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The number of fake £1 coins in circulation now stands at more than 30 million, according to the Royal Mint. How do you know if you've been given one? That £1 coin in your pocket could be worthless. The number of fake pound coins in circulation has doubled in the past five years and one in every 50 is now counterfeit.

BY JOANNA SLATER As the British pound continues to sink, its travails are a cautionary tale for the U.S. dollar. The U.S. and the U.K. face very similar predicaments, from a deepening recession to a damaged financial system. Both are orchestrating massive bank bailouts and attempting to assist struggling homeowners. Both are ramping up government spending even as they rely on financing from overseas investors. And both countries have central banks that have slashed interest rates and opened the door to unconventional ways of stimulating the economy. Yet their currencies have headed in opposite directions. On Wednesday, the British pound...

Sterling plunged to a seven-year low against the dollar today as one of the world's top investors warned the currency was 'finished'. The pound fell more than two cents to hit a low of $1.3965 as traders reacted to the Government's latest multi billion-pound bailout of the banking system. It is the first time sterling has dropped below $1.40 since mid-2001 and is on track for its biggest one-day percentage fall against the dollar since late 1992. Less than a year ago, it was still trading at $2. Today, it was also down against the euro and the Japanese yen....

Sterling has fallen sharply against the dollar as yet more bad economic data points towards a prolonged recession and further interest rate cuts. The pound was down 5.2 cents to $1.486, its largest one day fall in percentage terms since sterling crashed out of the Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM) in 1992. Sharp falls in the FTSE 100 index - down 5.2% on Monday - also served to undermine the currency. The pound was also down 3.5 cents against the euro, at 0.851 pounds. The poor economic data increases the likelihood that the Bank of England will cut interest rates on...

The US dollar gained on the euro Wednesday on demand for US dollars from foreign banks and ahead of a Senate vote on the $700 billion bailout proposal and a proposal to raise FDIC protection on deposits from $100,000 to $250,000. The euro declined ahead of Thursday’s meeting of the European Central Bank, where Eurozone interest rates are expected to be held at 4.25 percent. In late morning trade in New York, the dollar traded at $1.4030 to the euro. The pound weakened against the dollar and the euro after the Chartered Institute of Purchasing and Supply reported that its...

1/22/2008 - SALMANPAK, Iraq (AFPN) -- Aircrews of B-1B Lancers, Navy F/A -18 Hornet pilots, Army 3rd Infantry Division Soldiers and Iraqi forces cleared out an al-Qaida stronghold 30 miles southeast of Baghdad late night Jan. 20 and early morning Jan. 21. Coalition aircraft dropped more than 30,000 pounds of bombs on former al-Qaida territory in Salmanpak, Iraq. This was all part of the on-going Operation Marne Thunderbolt, which is part of Operation Phantom Phoenix, an overarching operation to defeat extremism throughout Iraq. This particular mission targeted an area where al-Qaida laid obstacles, in the way of improvised explosive devices,...

A Guided Multiple Launch Rocket System fires a 227 mm rocket at a building that insurgents were using to store explosives and a nearby weapons cache in the open desert near the northern Iraqi city of Bayji, Dec. 27. US Army Photo by Spc. Rick Rzepka, 1st Brigade Combat Team, 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault) PAO. COB SPEICHER — U.S. forces in Northern Iraq destroyed a storage facility containing explosives used in the making of vehicle-borne bombs, and a weapons cache in the open desert near Bayji, Thursday. Intelligence sources informed the forces of this target, which had been under...

The British pound hit record lows against the euro on Monday for the second straight day, weighed down by falling home prices and expectations that the Bank of England will keep cutting interest rates. The euro rose to 72.710 British pence, compared with the earlier record of 72.350 pence from May 27, 2003, according to the daily reference rate of the European Central Bank. That was the lowest since the euro began trading on financial markets in 1999. Traders seized on data showing that house prices fell 0.3 percent in December from the month before, with the average property staying...

BISBEE — A few months back, he was just a cast-off dog, unwanted, unloved and headed for the “sleep-forever table” at a California animal shelter. Today, Phillip is a hero in the eyes of his owner Linda Reynolds after protecting her and his companion, Jake, a Labradachshund, from a very large female Western Diamondback rattlesnake that had somehow found her way onto Reynold’s enclosed sun porch at her 33-acre ranch in Elfrida on Sept. 29. “I was going to let them go out in the back yard and opened the door to the sun porch. That’s when I heard it....

WASHINGTON, Sept. 30, 2007 – Coalition and Iraq forces continued taking the fight to the enemy in a variety of recent operations. Coalition forces killed two terrorists and detained 21 suspected terrorists yesterday and today during operations to disrupt al Qaeda in Iraq networks in the Tigris River Valley. In a village southwest of Samarra, coalition forces conducted several coordinated operations today targeting individuals believed to be close associates of an al-Qaeda in Iraq senior leader. As coalition forces approached, an armed man emerged and maneuvered toward a nearby palm grove. Coalition forces engaged the terrorist, killing him. As the...

