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How marvellous, 17 of the country's top bankers, insurers, lawyers, accountants and market-makers have written to the Financial Times to declare that it is their "personal responsibility" to "create, oversee and imbue their organisations with an enlightened culture based on professionalism and integrity". They denounce the philosophy that says anything legal goes. They wish to "restate and reaffirm the social purpose of financial institutions".

These grand thoughts would carry more weight if the signatories explained what their firms won't be doing in future. To pick on Barclays, since the letter appears to have originated there: would the bank tell us how last year's $12.3bn sale of duff credit assets to a business registered in the Cayman Islands fits with the latest thinking?

To recap: 45 Barclays employees quit the bank to set themselves up as C12 Capital Management, which has a management contract with Protium Finance, which is buying the impaired assets by borrowing $12.6bn from Barclays itself. Protium gets a return on its $450m investment of 7% a year plus any profits after ten years; Barclays gets a miserable-looking initial rate of interest of about 3% and, all being well, its capital back at the end.

At a stretch, we might agree this complicated arrangement gives Barclays more freedom to deploy capital for socially useful ends. But we will never know how enriching it is for the 45 escapees, who used to manage the assets for Barclays – they now operate beyond the reach of forthcoming disclosure rules on pay for UK banks. Nor do we know the identity of the partners behind Protium. Cayman Islands laws do not require disclosure and Barclays did not insist that its shareholders should be told.

Maybe transparency lies beyond the requirements of a "social purpose". The FT letter didn't say.

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Ninety-five defendants, including two former mayors, packed a court in the southern Spanish city of Malaga yesterday for the opening of one of Spain's biggest corruption trials.

The trial revolves around alleged property fraud in Marbella in the mid-1990s.

The alleged mastermind, a businessman, Juan Antonio Roca, is the only defendant who has been held in custody. Former town hall officials, lawyers and business representatives are among the accused. The trial is expected to last a year.

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The karaoke world's newest star is about to find out if Russian dumplings are good for the throat after he won a million of them at the Karaoke World Championships in Moscow.

Edward Pimentel, a telephone company technician from Albuquerque, New Mexico, got the unusual prize after the audience at the competition voted him their favourite for his dapper and assured R&B performances. He chose Usher's DJ's Got Us Fallin' In Love for his final-round song.

Organisers said the dumplings are enough to last 27 years if someone eats 100 of them a day.

A panel of judges chose two Finns – Sam Moudden and Maria Saarimaa-Ylitalo – as their male and female champions. They were awarded karaoke machines. Moudden, sharply dressed in Rat Pack style, performed Je Suis Malade, while the purple-gowned Saarimaa-Ylitalo sang Celine Dion's I Surrender.

Two singers who stretched karaoke's boundaries beyond the usual pop favourites came second. Fedor Rytikov, a gastroenterologist by day, advanced to the finals with the Nessum Dorma aria from Turandot, then stayed with Italian music for the final with L'Immensita.

Russia's Julia Kurileva was runner-up in the women's competition with the most adventurous choice of the night – the wordless and eerie wailing of Pink Floyd's Great Gig In The Sky.

Amateur singers from 16 countries took part in the three-day competition.

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Alistair Darling has warned Ed Miliband that Labour must not throw away its claim to economic credibility by proposing higher taxes or by calling for the public deficit to be cut more slowly.

In an interview with The Independent, the former Chancellor, who backed David Miliband for the leadership, promised his "full support" to the younger brother but delivered a parting shot as he prepares to stand down from the shadow Cabinet.

Mr Darling urged Ed Miliband to show that he was not in the pockets of the unions and cautioned him against a policy of making the 50p top rate of income tax permanent. He also warned him against opposing every spending cut.

Mr Darling accepted that his own policy of halving the £155bn deficit over four years was no longer set in stone. Although David endorsed it during the leadership election, Ed did not. But Mr Darling insisted: "I have yet to be persuaded that another approach would be better."

He added: "Ed is the leader. He has to form his own judgement. If I were offering him advice, it would be: yes, whatever we do must get growth back into the economy, but we have also got to be realistic and credible."

Mr Darling said the 50p tax rate on earnings over £150,000 that he had introduced should be temporary, for this five-year parliament. Although Ed Miliband has said it should be permanent, Mr Darling said: "I did not do it as a matter of philosophy. I did it because we needed to raise revenue to get the deficit down and to make sure the burden fell on those with the broadest shoulders. It was always temporary."

