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Economics editor Larry Elliott explains why oil prices have fallen to below $50 a barrel.

As retailers feel the chill winds of recession, Martin Wainwright gauges the mood among shoppers in Sheffield city centre.

Farhad Hakimzadeh, a 60-year-old Iranian academic, is being sentenced today at Wood Green magistrates court in north London after admitting damaging priceless and rare books at the British and Bodlean libraries. The British Library's head of collections, Dr Kristian Jensen, assesses the damage to the books.

Immigration minister Phil Woolas talks tough on immigration. But what's the reality behind the rhetoric? Our home affairs editor Alan Travis explains.

Diplomatic editor Julian Borger looks at a report from the US National Intelligence Council on the long-term foreign policy challenges facing the new American president.

As the world economy sinks deeper into recession, a particular kind of story is cropping up regularly in the media. Call it the how to cope with recession story. They range from the prosaic – how shoppers are turning away from more upscale supermarkets such as Waitrose to the discounters, Lidl and Aldi in the UK – to the less obvious ones.

In the latter category, we have stories about how rappers are falling out of love with bling, or how recession could "stimulate" demand for sex toys and porn films as Australians seek cheaper pleasures.

The Times today comes up with one of the more ingenious twists to the genre as its Paris correspondent cooks up a story on how sales of offal have shot up in France. The French turn away from beef to cheaper cuts such as tripe, trotters, brain and even testicles in response to the global meltdown.

Adam Sage cites statistics to back up his story. The French offal industry, which produces 250,000 tonnes of food a year, has witnessed a 15% rise in sales since Lehman Brothers went bust a few months ago.

Jean-Jacques Arnoult, a French offal merchant, comes up with this interesting observation about the gap between reality and perception. "It's not that people have become a lot poorer in this country, but they think they're poorer because of all the talk of the crisis."

But tell that to poor Marks & Spencer, which today is holding its first pre-Christmas sales for four years, slashing its prices by 20% in a desperate bid to lure shoppers. Perhaps Stuart Rose, the M&S boss, should think about pushing tongues, trotters and tripe in his shops.

• Based on an extract from the Wrap, guardian.co.uk's digest of the day's news

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Britain already has one of the world's best road safety records and the number of people killed or injured has fallen dramatically in the last decade. The downward trend continued last year.

In 2007, 2,946 people were killed, 7% lower than in 2006, 27,774 were seriously injured (down 3% cent on 2006) and 217,060 were slightly injured (down 4% cent on 2006). Of last year's deaths, 57 were child pedestrians.

But the government wants to see further improvements in line with ambitious targets for 2010. Today the department for transport unveiled new proposals to further reduce the number of road deaths, particularly from speeding.

Those who break the speed limit by a large margin – 20mph or more – could be given six penalty points, resulting in a potential ban after two offences. A driver with 12 points on their licence is automatically disqualified.

The planned crackdown receives front-page treatment from the Telegraph and the Mail. The Mail indicates where its sympathies with the line: "But critics fear the measure is another chapter in the war on motorists, who paid £106m in fines last year."

In another giveaway, the Mail mainly quotes spokesmen from organisations representing motorists, including the Association of British Drivers.

"We could envisage circumstances where someone travelling at 90mph on an empty motorway in the early hours of the morning in clear visibility would be liable for six points, when the fact is that it is very unlikely that they would threaten anyone's life or even their own."

The proposals also focus on persistent drink drivers, the Telegraph reports.

"It's the people who are at 100mg and more who are the real danger here; that's who we have to target," a source tells the paper.

Britain has one of the toughest limits in Europe at 80mg of alcohol to 100ml of blood. The Telegraph says ministers will expand the high risk offenders scheme targeting a hard core of persistent drink-drivers that could see friends, neighbours and colleagues encouraged to inform police about those who frequently drive while drunk.

Based on an extract from the Wrap, guardian.co.uk's digest of the day's news.

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Woolworth's 800 high street stores are for sale for just £1. Business editor Deborah Hargreaves explains how UK retailers are being hit by the recession.

In his last days as president, George Bush is scrapping laws protecting America's environment, reports Washington correspondent Suzanne Goldenberg.

There are bitter recriminations among the leadership of the far right British National party after its members' names and addresses were published online. Haroon Siddique looks at the fallout from the publication of the list of 13,500 people.

Numbers of house sparrows have been falling dramatically over the last two decades. Dr Will Peach of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds has led the first major study into the species' decline.

And singer Mick Hucknall tells Hannah Pool about the end of Simply Red.

In the 16th century a series of laws subjected "vagabonds" to ever harsher treatment ranging from imprisonment and forfeiture of land and goods to death. The legislation was aimed at the Romany gypsies who are thought to originate from India, bringing with them a language derived from Sanskrit which is still used today

Recriminations are flying thick and fast among rightwing activists after someone, possibly a BNP malcontent, posted the party's entire membership on the internet.

The BNP leader, Nick Griffin, claimed that he knew the identity of the person who published the list, describing him as a "hardliner" senior employee who left the party last year.

"He didn't like the direction the party was going and broke away, taking the list with him," Griffin told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.

Be that as it may, the BNP leaker has unleashed a fresh bout of infighting among far right activists. Griffin has faced strong criticism of his leadership and tensions within the party boiled over last December when two key organisers were sacked for gross misconduct.

BNP dissidents are fuming on the NorthWestNationalists website, a forum for anti-Griffin activists, who have never forgiven Griffin for deposing John Tyndall – the former BNP leader – in 1999. Tyndall died in 2005.

Several bloggers are calling for Griffin's resignation, including this one.

