At least £157 billion has been wiped off the value of defined contribution pension schemes since October last year, according to Aon Consulting. Defined contribution pensions had assets worth £552 billion compared to the same time last year, but the value of these assets has now fallen by 28 per cent to around £395 billion.

The sharp drop came despite more than 3.7 million workers and their employers paying contributions totalling £6.7 billion into the schemes during the period. The group said the figures showed the economic downturn was visibly taking its toll on the money workers set aside for their pension schemes. It also warned that those who were close to retirement may have to stay in work longer to give their pension plan a chance to recover

- FTSE falls to new depths in wake of crisis in Asian markets

- Sterling plunges to five-year low against the dollar

- Oil drops to below $60 a barrel

The UK economy suffered a double blow today as the FTSE and Sterling plunged to new depths. Fresh falls across Asia battered UK blue chips forcing the FTSE 100 Index down 5.6% to 3,665 at one point - a five year low. Sterling was also hit losing 3 cents to $1.536 after having fallen below $1.60 for the first time in five years on Friday.

"This meeting is of great importance in the context of the spreading international financial crisis and severe challenges the world economy is facing," Chinese Vice Premier Wang Qishan said at the 12th conference of a joint commission for the regular meetings of Chinese and Russian prime ministers.

During the one-day conference, the two sides exchanged views in a candid and thorough manner on major issues of common concern and reached a broad consensus. They also prepared for the upcoming meeting between Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin, Wang said.
Wang hailed the regular meeting mechanism and progress made in bilateral cooperation since the mechanism's introduction. Advances include improved trade and an expansion of two-way investment.

He appreciated Russia's support and assistance to China in the wake of the devastating Wenchuan earthquake in May and during the Beijing Olympics in August. The senior cabinet member spoke highly of CHINA-RUSSIA COOPERATION IN SUCH SECTORS AS OIL AND GAS, ELECTRICITY, NUCLEAR ENERGY, HIGH-TECH INDUSTRY, INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY, TRADE AND FINANCIAL SERVICES AND CROSS-BORDER ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION.

CURRENCY PEGS ARE BEING TESTED TO DESTRUCTION on the fringes of Europe's monetary union in a traumatic upheaval that recalls the collapse of the Exchange Rate Mechanism in 1992. "THIS IS THE BIGGEST CURRENCY CRISIS THE WORLD HAS EVER SEEN," said Neil Mellor, a strategist at Bank of New York Mellon.

Experts fear the mayhem may soon trigger a chain reaction within the eurozone itself. The risk is a surge in capital flight from Austria – the country, as it happens, that set off the global banking collapse of May 1931 when Credit-Anstalt went down – and from a string of Club Med countries that rely on foreign funding to cover huge current account deficits. The latest data from the Bank for International Settlements shows that Western European banks hold almost all the exposure to the emerging market bubble, now busting with spectacular effect.

They account for three-quarters of the total $4.7 trillion (£2.96 trillion) in cross-border bank loans to Eastern Europe, Latin America and emerging Asia extended during the global credit boom – A SUM THAT VASTLY EXCEEDS THE SCALE OF BOTH THE US SUB-PRIME AND ALT-A DEBACLES. Europe has already had its first foretaste of what this may mean. Iceland's demise has left them nursing likely losses of $74bn (£47bn). The Germans have lost $22bn.

The threat to Britain lies in emerging Asia, where banks have lent $329bn, almost as much as the Americans and Japanese combined. Whether you realise it or not, your pension fund is sunk in Vietnamese bonds and loans to Indian steel magnates. Didn't they tell you?

Bonuses for investment bankers and traders are projected to fall by 40% this year. But analysts, compensation consultants and recruiters say the drop would be much more severe, perhaps as much as 70%, had it not been for the government's efforts to prop up the financial firms. "Year-end pay on Wall Street will be higher than it would have been had it not been for the government and mergers," says Alan Johnson, a leading compensation consultant. "You would expect it to be down much more."

Johnson predicts the average managing director at an investment bank, a title typically earned around eight years on the job, will receive a bonus of $625,000. That's down from nearly $1.1 million last year, but it is still 15 times the income of the average American household. Top bankers could receive as much as $1 million. Even a bond trader just out of business school could see his or her bank account enriched by as much as $170,000 this Christmas. "The firms have had an extremely difficult year," says Joan Zimmerman, a Wall Street career coach. "But they can't afford to lose talent either."