Mr Darling said the party must not appear to be too influenced by the trade unions after they played a crucial role in Ed Miliband's victory. "It is not a problem, as long as he makes it clear that his judgement calls will be what is in the best interests of the country, not one particular section. The leader... must lead the whole party for the benefit of the whole country. Tony Blair and Gordon Brown got us on to the centre ground of British politics and that is where we have got to stay. "

Before the general election, Mr Darling proposed that two-thirds of his deficit reduction plan would come from spending cuts and one-third from higher taxes. That, too, is now up for grabs. The former Chancellor promised not to criticise the new leadership if its "fresh eyes" changed his policy, but warned: "Whatever you do, it has to strike a chord with the public."

He insisted that differences between him and his colleagues were tiny compared to those between Labour and the Coalition, saying that the slowdown in Ireland showed the dangers of hasty, tough austerity measures. He said the Opposition should not produce an alternative spending review to the one George Osborne will unveil on 20 October, and insisted it could not oppose every cut he proposes. "That is just not credible... We all know that had we been returned to office in May, we would have had to make some very difficult decisions."

As Chancellor, Mr Darling had battles with Mr Brown but resisted the temptation to criticise the former Prime Minister. "We had our moments but I was determined to do what I thought was right," he said. He believes Mr Brown's reluctance to abandon his "Labour investment versus Tory cuts" theme was "counterproductive" and "damaging".

After spending 22 of the last 23 years on the front bench, Mr Darling is ready for a break. But, at 56, he is not ruling out a return to the front line. "Nothing is forever," he said.

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The US Central Intelligence Agency is running and paying for a secret 3,000-strong army of Afghan paramilitaries whose main aim is assassinating Taliban and al-Qa'ida operatives not just in Afghanistan but across the border in neighbouring Pakistan's tribal areas, according to Bob Woodward's explosive book.

Although the CIA has long been known to run clandestine militias in Afghanistan, including one from a base it rents from the Afghan president Hamid Karzai's half-brother in the southern province of Kandahar, the sheer number of militiamen directly under its control have never been publicly revealed.

Woodward's book, Obama's Wars, describes these forces as elite, well-trained units that conduct highly sensitive covert operations into Pakistan as part of a stepped-up campaign against al-Qa'ida and Afghan Taliban havens there. Two US newspapers published the claims after receiving copies of the manuscript.

The secret army is split into "Counterterrorism Pursuit Teams", and is thought to be responsible for the deaths of many Pakistani Taliban fighters who have crossed the border into Afghanistan to fight Nato and Afghan government forces there.

There are ever-increasing numbers of "kill-or-capture" missions undertaken by US Special Forces against Afghan Taliban and foreign fighters, who hope to drive rank-and-file Taliban towards the Afghan government's peace process by eliminating their leaders. The suspicion is that the secret army is working in close tandem with them.

Although no comment has been forthcoming, it is understood that the top US and Nato commander in Afghanistan, Gen David Petraeus, approves of the mission, which bears similarities to the covert assassination campaign against al-Qa'ida in Iraq, which was partially credited with stemming the tide of violence after the country imploded between 2004 and 2007.

The details of the clandestine army have surprised no one in Kabul, the Afghan capital, although the fact that the information is now public is unprecedented. There have been multiple reports of the CIA running its own militias in southern Afghanistan.

The operation also has powerful echoes of clandestine operations of the 1990s, when the CIA recruited and ran a militia inside the Afghan border with the sole purpose of killing Osama bin Laden. The order then that a specially recruited Afghan militia was "to capture him alive" – the result of protracted legal wrangles about when, how and if Osama bin Laden could be killed – doomed efforts to assassinate him before 9/11.

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The Liberal Democrat leadership appears to be winning crucial battles with its Tory partners over immigration and the renewal of Trident.

Senior Liberal Democrats are increasingly confident they will secure a delay to approving the renewal of Britain's £20bn Trident nuclear weapons system until after the general election, which is due in May 2015. The final Government go-ahead for Trident is scheduled for 2014 under current plans.

"It is very important for us that the issue is still alive going into the election," said one senior member. "We want to go into it with a clear difference on this. It makes sense for us, but also for David Cameron, to show he is leading a modern Conservative Party."

Nick Harvey, the armed forces minister, prepared the ground for a delay to take place, openly talking about a postponement at the Liberal Democrat conference in Liverpool yesterday and rejecting Tory suggestions it would drive up the cost of the project.

"If it were to be delayed until just after the May 2015 election, it is of no great financial significance, it is of no great military significance, it is of no great industrial significance," he said.

