a lot of medical debt."

UN officials stressed that the five cases, the first confirmed in the capital since the epidemic started, were people who had become infected in the main outbreak zone of Artibonite north of Port-au-Prince and had subsequently traveled to the city where they fell sick. "They were very quickly diagnosed and isolated," UN humanitarian spokeswoman Imogen Wall told Reuters, citing information from Haitian health authorities. "This is not a new location of infection."

But prevention measures and surveillance were being increased in Port-au-Prince, with its squalid sprawling slums and about 1.3 million survivors of the January 12 earthquake packed into tent and tarpaulin camps. All are highly vulnerable to a virulent diarrheal disease like cholera. With more than 2,600 cholera cases reported and experts predicting the numbers will rise, Haitian and international medical teams are working desperately to isolate and contain the epidemic in the Artibonite and Central Plateau regions, north of the rubble-strewn capital.

It is the worst medical emergency to strike the poor, disaster-prone Caribbean nation since the earthquake killed up to 300,000 people and is also the first cholera epidemic in Haiti in a century.

And unless something drastic and dramatic happens, America soon could follow the pattern established in Germany's Weimar Republic shortly after World War I when it created 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 (1 sextillion) Marks, destroying its own economy with hyperinflation, crashing its currency, wrecking social values of thrift and work and paving Hitler's rise to power.

The analysis comes in "Crashing the Dollar: How to Survive a Global Currency Collapse," by Smith, who is founder and chairman of Swiss America Trading Corp, and co-author Lowell Ponte, a contributing editor at Newsmax magazine. The book says while the problems have been developing for some time, "President Barack Obama and liberal Democratic policies are pushing the United States toward inflation or even hyperinflation, and... this could destroy the US dollar and other major currencies."

"President Obama's bizarre response to America's ongoing economic crisis appears to be madness - unless some hidden method, motive or agenda lurks behind it," Smith said.

The $120 trillion?

"Forty-one cents of every dollar the federal government spends is borrowed; up to 43 percent of America's Gross Domestic Product is now local, state and federal government spending; unemployment and underemployment are stuck close to 20 percent; inflation-adjusted wages have not increased in 30 years... and the International Monetary Fund announced in summer 2010 that the United States is effectively bankrupt," he said.

Regarding this last objective, the synod fathers have been stressing a duty to protect the identity of the Eastern Catholic Churches, to reinforce communion within the Catholic Church among bishops, clergy and faithful (ad intra) and with the other Churches and ecclesial communities (ad extra).

The proposals call the world's attention to the problems linked to emigration and immigration in the region and to the promotion of religious liberty, including that of worship and conscience.

Noteworthy is constant reference to a need to intensify cooperation among the Catholic hierarchies in the Middle East through meetings, initiatives of solidarity, and the formation of priests and laity. The proposals also stress the importance of media in transmitting the teachings of the Church.

These include eating more seasonal produce to reduce transportation and switching to microwave ovens and pressure cookers to use less energy in preparing food. Out would go beef, cheese, sugary foods and drinks such as tea, coffee and cocoa. In would come vegetables and pulses, together with yoghurt.

The FSA says the switch is necessary as part of a move to a diet that is low in greenhouse gases (GHG), which are associated with climate change. The report, compiled by a team from the University of East Anglia, suggests that schools, hospitals and other public bodies should be expected to lead a change in national behaviour by putting low-GHG food on their menus.

The university was at the centre of allegations last year that it had manipulated climate change data to magnify the problem. Its report, called Food and Climate Change, will be controversial given that many people may baulk at being told what they should eat in order to meet greenhouse gas reduction targets. However, the recommendations will be welcomed by vegetarian campaigners and those who support organic farming, which is recognised in the study as producing food that is lower in GHG.

But the National Farmers' Union has ridiculed the idea that a shift to vegetarian food will combat climate change as 'simplistic'. A spokesman said: 'It is simply not true that fruit and vegetables are a better climate option than meat and milk. You have to look at how these crops are produced in terms of the energy used for growing and transport.'

