The credit crunch is hitting the average punter hard but an order book of more than 120 for the electrically powered Lightning car, which costs around £125,000, suggests some people still have cash to splash.

Computer giant Dell is to axe 1,900 jobs at its flagship manufacturing plant, the company confirmed today.

Yahoo's board members acted "irrationally" and "irresponsibly" in rejecting a $46bn bid from Microsoft, the billionaire Carl Icahn said yesterday as he launched a campaign to oust them.

The loos flush using rainwater, roofs are covered with sedum plants, the building is heated using the playground and the desks are made from drainpipes. In the "living" classroom, wearing jerseys bearing the school's part-flower, part-windmill logo, a group of nine to 11-year-olds demonstrate their field skills by looking for creepy-crawlies with magnifying glasses. Imogen, a bright-eyed nine year-old, talks to me about carpets. "They're made up of tiles," she tells me authoritively. "So that when it wears out, they can replace one or two rather than the whole carpet."

What a celebration they have in mind is unclear. When the celebration will take place is also uncertain. But Republicans in Washington are so certain of the US making progress in Iraq and Afghanistan that they have set aside $20m (£11m) for a "commemoration of success".