The party leader Nick Clegg backed his minister. Speaking from New York where he is attending a UN summit, he said: "I have always argued we should be looking at alternatives to a like-for-like replacement for Trident. It's a perfectly sincere, level-headed debate about what are the security threats the country faces in the coming period." The issue is almost bound to claim political casualties before it is resolved. Tessa Munt, a Liberal Democrat whip, said she would quit over Trident if necessary. Some Tories, however, have given warning that Liam Fox, the Secretary of State for Defence, could resign if such a move was taken.

It also emerged yesterday that leading Liberal Democrats are confident of persuading Downing Street to modify the Coalition Government's strict cap on immigration after a member of David Cameron's inner circle signalled his support for their cause. Vince Cable said he was "optimistic" of securing a compromise over the policy from his Tory Cabinet colleagues. He said his concerns over the policy echoed remarks made by Oliver Letwin, a key adviser to the Prime Minister.

During a fringe event at the Liberal Democrat conference, Mr Letwin admitted the Government had to be "very careful" in deciding how the policy would operate. "We have to be very sure that the caps we set are consistent with what our economy needs," he said. "That's exactly what we are trying to do."

His comments risk provoking a stand-off with Theresa May, the Home Secretary, who is sticking by the original policy. Several major companies have now broken cover to protest about the quotas they have been given under the temporary cap, which was introduced in July. The first permanent limit will be put in place in April.

Mr Cable, the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, used a combative speech yesterday to reassure worried activists that he would not allow the party's identity and "authentic voice" to be subsumed within the Coalition Government.

Mr Cable won an enthusiastic standing ovation for the final major address of the party's conference in Liverpool, as he underlined the party's political differences with the Tories and insisted that the Liberal Democrats "punched above our weight in Government".

His remarks were designed to reinforce Nick Clegg's plea to the party's foot-soldiers to remain optimistic about its long-term prospects, despite sliding opinion ratings and the prospect of a hammering in next year's local council elections.

Mr Cable, who began his speech by addressing delegates as "comrades", said the Coalition Government's formation in May had given the Liberal Democrats the chance to demonstrate that they had "the political maturity to make difficult decision and wield power with principle".

Coalition politics was exhausting and "not much fun", he admitted, and he acknowledged there were daily tussles with the party's Tory partners. He added: "To hold our own, we need to maintain our party's identity and authentic voice."

He maintained the power-sharing agreement was "good for government and good for Britain", but admitted: "We must make sure it is good for the Lib Dems as well."

He ridiculed suggestions the party could eventually merge with the Tories and stressed: "We will fight the next general elections as an independent force with our options open, just like 2010.

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Die-hard fans have known for some time that the Nigerian film industry is truly unique, but even they may be surprised to discover just how big – and lucrative – it has become.

A new festival, Nollywood Now, takes place in London from 6-12 October and is the first major event to celebrate the second largest film industry in the world. Its chief aim is to draw wider attention to the success and popularity the films enjoy across Europe, and particularly the UK.

Nollywood makes about 2,400 films per year, putting it ahead of the US, but behind India, according to a Unesco report last year. Nigerian film-makers tend to operate in a fast and furious manner; shoots rarely last longer than two weeks, cheap digital equipment is almost always used and the average budget is about $15,000 (£9,664). The finished products often bypass cinemas altogether and are instead sold directly to the "man on the street" for about $1.50 (£1). Most films shift between 25,000 and 50,000 copies globally – although a blockbuster can easily sell up to 200,000.

So, what exactly is it about the films that resonates so much with their audience? For all of their populist appeal, Nigerian films are very rooted in local concerns, according to Nollywood Now's creative director, Phoenix Fry: "Many of the films have looked at how traditional beliefs co-exist with Islam and Christianity, Nigeria's main religions," he says. "There are some superb sequences using quite simple video effects to transform aunties into demons, or show evil animal spirits being driven out from the possessed."

This view is shared by Nigerian director and producer, Ade Adepegba, whose feature film Water Has No Enemy, explores corruption in his native country: "Nigerians are the largest group of Africans living in the UK, and the majority of them live in London," he says. "Nigerian films still hold their strongest appeal to first generation immigrants who feel a deep attachment to their homeland. So, at the moment nostalgia is the main reason for the appeal of Nollywood."

Ultimately, it's the way the films are crafted, rather than their juicy content that gives them universal appeal, says Fry. "The storytelling is so good. Nigerian filmmakers really know how to entertain their audiences. They've studied the populist genres from other countries – Bollywood musicals, low-budget horror and Brazilian soap operas, for example – and reworked these to appeal to anyone with a love of drama."