Says Frank Bruconi, chief economist in the New York City Comptroller's office: "Had the federal government not stepped in with a bailout plan and other moves, the pay and the employment situation on Wall Street would be much worse." That may make Wall Streeters — and some Manhattan restaurateurs — happy. But it will likely leave a sour taste with taxpayers for some time to come.

"We're seeing a lot of panic selling," said Peter Lai, investment manager at DBS Vickers in Hong Kong. "PEOPLE ARE JUST LIQUIDATING … NOBODY CAN PREDICT WHERE THE BOTTOM IS."

Tokyo's Nikkei 225 index, after trading higher in the morning, closed down 6.4 percent to 7,162.90 — the lowest since October 1982. Hong Kong's Hang Seng Index tumbled 12.7 percent to 11,015.84, its lowest close in more than four years. European markets followed Asia lower, with benchmarks in Britain, Germany and France trading down more than 4 percent or more in early trading.

"With what's going on in the equity markets, you can just see the risk aversion and it's taking oil down with it," said Mike Wittner, analyst at Societe Generale. Gloom about the world economy has overshadowed OPEC's deal on Friday to chop output by 1.5 million barrels per day to try to defend prices.

"What OPEC did is constructive, but right now that is beside the point," said Wittner. Some traders have said this reduction will not be enough to arrest the price slide.

The Syrian report comes just days after the commander of US forces in western Iraq told reporters that American troops were redoubling efforts to secure the Syrian border, which he said was an "uncontrolled" gateway for fighters entering Iraq.

A government statement carried by the official Syrian Arab News Agency said Sunday's attack was on the Sukkariyeh Farm near the town of Abu Kamal, five miles inside the Syrian border. Four helicopters attacked a civilian building under construction, firing on the workers inside, shortly before sundown, the statement said.

The US military in Baghdad did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Today, Catholic politicians and individual voters on both sides of the aisle have lost the sense of this fundamental principle that underlies every just and enduring society. Most especially, they have lost the sense of the inalienable right to life for the unborn child. Even without considering God in the equation, human life, for every human being, begins at the moment of conception.

That is when human life begins. That is when your life began. And that is when Rep Pelosi's life began. That is when Sen Biden's life began. That is when Sen Obama's life began and Sen McCain's life began. Sadly, the dignity of human life from the moment of conception is lost today. The truth nonetheless exists. Our forefathers recognized it but present day politicians and voters do not.

FURTHERMORE, WE HAVE LOST TOO THIS FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLE IN WHAT IT MEANS TO PURSUE HAPPINESS. We see the attempted pursuit of happiness without God and the collapse of this pursuit in Wall Street and the economics of today. Greed has guided the hearts of men and women, in which a 40 million dollar bonus is not enough in one year. When you take God out of the equation and life is lived as if he did not exist, the only thing left to pursue is materialism, because there is no life after death, there is no judgment. And so greed guides the hearts of men and women when we lose that basic essential understanding of the presence of God.

When there is no recognition of the primacy of God and human beings decide what is good and what is evil, anything can be justified. All we have to do is look at history and the atheism of China, the atheism of Russia, the atheism of Cambodia, and the atheism of Nazi Germany. Countries that embrace atheism reveal the truth -- that is, IF WE DO NOT EMBRACE, AS OUR FOREFATHERS DID, THE LAWS OF NATURE AND NATURE'S GOD, WE WILL EVENTUALLY COLLAPSE AS A SOCIETY.

It is something for which I have prayed and offered up my sufferings since the meeting of Pope Paul VI and Patriarch Athenagoras in Jerusalem. I pray I live to see the day come when the Church, East and West, may share the "Cup of the Lord" together in peace, unity and fraternal charity!

Yours in Jesus and Mary,
Joseph F. Amarose
Sts. Peter & Paul Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church
Mount Carmel, Pennsylvania

The body of Jörg Haider, late head of the far-right Alliance for the Future of Austria (BZÖ), was pulled from a planned cremation last weekend at the request of his widow, Claudia Haider, according to an Austrian newspaper which says MRS. HAIDER IS UNSATISFIED WITH THE OFFICIAL VERSION OF HER HUSBAND'S DEATH.

Haider died in a sudden car accident on October 11, less than two weeks after his party was boosted in a contentious national election. He was speeding, drunk, and had reportedly just seen Stefan Petzner, his political protégé and rumored lover, at a gay bar. Petzner, 27, was abruptly sacked as Haider's successor on Wednesday after a radio interview all but confirmed the two men were lovers. Haider's affair with Petzner was an open secret in Austria.

