The decline, which was bigger than most analysts were expecting, pushed the average price of a property to 164,654 pounds, the lowest since May 2006. The 10th consecutive monthly decline highlights the reversal of fortune for the property market since the credit crunch took hold last summer, bringing an end to a decade in which property values almost trebled.

Nationwide said house prices in August were 10.5 percent lower than a year earlier. Quarterly data recorded prior to the current series suggest August's annual decline was the first double-digit drop since the fourth quarter of 1990 when the nation was mired in recession. Concern has grown in recent months that a sharp property downturn will tip the already stuttering economy into recession.

Some half a million New Yorkers were unemployed by mid-year, the highest number since 2004. More job losses are likely as a national economic downturn is intensified by the problems Wall Street firms are struggling with, according to the Fiscal Policy Institute's study. "At a minimum, it appears that the state's economy will continue declining through the rest of 2008 and possibly into 2009," according to the study by the Albany-based think tank.

New York's economy is dependent on the fortunes of the Wall Street finance industry, so the state's tax collections have plunged with the profit-drought now withering banks and brokerages. Democratic Gov David Paterson recently persuaded the legislature to cut $427 million of spending and prune the three-year deficit by $2 billion to $24.4 billion. But those budget cuts could cause more job losses, which in turn could make it harder for New York to replenish its unemployment insurance fund.

Though Hispanic and African American workers make up 29 percent of the work force, their jobless rates are "roughly double" those of their white counterparts, the study said.

But he effectively rules out imposing a windfall tax on energy firms because it would only lead to higher charges for customers. And he warns that Russian aggression in Georgia has cast doubt over Britain's future energy supplies.

Mr Hutton's refusal to levy a windfall tax on power firms will dismay many who had hoped for extra government help to pay for heating this winter. Millions of homes have been hit by a wave of recent energy price rises of more than 35 per cent, while petrol and food bills have also soared. Seventy Labour MPs have signed a petition calling for a one-off tax on the "excessive profits" of the energy companies.

He says: "The era of cheap energy is over. The question is how are we going to adjust to that and what sort of help can we provide to those who are going to struggle the most. There is genuine concern about the difficulties that people will face paying their heating bills over the coming winter and we are looking at extra support."

Former President Bill Clinton, who has been slow to warm to Obama after the bruising primary battle that his wife lost, gave Obama an unwavering seal of approval in a speech to a packed convention hall where delegates cheered his appearance for so long that he had to ask them to sit down.

"My fellow Democrats, I say to you: Barack Obama is ready to lead America and to restore American leadership in the world," former President Clinton told flag-waving delegates who interrupted him repeatedly with roars of approval. "Barack Obama is ready to be president of the United States," he said.

Not since Katrina struck on August 29, 2005, have residents faced a forced departure from their homes and businesses as many still struggle to rebuild their lives in a city famed for its jazz clubs and Mardi Gras festival. Storm levees broke under the onslaught of Katrina, flooding 80 percent of New Orleans and killing 1,500 people in the city and along the Gulf of Mexico coast. The hurricane caused $125 billion in wind and flood damage.

With Tropical Storm Gustav swirling near Cuba and likely to enter the Gulf of Mexico as a hurricane this weekend, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal said an evacuation could begin as early as Friday - three years to the day after Katrina inundated New Orleans. Jindal said he had activated the state's catastrophic action team and could declare a state of emergency as early as Thursday. He also put the Louisiana National Guard on alert.

Jindal, elected as governor in October 2007, is hoping to avoid heavy criticism that fell on his predecessor, Kathleen Blanco, for not reacting quickly enough after Katrina. Federal agencies and the New Orleans city government also faced the wrath of residents over their response to the disaster, while President George W. Bush was criticized for his role, including his initial decision to view the devastated city only from the air.

"Ahmadinejad is not complying with the will of the people," The Financial Times Deutschland quoted Grand Ayatollah Bajat Sanjani as saying. "This is a major threat, a big danger," the cleric added in an unusually direct personal attack. The newspaper also said Sanjani accused Ahmadinejad's government of breaking the law, seriously violating personal freedom and illegally empowering the Revolutionary Guard.

Ahmadinejad is expected to run for a second term in Iran's next presidential election, slated to take place early in 2009. His reformist rivals are expected to attack him especially on his economic policies. Iran suffers from a rising consumer price index, high percentage of unemployment and inflation of 26 percent.

This allows them to hand out fines for a raft of offences, from dropping litter to riding a bike on the pavement. They can also stop cars to check their tax discs, seize alcohol from underage drinkers and demand people's names and addresses. The hope is that they will free up rank-and-file officers from having to perform these unpopular tasks. The uniformed, badged army of snoopers will become a vital part of the 'extended police family', ministers say.

But privacy campaigners have dubbed them Home Secretary Jacqui Smith's 'Stasi' after the East German secret police. Phil Booth of NO2ID said: 'This is a sinister move towards a Stasi snooper state in which jobsworths are devolved the powers of the police - including the right to demand you identify yourself.' Shadow Home Secretary Dominic Grieve added: 'This is a consequence of the Government's obsession with policing on the cheap as well as their staggering complacency towards the extension of surveillance by an increasing amount of different bodies.

'The public will be angered that the Home Office is seeking to take serious powers that should be appropriately applied by the police and encouraging them to be given not just to local councils, but also to private firms. The public want to see real police on the streets discharging these responsibilities, not private firms who may use them inappropriately - including unnecessarily snooping on the lives of ordinary citizens.'

A spokeswoman says more than 100 of those caught up in Monday's raid on Howard Industries were released based on humanitarian concerns, mostly because they have children. Most of the rest were transferred to a federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Jena, Los Angeles. Nine 17-year-olds were transferred to the custody of the Office of Refugee Resettlement.

