The middle classes could have to bear the brunt of cutting the national debt amid growing debate in the Labour party over whether universal benefits, including the pensioners' winter fuel payments and child benefit, can be sustained.

The admission by the chancellor, Alistair Darling, that public spending will reduce under a Labour administration has opened new questions over a group of benefits that are not means tested.

A senior cabinet aide said measures whereby top earners lose out in order to benefit the poor were proving popular and might even be needed to shore up Labour's core vote, overriding past concerns over upsetting home counties voters: "Distributional politics are working well for us at the moment - how popular is the 50% tax? It's off the charts, while [Tory proposals on] inheritance tax just hammers home who they are for."

The acting chief constable of Northern Ireland today described the dissident republican terror threat as "severe".

Judith Gillespie said the threat to her officers remained high following two attempts by the Real IRA to kill a Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) officer in Derry last week.

Speaking in Belfast, Gillespie said: "We don't say that lightly - it is a severe threat to police officers.

"If you look, for example, at what happened in Derry in the last couple of days, when a police officer from the area serving the community [and] their family was targeted, [it] was absolutely disgraceful."

Gillespie also said the public in South Armagh - a long-time stronghold of hardline republicanism - had helped the PSNI find a 600lb bomb last week.

Far-right supporters of the English Defence League were today involved in a standoff with pro-Palestinian demonstrators in central London.

There were several brief confrontations as EDL activists chanted "We hate Muslims" and "Muslim bombers off our streets".

Hundreds of police officers kept the two sides apart as the march made its way to the Mall. Scotland Yard said there were no arrests.

Around 30 police officers in fluorescent yellow jackets walked ahead of the procession as it snaked along Park Lane.

Meanwhile, a long line of officers accompanied the crowd, which filled two lanes of the road. Cars queued, with traffic limited to one lane.

Pro-Palestinian protesters held up banners with slogans including 'Justice for the murdered children of Gaza', 'We are all Palestinians', 'Boycott Israel' and 'Judaism rejects the Zionist state'.

7:00 p.m. - Steinmeier arrives to the studio first, accompanied by his wife -- a Berlin judge. The pressure is clearly on the challenger but he flashes a wide, confident grin to the waiting photographers. "With the SPD trailing Merkel's conservatives in the polls by 11-14 points, the onus is on Steinmeier to land a punch on Merkel and win over undecided voters," my colleague Madeline Chambers wrote in her afternoon update story. "Analysts say up to 40 percent have still to make up their mind." Steinmeier is wearing a bright red tie -- matching the colour of his centre-left Social Democrats. There will be a lot of speculation about Merkel's outfit -- but one thing is certain: her husband won't be with her. He's watching at home.

Cutting public spending would provoke a "double dip" recession, raise unemployment to more than four million and spark the threat of industrial action by millions of workers, union leaders warned today.

One senior official also reminded politicians that the last time the UK suffered "slash and burn" economics, there were riots on the streets.

A return of mass unemployment would have "terrible" social effects and could lead to Britain being "broken", said TUC general secretary Brendan Barber.

ITV welcomed the news that product placement is to be allowed on British television programmes for the first time.

Ministers hope lifting the ban will throw a lifeline to struggling independent broadcasters such as ITV by opening new multi-million pound revenue streams. Related articles

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The move - which is likely to prove highly controversial and could be announced as early as this week - represents a major U-turn.

But the Government is understood to believe that the "climate has changed", and placement should now be allowed "in certain circumstances".

The shift in the rules will only apply to commercial broadcasters, with the BBC still prevented from promoting products, even when programmes are made by independent production companies.

An ITV spokesman welcomed the move. He said: "If the Government does decide to permit product placement, it will be warmly welcomed by the commercial broadcasting industry and advertisers alike.

"ITV plc has led the campaign for product placement in the UK, which could be an important new revenue stream - as it already is in Europe.