Someone or some people at the highest levels in the BNP has/have to take responsibility for this, if a local organiser had been lax enough to entrust local party members details to someone who leaked them, I bet a pound to a penny Nick Griffin would not hesitate in making an example of them to restore confidence.

Another focused his anger not just on Griffin but also on Mark Collett, the party's director of publicity, a key Griffin ally.

Don't know if Griffin should go but Collett has to. Least thing he could of done was be a man, an honest man, and admitted it was true. How can anyone in the BNP trust him ever again? Least we would have known from one of our supposed own rather than let the reds break it to us. Fellow members can never ever trust another thing he says, so his position is untenable. He must be sacked.

Another poster poses the question cui bono? Who benefits? Leading to the theory – implausible as it may sound - that Griffin had a hand in the leak.

Think about it. Frighten off activists who want to do things and that leaves the armchair squad sending in their cash for entertainments. Activists are a thorn in Griffin's side.

Liberal and leftwing bloggers can hardly conceal their delight at the discomfiture of BNP activists and supporters. Chicken Yoghurt points out this delicious irony.

The crowning jewel of the story is that the BNP, who only this month called the Human Rights Act 'surely one of the most pernicious pieces of legislation ever passed by the mother of parliaments,' and reiterated its promise to repeal it when the party - don't laugh - becomes a 'British Nationalist government', have now asked to police to investigate breaches of the Human Rights Act.

Other bloggers voice concern at the latest breakdown in privacy following serious cases of data loss under the government. Curly's Corner Shop, a conservative blogger, deplores those who stole private details of individuals and made them publicly available.

In this country we ought to value our privacy more and accept the fact that we live in an open democracy which still allows us the freedom and liberty to pick and choose which political parties we can join, even if the policies are outlandish, statist, protectionist, and racist.

The Guardian's Michael White agrees that BNP members should enjoy the same rights to privacy as others.

"My instinct is that we should be as offended on their behalf as we would be about any breach of personal privacy on this scale."

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John Redwood MP, chair of the Conservatives' economic competitiveness policy group, defends David Cameron's decision to scrap the Tories' adherence to Labour's spending plans.

Surgeons have successfully carried out the world's first airway transplant on a young woman using an organ partly grown from her own stem cells. Health editor Sarah Boseley explains the significance of the operation.

Xan Rice describes the dangers facing shipping off the Somalian coast, where pirates rule the waves.

Commentator Martin Kettle looks at the pros and cons of Barack Obama appointing Hillary Clinton as his secretary of state.

Argentina take on Scotland tonight in a friendly, Diego Maradona's first match as national football team coach. Chief sports writer Richard Williams reports from Glasgow on the warm reception Maradona has received from the Scots.

Operating skiffs with powerful outboard engines, GPS systems and satellite phones, the Somali pirates who seized a Saudi supertanker have left officials open-mouthed in astonishment at their audacity.

"Both the size of the vessel and the distance from the coast where the hijackers struck is unprecedented," Commander Jane Campbell, a spokeswoman for the US Fifth Fleet, based in Bahrain, is quoted in the Guardian as saying. "It shows how quickly the pirates are adapting."

The Independent says Somalia's breakaway region of Puntland is at the centre of an explosion of piracy. The authorities there say they can do little to stop the pirates and blamed shipowners for causing the crisis by paying ransoms, estimated to be more than $30m (£20m) this year.

The authorities pay up, Frank Pope writes in the Times, because the last thing shipowners want is to change a monetary relationship into a gunfight. Only three hostages have been killed so far (all in accidents), while the pirates have tens of millions of pounds in profit. At least 12 ships, with more than 250 crew, are currently being held while negotiations take place.

The actions of the pirates could hurt consumers worldwide, Roger Middleton, an author who studies piracy in Somalia, writes, also in the Times. If international shipping reacts by avoiding the route via the Gulf of Aden and the Suez canal and taking the longer way around the Cape of Good Hope, someone will have to pay – very probably the consumer.

The latest act of piracy prompts reflection on Somalia's parlous state. Simon Tisdall in the Guardian reminds us that Somalia is arguably the world's biggest single humanitarian disaster; more serious than Darfur, Zimbabwe and eastern Congo. Yet, he says, leading countries and their navies seem more exercised about safeguarding sea lanes than helping the 3.25 million Somalis – 43% of the population – who are dependent on food aid.

The Bush administration bears much responsibility for Somalia's state of anarchy, Martin Fletcher argues in the Times. Because of the "war on terror", the US backed an invasion of Somalia by Ethiopia to throw out the Islamic courts movement which had brought a semblance of stability. Fletcher says the intervention helped destroy Somalia's best chance of peace for a generation and, far from stamping out militancy, turned Somalia into a breeding ground for Islamist extremists and gave al-Qaida a valuable foothold in the Horn of Africa.

Based on an extract from the Wrap, guardian.co.uk's digest of the day's news.

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Jason Burke reports from north-west Pakistan, where government troops are fighting Taliban militants.

The UK Organ Donation Taskforce has rejected calls for an opt-out system. One member of the panel, Dr Paul Murphy, tells health editor Sarah Boseley why the taskforce reached that decision.

A government inquiry is under way into the tragedy of 'Baby P', the 17-month-old infant who died in Haringey after repeated abuse by his guardians, despite 60 visits from care workers. Robert Booth looks at what the investigation hopes to achieve.

Martin Chulov reports from Baghdad on plans to build an underground railway system in the Iraqi capital.

And Duran Duran talk to our Latin American correspondent Rory Carroll on their first visit to Colombia.

How abandoning Taiwan brings you not only a shiny new sports ground but also a presidential visit