The Mississippi raid was one of a series of recent high-profile crackdowns on illegal immigrants. In May, officials swept into the Agriprocessors kosher meatpacking plant in Iowa and detained 400 workers.

The potential for Gustav to become a major hurricane over the next four days depends primarily on two factors - how close it tracks to Cuba and the interaction it has with the island. According to Expert Senior Meteorologist John Kocet, "The longer Gustav stays over the warm water in the Caribbean, the stronger it gets and the greater the chance that it will become a Category 3 hurricane by Saturday."

Kocet adds, "The storm will weaken if it moves close to Cuba, but it will strengthen if it tracks farther south across the Caribbean." If Gustav is able to thread the needle, passing through the Yucatan Channel into the Gulf of Mexico, it could intensify to Category 4 or 5 strength over the warm water in the Gulf. If it makes it to the Gulf, Gustav could be the first major hurricane (Category 3 or greater) in the Gulf since Hurricane Wilma reached Category 3 strength as it steered from the Yucatan Peninsula to South Florida in October 2005. ALL INTERESTS IN THE CARIBBEAN, THE GULF OF MEXICO AND FLORIDA SHOULD CLOSELY MONITOR GUSTAV AS IT MOVES THROUGH THE CARIBBEAN.

Gustav is already having an impact on world oil markets. The Associated Press reports that oil prices swung in both directions in trading Tuesday before news that Gustav could threaten oil operations in the Gulf of Mexico sent prices rapidly higher.

The EU-funded organisation the Young European Federalists have said in a open letter to athletes from the 27 EU member states that if they became Team EU they would have a higher medal tally than the US, China or Russia.

EUobserver reports that Nicolas Sarkozy has issued a statement in which he notes that the combined medal haul of the entire EU is 280. He goes on to say, "The European Union therefore takes the leading position. It's a victory for sport and for the fundamental and common values of the people of the union."

The mayor of Europe's latest 'party' destination has called on the UK Government to do something about the drunken, rowdy young Britons invading his town. 'They scream, they sing, they fall down, they take their clothes off, they cross-dress, they vomit,' said Konstantinos Lagoudakis, mayor of Malia in Crete. 'It is only the British people — not the Germans or the French.'

The town has fallen prey to the curse of the package tour, like Ayia Napa in Cyprus, Faliraki in Greece and others before it. 'The government of Britain has to do something,' said Mr Lagoudakis. 'THESE PEOPLE ARE GIVING A BAD NAME TO THEIR COUNTRY.'

The fact that the mayor's comments appeared in the New York Times will only underline the impression that he is right. They come in the wake of a Foreign Office report which said 602 Britons had been hospitalised and 28 raped in Greece alone in 2006/07, with the number of UK citizens arrested in foreign resorts up by more than 15 per cent to 4,603. 'Many arrests are due to behaviour caused by excessive drinking,' the Foreign Office report added.

In a study of more than 61,000 ethnic Chinese living in Singapore who were followed for up to 12 years, the investigators found a link between heavy incense use and various respiratory cancers. The findings are published in the medical journal Cancer. Incense has been used for millennia in many cultures' religious and spiritual ceremonies. In Asia, people commonly burn incense in their homes - a practice that is becoming more popular in Western countries as well.

For their study, the researchers followed 61,320 Singapore Chinese men and women between the ages of 45 and 74 from the Hokkien or Cantonese dialect group. All of the subjects were cancer-free at the outset. Over the next 12 years, 325 men and women developed cancer of the upper respiratory tract, such as nasal, oral or throat cancer. Another 821 developed lung cancer.

"There is an agreement actually reached, reached between the two parties on a fixed date, which is the end of 2011, to end any foreign presence on Iraqi soil," Maliki said in a speech to tribal leaders in Baghdad's heavily fortified Green Zone. "An open time limit is not acceptable in any security deal that governs the presence of the international forces," he said.

Maliki's remarks were the most explicit statement yet that the increasingly assertive Iraqi government expects the U.S. presence to end in three years as part of a deal between Washington and Baghdad to allow them to stay beyond this year.

In Washington, State Department spokesman Robert Wood said a draft agreement had been prepared but it needed to "go through a number of levers in the Iraqi political system before we actually have an agreement from the Iraqi side."

In Britain alone, experts say landfill sites could offer up an estimated 200 million tonnes of old plastic - worth up to 60 billion pounds at current prices - to be recovered and recycled, or converted to liquid fuel. As many oil analysts predict oil prices will stay above $100 a barrel, waste experts in America, Europe and across Asia have been conducting pilot projects to recoup old plastic and other waste materials.

Prices for high quality plastics such as high-density polyethelenes (HDP) have more than doubled to between 200 and 300 pounds ($370-560) per tonne, from just above 100 pounds a year ago, according to experts in the waste industry. With this in mind, leaders of the world's waste management industry are planning to come together in London in October for what is being billed as the first "global landfill mining" conference.

Ahead of a key German survey of business sentiment due out later on Tuesday, the dollar strengthened to $1.4717 against the euro. Against the pound, the dollar was trading at $1.8468, just below a two-year high versus sterling. The latest German survey may show more signs of a possible European recession.

The US currency has benefited as the economic outlook has darkened in both mainland Europe and the UK. Investment guru Warren Buffett said last week that he had no bets against the dollar - underscoring the currency's strength. The fall in the euro and sterling could help European exporters whose goods will now be cheaper overseas.

But it will hurt holidaymakers who have benefited from a strong pound when travelling to countries which use the dollar.