Chancellor Angela Merkel and her challenger Frank-Walter Steinmeier aren't the most confident or inspiring public speakers, so their encounter on Sunday in the only TV debate of the election campaign should be intriguing. Media coach Richard Schütze has some free advice for them.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel of the conservative Christian Democrats and her center-left Social Democrat challenger, Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, will square off against each other on Sunday evening in the only televised debate between the two during the election campaign. It will be broadcast by four networks, and some 20 million Germans are expected to tune in. Political pundits are hoping the encounter will breathe life into what has been a spectacularly dull campaign so far.

In an interview with SPIEGEL ONLINE, Richard Schütze, who has spent decades teaching politicians and business people how to get their message across with the right mix of rhetoric and body language, outlines his expectations for the debate and has some helpful tips for the two contenders.

He also gives his assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of Merkel, Steinmeier, and opposition leader Guido Westerwelle, the leader of the pro-business Free Democrat Party who may well end up as German foreign minister after the Sept. 27 election.

Dominique de Villepin, France's former prime minister, will soon go on trial for his part in an alleged plot to tarnish the name of his political rival, Nicolas Sarkozy.

The First Chamber of the Palais de Justice law courts in Paris has claimed many a political head including, most famously, that of Marie Antoinette.

In a few days' time the state prosecutor will be seeking the scalp of another aristocrat: the former Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin, in what has been described as France's "trial of the century".

Final campaigning is underway in Norway's looming general election.

Norway's so called Iron Lady, Siv Jensen joined the Scandinavian country's other main party leaders in a live TV debate yesterday.

Modelling herself on former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher, Jensen has vowed to overhaul Norway's welfare state and apply a free-market system.

She may get her opportunity. Polls show her right-wing Progress Party and its potential coalition partners are locked in a tight race with current Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg's left-leaning Labour party.

The reference to "external exile" is, of course, to sending people to the European Parliament.

Former finance minister Pedro Solbes has, indeed, resigned his parliament seat today. He had been an independent since 1993 (despite being minister in 1993-6 and 2004-9 and EU Commissioner in 1999-2004) and only joined the PSOE for the 2008 elections where he was #2 on the Madrid list behind Zapatero and did his part by trashing the PP's #2 in an electoral debate on the economy.

En un viejo país ineficiente, algo así como España entre dos guerras civiles, poseer una casa y poca hacienda y memoria ninguna. -- Gil de Biedma

LONDON (Reuters) - Britain's prime minister, Gordon Brown, is expected to tell union members next week that the country's economy was on the "road towards recovery," according to extracts of his speech released on Sunday.

Brown is due to tell the Trades Union Congress in Liverpool on Tuesday the recovery must not be put at risk with public spending cuts.

"Today we are on a road towards recovery -- but things are still fragile not automatic and the recovery needs to be nurtured," he was due to say.

Recent bright economic data, including an increase in house prices and consumer confidence, and the FTSE-100 index of leading shares climbing above 5,000 for the first time in 11 months, have raised hopes Britain is emerging from recession.

It was, until a few days ago, one of the big unanswered questions of the economic crisis.

Last November, the Bank of England cut interest rates by the biggest amount since it was granted independence in 1977, reducing them by 1.5 percentage points in one fell swoop. The decision triggered chaos in the City. It sent the pound lurching lower, caused economists to tear up their forecasts and suddenly made the prospect of near-zero interest rates a close reality. But how on earth did the Bank engineer such a dramatic monetary policy move?