The process is tried and tested, and the main reason Nollywood is currently in such rude health, but how long can it stay that way? It's hard to see how an industry that prides itself on producing so much in so little time won't start to lose its momentum in the coming years. Diversifying is probably its best hope of lasting success, but loyal and long-standing fans may see that as a betrayal of its origins.

Adepegba believes that widening its scope will serve Nollywood well in the long term: "The industry needs to start making films with deeper social and artistic values – the path to even greater success," he says.

In October, Nigeria celebrates 50 years of independence, and thanks in no small part to Nollywood, its creative industries are under the global spotlight like never before. Film-makers need to make the most of these new opportunities to showcase the country by accurately portraying its flaws as well as its triumphs. This may mean tackling less savoury subjects regarding everyday life in the country, such as crime, corruption and abject poverty. It will not please everyone, but to ensure the legacy it deserves, Nollywood audiences should demand no less.

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The last time witchcraft figured prominently on the US political scene, I travelled to Salem, Massachusetts, to meet local witches who were outraged at being mocked in an ad released by that state's Republican candidate for governor. Salem is the "witchcraft capital of America" – home to the Witches Education Bureau and specialist vendors of spell supplies, as well as a soul-crushing multitude of tacky Halloween-themed trinket shops – and I went with my journalist's smirk fixed firmly in place. It ended up slightly dislodged, though.

The Salem witches seemed far nicer people than most, albeit with a funny aesthetic and a predilection for spelling "magic" with a K. They were liberals to a woman (and occasional man). They made witty asides about how flying broomsticks would be useful in rush-hour traffic. True, they had some dodgy beliefs, but it would have taken more rationalist indignance than I could muster, then or now, to characterise those beliefs as harmful. They weren't global warming denialists, or MMR-vaccine rejectors, or abortion-rights opponents. They just wore slightly too much pentagram-shaped jewellery, and probably spent an unwise proportion of their disposable income on crystals.

It would, therefore, surely be rather ironic if Christine O'Donnell — the victorious Delaware Tea Party Senate candidate who is a staunch anti-choicer and climate-change sceptic, opposes all tax increases on principle, has said masturbation is equivalent to adultery, thinks America is a "socialist economy", and argues that condoms don't help stop the spread of Aids — were finally to be dismissed as unacceptably eccentric because she once went on a date with a witch. (A male witch, we must assume, since O'Donnell's publicly stated opinion on The Gays is that "they're getting away with nudity! They're getting away with lasciviousness!")

"[I] dabbled into witchcraft," O'Donnell says in a 1999 clip from the TV show Politically Incorrect. "One of my first dates with a witch was on a satanic altar, and I didn't know it. I mean, there's a little blood there, and stuff like that. We went to a movie, and then we had a little midnight picnic on a satanic altar." After the clip emerged, she abruptly cancelled two appearances on high-profile Sunday talkshows.

You can't really blame Bill Maher, Politically Incorrect's liberal former host, for delighting in releasing the clip last Friday, nor Democrats for joyously piling on. The real danger of the revelation for O'Donnell, of course, is not that most people think being involved in witchcraft is ridiculous, but that some rightwing Christians think it's evil. The news thus threatens to further destabilise the increasingly tenuous coalition of libertarians, social conservatives and fantasists that constitutes the Tea Party, not to mention the tenuous coalition of Tea Partiers and traditionalists that constitutes the Republican party.

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The label is scrawled and inky, but it unmistakably says "Nyassa. Dr Livingston." Despite the spelling mistake, it's the Doctor Livingstone, I presume (quite rightly). Suddenly we are transported back to tropical central Africa in the early 1860s. David Livingstone was in what is modern-day Malawi, where it is hot and dry or hot and humid, except in the freezing night-time highlands. Livingstone's wife Mary had recently died, and members of his expedition were starving by the end of a long trip.

For all this, the medical missionary was also a professional explorer, and what he had found was a new plant he called Faroa nyasica. The sample of dried flowers, stems, leaves and roots (like a shrivelled brown miniature hydrangea, though it is unrelated) was preserved and taken back to England, where it was donated to the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew in west London, taped to the top corner of a piece of paper and filed. And there it still is, along with 7 million other specimens stored in Kew's Herbarium – the 18th century building attached to the grounds of the gardens dedicated to this purpose.

