The larger part of the impact on business investment comes through over a two to three year period. It takes longer in the case of consumer spending". This would equate to about 2 per cent of GDP, a significant hit, with an implied reduction of around the same magnitude in Government revenues, or approximately £10bn per year by the end of the timescale.

Even if share markets recover swiftly, the continuing crisis in credit markets is a potentially larger source of disruption. In the medium term there is the unknowable impact of lay-offs, financial losses relating to sub-prime lending, a general depression in earnings in the financial sector and the cost to the Bank of England of any losses it suffers as a result of lending to banks.

Financial services account for some 8.3 per cent of the GDP, very roughly £100bn, so any reduction in the health of the sector would have serious repercussions for the UK economy as a whole, and especially for London and the South-east.

Philip Shaw of Investec Securities comments: "A large shake-out of the UK financial services sector could have a noticeable effect on the economy. Given the fast pace of growth in this area recently (10.4 per cent in the year to the second quarter of 2007), it has contributed over a quarter of the 3.0 per cent increase in GDP this year. If this key driver is taken away, the effects on growth will be very visible. In the last downturn, corporation tax paid by the financial sector fell by 30 per cent between 2000/01 and 2003/04."

Mr Moi's regime, which came to an end in 2002, has long been regarded as one of Africa's most corrupt, but the extent of the graft has never been exposed in so much detail. The 110-page report by international risk consultants Kroll details assets still allegedly owned by the Moi family and their entourage in 28 countries, including hotels and residences in South Africa and the United States, a 10,000-hectare ranch in Australia, three hotels in London, a £4 million house in Surrey, and a £2 million penthouse flat in Knightsbridge.

The report, delivered to the Kenyan government in April 2004, alleges a level of corruption that would place ex-President Moi's regime on a par with the kleptocratic rule of Zaire's Mobutu Sese Seko, Sami Abacha of Nigera and Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines.

It claims the Moi family laundered $400 million through a complex web of accounts in Kenya, Geneva and Frankfurt. It also alleged that they and a handful of associates own a bank in Belgium that was used to launder money from Kenya and uncovered a web of secret bank accounts, shell companies and dummy trusts registered in tax havens, including the Cayman Islands. Moi's sons, Philip and Gideon, were reported to be worth £384m and £550m respectively.

The Atlantic lows which have dogged the British Isles almost continuously for the past three months, giving us our monsoon summer, are likely to give way now to many more settled periods of high pressure, according to the Met Office's autumn forecast, issued last week. Rainfall and windy weather are likely to be below average, and in the still, calm conditions, fog is more likely to form, especially after the autumn equinox of 21 September when nights become longer than days - and so chillier.

"There will be a greater risk of fog, compared to normal, during the latter part of autumn," said the chief forecaster, Nick Graham. "As the nights get longer and colder it may cause more impact, as it is likely to linger longer during the morning."

The king's call comes as the Fatah and Hamas movements remain deeply divided, both physically in their respective strongholds of the West Bank and Gaza Strip and ideologically in their approach toward Israel.

"We call upon all our Palestinian brothers to let sound judgment and reason prevail," Abdullah said in an interview with Jordanian television. "The separation of Gaza from the West Bank is unacceptable at both the Palestinian and Arab levels."

The violent seizure of the Gaza Strip by Hamas in June has created dueling Palestinian governments, with Hamas ruling the Gaza Strip and loyalists of Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas in charge in the West Bank. Hamas opposes Israel's existence, while Abbas seeks a political accommodation.

Abullah held out high hopes for an international Mideast peace conference called for by US President George W. Bush and scheduled to take place in November. He said the meeting would be a "significant opportunity to resolve the core conflict in the region between Israelis and Palestinians in accordance with international resolutions and the Arab peace initiative."

The peace plan referred to by the king envisions full Arab recognition of Israel in exchange for lands it captured in the 1967 Six-Day War.

A boy wept in court yesterday as he was convicted of killing a man when he was only ten. The child, now 12, was part of a gang who stoned a father-of-two to death as he played cricket with his son. The 4ft-tall youngster was three months short of his 11th birthday when he and his friends launched a barrage of sticks and stones at retired draughtsman Ernest Norton, 67, in February last year.

