The attack was launched with American approval on September 6 after Washington was shown evidence the material was nuclear related, the well-placed sources say.

They confirmed that samples taken from Syria for testing had been identified as North Korean. This raised fears that Syria might have joined North Korea and Iran in seeking to acquire nuclear weapons. Israeli special forces had been gathering intelligence for several months in Syria, according to Israeli sources. They located the nuclear material at a compound near Dayr az-Zwar in the north.

Diplomats in North Korea and China believe a number of North Koreans were killed in the strike, based on reports reaching Asian governments about conversations between Chinese and North Korean officials. Syrian officials flew to Pyongyang, the North Korean capital, last week, reinforcing the view that the two nations were coordinating their response.

In a speech yesterday, the Pope defended "religious liberty", which he said "includes the right to change religion, which should be guaranteed not only legally but in practice". He also said that "all authentically religious traditions must be allowed to manifest their identity publicly, free from any pressure to hide or disguise it".

Make no mistake about it: this Pope is deeply worried about the Islamisation of Europe, and the West's supine attitude towards the persecution of Christianity by its Muslim allies. In July, his closest aide, Mgr Georg Gaenswein, said that "attempts to Islamise the West cannot be denied" and, indeed, were being helped by naïve "respectfulness."

What a contrast with the attitude of the Catholic Church in this country, which rarely misses an opportunity to suck up to Islam, and indeed treats its own traditionalists rather as certain Islamic countries treat Christians.

Defra officials confirmed discovery of the insect-borne virus, which is usually found around the Mediterranean.

All ruminants, which include cattle, sheep, goats and deer, can be infected, but the viral infection is not thought to pose a risk to human health. Since July there have been nearly 3,000 cases in Northern Europe, fuelling fears of its arrival in the UK.

It is transmitted by the Culicoides imicola midge. It is passed from animal to midge, and from midge to animal - it is not transmitted from animal to animal. The virus has long blighted Africa, but in recent years has begun to spread northwards into Europe as the range of the biting insects has increased.

Animals with the disease experience discomfort, with flu-like symptoms, swelling and haemorrhaging in and around the mouth and nose. They can also go lame and have difficulty eating properly. The news came as the farming industry has struggled with movement and export restrictions imposed due to the foot-and-mouth outbreaks in Surrey. On Saturday cattle on a fourth farm were slaughtered and the protection zone was extended after a further case was confirmed.

Both the bluetongue infection, and efforts to contain it, were different from foot-and-mouth, the Defra statement said. Once infected, up to 70% of a flock of sheep can die from the virus. While infected animals can recover - and become immune - productivity is reduced with milk yields in dairy herds dropping by about 40%.

Around 40 cows on the farm - which is within the 3km protection zone set up after the latest cases emerged - were slaughtered as a precaution. Tests were carried out after the animals displayed clinical signs of the disease.

A spokeswoman from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs said last night: "Positive test results for foot-and-mouth disease have now been confirmed at the site where it was decided that cattle should be slaughtered on suspicion. The affected animals are within the existing Protection Zone and this now becomes the sixth Infected Premises since August 3 this year."

She said minor changes had been made to the protection and surveillance zones. Laboratory results have shown that the strain of the disease has been the same in all cases in the outbreak so far.

The latest four cases near Egham have emerged in the last two weeks - after officials declared the UK free of the disease following the August outbreak, which has been blamed on the virus escaping from leaking pipes at the nearby Pirbright laboratory site.

Some 1,800 animals have been slaughtered since the first outbreak on a farm in Normandy, near Guildford. Nearly 600 cows, sheep and pigs had to be culled there.

New York money manager John Paulson made a billion dollars on the money markets in a few months over the summer. The windfall meant he entered the list of the top 400 wealthiest Americans at number 165 - equal with Oprah Winfrey. They both have fortunes of £1.25billion.

Last night some analysts criticised Mr Paulson for cashing in on the plight of ordinary Americans. Others said he was simply a businessman who saw an opportunity and took advantage of it. "He gambled big," one said. "If things had gone the other way, he'd be bankrupt now."

Mr Paulson, 51, a former partner in the Bear Stearns international investment bank, runs his own company, the Paulson Hedge Fund. Such funds are basically huge pots of private money given by wealthy investors to one manager to wheel and deal on the financial markets in the hope of making big profits. Because they are private, they operate in great secrecy with fewer legal restrictions than other investment funds.