David Simpson, one of the assistant keepers of the Herbarium, shows me several specimens that illustrate its history, encompassing the rise and fall of the British Empire and figures including Captain Bligh, Charles Darwin and the Hookers of Kew (Sir William Hooker was the first director of the Royal Botanic Gardens, followed in that role by his son, Joseph, in 1865). There were many lesser-known adventurers, too, successes and failures who gave up their creature comforts – even their lives – to help build what is believed to be the world's finest collection of samples of plants and fungi and related diaries, journals, letters, books and paintings .

The Herbarium might be run by "keepers", but it is an active research centre: every year many of its 180 scientists travel the world, returning with 30,000 to 50,000 new samples. They are mapping new or lost discoveries (last year more than 250 of 2,000 newly "discovered" plants were found by Kew staff) and examining how ecosystems are coping in the face of human exploitation and climate change.

Each week, on average, 50 scientists visit the Herbarium to consult the specimens, and hundreds of samples are loaned out elsewhere. Every 40 years, on average, the building has to be extended to cope with the growing collection, with the opening of a new wing officially celebrated this month.. In two weeks' time, scientists at Kew will also announce the results of the most comprehensive study ever to find out how many of the world's one million or so named plants are at risk of extinction.

"This collection is not a museum," says David Simpson. "It's a museum in one sense, but it's also a well-used, vitally important collection that's equivalent to a database of plant information. Plants are not just beautiful and decorative; without them we simply couldn't survive. From the sheets we sleep on, the clothes we wear for warmth and the food and medicine we depend on, plants are invaluable to humanity; their diversity sustains us now, and in the future it will enable us to adapt, innovate and ultimately to survive."

History's first enthusiastic botanist, as Carolyn Fry recounts in her recent study of the subject, The Plant Hunters, was the bearded Queen Hatshepsut, an Egyptian pharaoh in the 15th century BC. Reliefs from her prosperous reign show ships loaded with ebony and myrrh trees, as well as apes and panther skins taken from a mysterious land called Punt (its identity is still disputed). Later, Alexander the Great sent home specimens from his wars in north Africa and the east, and successive armies transported plants into their new territories: the Romans sowing wheat, corn, barley and olives to feed their armies; Muslims spreading orchard fruits like sour oranges, lemons, limes and apricots, and showy flowers – most famously at the Alhambra palace in the Spanish city Granada.

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A papal aide who compared the UK to a "Third World country" was facing growing pressure to apologise today as the Pope flew in for his historic visit.

German-born Cardinal Walter Kasper, 77, was not in the Pope's entourage, but Vatican officials attributed his absence to ill health.

He made his remarks during an interview with the German magazine Focus.

He commented on the Godlessness of a section of English society, claiming Britain was facing an "aggressive new atheism" and "Christians were at a disadvantage".

Asked about the protests expected to greet the Pope's visit, he remarked on Britain's multi-cultural inhabitants, telling the magazine that someone landing at Heathrow airport might think they were in a "Third World country" as there was such a variety of faces there.

Cardinal Keith O'Brien, leader of the Catholic Church in Scotland, said he expected the cardinal to say sorry.

Commenting on the interview today, Cardinal O'Brien told BBC Radio Scotland: "That was unfortunate and each and every person's aides sometimes do make awkward, difficult remarks.

"Sometimes we make awkward, difficult remarks ourselves.

"And simply, if we do that sort of thing we apologise for it, and I'm sure Cardinal Kasper will apologise for any intemperate remarks which he made some time ago."

The Catholic Church in England and Wales also distanced itself from Cardinal Kasper's comments, saying they were "the personal views of one individual", but the remarks threatened to overshadow the first state visit by a pontiff to Britain.

The first stop on Pope Benedict's visit was Scotland where he was meeting the Queen and addressing thousands of pilgrims at an open-air mass before travelling to London.

The four-day trip includes a meeting with Prime Minister David Cameron and a prayer vigil in London's Hyde Park.

It culminates in a beatification ceremony for Cardinal John Henry Newman in Birmingham on Sunday.

It is the first papal trip to Britain since Pope John Paul II made a pastoral visit in 1982 following an invitation from the Church.

Pope Benedict will be the guest of the Queen and Government on this occasion, making it the first state visit by a pontiff.

The invitation has been criticised by a number of groups, including gay and women's rights organisations.

Pope Benedict XVI, who was elected in 2005, has faced calls to address public concern over the sexual and physical abuse of children by priests.

Last year two reports were published detailing years of mistreatment by priests and nuns in Ireland, prompting an apology from the Vatican.

Victims also came forward in Austria, Switzerland, Italy, the Netherlands, Germany and the US.

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