"Forget April in Paris. Autumn is exciting, with the Eiffel Tower bathed in blue and stylish women everywhere."

The designers showed their collections last week in Paris and, as usual, there is beauty and inspiration everywhere!

When I arrived in Paris, suddenly it struck me, My heavens! It's exactly like the arrival of my first trip there in 1950 or was it  '49? The streets are once again filled with bicycles. Everyone has taken to the bike.

And the important message is the one-piece dress...

I'm mostly interested in the bicycles on the streets of Paris. Is it true what Cunningham observed? Has everyone taken to the bike in Paris?

The documents - released to The Sunday Telegraph after a two-and-a-half year Freedom of Information battle - reveal that Mr Blair personally intervened to secure Formula One's exemption from the tobacco advertising ban just hours after meeting Bernie Ecclestone, the motorsport's billionaire boss.

The Government has always maintained that the meeting with Mr Ecclestone, a major new Labour donor at the time, did not influence the final decision to offer the exemption.

However the previously secret papers show that Mr Blair did order ministers to find ways to implement the "derogation" for Formula One after the meeting.

The revelation casts doubt on the version of events given by officials both to Parliament and to lobby journalists when the sleaze scandal first broke in 1997. The documents also show that civil servants believed draft statements on the affair, which were about to be made public, were "disingenuous".

More than a million Britons will be out of work and on the dole by next month as the toxic fallout from Black October filters down to ordinary families, economists are warning.

A bleak Christmas lies ahead for many as the City turmoil spreads into the so-called real economy. Companies are now being squeezed on two vital fronts, with shoppers abandoning the high street and bank lending drying up, making it almost impossible for smaller businesses to get credit to stay afloat.

Geoff Hoon, the new Transport Secretary, yesterday warned that there were 'potentially serious consequences for small business, for employment' from the current crisis, reflecting private warnings to the Prime Minister's new economic 'war cabinet' that job losses and business collapses later this year are now virtually inevitable.

Official unemployment figures for September, due on Wednesday, are expected to show another increase in job losses - although this will not yet be the sharp upward spike which is expected as the full consequences of last week's stock-market crash filter through. Some forecasts suggest that unemployment will hit two million by Christmas.

Some government officials warned that those slipping into unemployment could find themselves much more isolated than in the last recession. They pointed out that unemployment benefits had slipped relative to earnings and there were now fewer council houses available.

An Iranian businessman arrested a week ago in Germany on suspicion of illegal exports to Iran was a valued agent of the German foreign intelligence service BND, a German news magazine reported on Saturday.

Prosecutors had advised the BND before the arrest they had no choice but to detain the man, 61, who had the code name Sindbad, because of suspicions that he was supplying equipment needed to make Iran's Shabah missiles, German news magazine Der Spiegel said.

 

In a story to hit the streets in its Monday issue, the magazine said Sindbad's intelligence deliveries to Germany included photographs of tunnel-drilling machinery, details of secret warehouses and up-to-date reports on Iranian missile development work.

 

His intelligence had been so good that the BND was even concerned he might be a double agent hoodwinking the West on Iran's orders.

In my local municipality or 'kunta' (pop. 35.000, area 220 km2), there are over 260 candidates for 51 seats. All the main national political parties have slates of candidates, plus a local 'kommun' activist party.

You can't be me, I'm taken

The Netherlands is the centre of Nigerian scam operations and Amsterdam is its headquarters. Nigerian fraudsters regard the Netherlands as a safe haven. The police are seen as soft and, moreover, south-east Amsterdam is home to a close-knit African community making it easy to go to ground. It is also conveniently near to Schiphol airport.

At a seminar organised by the Centre of Information and Research on Organised Crime in Amsterdam this week, Yvette Schoenmakers, a police academy criminologist, presented the preliminary results of research on Nigerian criminal networks in the Netherlands. This was carried out in conjunction with the research firm Beke which advises on criminal policy.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The International Monetary Fund warned on Saturday that debt-ridden banks were pushing the global financial system to the brink of meltdown and rich nations had so far failed to restore confidence.

