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Britain's farmers say they are enjoying a boom despite the downturn, as a campaign to highlight their contribution to the economy is launched.

President Obama tells a Nato summit there are "hard days ahead" in Afghanistan as the alliance prepares to withdraw troops at the end of 2014.

An annular eclipse, in which the Moon does not fully block out the light from the Sun, has moved across east Asia and is due to reach the western US later.

The 29 Chinese fishermen and three boats seized in the Yellow Sea by unidentified North Koreans are free, Chinese state media reports.

Nationalist Tomislav Nikolic is elected president of Serbia beating incumbent Boris Tadic in a run-off vote, and vowing to stay on the EU path.

Mental health charities say they have seen a surge in calls to their helplines since the start of the recession.

Environmentalists fear the UK government's draft energy bill to be published on Tuesday will end in a new "dash for gas".

A single 30% rate of income tax is needed in order to boost growth in the UK, according to a report by a campaign group and business leaders.

Bee Gees' singer Robin Gibb has died aged 62 following a lengthy battle with cancer, his family say.

Nine out of the ten poorest areas in England are in the north-west, a church charity survey shows.

A growing number of people are failing to save anything for their retirement - leaving them in a "precarious" position, a pensions provider says.

Why the US is falling in love again with British pop

Army push on with offensive in bid to regain control of Zinjibar, a key town in the south of the country

Fresh clashes between al-Qaida fighters and government forces in Yemen left 17 dead, military officials have said, as the army pushed on with an offensive to regain a key town in the country's south that fell to the militants over a year ago.

Officials said eight al-Qaida fighters, four soldiers and five civilian volunteers fighting alongside the military were killed.

The army started a two-pronged attack on the town of Jaar on Friday as part of a broader assault to take back Zinjibar, the provincial capital of Abyan, which has been also under al-Qaida control for more than a year.

Al-Qaida-linked fighters took advantage of the 2011 uprising to overrun a swath of territory and several towns in the south, pushing out government forces and establishing their own rule. In recent weeks, the army has launched a concerted effort to uproot the militants from their strongholds, and is closely coordinating with a small contingent of US troops who are helping to guide the operations from inside Yemen.

Officials say US drones have been providing information to their forces.

The military officials said Yemeni warplanes pounded targets some three miles outside Jaar. Up to 70 percent of the town's residents have fled over the past months to escape the fighting.

The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the militants used suicide car bombs against military checkpoints and vehicles to hinder the army's advance and had called for reinforcements from neighbouring towns.

Yemen's new president, Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi, took office in February as part of a US- and Saudi-backed deal aimed at ending the unrest. He has made fighting al-Qaida one of his top priorities.

The official news agency Saba said that Ken Tovo, a US commanding general of special operations, met with Yemen's chief of staff Ahmed Ali al-Ashwal and discussed US aid to Yemen in combating terrorism.

Tovo later met with the commander of the Yemeni southern sector in Aden to discuss details of the operations in the south, a military statement said.

Meanwhile Yemen's defence minister, who is directly supervising the operations in the south, paid a 24-hour visit to Saudi Arabia.

A government official said Yemen was seeking military hardware aid from Saudi Arabia to enable it to keep up the momentum of the operations against al-Qaida.

The party of former president Ali Abdullah Saleh said he has been admitted to a hospital for regular checkups and minor procedures.

The statement by the General People's Congress did not provide further details or say to which hospital Saleh was admitted.

Saleh had spent time in Saudi Arabia and the US earlier this year for medical treatment for wounds sustained in a June assassination attempt. Saleh stepped down in February and was replaced by his deputy, Hadi.

But Hadi and other political groups have complained that Saleh, the country's ruler for 33 years, has continued to play a behind-the-scenes role in local affairs, impeding the new president's efforts to implement a reform program.

• Yemen
• Middle East and North Africa
• Arab and Middle East unrest

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IAEA head Yukiya Amano arrives in Tehran voicing optimism about reaching agreement on Iran's controversial nuclear programme.

Haul of vintage health and safety posters found in warehouse

The Mexican army says a leader of the Zetas drug cartel has been arrested for the killing of 49 people whose bodies were dumped by a roadside.

Shoppers deserted Scotland's high streets last month as footfall fell by nearly a fifth, according to a survey by retailers.

Prime Minister David Cameron warns EU leaders that uncertainty over the eurozone cannot be allowed to go on beyond upcoming elections in Greece.