A half-brick hit Mr Norton on the side of the head, fracturing his cheekbone, and he collapsed with a fatal heart attack. Five of his attackers - none of them more than 13 at the time - were found guilty at the Old Bailey of manslaughter and violent disorder.

The verdicts shattered the show of bravado they had put on through the month-long trial. Minutes earlier, they and their families had looked relaxed in the corridors of the criminal court, with the boys playing card games and swopping sweets. But as the jury foremen read out the verdicts, the youngsters burst into tears and clung to the parents sitting with them in the dock.

Judge Warwick McKinnon indicated that they faced an "inevitable" custodial sentence but allowed them to go home on bail until sentencing on October 19.

The boys, from Erith, Kent, were in a gang called TNE (The New Estate), who had planned a fight with rival gangs on the day of Mr Norton's death. As they wandered around the town they saw Mr Norton and his son James, then 17, playing a makeshift game of cricket in the tennis court of Erith Leisure Centre. The gang began shouting insults, calling the teenager a "rubbish bowler" and telling Mr Norton, "Go back to your old people's home". But they turned to violence when Mr Norton told them to go away.

Meanwhile, cloudbursts laced with lightning unleashed downpours in the mountains and deserts, leading to flash flood watches and warnings. Firefighters also watched for lightning-sparked wildfires. The steamy conditions were expected to continue into midweek

Meanwhile, the state entered the peak two months of its fire season, when historically the most devastating blazes have occurred, said Daniel Berlant, a spokesman for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.

"Merkel continued to impress the world with her cool leadership at two back-to-back summits, and stuck to her principles, getting G8 leaders to agree to significant cuts in carbon emissions, among other things," Forbes said.

World's 10 most powerful women in 2007 according to Forbes:

1 Angela Merkel Chancellor Germany

2 Wu Yi Vice premier China

3 Ho Ching CEO, Temasek Holdings Singapore

4 Condoleezza Rice Secretary of State U.S.

5 Indra K. Nooyi Chairman, CEO, PepsiCo U.S.

6 Sonia Gandhi Political party chief India

7 Cynthia Carroll CEO, Anglo American U.K.

8 Patricia A. Woertz Cochairman, ADM U.S.

9 Irene Rosenfeld Chairman, CEO, Kraft Foods U.S.

10 Patricia Russo CEO, Alcatel-Lucent U.S.

President Vladimir Putin has rattled the West with a wave of dramatic military announcements redolent of the Cold War. Long-range Russian bombers capable of carrying nuclear weapons are back on flying patrol around the world, prompting NATO fighters to scramble in response. New long-range missiles have been test-fired, one streaking from one end of Russia to the other in less than half an hour, according to official accounts.

And the former Red Army is re-equipping itself, with defense spending growing 20-40 percent a year since Putin came to power in 2000, albeit from a low base after the ravages of the 1990s.

Should the West be worried ? "Overall, Russia's military capability is well below 50 percent of what the Soviet Union had," Peter Felstead, editor of Jane's defense Weekly, said in a telephone interview. "The bombers resuming flights was more a prestige thing and a diplomatic signal than real military posturing."

The State Department in Washington dismissed the bombers' reappearance as Russia taking "old aircraft out of mothballs" -- an unflattering reference to the backbone of Moscow's fleet, the propeller-driven Tupolev-95 which first flew in 1952. "The West doesn't terribly need to worry," said Christopher Langton, a retired colonel who works as a Senior Fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) in London.

"Most of the product of the Russian military-industrial complex is for the export market to bring in revenues. Little goes to the domestic market." And despite pledges to re-equip the military, analysts say new high-tech versions of existing weapons are still snapped up abroad before they come into service at home.

"The first buyer for the modernized MiG-29 (fighter) is Yemen and the second is Eritrea," said Ruslan Pukhov, director of Moscow's Centre for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies. The Kremlin says its military build-up should not worry anyone. Russia's 2007/8 defense budget is half that of Britain's and less than one-tenth of the United States', it says.