The achievement of economic and monetary union by 11 European countries in 1999 was based on a deal: Germany, the strongest member, gave up the Deutschemark on the understanding that the others would not debauch the new common currency, the euro. Nearly eight years on, that inherently doomed project is coming apart at the seams.The fundamental problem is that the economies of the "Germanic" members have diverged so far from those of the "Latin" bloc that the single interest rate set by the European Central Bank (ECB) is becoming a huge political liability. An inkling of this came last year,...

The sagging dollar fell Thursday to its lowest level against the pound in 14 years amid a rise in U.K. house prices and a seasonal rally in the British currency. The dollar also declined against the euro and yen. In morning trading in London, the pound hit $1.9562, up from $1.9462 late Wednesday in New York -- its strongest showing against the dollar since September 1992, before Britain was forced out of the European Exchange Rate Mechanism. The pound last reached the $2 level on Sept. 8, 1992

"The Path to 9/11" is looking a lot like "The Reagans, Part II." Bill Clinton loyalists are demanding wholesale changes to the upcoming miniseries -- and while ABC is making some snips, the alterations, insiders say, may not please the Dems. Net found itself in the middle of a media maelstrom Thursday as the 9/11 mini came under attack from a slew of interest groups, former Clinton administration aides and the Democratic Party. As for specific criticisms -- and changes -- the original mini contained a scene in which then-National Security Adviser Sandy Berger declines to give the CIA authority...

In Belgium, you can buy jam in returnable jars, and once I finished my jar, and was cleaning it, and in the glass at the bottom was "3/8 L". And this sort of threw me, because I was a big metric fan, and the great advantage of the metric system was that it got rid of all those silly fractions. So why were they using them here in metric-land? Then I figured the jar was only so big, so it took up less space to print 3/8 L rather than 0.375 L. But there was another possibility. That being that...

MADRID, Spain - A Colombian woman has given birth to a 15-pound baby, the largest in 40 years in Madrid's main maternity hospital. The 38-year-old mother, identified only as Rosario, had gestational diabetes _ which can cause women to give birth to larger-than-usual babies _ and a track record. Her first daughter, now nine, weighed 10.2 pounds at birth. The new baby's father, Juan Carlos, said that with another woman he had a daughter that weighed 17 pounds at birth. "They told me it is genetic," he told reporters. The proud parents showed off their daughter Arancha on Monday. She...

"An almost hysterical antagonism toward the gold standard is one issue which unites statists of all persuasions. They seem to sense - perhaps more clearly and subtly than many consistent defenders of laissez-faire - that gold and economic freedom are inseparable, that the gold standard is an instrument of laissez-faire and that each implies and requires the other. In order to understand the source of their antagonism, it is necessary first to understand the specific role of gold in a free society. Money is the common denominator of all economic transactions. It is that commodity which serves as a medium...

"An almost hysterical antagonism toward the gold standard is one issue which unites statists of all persuasions. They seem to sense - perhaps more clearly and subtly than many consistent defenders of laissez-faire - that gold and economic freedom are inseparable, that the gold standard is an instrument of laissez-faire and that each implies and requires the other. In order to understand the source of their antagonism, it is necessary first to understand the specific role of gold in a free society. Money is the common denominator of all economic transactions. It is that commodity which serves as a medium...

TONY Blair’s EU cheerleader last night admitted the euro is “economically irrelevant”. Europe Minister Denis MacShane — one of the currency’s biggest fans — sensationally conceded we must never axe the Pound. Yet only four years ago he claimed joining the euro was essential for Britain’s industry. He revealed his astonishing new stance in a foul-mouthed tirade. And he confessed that being part of the single currency would have made thousands of steelworkers in his South Yorkshire constituency redundant. The Rotherham MP told New Statesman magazine: “For f***’s sake, the euro ... this really drives me mad. “I represent a...

LONDON (Reuters) - The dollar steadied versus the euro and yen on Thursday following sharp gains across the board in the previous session driven by profit-taking on bets against the long suffering U.S. currency.Unexpectedly strong jobs data from Australia appeared to counter the rising market belief the weak dollar was hurting major economies and forcing central banks to stop interest rate hikes, which in turn would bolster the greenback's appeal. Such arguments, driven by Canada's and Australia's decision earlier this week to hold rates unchanged, were seen as triggers for the dollar's rebound from record lows against the euro...

LONDON (Reuters) - The dollar rose one percent against the euro and the yen on Wednesday as investors bought the U.S. currency back in the run-up to the year-end and eyed the impact of the dollar's weakness on other economies.Worries about the United States' ability to fund its huge currrent account deficit have led to persistent weakness in the dollar, taking it to fresh record lows against the euro on Tuesday and five-year lows against the yen last week. But investors are looking to take profits on the climb of a broad spectrum of currencies against the dollar, while...