Germany, which has been the top exporter to Iran for 30 years, supplied goods totalling $5.08bn (€3.6bn, £2.5bn) to the country last year, according to the Iranian central bank, but in the first five months of this year its exports fell 19.8 per cent. China, which has enjoyed growing trade since the early 1990s, ranked third behind the United Arab Emirates last year, with $4.48bn of exports, up 35.8 per cent on 2005.

The trend is set to continue this year, with diplomats predicting China will become the leading supplier to Iran.

The trade shift is partly driven by the prospect of sanctions over Iran's nuclear programme. A meeting of leading powers next week will discuss a new United Nations resolution and possible fresh curbs against Iran.

Unilateral US action, meanwhile, has put international organisations, notably banks, under pressure to stop conducting business with Tehran or risk action against their interests in the US. In recent weeks three German banks, including Deutsche Bank, have reduced business with Iran.

Asadollah Asgaroladi, head of the Iran-China Chamber of Commerce, says: "We have no choice but to look at the east." He believes Iranians prefer trade with the west because of historical ties and "our factories are dependent on their technology. But what else can we do when they [the west] turn their back on us and bow to US pressure".

He made it clear that the bank was prepared to act as "lender of last resort" in other cases after Northern Rock today became the first major British bank to be bailed out by the central bank for more than 30 years.

Mr Darling told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "It is in everybody's interest that we have a very stable banking system and that indeed is what we have got."

Northern Rock said "extreme conditions" in global credit markets had forced it to ask Bank of England Governor Mervyn King for emergency funding. However, the authorities said Britain's fifth biggest mortgage lender remained "solvent" and there was no threat to its borrowers or savers.

The Newcastle based group - one of the country's most respected banks - admitted it had got caught up in the world credit turmoil triggered by the sub-prime mortgage market crisis in the US. The Chancellor stressed that there was no lack of money among UK banks but said they were "reluctant" to lend money among themselves given the problems in America linked to the housing market.

He added that 10 years ago, Britain had put in place plans to deal with such situations.

Indonesia's meteorology agency issued on Friday the latest in a series of tsunami warnings after another strong quake in Sumatra, although it was lifted about an hour later. There have been a series of tremors ranging in intensity from 4.9 to 7.8 since Wednesday's 8.4 quake, repeatedly setting off tsunami warnings in Indian Ocean countries. There have, however, been no reports of the sort of widespread tsunami that caused the death and devastation of the huge waves in 2004, which followed a quake of over 9 magnitude.

Seismologist Mike Turnbull of Australia's Central Queensland University warned against complacency over the frequent tsunami warnings. "The problem is, these were very large eathquakes. They had every capability to generate large tsunami." At least two areas in Bengkulu province were hit by tsunamis after Wednesday's quake, residents told Reuters correspondents. About 100 houses were damaged by a 3 metre (10 ft) wave in Serangai, 70 km north of Bengkulu city, but there were no casualties.

The quakes in the last few days in Sumatra were felt in neighbouring Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand. Indonesia suffers frequent quakes, as it lies on an active seismic belt on the so-called Pacific "Ring of Fire".

Greenspan, who led the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank through 18 years and four presidents, speaks to Lesley Stahl in his first major interview, to be broadcast on 60 MINUTES Sunday, Sept. 16 (7:00-8:00 PM, ET/PT) on the CBS Television Network.

Greenspan says he knew about the questionable subprime lending tactics that gave loans to homebuyers and investors with low adjustable interest rates that could rise precipitously, but not the severe economic consequences they posed. "While I was aware a lot of these practices were going on, I had no notion of how significant they had become until very late," he tells Stahl. "I really didn't get it until very late in 2005 and 2006."

The rocket carrying the three-metric ton orbiter took off into blue skies, leaving a huge trail of vapor over the tiny island of Tanegashima, about 1,000 km (620 miles) south of Tokyo, at 10:31 a.m. (9:31 p.m. EDT) as it headed out over the Pacific Ocean.