The United States appealed for patience as world leaders raced to stabilize financial markets and avert the deepest global recession in decades, but the IMF said more steps would be needed in the coming months.

"Intensifying solvency concerns about a number of the largest U.S.-based and European financial institutions have pushed the global financial system to the brink of systemic meltdown," IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn said.

Oct. 11 (Bloomberg) -- U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson indicated that pumping government funds into banks is a priority and said financial markets will remain volatile.

``We see the need -- a clear, present need -- to raise capital,'' Paulson said yesterday at a press conference after a meeting in Washington of finance ministers and central bankers from Group of Seven countries.

The purchases of stock, the newest part of a rescue plan engineered by Paulson, would be aimed at sustaining banks and other financial institutions through the worst credit crisis in seven decades.

The U.S. Congress last week passed legislation allowing the Treasury secretary to spend as much as $700 billion to buy mortgage securities and other troubled assets and to purchase equity in banks. Paulson declined yesterday to give a timetable or details about the purchases.

Wachovia Corp. says securing shareholder approval of its pending acquisition by Wells Fargo & Co. â€oewould seriously jeopardize the financial viability of Wachovia.â€�

The audit committee of the companyâ€^TMs board, citing an exception in the New York Stock Exchangeâ€^TMs policy for such a situation, has approved Wachoviaâ€^TMs decision not to seek shareholder approval for the deal. And the NYSE has accepted Wachoviaâ€^TMs application of the exception.

DETROIT -- Before General Motors began exploring a possible merger with Chrysler -- talks that first came to light on Friday -- G.M. proposed a similar deal with its other cross-town rival, the Ford Motor Company, two people with knowledge of the talks said Saturday.

G.M. executives approached Ford about a possible merger in July, but Ford rejected the idea and ended the discussions last month, these people said.

After Ford decided to remain independent amid an increasingly difficult auto market, G.M. turned its attention to Chrysler. For the last month, it has been in preliminary merger talks with Chrysler's owner, the private-equity firm Cerberus Capital Management.

A deal is not certain, but people with knowledge of the talks described the chances of it happening as "50-50."

THE government will tomorrow launch the biggest rescue of Britain's high-street banks when the UK's four biggest institutions ask for a £35 billion financial lifeline.

The unprecedented move will make the government the biggest shareholder in at least two banks. The Royal Bank of Scot-land (RBS), which has seen its market value fall to under £12 billion, is to ask the government to underwrite a £15 billion cash call. HBOS, which is Britain's biggest provider of mortgages, is requesting up to £10 billion. Lloyds TSB, which is in the process of acquiring HBOS, and Barclays require £7 billion and £3 billion.

The scale of the fundraising could lead to trading at the London stock market being suspended. This would be to give time for the market to digest the scale of the information and its impact.

In the long run we are all dead

But in the short run some of us can't get buried because of the credit crunch:

The spectre of the Winter of Discontent threatened to return to haunt Labour last night after funeral directors revealed that the burial of `hundreds' of bodies is being delayed for financial reasons.

In a bleak new sign of the growing economic crisis, hard-up families are having to wait more than two months before receiving Government money for funerals.

Organisations representing undertakers accused the Government of putting them in an `impossible' position by dragging their feet over burial costs for poor families.

Previously, undertakers would pay for the cost of funerals and wait to be reimbursed by the State, but the lack of credit in the banking system means many firms can no longer afford to do so.

The death penalty is the ultimate punishment, often shrouded in secrecy. In 2007, at least 1,252 people were executed in 24 countries, according to Amnesty International. Nearly 90 percent of these recorded executions -- believed to be just a fraction of the true number -- were in five countries: China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and the United States. In 2007, three countries, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Yemen, violated international law by executing people for crimes committed when they were younger than 18, according to Amnesty. Up to 27,500 are estimated to be awaiting execution on death row around the world.