Mr Paulson made the profit by selling credit notes he did not have in the international banking markets at a fixed price at the start of a trading cycle. Sub-prime is the name given by banks to risky mortgages granted to those with poor credit ratings. As the sub-prime bubble burst, the value of those debts nose- dived and Mr Paulson was able to buy the credit notes for much less than he'd already sold them.

The same credit squeeze saw thousands of American families having their homes repossessed and a glut of property on the market.

The figures, seen by the BBC, were compiled for the first time by the Forum for Preventing Deaths in Custody.

They cover deaths in prisons, police cells, secure hospitals and other establishments and include those from natural causes, suicides and murders.

The forum was established to help cut deaths in custody - but campaigners say it is toothless and lacks resources. The report is the first time figures from across the criminal justice system have been brought together for a complete look at deaths in state custody.

Pauline Campbell, whose daughter Sarah died in custody, told BBC News that improvements were essential. She said: "I think prisons are overwhelmed. They're being used as social dustbins for people who are mentally ill, drug and alcohol dependents, the homeless and so on. And given that we have such a high proportion of prisoners who have psychiatric difficulties, it is inevitable that these tragic deaths will occur unless action is taken to prevent this happening."

Two officials at leading Communist Party bodies have given interviews in recent days warning - for the first time - that Beijing may use its $1.33 trillion (£658bn) of foreign reserves as a political weapon to counter pressure from the US Congress.

Shifts in Chinese policy are often announced through key think tanks and academies. Described as China's "nuclear option" in the state media, such action could trigger a dollar crash at a time when the US currency is already breaking down through historic support levels.

It would also cause a spike in US bond yields, hammering the US housing market and perhaps tipping the economy into recession. It is estimated that China holds over $900bn in a mix of US bonds.

This would involve the closure of all border crossings with Israel and the transfer of all responsibility over the Palestinian territory to Egypt. The proposal, defense officials said, was recently raised by Deputy Chief of General Staff Maj.-Gen. Moshe Kaplinsky during a series of meetings within the defense establishment.

While Israel removed its military positions and settlements from the Gaza Strip in 2005, it has maintained a certain level of responsibility for the Palestinian population there, including coordinating the Gaza-based activities of humanitarian organizations such as UNRWA, the World Bank and the International Committee of the Red Cross.

According to the proposal, which officials stressed was in its early stages, Israel would completely disconnect from Gaza by closing off the Erez, Karni, Sufa and Kerem Shalom crossings and instead directing humanitarian organizations to work with Egypt.

"The idea is to finalize what was started with the 2005 'disengagement,'" explained a senior defense official. "No matter how much we try and what we do, the humanitarian organizations consistently blame us for the humanitarian situation in Gaza. This way they will no longer have a case against us, since we won't be involved." The official said the proposal was being pushed strongly by Kaplinsky, who has said in a number of meetings that there is no longer a need for Israel to take responsibility for what happens in the Strip.

Plans for the lavish Europe-Africa summit were thrown into turmoil after Gordon Brown threatened to pull out if Robert Mugabe is invited. There was consternation after PORTUGUESE DIPLOMATS DEFENDED THE DECISION TO INVITE THE ZIMBABWEAN DICTATOR ON THE GROUNDS THAT HE HAD BEEN A "FREEDOM FIGHTER" AGAINST BRITISH COLONIAL RULE.

And African leaders said they would boycott the showcase meeting if the Zimbabwe strongman was barred from travelling to Portugal in December. But Portugal, which currently holds the EU presidency, complained that the Zimbabwe issue was "holding hostage" relations between Europe and Africa. And ZAMBIA'S PRESIDENT SAID HE AND OTHER LEADERS WOULD BOYCOTT THE EVENT IF MR MUGABE WAS EXCLUDED. His threat raised the prospect of the summit collapsing in disarray.