The long-delayed lunar explorer separated from the rocket in skies near Chile about 45 minutes after lift off. It is to orbit the Earth twice and then travel 380,000 km (237,500 miles) to the moon.

"Kaguya separated from the rocket smoothly," the space agency's launch commentator said in a live broadcast of the launch on the Japanese space agency's Web site (www.jaxa.jp). Japanese scientists say the 55 billion yen ($479 million) Selenological and Engineering Explorer, or SELENE, is the world's most technically complex mission to the moon since the U.S. Apollo program decades ago. "If we succeed in this program, we will be able to prove that Japan has the technology," Okada said.

SELENE also carries a high-definition television camera to shoot the Earth "rising" from the Moon's horizon, footage of which will be sent back to Earth. SELENE will orbit the moon for about a year until it runs out of fuel.

China plans to launch a lunar orbiter called Chang'e One in the second half of this year to take 3D images, and it aims to land an unmanned vehicle on the moon by 2010.

India is planning its first unmanned mission to orbit the moon in 2008, powered by a locally built rocket. It is also discussing sending a person to the moon by 2020.

The United States plans to launch a lunar orbiter next year.

FRANCE is set to once again become a full member of NATO after strong indications from the president, Nicolas Sarkozy, that he will soon make a historic move by ending his country's 41-year boycott of the alliance's integrated military command.

In a foreign policy speech last month, Mr Sarkozy said he would shortly take "very strong" initiatives to build up European defence and renew the NATO military alliance, while giving France "its full place" in the organisation, insisting NATO was no rival to France's ambition of a robust European defence capability.

"France is a country that contributes a lot, is often among the countries that contribute the most, and that also means to our military operations," James Appathurai, a NATO spokesman told reporters in Brussels yesterday.

On 17 September, 1958, the French president, Charles de Gaulle, sent a memorandum to the US president, Dwight Eisenhower, and the prime minister, Harold Macmillan. In it he argued for the creation of a tripartite directorate that would put France on an equal footing with the United States and the UK, and also for the expansion of NATO's coverage to include geographical areas of interest to France, most notably Algeria, where France was waging a counter-insurgency and sought NATO assistance.

He did not consider their response to be satisfactory and snubbed the Allies - who had enabled him to liberate his country from the Nazis - embarking on an independent defence program.

"Osama, since you seem to be a fan of video messages, I thought this would be the best way to communicate with you," says Bill Keller, host of the Florida-based "Live Prayer" TV program as well as LivePrayer.com in a message being posted to YouTube and 20 other major video sites in the U.S. as well as some 50 in the Middle East. Keller said his goal was to reach out to bin Laden with a message of salvation.

"Look at you, look at your life," Keller says. "You live like a hunted goat in caves, totally dependent on a small group of people for your survival. At any moment, one of those you trust could betray you like Judas betrayed Jesus and your life would be over. The false prophet you follow, Mohammad, was poisoned to death by one of his wives."

Keller continues: "It is against the most basic standard of good and evil that your life, Osama, will be judged by historians and future generations to be one of pure, unbridled evil."

Keller has harsh words not only for bin Laden, but for Islam, as well.

"You followed the same path as the false prophet you have put your faith in - Mohammad - who, like you, was once a businessman, but who history has recorded was nothing more than a murdering paedophile who led men's souls to eternal damnation with the false religion he created," Keller says.

"Islam is a 1,400-year-old lie that was born out of the voice of Satan - literally. Mohammad was correct when he stated it was Satan who initially spoke to him. He dreamed up his own god, Allah, a poor imitation of the God of the Bible, and inspired his own holy book, the Quran, a cheap imitation of the inspired, inerrant Word of God found in the Bible."

Keller calls bin Laden a "coward" and a "tool of Satan."