"It has been an open secret for years that Haider was gay, and most Austrians would have preferred for it to remain a secret," a political science professor called Reinhold Gärtner, at Innsbruck Univerity, told the New York Times. "People are trying to turn Haider into a saint, and are quickly forgetting that he was a right-wing xenophobe."

The two companies will this week report massive third-quarter profits totalling nearly £12.6 billion, according to analysts' estimates. Shell, Europe's biggest oil company, is expected to report profits of £5.8 billion during the three months to the end of September, up nearly 20 per cent on the same period last year. BP is likely to report profits of about £6.8 billion for the third quarter of 2008, up 62 per cent on the same period in 2007, analysts said.

The huge profits mean the two companies together were making almost £6 million per hour over the three month period as they benefited from the high price of crude oil. In July oil reached a record $147 a barrel. However, the price has fallen amid the global economic slow down, dropping under $100 a barrel at the end of September and closing last week just above $60.

AA spokesman Luke Bosdet said extra profits for the oil companies should be passed on to the motorist by reducing petrol prices on forecourts, or should be put into developing alternative fuels. He also said BP and Shell should use the profits to invest in refining diesel to bring its price down to the same as petrol. Mr Bosdet said it was not the oil companies who were responsible for recent falls in petrol prices at the pumps.

GM IS RUNNING OUT OF CASH and ideas and pursuing merger talks with Chrysler, which is also talking to Nissan. Ford Motor Co this year celebrated the 100th anniversary of the Model T, an invention that significantly altered almost every aspect of American life from shopping to sex. But Americans are doing demonstrably less of the former when it comes to cars. Sales are braking quickly, and this month are expected to be at their lowest level in 25 years, industry experts predict.

According to JD Power, automakers will sell 10.8 vehicles at retail (fleet sales will add another 2.8 million). That's a drop of more than 15% from 2007. "Nobody's coming into the showrooms," notes a senior official from Volkswagen of America. Terrible sales, however, are only one part of the many difficulties that have engulfed American carmakers. GM, Ford and Chrysler, are also facing monumental financial challenges that have left them with poor credit ratings, making it prohibitively expensive to raise cash to finance auto sales.

GM is feverishly working on the Chevrolet Volt, an electric car that could go a long way towards changing the way Americans think about such cars. Even Chrysler is promising to deliver seven new models by 2010. That's if it can get there. JP Morgan predicts sales levels will sink again next year and recover only marginally in 2010. "The trick is making it through the current period," Cole says. A neat trick indeed.

The betting is that many with their hands out will be successful, especially with financial markets in a stomach-churning dive and predictions the economy is about to tumble into a deep recession. These groups argue that the credit squeeze is so severe and the risks to the economy so dire that their industries need financial support as well.

The Treasury is considering requests from a variety of industries, but has not decided whether to expand the program, officials said Saturday. Lobbying efforts are intensifying. "The institutions that are excluded play a vital role in the U.S. economy by providing liquidity to the market," Bartlett wrote Neel Kashkari, the Treasury Department official running the bailout program. Referring to U.S. subsidiaries of foreign companies, Bartlett said, "This is a global crisis and to not recognize the U.S. firms controlled by foreign banks or companies would create further impediment to the market's recovery."

The Treasury also is moving ahead to get bank stock purchases approved. It announced on Oct. 14 that it was spending $125 billion to buy stock in nine of the largest financial institutions. An announcement was expected Friday about a second round involving 20 to 22 other banks.

"The only thing I could do was hug my kids and run away with my wife as water reached our chest," the 33-year-old said Saturday. "I heard people screaming from houses just few steps from my house." The death toll, now at 49, is expected to rise since scores of people are still missing and hundreds of families are homeless or trapped by the flood waters, said Hamid el-Kharashi, a police chief in the remote southern province of Hadramut.

Damage from the storm, which first struck Thursday, has been extensive in Hadramut — Yemen's largest province — because most homes are made of mud brick. The government has struggled to distribute relief supplies because the floods have washed out many roads. The province of Mouhra, sandwiched between Hadramut and the border with Oman to the northeast, was also affected by the storm. On Friday, Mouhra deputy governor, Salem Numier, said floods had cut off main roads and caused power outages. There was also a shortage of food and medicine, he said.