"The change in Russian military spending is insignificant compared with the military build-up of the United States or Great Britain," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said. "We had quite a long period of underfunding of military programs and of course it has to be compensated. Everything is gradually returning to normal."

Felstead of Jane's defense Weekly said the West's biggest headache might not be Russia's armed forces but some of their overseas customers like Iran, Venezuela or Syria. "Russia still has certain key technologies which we don't have in the West," he said. "If the latest air defense systems find their way from the former Soviet Union to places like Iran, this could have a big impact."

President Bush announced a package of measures to help homeowners struggling to pay their mortgages amid the current sub-prime loan crisis. Meanwhile Mr Bernanke hinted that rates may be cut as the Fed seeks to "promote general financial stability".

Related losses had exceeded "the most pessimistic of projections", he said. President Bush said the measures were aimed at stopping more people defaulting on their repayments and to allow owning a home to remain "at the centre of the American dream".

The pair have banned yoga instructor Louise Woodcock from using their church halls in Taunton for her children's classes. They told her the ancient Hindu and Buddhist meditation method is a "sham" and "unChristian".

The Rev Simon Farrar defended the decision, saying: "We are a Christian organisation and when we let rooms to people we want them to understand that they must be fully in line with our Christian ethos. Clearly yoga impinges on the spiritual life of people in a way which we as Christians don't believe is the same as our ethos.

If it was just a group of children singing nursery rhymes, there wouldn't be a problem. But she's called it yoga and therefore there is a dividing line we're not prepared to cross."

Reverend Tim Jones, vicar of St. James, said: "Any alternative philosophies or beliefs are offering a sham - and at St James we want people to have the real thing. The philosophy of yoga cannot be separated from the practice of it, and any teacher of yoga (even to toddlers) must subscribe to the philosophy. As Christians we believe that this philosophy is false and not something we wish to encourage. Yoga may appear harmless or even beneficial, but it is encouraging people to think that there is a way to wholeness of body and mind through human techniques - whereas the only true way to wholeness is by faith in God through Jesus Christ."

Some 1,000 fighters loyal to rebel Tutsi General Laurent Nkunda attacked a Congolese army brigade headquarters in Katale, around 60 km (38 miles) northwest of the provincial capital Goma, at around 4 a.m. (0200 GMT), witnesses said. Exchanges of machinegun and heavy weapons fire continued for more than six hours and sporadic fighting followed. Military sources said 31 soldiers were wounded on the government side.

In 2004, Nkunda led two army brigades, around 4,000 men, into the bush and briefly captured Bukavu, the capital of neighbouring South Kivu. He faces an international arrest warrant for war crimes allegedly committed at the time.

President Joseph Kabila promised to bring peace to the east of Congo after last year winning the first democratic election in more than four decades, a vote meant to draw a line under a 1998-2003 war that killed an estimated 4 million people.

Wind farms attract controversy, wherever they are proposed, with strong opinions on both sides, but it appeared this latest claim was being made not by the usual anti-wind lobby but by an eminent figure within an international renewable energy group.

At stake was the reputation of a burgeoning multimillion-pound industry and the people who champion it. Or so it seemed, at least. For the revelations resulted in the outbreak of bizarre feuding within the World Renewable Energy Network (WREN), which described its own policy committee chairman as an "oil and gas" expert, his views as "stupid" and his theories akin to imposing a Communist-style command economy.

The debate might be bizarre, but there is no doubting the seriousness of the issue: wind energy has become a mainstay of the renewable sector, which supporters say is vital to cutting greenhouse gases and saving the planet.

They also argue it will make the UK more secure by providing electricity without the risk of politically motivated cuts by countries such as Russia or sudden large price rises on the international market.

Some wind farms were producing a pitiful 7.6 per cent of their potential because the wind was so light, the BBC reported, citing an expert study written by Jim Oswald, an independent engineering consultant, for the Renewable Energy Foundation (REF).

Mr Oswald said he had found that, at times, the wind could drop so low in the UK that wind farms across the country would be producing just 3.3 per cent of their potential electricity.