Barack Obama would like to offer John McCain a job if he becomes president, in what his allies says is an attempt to end the bitter partisan rancour that engulfed the White House race last week.

Both presidential rivals are working behind the scenes to calm the increasingly incendiary atmosphere on the campaign trail, which erupted with lurid claims about Mr Obama's links with the former terrorist Bill Ayres and a lynch mob atmosphere at McCain rallies.

Two Democratic sources with knowledge of the thinking in the Obama camp say that forming a partnership with Mr McCain would prove that Mr Obama will reach across the aisle and also help rehabilitate Mr McCain, who many Democrats believe has been pushed by hardline advisers into making increasingly desperate attacks on his rival.

By his own admission, the Republican candidate "took the gloves off" last week , unleashing adverts and soundbites attacking Mr Obama's character and judgment as polls showed him on course for a landslide election victory.

One well-connected Democrat, who spoke to Mr Obama last week, told The Sunday Telegraph: "John McCain is a good man. There's no question about it. I think we'll see Barack Obama reach out to him and say: let's work together."

WASHINGTON -- They huddled in a quiet corner at the US Airways lounge at Ronald Reagan National Airport, sipping bottomless cups of coffee as they plotted to turn America's missile defense program into a personal cash machine.

Michael Cantrell's photograph of himself with three congressmen and others at a missile testing center in Buffalo, which Congress financed despite the objections of the Pentagon.

Michael Cantrell, an engineer at the Army Space and Missile Defense Command headquarters in Huntsville, Ala., along with his deputy, Doug Ennis, had lined up millions of dollars from Congress for defense companies. Now, Mr. Cantrell decided, it was time to take a cut.

"The contractors are making a killing," Mr. Cantrell recalled thinking at the meeting, in 2000. "The lobbyists are getting their fees, and the contractors and lobbyists are writing out campaign checks to the politicians. Everybody is making money here -- except us."

Within months, Mr. Cantrell began getting personal checks from contractors and later returned to the airport with Mr. Ennis to pick up a briefcase stuffed with $75,000. The two men eventually collected more than $1.6 million in kickbacks, through 2007, prompting them to plead guilty this year to corruption charges.

Mr. Cantrell readily acknowledges concocting the crime. But what has drawn little scrutiny are his activities leading up to it. Thanks to important allies in Congress, he extracted nearly $350 million for projects the Pentagon did not want, wasting taxpayer money on what would become dead-end ventures.

TORONTO -- The seemingly benign decision to stick a Liberal Party lawn sign in her front yard has brought a new ritual to Marla Waltman Daschko's morning routine. Ms. Waltman Daschko walks around her Volkswagen Passat station wagon and peers underneath the chassis, searching for potentially deadly sabotage.

She is not alone, at least in parts of Toronto, when it comes to kneeling and peering at underbellies of cars usually seen only by mechanics. Last weekend, more than 30 Toronto residents awoke to find the brake lines on their cars severed, their telephone and cable television lines cut and political graffiti gouged into automobile paint and scrawled on their homes. The sole link among victims: a lawn sign promoting a Liberal candidate in the current federal election campaign.

The sabotage occurred in two leafy, upper-middle-class residential neighborhoods, where raccoons raiding garbage pails are normally a bigger concern than crime. The episodes have provoked bafflement, anger and defiance. They have also brought a tinge of nastiness to an election campaign short on drama.

Ms. Waltman Daschko briefly removed her lawn sign on Oct. 4 at the suggestion of the police after the first attacks, which occurred overnight on Oct. 3. But she put it back up before going to bed, she said, partly after considering the history of her Jewish ancestors.

"Perhaps because it's the High Holidays but I thought of my parents and my grandparents and what they went through to assert their faith," she said. "It's shocking that in Canada, in Toronto and in the 21st century that this could happen when all we're doing is supporting a very mainstream political party."