Yesterday Portugal claimed the event could go ahead without Brown. "It will be very hard not to invite Mugabe. ZIMBABWE IS IN RUINS AFTER MORE THAN 20 YEARS OF MUGABE RULE THAT HAS LEFT IT WITH THE WORLD'S HIGHEST INFLATION RATE OF ABOUT 6,600 PERCENT AND JOBLESSNESS OF ABOUT 80 PER CENT. HE KEEPS A GRIP ON THE COUNTRY THROUGH A REIGN OF TERROR. "

Zambia's President Levy Mwanawasa - head of a 14-nation southern African group seeking to end Zimbabwe's political and economic crisis - said he would boycott the summit if Mugabe was not invited and said other African leaders could do so too. "I will not go to Portugal if Mugabe is not allowed. I don't know how many of us (African leaders) will be prepared to go to Portugal without Mugabe," he said in the Zambian capital Lusaka. Ghana - the official summit host - has made clear that it wants Zimbabwe's leader to receive the same courtesy as everyone else.

Conservative Euro-MP Neil Parish said: "Portugal's invitation to Robert Mugabe to attend the EU-African Union summit in December must be revoked." Mr Parish - who is banned from entering Zimbabwe for speaking out against the regime - went on: "The travel ban is pointless if we continue to invite Mugabe to the more prestigious meetings on European soil. THE PORTUGUESE EU PRESIDENCY IS SENDING OUT A TERRIBLE SIGNAL THAT WE ARE PREPARED TO DO BUSINESS WITH DICTATORS. THIS INVITATION IS A DISGRACE AND MUST BE REVOKED."

Home Office research revealed that - of 5.4 million crimes logged by officers - only one in eight ended with a criminal charge or summons being made. In a shocking 3,953,000 cases, the equivalent of 73 per cent of all recorded crimes, the offender was simply not caught. Even when police did manage to catch the culprit - fewer than half were dragged before the courts or received a formal charge.

Instead, they escaped with a caution, on-the-spot fine, warning for smoking cannabis or had their crime "taken into consideration" alongside other offences. Of all the crimes reported last year, only 693,821 were punished using the traditional route of a criminal charge and appearance before a magistrate or judge.

Experts and Opposition MPs warned it was yet more proof of the lurch towards "soft justice". Overall, the detection rate for recorded crimes remained stable last year, at 27 per cent. But this was only achieved thanks to a huge increase in the number of minor offences, such as drunkenness, which were punished by fixed-penalty notices. Along with warnings for cannabis, these £80 on-the-spot fines now represent 15 per cent of all crimes police claim to have solved.

Police Minister Tony McNulty said: "We have seen crime fall by a third over the last decade and this is in large part thanks to the range of powers available to the police to bring offenders swiftly to justice."

More than $4 million of U.S. taxpayers' money ebbed away in the 18 minutes it took George W. Bush to explain to his country and the world last week why the war he ordered would last well beyond his presidency. During an eight-hour working day, U.S. tax dollars spent in the battle zones of Iraq total $112 million. These figures are extrapolated from a report by the Congressional Research Service (CSR), a bipartisan agency which provides research and analysis for the U.S. Congress. It put the war's average cost in 2007 at around $10 billion a month.

That translates into $333 million a day, $14 million an hour, $231,000 a minute and $3,850 a second. Even for the world's richest country, this is serious money. It dwarfs what the United States is spending on efforts to alleviate the huge humanitarian crisis that unfolded after the 2003 invasion. Sectarian fighting has driven more than 4 million people from their homes, a population displacement without parallel in modern Middle Eastern history.

The consequences of the war were never part of the planning. And its high cost is a long way from the Bush administration's optimistic initial estimates. Then Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, one of the war's chief promoters, even predicted the post-invasion phase would be self-financing. The number of U.S. troops in Iraq is now at a record high - 168,000. The cost of the war is not projected to decline despite plans for a phased withdrawal that will reduce troop levels by next summer to what they were before the so-called surge.

Troop levels are one of the factors that determine the cost of the war. Another cost driver: repairing and replacing worn-out equipment, from helicopter engines and tank tracks to Humvees, armored personnel carriers and machineguns. Opponents of the war have begun to focus on its high cost and stress what could be done with the dollars spent in Iraq -- improving American education and healthcare and fixing ageing U.S. infrastructure.

The comparisons almost invariably center on things that could be done or bought in the United States for the benefit of Americans. Iraqis do not figure prominently in these analyses and the humanitarian disaster now unfolding is not much of a topic of discussion among Washington policy makers. That, at times, dismays international aid officials who deal with the terrified multitudes who have fled waves of ethnic cleansing in the aftermath of the U.S. invasion. Around 2 million went to neighboring countries, mostly to Jordan, Syria and Egypt, by the count of international relief organizations.