With all the talk of "green shoots" of economic recovery, America's banks are pushing back on efforts to regulate them. While politicians talk about their commitment to regulatory reform to prevent a recurrence of the crisis, this is one area where the devil really is in the details - and the banks will muster what muscle they have left to ensure that they have ample room to continue as they have in the past.
The old system worked well for the bankers (if not for their shareholders,) so why should they embrace change? Indeed, the efforts to rescue them devoted so little thought to the kind of post-crisis financial system we want that we will end up with a banking system that is less competitive, with the large banks that were too big to fail even larger.
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The Obama administration has, however, introduced a new concept: too big to be financially restructured. The administration argues that all hell would break loose if we tried to play by the usual rules with these big banks. Markets would panic. So, not only can't we touch the bondholders, we can't even touch the shareholders - even if most of the shares' existing value merely reflects a bet on a government bailout. I think this judgment is wrong. I think the Obama Administration has succumbed to political pressure and scare-mongering by the big banks. As a result, the administration has confused bailing out the bankers and their shareholders with bailing out the banks.
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Rewriting the rules of the market economy - in a way that has benefited those that have caused so much pain to the entire global economy - is worse than financially costly. Most Americans view it as grossly unjust, especially after they saw the banks divert the billions intended to enable them to revive lending to payments of outsized bonuses and dividends. Tearing up the social contract is something that should not be done lightly.
But this new form of ersatz capitalism, in which losses are socialised and profits privatised, is doomed to failure. Incentives are distorted. There is no market discipline. The too-big-to-be-restructured banks know that they can gamble with impunity - and, with the Federal Reserve making funds available at near-zero interest rates, there are ample funds to do so.
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We need to break up the too-big-to-fail banks; there is no evidence that these behemoths deliver societal benefits that are commensurate with the costs they have imposed on others. And, if we don't break them up, then we have to severely limit what they do. They can't be allowed to do what they did in the past - gamble at others' expenses. This raises another problem with America's too-big-to-fail, too-big-to-be-restructured banks: they are too politically powerful. Their lobbying efforts worked well, first to deregulate, and then to have taxpayers pay for the cleanup. Their hope is that it will work once again to keep them free to do as they please, regardless of the risks for taxpayers and the economy. We cannot afford to let that happen.

With a public deficit nudging 10 percent of GDP, Spain's government is testing the waters on a series of recovery measures - from improved social protection to green stimulus. 

This week saw workers across Spain protest at layoffs from the factories of bathroom manufacturer Roca. 'What next?' read the banners of the angry demonstrators. It's a question most Spaniards are asking as the country continues to wallow in recession.

For while France and Germany have staged quick recoveries, Spain is lagging behind. Spanish daily El Pais reported this summer that the Spanish GDP would shrink 4.2 percent this year, while the Central European Bank has predicted that it will be mid-2010 before the country starts to register growth.

The authors discuss the massive squandering of British soldiers' lives at the beginning of trench warfare in WW I and cite German generals: "The English soldiers fight like lions," one German general remarked. "True.  But don't we know that they are lions led by donkeys?" was the reply.

The pre-crisis activities and portfolios of Barclays, Goldman Sachs, and other "survivors" of this crisis were only slightly different from Lehman Brothers or Bear Stearns, which failed.  The "good" banks also securitized subprime assets, helped build the intricate web of IOUs between banks and insurance companies, and leveraged their balance sheets to enormous levels.  The winners were not better, they were just smart enough to make sure someone else held the bad assets when the music stopped, and they were powerful enough to win generous bailout packages from their governments.

The danger we face is that, by bailing out these institutions and rewarding failed managers with new powerful positions, we have now created a much more dangerous financial system.  The politically well-connected, knowing they will most likely do fine in the next crisis, is now highly incentivized to take even greater risk.  Once we admit this profound problem in our system, we can begin to think of the radical measures needed to solve it.  There is no doubt these solutions will include much greater capital requirements, so that bank shareholders know that they face substantial losses if their ventures fail.

But, we also need to ensure that our regulators are not captured by the banks that they are meant to oversee.  This means we need to put checks on financial donations to political parties, and we need to buttress our regulators with more intellectual firepower and financial resources, along with rules that ensure independence, in order to be sure they can act in the interests of the broader population.  We also need to close the revolving door, through which politicians and regulators leave office to earn their nest eggs in finance, and "financial experts" move directly from failing banks to designing bailout packages.  The conflicts of interest are abundant and most dangerous.