In 2004, Democrats watched as any chance of defeating President Bush slipped away in a wave of Republican turnout that exceeded even the goal-beating numbers that their own side had produced.

Four years later, Sen. Barack Obama's campaign intends to avoid a repeat by building an organization modeled in part on what Karl Rove used to engineer Bush's victory: a heavy reliance on local volunteers to pitch to their own neighbors, micro-targeting techniques to identify persuadable independents and Republicans using consumer data, and a focus on exurban and rural areas.

But in scale and ambition, the Obama organization goes beyond even what Rove built. The campaign has used its record-breaking fundraising to open more than 700 offices in more than a dozen battleground states, pay several thousand organizers and manage tens of thousands more volunteers.

In many states, the Democratic candidate is hewing more closely to the Rove organizational model than is rival Sen. John McCain, whose emphasis on ground operations has been less intensive and clinical than that of his Republican predecessor.

"They've invested in a civic infrastructure on a scale that has never happened," said Marshall Ganz, a labor organizer who worked with César Chávez's farmworker movement and has led training sessions for Obama staff members and volunteers. "It's been an investment in the development of thousands of young people equipped with the skills and leadership ability to mobilize people and in the development of leadership at the local level. It's profound."

ScienceDaily (Oct. 11, 2008) -- Scientists have confirmed the second-ever case of a "virgin birth" in a shark, indicating once again that female sharks can reproduce without mating and raising the possibility that many female sharks have this incredible capacity.

Lead author Dr. Demian Chapman, shark scientist with the Institute for Ocean Conservation Science at Stony Brook University, Beth Firchau, Curator of Fishes for the Virginia Aquarium & Marine Science Center, and Dr. Mahmood Shivji, Director of the Guy Harvey Research Institute and Professor at Nova Southeastern University in Florida, have proven through DNA testing that the offspring of a female blacktip shark named "Tidbit" contained no genetic material from a father. Tidbit had lived at the Virginia Aquarium in the Norfolk Canyon Aquarium for eight years since shortly after her birth in the wild.

In May 2007, Chapman and Shivji were part of a team that made the groundbreaking scientific discovery confirming -- for the first time ever -- a virgin birth in a female shark. That shark was a hammerhead residing at an Omaha, Nebraska zoo and had not been in contact with male sharks for at least three years. That study was published in the journal Biology Letters and captured global media and scientific attention. The DNA-fingerprinting techniques used to prove both cases of virgin birth (scientifically known as "parthenogenesis") are identical to those used in human paternity testing.

"It is now clear that parthenogenesis occurs in sharks other than just hammerheads," Chapman said. "The first case was no fluke. It is quite possible that this is something female sharks of many species can do on occasion."

Sharks' ability to reproduce alone should not be viewed as an adequate replacement for normal sexual reproduction, Chapman cautioned. For one, the blacktip and hammerhead sharks that reproduced without mating both only produced one pup, rather than an entire litter. Shark litters can contain anywhere from a few to more than a hundred shark pups, depending upon the species. "The revelation that female sharks can reproduce alone shouldn't stop us from worrying about driving shark populations to very low levels through overfishing," said Chapman. "It is very unlikely that a small number of female survivors could build their numbers up very quickly by undergoing virgin birth."

Volunteer mountain-rescue staff in Scotland are being asked to write to the UK regulator Ofcom to complain about increased spectrum prices that could drive them out of the life-saving business.

The BBC reports that the Mountain Rescue Committee of Scotland has asked its members to write to the regulator in response to the current consultation on Maritime and Aeronautical radio use, which is open until the end of October, complaining that the "Administered Incentive Pricing" proposed will cost the charity thousands of pounds it doesn't have.

The situation is similar for the Royal National Lifeboat Institute: which currently pays a discount rate of £38K for a licence around 156Mhz, but could end up with a bill knocking quarter of a million quid, annually. Even if they retain their 50 per cent discount, that's another £100K the charity is going to have to find if lifeboats are going to be able to talk to each other and the shore