Another 2.2 million fled from their homes and sought refuge elsewhere in Iraq. Shiites driven out of Sunni neighborhoods, Sunnis fleeing Shia districts, Arabs expelled from Kurdish areas, Kurds from predominantly Arab districts. The movement dwarfs even the great population dislocations prompted by the 1948 creation of Israel, when an estimated 750,000 Palestinians fled their homes in fear for their lives.

Many of the internally displaced Iraqis -- IDPs in the language of aid organizations -- live in grim conditions, in makeshift camps without running water, electricity, even latrines. Improving such conditions would be cheap, measured against the cost of the war, but appeals for increased funds have fallen on deaf ears.

Blackstone sold a near 10 per cent stake in its management company to the Chinese government in May. A different arm of the Abu Dhabi government bought a stake in Apollo Management in July. Selling stakes to international sovereign wealth funds has become a popular way for US buy-out groups to cash in on their booming businesses while expanding their influence in new markets. The Carlyle deal demonstrates that the credit squeeze has not halted such transactions.

Mubadala, the arm of Abu Dhabi which has invested in sectors as diverse as Libyan oil exploration and Ferrari, the Italian motor company, is paying $1.35bn for the Carlyle stake. The deal was struck at a 10 per cent discount to a valuation of $20bn for all of Carlyle. The Washington-based buy-out group agreed to guarantee a floor to Mubadala's investment, pledging to compensate the arm of the oil-rich emirate if Carlyle goes public and the share price drops.

Carlyle co-founder David Rubenstein said, in an interview with the Financial Times, that the deal gave his firm "more capital to invest in our funds and more flexibility in terms of deciding whether to go public". The investment comes as Carlyle faces pressure on Capitol Hill from lawmakers who want to impose a tax hike on the private equity industry.

The deal could also come under political scrutiny if Carlyle pursues sensitive takeovers in areas such as defence, technology or critical infrastructure. Carlyle has alerted key lawmakers to the deal, including Chuck Schumer, the New York Senator, and Bush administration officials at the Committee on Foreign Investment in the US.

Nearly 50 per cent of the London Stock Exchange is now in the hands of two rival Gulf states battling to be their region's leader in the global consolidation of exchanges. Qatar Investment Authority and Borse Dubai now own 48 per cent of the LSE following a complex series of deals in which ownership of Europe's exchanges is being realigned.

Borse Dubai secured 28 per cent of the LSE as part of a wider deal with the US-based Nasdaq designed to settle their long-running battle for control of the Nordic exchanges and technology operator OMX. The Dubai group bought most of Nasdaq's 31 per cent stake in the LSE for £14.40 a share in cash. In return, it will take a 19.9 per cent stake in the combined Nasdaq/OMX group and receive cash.

However, the move enraged the Qatar Investment Authority, which until Tuesday night believed it was close to clinching a deal to buy much of the LSE stake for itself. It responded on Thursday by buying nearly 20 per cent of the LSE, sparking expectations of a bidding war for the exchange. LSE on Thursday welcomed the Qatari move because it sees QIA as a passive investor.

Meanwhile, the QIA also bought nearly 10 per cent of OMX, a move widely interpreted as a sign that it, too, will make a competing offer for the Stockholm-based group. It issued a statement calling on OMX shareholders to do nothing in response to Borse Dubai's offer.

LSE shares soared on Thursday, closing £2.34 higher at £16.87.

Twice-divorced Gabriele Pauli, who is attempting to become leader of the ultra-conservative Christian Social Union (CSU), believes anyone wanting to stay married beyond seven years should have to apply for an extension. The partnership would otherwise be automatically dissolved.

The 50-year-old maverick last year rattled the all-white and male-dominated hierarchy of her party, which rules the Catholic southern state of Bavaria, by posing for magazine photographs dressed as a dominatrix in latex and leather. Speaking at the launch of her manifesto, she said: "I firmly believe marriages of the future should be locked in to a time period.

"The basic approach is wrong - many marriages last just because people believe they are safe. My suggestion is that marriages expire after seven years. I know that after this period many marriages reach a crisis point. It is false to go around with a notion that marriages are always super and intact."

The CSU has dominated Bavarian politics since the Second World War. It is the sister party of the conservative Christian Democratic Union - which is led by Angela Merkel, the German chancellor.