Last week the UK's chief financial regulator, Adair Turner, faced heavy criticism from the City, Chancellor Darling, Boris Johnson, and editorials in the Financial Times and Wall Street Journal.  His main offense was daring to raise the issue of whether parts of our financial system have become socially dysfunctional, in an interview with Prospect Magazine.  He called for greater capital requirements at banks, and he pondered how it would be possible for regulators to preserve the valuable parts of our financial system, while ensuring that regulation limited the harmful parts.  These are eminently sensible questions which anyone with a public spirit should understand are critical policy issues today.  Sadly, these public rebukes to Lord Turner are a further indication that very few of our leaders are prepared to even discuss the real problem, let alone seek a sufficient solution.  Smart people and well-organized governments can, as in the past, behave like donkeys.

I could cite Sinclair Lewis' dictum about what men cannot understand and under which circumstances, and that is undoubtedly part of the problem.  But another part of the problem is that the capitalist system is built around and measures relative position and power in terms of the differential returns to dominant organizations and the corresponding rewards to their leaders.  Through the capture of government by these organizations policy has come to allow and encourage maximum risk taking.  

Even at this late date most of those within the system cannot accept that this process has brought society to a breaking point by making the top corporations so differentially profitable and so risk tolerant that they are strangling the entire economy during good times and bankrupting society with bad debt when things go bad.  Understanding and accepting that development is a prerequisite for any real, effective change to the system.

Capitalism and the return on capital is the organizing principle of our economy and society, especially in the Anglo world.  I do not believe that society can be successfully managed for the long term around that one value, but, as things stand, all others of our values together will not tip the balance against return on investment.  Every thing that makes life a worthwhile human endeavor, including our families, our children and the very conditions necessary to the long term survival of our ecosystem are mere externalities to the inhuman demands for perpetually increasing return on capital from our current system.  If we cannot do better than this, we do not deserve to survive.  

As the Dutch said while fighting the Spanish: "It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."

A political leader attempting to promote the well-being of his citizens is pulled in different directions: he will be graded on economic performance but there are many other dimensions to the quality of life, including the state of the environment. While there is no single indicator that can capture something as complex as our society, the metrics commonly used, such as gross domestic product, suggest a trade-off: one can improve the environment only by sacrificing growth. But if we had a comprehensive measure of well-being, perhaps we would see this as a false choice. Such a metric might indicate an increase in wellbeing as the environment improved, even if conventionally measured output went down.

This was one of several motivations for Nicolas Sarkozy, president of France, when he established the International Commission on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress, which I chaired and for which Amartya Sen served as adviser and Professor Jean-Paul Fitoussi of the Institut d'Etudes Politiques served as co-ordinator, and whose final report is issued on Monday.
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What we measure affects what we do. If we have the wrong metrics, we will strive for the wrong things. In the quest to increase GDP, we may end up with a society in which most citizens have become worse off. We care, moreover, not just for how well off we are today but how well off we will be in the future. If we are borrowing unsustainably from this future, we should want to know.

Flawed statistics may also lead us to make incorrect inferences. In the years preceding the crisis, many in Europe, focusing on America's higher rates of GDP growth, were drawn to the US model. Had they focused on metrics such as median income - providing a better picture of what is happening to most Americans - or made corrections for the increased indebtedness of households and the country as a whole, their enthusiasm might have been more muted.

No good accountant would ignore the depreciation of a company's capital, but the standard GDP measure not only does that but also takes no account of resource depletion and environmental degradation. Our increased awareness of the scarcity value of environmental resources makes this lacuna especially troubling.

The Commission will present its report to the president Sarkozy today. The report will be available on the Commission's site

"Ce qui vient au monde pour ne rien troubler ne mérite ni égards ni patience." René Char

Top economists and financial experts believe that the economy cannot recover unless the big, insolvent banks are broken up in an orderly fashion.