"There are no virgins waiting for you in Paradise when you die, only Satan and the everlasting punishment of hell," said Keller. "The good news I have come to deliver to you is that you, yes, even you Osama, can escape God's wrath. He loves you so much, that He sent Jesus to die for your sins, all of them, every last one! Yes Osama, even you can be saved and enter into the Glory of Heaven. Not some fictitious place called "paradise" with women waiting to have sex with you, but the home of God where you can find eternal peace and rest when your life on this earth is over."

They can now take their animals to slaughter under strict conditions and say it will ease the "acute economic hardship" being caused by the outbreak. From midnight, the assembly government allowed farmers to take animals directly from farms to abattoirs. But farmers' leaders say the situation is still "pretty desperate".

The assembly government imposed a movement ban on animals in Wales after the new case of foot-and-mouth in Surrey was confirmed on Wednesday by the rural affairs ministry Defra.

But experts say it does not mean Northern Rock, which has £113bn in assets, is in danger of going bust. The bank has struggled to raise money to finance its lending ever since money markets seized up over the summer. Other bank shares fell, with those in Alliance & Leicester and Bradford & Bingley down by between 5% and 6%.

Meanwhile those in HBOS and Barclays fell by roughly 2.5%. Northern Rock has also said that its profits for 2007 will be hit, but that it remains solvent. Unlike most banks, which get their money from customers making deposits into savings accounts, Northern Rock is built around its mortgage business. It raises most of the money which it provides for mortgages by borrowing from banks and other financial institutions.

Speaking on BBC Radio 4's Today programme, Chancellor Alistair Darling said: "The problem here is there is a lot of money in the system but they are reluctant to lend it to each other at the moment." In order to create a stable banking system, the Bank steps in and it makes facilities available to the Northern Rock.

The decision for the Bank of England to become the "lender of last resort" is extremely rare - and also comes after consultation with the Financial Services Authority. It is an unlimited facility, with interest rated at a "penal rate" of more than 1% above Bank base rate. To obtain the money, the Northern Rock will have to deposit some of its customers' mortgages as collateral, which are regarded by the Bank of England as sound.

The tremor had a magnitude of 7.9, according to the Indonesian Meteorological Institute. It caused buildings in the capital, Jakarta, to sway, and some offices were evacuated, reports say. There are no reports of damage or casualties.

A massive undersea earthquake sparked a tsunami that killed more than 130,000 people in Indonesia in December 2004. The Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre issued a tsunami alert for the entire Indian Ocean region following the latest quake.

The BBC's Lucy Williamson in Jakarta says the quake was the most powerful one in Indonesia since the one which caused the tsunami in 2004, and was dangerously shallow.

She says quakes on this scale are rare and memories of 2004 have made people terrified of a repeat.

The government has set up a 10km (6.2 mile) control zone centred on the affected site near Egham, Surrey, and a pre-emptive slaughter has been ordered. The EU has halted plans to lift the export ban on livestock products from the area around the original outbreak.

A report into the August outbreak blamed a leaking pipe at the Pirbright animal research site in Surrey.

Dr Reynolds, said the control zone was put in place swiftly because "containment and eradication of foot-and-mouth is our top priority". She urged farmers to remain vigilant and report any suspicions.

Peter Kendall, president of the National Farmers' Union, said if the results were positive, it could "shut the industry down again. This is an absolute disaster," he said. "We worked so hard to stamp out the early outbreak, and we are now waiting to see whether it's a confirmation.

Michael Pritchard hopes that the bottle could be a life-saver for refugees in disaster regions where access to clean drinking water is vital. However, the military are already latching on to his idea. Four hours after Mr Pritchard launched his new "Life Saver" bottle at the DESI defence show in London yesterday, he sold out his entire 1,000 stock. "I am bowled over," he said.

Military chiefs are excited because the bottles, which can distill either 4,000 litres or 6,000 litres without changing the filter, will have huge benefits for soldiers who hate drinking iodine-flavoured water.