Scheme will offer guarantee to all children on free school meals that they will be financially supported through higher education

Nick Clegg is to return to the issue of university funding for poor students, the scene of his greatest political anguish, by proposing a student premium designed to guarantee financial help for all children on free school meals entering higher education. It is likely to be worth about £2,500 a year.

The scheme draws on the lessons of the pupil premium for children on free schools meals in schools, and is designed to give children from poor families a guarantee that if they make it to university they will be financially supported by the state. Ministers insist this is not a simple rebranding of existing help, and the guarantee to poor students represents a re-engineering of the currently haphazard system that will boost aspiration. The idea is part of a new social mobility review due to be published on Tuesday which is billed as central to Clegg's political thinking.

Clegg's decision to sanction the trebling of student fees led to a major backbench revolt and has soured his relationship with large parts of the electorate. In the midst of the furore , which was in breach of a manifesto promise, Clegg made passing reference to a student premium, but it was thought the idea was a panic-stricken response to the political crisis, and was not subsequently developed.

Liberal Democrat thinking is that children even at primary school age are thinking about their future education, and by providing an earlier guarantee of funding, the aspiration of poorer students will be boosted. A lack of aspiration is seen as one of the biggest barriers to poor children going on to higher education.

The aim will be to guarantee the student premium to any secondary school child on free school meals who passes the English baccalaureate and secures an offer of a place at university. Students would know at least two years before applying to university that money would be available to help them so long as they attain certain grades and the money could come in the form of a fee waiver or a bursary. The baccalaureate is given to pupils who have secured a C grade or better across a core of academic subjects – English, mathematics, history or geography, the sciences and a language.

The social mobility paper will for the first time publish figures showing the disparity in performance between state and independent children at A-level. Across the 2010-11 year group, 7% of state school students achieved two As and a B, compared to 23.1% among their counterparts in the independent sector. Two years before, the gap was even wider with only 5.8% of state school pupils getting AAB compared to 22.3% at independent schools.

Clegg will outline efforts to narrow that gap. "Education is critical to our hopes of a fairer society. Right now there is a great rift in our education system between our best schools, most of which are private, and the schools ordinary families rely on. That is corrosive for our society and damaging to our economy, " he intends to say. "I don't for a moment denigrate the decision of any parent to do their best for their child, and to choose the best school for them. Indeed, that aspiration on behalf of children is one of the most precious ingredients of parenthood.

"But we do need to ensure that our school system as a whole promotes fairness and mobility, that heals the rift in opportunities."

As part of the trebling of the cap on university fees to £9,000, ministers reinforced a range of measures to reduce the cost of going to university for poor students such as reducing or minimising the cost of loan repayment.

The national scholarship programme worth £100m this year is due to rise to £150m by 2014-15, with matched funding pound for pound from universities aimed at helping mainly new students . This cash is available to students whose parents' income is below £25,000 and assuming matched funding can be worth up to £6,000. Separately the higher funding education council for England provides up to £150m to help disadvantaged children, but often students do not know the size of the grant they will receive until they arrive at university.

A government source said; "There is quite a lot of funding available in the system, but it is not available until very late on so we want children and families to get earlier line of sight of what is on offer and to guarantee it".

The social mobility white paper – a review of progress on a similar paper a year ago – may also push the boundaries of the thorny debate on the extent to which universities can take account of background in deciding on allocation of places.

The issue led to an attempt by Conservatives to block the appointment of Les Ebdon to be director of the Office for Fair Access. The higher education minister David Willetts has stressed universities must be autonomous bodies even though their ability to charge higher fees is subject to an agreement to provide fair access arrangements for poorer students.

Willetts has also said grades need not be the only indicator, suggesting admission "can be based on more than just A-level results, by looking at all the information that indicates the potential of an individual to succeed." That can include their relative performance at school.

A survey by SPA (the supporting professionalism in admissions programme) last year showed that almost a quarter of universities were planning to offer lower grades to 2012 applicants from poor schools or deprived backgrounds.

The social mobility paper will have to face the challenge that the government will not meet the child poverty target, a target of relative inequality by the proposed deadline of 2020. Ministers are looking at a range of additional life chance targets, such as birth weight and parenting.

• Education policy
• Nick Clegg
• Students
• Secondary schools
• School meals
• English baccalaureate
• Schools
• Liberal Democrats
• Student finance
• Higher education
• Children

Patrick Wintour
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Thousands of people left homeless by a powerful earthquake in northern Italy spend the night in shelters as aftershocks continue in the region.