Even the Bank of International Settlements - the "Central Banks' Central Bank" - has slammed too big to fail. As summarized by the Financial Times:

The report was particularly scathing in its assessment of governments' attempts to clean up their banks. "The reluctance of officials to quickly clean up the banks, many of which are now owned in large part by governments, may well delay recovery," it said, adding that government interventions had ingrained the belief that some banks were too big or too interconnected to fail.

This was dangerous because it reinforced the risks of moral hazard which might lead to an even bigger financial crisis in future.

The primary focus of the US war strategy in Afghanistan could shift towards the eastern provinces bordering Pakistan and away from the south of the country, where British forces are heavily engaged, under a plan being finalised by commanders.

Senior military officials are said to believe the Afghan Taliban's ability to find sanctuary and support across the porous border with Pakistan ‑ plus the suspected presence in the lawless tribal Waziristan area of al-Qaida leaders including Osama bin Laden ‑ has made a bigger effort in the east essential if the insurgency is to be defeated.

Any move by General Stanley McChrystal, the US and Nato commander in Afghanistan, to concentrate firepower and resources away from Helmand, in the south, could be resisted by British commanders leading an increasingly lethal struggle with insurgents there.

Additional US military pressure along the eastern border would also cause concern in Pakistan, where US aerial drone attacks on al-Qaida and Taliban targets in Waziristan and the Pakistani army's US-driven spring offensive against Pakistani Taliban in Swat are blamed for growing instability.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A key group of U.S. senators was "very close" to agreement on healthcare reform, one of its members said on Sunday, suggesting Congress was nearer to meeting President Barack Obama's goal of passing a reform bill this year.

"We think we are very close to an agreement," said Senator Kent Conrad, chairman of the Senate Budget Committee and part of the "Gang of Six" bipartisan group that is trying to forge consensus, on "Fox News Sunday."

Lawmakers have struggled to find common ground in the debate over healthcare reform, hampering Obama's efforts to push through his top domestic policy priority.

Raucous town hall meetings over the summer showed many voters were unconvinced Washington had a plan that would improve their healthcare without imposing federal bureaucracy or saddling taxpayers with unsustainable public debt.

KABUL (Reuters) - Nearly 100 people, including 30 civilians, were killed in a NATO air strike called in by German troops on two hijacked fuel tankers in northern Afghanistan this month, a government-appointed official said Sunday.

The September 4 strike in northern Kunduz province has drawn domestic and international criticism and has stirred intense debate in Germany over Berlin's strategy in Afghanistan, two weeks before an election.

President Hamid Karzai said last week the air strike was a major "error of judgement" by German forces and sent his own commission to the area to investigate.

"Based on our interviews with local officials, villagers and the district governor, we have found that 119 people were killed and wounded," Mohammadullah Baktash, one of the investigators of Karzai's appointed commission, told Reuters Sunday.

British intelligence chiefs have targeted war-torn Somalia as the next major challenge to their efforts to repel Islamic terrorism, after scores of youths left the UK for "jihad training" in the failed African state. MI5 bosses have warned ministers that the number of young Britons travelling to Somalia to fight in a "holy war", or train in terror training camps, has soared in recent years as the country has emerged as an alternative base for radical Islamic groups including al-Qa'ida.

Less than 48 hours after Washington and its allies reluctantly accepted an offer of face-to-face negotiations from Tehran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president, insisted that the topic of greatest interest to the West would not be on the table.

"From the Iranian nation's viewpoint, the nuclear case is closed," he told Britain's ambassador to Tehran, Simon Gass. "Having peaceful nuclear technology is Iran's lawful and definite right and Iranians will not negotiate with anyone over their undeniable rights."

Google's battle with Amazon.com, Microsoft and Yahoo came to Capitol Hill on Thursday as the head of the U.S. copyright office backed claims that Google violates author copyright issues with its online library.

Register of Copyrights Marybeth Peters told the House Judiciary Committee that she opposes the proposed $125 million settlement Google reached with authors and publishers.

