London, Sep 17 : Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama is fighting to regain the initiative in the presidential race even as the Wall Street financial crisis threatens to stall the momentum gained by Republican rival John McCain.

The banking meltdown has thrust the economy back to the centre of the campaign on Tuesday, giving Obama a chance to hit back after two weeks of declining poll numbers and escalating Republican attacks, The Financial Times reported.

Obama said the turmoil represented a “final verdict” on the failed economic policies of President George W. Bush and McCain, accusing them of fostering a “winner take-all, anything-goes environment”, and then doing nothing as the system collapsed.

London, Sept 17 : Sarah Brown, the wife of UK’s Prime Minister, celebrated 25 years of London Fashion Week by hosting a party.

While at the party, Sarah’s choice of dress was a diplomatic one: she chose the colour purple, a simple, but well-cut, scoop-neck silk dress from Jaeger’s new autumn Limited Collection.

Secondly she teamed it with the accessory du jour, a ‘statement’ necklace, hers a gift from her mother in semi-precious stones and pearls.

When asked how she felt sharing the stage with glamorous models, she said: “I’m not worried. You know my attitude to things like this. When you’re standing next to a supermodel, nobody pays you that much attention.”

London, September 17 : A Russian billionaire who is due to arrive in Nottingham with his 40-strong entourage later this month tried to hire out a castle built by William the Conqueror because the nearby four-star hotel did not meet his high standards.

Sergei Matvienko, 35, will be in Nottingham to oversee a martial arts tournament his company is running.

When he turned his nose up at the presidential suite at the four-star Park Plaza hotel in the city, and set his sights on Nottingham Castle instead, he was disappointed to be told that nobody had stayed at the castle since the Duke of Newcastle in the 17th Century.

London, Sep 17 : A patriot flying the British Army flag outside his house was told by local council to take it down because they considered it advertising.

Dave Dingvean today branded the order to remove the military colours as ‘treacherous’.

Dingvean, 46, a volunteer for the British Army Association who raises money for the charity, was told any national flag was acceptable - but not those of our nation’s armed forces.

Council officials warned Dingvean that flying the ‘non-ceremonial’ flag of the British Army outside the front of his house was in “breach of planning control” and he would end up in court if he did not remove it.

London, Sept.17 : Human rights watchdog Amnesty International has charged both the United States and the United Kingdom with flooding Iraq with weapons, and this has led to an increase in sectarian killings and various human rights violations.

Amnesty International claims that there is no clear accountable audit trail for some 360,000 small arms supplied to the Iraqi security forces, many by the US and UK.

It further says that subcontracting makes the arms trade even less transparent. Among examples cited by Amnesty are the supply of 63,800 Kalashnikov assault rifles from Bosnia to Iraq and the dispatch via the UK of thousands of Italian Beretta pistols, many of which ended up in the hands of al-Qaida insurgents in Iraq.

London, Sept. 17 : British actress Joanna Lumley has said that the government’s treatment of retired Gurkha soldiers and their families is a scandal, and yesterday, she joined a protest at London’s High Court in support of their quest for citizenship and medical welfare rights.

The protest was held ahead of a two-day hearing to decide if 2,000 of the Nepalese war veterans will be allowed to live in Britain.

The TV and movie beauty stood alongside 86-year-old Victoria Cross hero Tul Bahadur Pun, who served in the Second World War with her late father, James, and saved his life by single-handedly storming Japanese machine-gun positions.