This large fluctuation of supply would force other power generators - probably fossil fuel ones - to power up and produce more electricity, generating more carbon dioxide than they would if they ran smoothly.

"It is unconscionable that the Israeli government is permitting the Waqf to use heavy equipment to chop away at the most important archeological site in the country without supervision," prominent, third-generation Temple Mount archeologist Eilat Mazar told WND.

"The Israeli government is actively blocking us from inspecting the site and what may be a monumental find and is doing nothing while the Waqf destroys artifacts at Judaism's holiest site," charged Mazar, a professor of Hebrew University and member of the Public Committee for Prevention of the Destruction of Antiquities on Temple Mount.

In a series of WND exclusive interviews, Palestinian terror leaders denied the existence of the Jewish Temples. "We are fed up with this crap nonsense of the Temple Mount," said Nasser Abu Aziz, the deputy commander of Fata's Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades in the northern West Bank.

"We do not know where this story came from. There is no historical or archeological proof that your legendary Temples existed. We are sick of this story. But Allah warned us that Jews will look for an excuse in order to corrupt life on earth, so we are not surprised from the fact that you keep raising this issue." Muhammad Abdul-El, spokesman for the Popular Resistance Committees terror organization, said the Jewish Temples "existed only in your dreams.

"Go look for your stupid Temple elsewhere. And I am not saying this for political reasons. I say that the enemy invented this story in order to justify its occupation of Jerusalem." Abu Abdullah, considered one of the most important operational members of Hamas' so-called military wing, accused all Jews of being pathological liars.

"Stop lying and believing your own lies. Even if there was such a thing (as a Jewish Temple) do you really believe that Solomon, who was a prophet, would have built a Temple in the place that Allah wanted for the Al Aqsa Mosque?"

It is the second time this month that the bank has tapped into the central bank's emergency credit line, sparking fears it is facing a cash crisis. But the UK bank insisted it was "flush with liquidity". At the end of every day, banks such as Barclays have to settle their trades through the market settlement system.

Typically, if borrowings are greater than their reserves at the end of the trading session, banks can borrow money from other banks to make up the difference. Barclays explained that it was forced to tap into the Bank of England's emergency credit line because a technical glitch meant it discovered the shortfall in its finances too late in the day to borrow from another high street bank.

But traders have questioned the bank's explanation, saying the loan was taken out at about 1100BST on Thursday - five hours before money markets shut and well before the problems hit the electronic trading system. "When you add this to the senior resignations a week or so ago, you can understand why the stock is coming under pressure," said Simon Denham, managing director of Capital Spreads.

Edward Cahill, the man in charge of structuring debt investments at the bank's investment arm Barclays Capital, unexpectedly resigned last week. His sudden departure sparked panic that Barclays could be sitting on hefty losses as a result of the devaluation of these debt funds which are heavily tied to sub-prime US mortgages - well-known to be the key factor causing havoc in financial markets. Others in that division are also believed to have left.

(ft.com) - The Bank of England has warned financial institutions authorised to use its emergency lending facility that they are not supposed to discuss it publicly

Bill Murdoch, of Massachusetts, and Bill Atwood, of Texas, will be answerable to the Kenyan Church, although they will serve in the US. They left the US branch of the Anglican Church - the Episcopal Church - after it consecrated an openly gay bishop.

There are growing tensions within the Anglican denomination around the world, mainly over the issue of homosexuality. Earlier, Archbishop Nzimbi said the consecration was not intended to widen the gulf in the church, but was a Christian response to a plea for help and pastoral care from Anglicans in the United States.

"Gay people," he said, "did not have a place as leaders in the Anglican communion. We need to love them, we need to preach to them, but not to make them lay readers, pastors, bishops." In February, Anglican bishops meeting in Tanzania issued an ultimatum to the American church, demanding an end to the appointment of gay clergy and the blessing of same-sex couples.

US bishops have until 30 September to respond. Meanwhile, the Episcopal diocese of Chicago on Tuesday included a lesbian priest among five nominees for bishop.