The committee was examining a settlement that resulted from a long-running fight between Google, which has scanned and indexed online 10 million books since 2004, and authors and publishers who say doing so violates their copyrights. Microsoft, Amazon.com, Yahoo and others have protested the project, as have some European countries including Germany and France....

"Google is in this position, in my view, not because they have engaged in predatory or anticompetitive behavior, but because they have built a better mousetrap in the eyes of mousetrap purchasers," [Rep. John Conyers Jr.] said.

Google says the Google Book Search project will make out-of-print and rare books more accessible to consumers. Google also argues that the settlement does not block competitors from striking agreements with publishers to make works available online, and it [GOOG] will license works to competitors through the registry created by the arrangement. Google allows publishers to sell access to books through online and offline retailers.

Representatives from the National Federation of the Blind and the Authors Guild praised the settlement and Google's efforts to make millions of literary works available [for a fee] to libraries, universities and people with disabilities....

Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas), the committee's ranking member, acknowledged that Google Book Search is a "novel and innovative way for people to acquire knowledge."

Philly Free Libraries to Close | LA Times | 11 Sep 2009

In a dramatic move, the Philadelphia Free Library System announced today that it will close all branch, regional and central libraries as of Oct. 2. There will be no book loans, no classes, no programs for seniors or children, no outreach to the community, no more community meetings at library locations. Starting today, the library began truncating its loan period.

European wind power producers are calling for billions of euros in investments to generate energy from wind turbines planted in the sea.

The European Union is aiming to generate a fifth of all its energy from renewable sources by 2020 to lessen reliance on imported oil and gas and meet climate change goals to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Wind power will likely play the major role and could generate up to 16 percent of all EU energy -- or a third of all electricity -- by 2020, the European Wind Energy Association says.

The industry says this depends on governments helping them make a major push to develop offshore wind farms over the next 20 years. They say it could replace power from older coal-fired electricity stations and help meet Europe's growing energy demand.

Some EUR 57 billion will be needed to develop these wind farms, the association said. The industry can use bigger and more powerful wind turbines planted in the sea bed to generate around a third more power than land-based wind stations.

Another EUR 20 billion to EUR 30 billion will need to be spent on energy links to transfer the power onshore and link power connectors between European nations, including links across the North Sea, EWEA says.

A minority group for those who find strength in numbers. A community for people who like their intimate lives communal. Polyamory - the practice of openly engaging in multiple loving relationships - acquired its name in the 1990s, and has been gaining ground as a recognised lifestyle and movement ever since. With the UK's first "poly" website just launched, and Polyday taking place in London later this month, it seems there's never been a better time for "ethical non-monogamists" to stand up and be counted.

Some of the UK's most prominent female writers, comedians and presenters, and one MP, are chatting over coffee and biscuits in a smart London bar. The topic of conversation isn't the latest play at the National, the current publishing sensation, or a piece of controversial legislation. No, these women are talking about sexual abuse; about insults scrawled on toilet walls; hate-filled letters published in newspapers; name-calling in the street: in short, about the harassment they have suffered as a result of their sexuality.

Like an estimated 1.8 million women in Britain, Stella Duffy, Rhona Cameron, Amy Lamé, Angela Eagle and Sarah Waters are lesbian or bisexual, and as some of the country's few prominent lesbians, the are fronting the gay rights group Stonewall's latest campaign, entitled: "Some People Are Gay. Get Over It!".

Fawziya Abdullah Youssef suffered severe bleeding while giving birth to a stillborn infant in Hodeida province, 140 miles (223km) west of the capital San'a, on Friday.

She was only 11 when her father married her to a 24-year-old man who works as a farmer in Saudi Arabia, according to Ahmed al Quraishi from the Siyaj organisation, which promotes the rights of children in Yemen.

He said he stumbled upon Fawziya in the al Zahra district hospital while investigating cases of youngsters who had fled from fighting in the north of the country.