George Osborne (UK Chancellor of the Exchequer) and Timothy Geithner, the United States' Treasury Secretary, will meet their counterparts from China, India and Japan on Friday in the South Korean city of Gyeongju for the latest round of G20 talks. The threat of a 'currency war', with countries jockeying to devalue their currencies in order to boost exports, is squarely at the top of the agenda.

A leaked draft copy of the summit's communique said G20 members would agree to "move towards a more market-determined exchange-rate system" and "refrain from competitive undervaluation". Brazil, Australia and Canada all urged the G20 to reach a solution on the issue, with Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, the Brazilian president, saying: "The whole world is seeing there is a currency war and we need to discuss this in the G20 and find a definitive solution to it."

The US is determined to agree on "fair" exchange rate rules, and Mr Geithner told the Wall Street Journal that he would "like countries to move toward a set of norms on exchange-rate policy". While he believes the euro, yen and the dollar are roughly "in alignment", he repeated that the Chinese yuan remains undervalued.

The growing taxpayer infusions will cover losses Fannie and Freddie suffer on home loans, as well as payments the companies must make to the US Treasury in exchange for a federal guarantee to provide cash to keep the companies solvent.

Over time, the majority of funds flowing to Fannie and Freddie from taxpayers will go to pay that dividend. As a result, most of the additional funds that go to Fannie and Freddie from taxpayers will ultimately be paid back. An Obama administration official said this arrangement is not being reconsidered at this time.

To date, the Treasury has injected $148 billion into Fannie and Freddie. Under the worst-case scenario, in which the country enters a second recession, the total infusion would be $363 billion in three years. Under this scenario, if taxpayer dividends weren't being paid, the total outlay would be $259 billion.

German politicians are well aware of the dangers of making ill-thought-out references to their country's history. In 2002, then-German Justice Minister Herta Daubler-Gmelin, speaking to the southern German daily Schwabisches Tagblatt, said in reference to US President George W Bush's increasingly bellicose rhetoric against Iraq: "Bush wants to distract people from his domestic difficulties. It is a popular method. Hitler did the same thing."

In this midterm campaign season in the US, German history seems to be everywhere. In June, conservative columnist Thomas Sowell of JewishWorldReview.com essentially argued that President Barack Obama, by requiring that BP pay $20 billion (14.3 billion euros) to compensate those harmed by the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, was following in the footsteps of Adolf Hitler - and was promptly praised by Sarah Palin and Republican Congressman Louie Gohmert of Texas.

Other examples abound. A Tea Party campaign poster in Iowa depicted Obama flanked by both Hitler and Lenin. Conservative talking head and Tea Party heartthrob Glenn Beck can hardly get through one of his Fox News shows without an Obama-Hitler comparison. Palin also accused Obama's health care plan of including "death panels." And one Tea Party candidate, Rich Iott, even enjoys dressing up as a Nazi now and then.

With Germany's 20th century crimes fading into the past, that is a dangerous path to take. It is a path that all politicians, whatever their leanings, should avoid. The Tea Party should keep their hands off German history.

The galaxy has the unglamorous name of UDFy-38135539, the team of European researchers said. "Here we report the detection of... photons emitted less than 600 million years after the Big Bang," they wrote.

Light travels at a speed of 186,000 miles a second, or about 6 trillion miles (10 trillion km) a year. Astronomers can use light-speed as a kind of time machine, and seeing light emitted from objects very far away shows them as they were in the past. In this case, the galaxy's light first started traveling 13 billion years ago, right after the Big Bang.

The distance is measured using what is called red shift, a kind of Doppler effect of light. Just as a train's whistle seems to change in pitch as the train approaches and passes, light's color also shifts. This galaxy has a red shift of 8.55, making it the farthest and oldest ever seen.