In July a protype of the bottle was voted "Best Technological Development" at the Soldier Technology conference. Mr Pritchard, who runs a water treatment business in Ipswich, was inspired after watching coverage of the tsunami in south-east Asia on Boxing Day 2004 and of Hurricane Katrina in Louisiana the following year.

He was amazed to see refugees waiting for days to get any fresh water. He said: "Something had to be done. It took me a little while and some very frustrating prototypes but eventually I did it." Conventional filters can cut out bacteria measuring more than 200 nanometres but not viruses, which typically are 25 nanometres long.

Mr Pritchard's bottle can clean up any water - including faecal matter - using a filter that cuts out anything longer than 15 nanometres, which means that viruses can be filtered out without the use of chemicals.

Prof Roger Burrows of the University of York analysed four post codes in detail, talking to residents, estate agents and others, and found existing predictions made by the databases were "surprisingly accurate".

Speaking at the British Association Festival of Science today, he said: "What is so amazing is the amount of work people do to give up data that marketing organisations have been trying to get out of them for years.
"I am not sure that people are aware that data they give up every day is leading to the construction of very nuanced 'data doubles' and there is a whole range of organisations using this data. It has an impact on buildings insurance, contents insurance, increase in car insurance, the junk in letter boxes, how they are queued in call centres, and where we locate stores and services".

The most widely used system is the Mosaic classification owned by the global data corporation Experian. The Mosaic system classifies each of the 1.7 million postcodes in the UK to one of 11 different Mosaic Groups and 61 different Mosaic Types. "We also found that, for the most part, the characterisations on offer 'rang true' for us," said Prof Burrows.

It seems that the nightmare vision of the sixties cult sci fi series The Prisoner has become true without most of us realising it. Episodes feature the imprisoned former agent, labelled "Number Six" by his captors who refuse to use names, failing to escape "the Village", and declaring "I am not a number - I am a free man!"

Today, we are not numbers but postcodes, which give governments and big business a glimpse of our personal life that would impress Big Brother himself.

The youngsters - dubbed "concrete children" by psychologists because of their exclusively urban lives - are more likely to have gone abroad than walk in the woods, fields and farms of their native country. In all, it is thought that 1.1 million eight to 13-year-olds have never set foot in the countryside.

The research follows other studies which found the average six-year-old had spent a year of their lives watching television while a fifth of them had never picked fruit and eaten it.

Dr Sigman, an associate fellow of the British Psychological Society, said previous research showed contact with the natural world appeared to improve concentration, behaviour and even thinking skills among the young.
He added: "In the early years of the 21st century, we have witnessed the rise of the "concrete child", who sees life through a TV or a computer screen, rather than by simply being in the great outdoors."

The bomb is the latest in a series of new Russian weapons and policy moves as President Vladimir Putin tries to reassert Moscow's role on the international stage. "Test results of the new airborne weapon have shown that its efficiency and power is commensurate with a nuclear weapon," Alexander Rukshin, Russian deputy armed forces chief of staff, told Russia's state ORT First Channel television. The same report was later shown on the state-sponsored Vesti channel. "You will now see it in action, the bomb which has no match in the world is being tested at a military site."

It showed a Tupolev Tu-160 strategic bomber dropping the bomb over a testing ground. A large explosion followed. Pictures showed what looked like a flattened multi-storey block of flats surrounded by scorched soil and boulders. "The soil looks like a lunar landscape," the report said.

Such devices generally detonate in two stages. First a small blast disperses a main load of explosive material into a cloud, which then either spontaneously ignites in air or is set off by a second charge. This explosion generates a pressure wave that reaches much further than that from a conventional explosive. The consumption of gases in the blast also generates a partial vacuum that can compound damage and injuries caused by the explosion itself.

"The main destruction is inflicted by an ultrasonic shockwave and an incredibly high temperature," the reports said. "All that is alive merely evaporates." Rukshin said: "At the same time, I want to stress that the action of this weapon does not contaminate the environment, in contrast to a nuclear one."