"This is one of many cases that exist in Yemen," Mr al Quraishi said.

"The reason behind it is the lack of education and awareness, forcing many girls into marriage in this very early age."

I didn't have any idea what to expect, but when I walked through the fairground gates, it was just absolutely overwhelming. What I saw were people who were lined up. It was raining that day. They were lined up in the rain by the hundreds, waiting to get care that was being donated by doctors and nurses and dentists and other caregivers, and they were being treated in animal stalls. Volunteers had come to disinfect the animal stalls. They also had set up tents. It looked like a MASH unit. It looked like this could have been something that was happening in a war-torn country, and war refugees were there to get their care. It was just unbelievable, and it just drove it home to me, maybe for the first time, that we were talking about real human beings and not just numbers.

AMY GOODMAN: And so, what did you do with that?

WENDELL POTTER: Well, it took me a while to just really process it. I came back to work. I knew at that time that I couldn't continue doing what I was doing. It just didn't seem like it was ethically the right thing for me to do. ...

But then, you know, just two or three weeks later, I was having to fly to a meeting, and I often would fly on one of the corporate jets. And while I was doing that, I was served my lunch on a gold-rimmed plate, was given gold-plated flatware to eat my lunch. I was sitting in a very spacious and luxurious leather chair. And it just dawned on me for the first time. I had done this many times. But because of the Wise County experience, I just realized for the first time that someone's premiums were helping me to travel that way and were paying for my lunch on gold-trimmed china. And then I thought about those men and women that I had seen in Wise County, undoubtedly not having any idea that this is the way that insurance executives lived and how premium dollars were being spent. And that got me closer to making an ultimate decision that I had to leave.

In the new "Crossing the Finish Line," William Bowen, a former president of Princeton University, argues that so many undergrads are dropping out (44 percent) that the country is in danger of losing its competitive edge to other nations.

He and coauthor Michael McPherson, former president of Macalester College, warn that America is likely to fall even further behind in the educational race because coming crops of high schoolers are filled with the kinds of low-income and minority students who tend to have the least educational success. In fact, despite billions of dollars in financial aid and scores of government and private efforts, the college graduation rate for low-income Americans who are the first in their families to go to college has been falling. "We're not doing as good a job as we should of creating genuine opportunity. We haven't continued to make progress the way other places have," Bowen said in an interview. (Harvard doctoral candidate Matthew Chingos also contributed to the book.)

The new research finds distressing signs that demographic factors such as gender, race, and parental education play large roles in determining a student's fate, no matter how smart or hardworking the particular student is. Those from families with below-average earnings or parents who didn't finish college, as well as African-Americans, Hispanics, and males, are failing college at disproportionate rates, even when compared with students with similar grades and test scores. Wealthy undergrads earn 11 percent more degrees from flagship universities than comparable students from the poorest income quartile, for example. White men are 6 percent more likely to graduate than black men with similar grades and scores. Women earn degrees at much higher rates than men. Failing to open educational opportunities to all students will endanger "the long-term health of our country," the authors warn.

If you could combine their features into one specimen of supreme manliness, their biceps would be as big as the forelimb of an ox and their neck as wide as an oak tree. The fusion of Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Bruce Willis would be truly impressive to behold.

They are not, yet, being genetically welded into one; but the three actors are being brought together into one film in what is being billed as the action hero dream team. The Expendables, scheduled for release next summer, will see Stallone lead a team of mercenaries on a mission to overthrow a South American dictator.

The film will see the three actors brought together for the first time since 1991, when they attended openings of their ill-fated restaurant venture, Planet Hollywood.

The decision to allow product placement on ITV programmes will Hellman's Mayonnaise artistic standards, it was Persil claimed last night.

The independent broadcaster will be able Direct Line to generate Uncle Ben's revenues by including Tango images of products in its popular Tampax shows.

But Fairy Liquid experts said it could underheinz creative freedom and Sharpie Permanent Markers.