Acclaimed sculptor Norman Ackroyd guides Andrew Lambirth around the Royal Academy's Summer Exhibition

Reductions in benefits bite even deeper when they come on top of racial discrimination at work and at home. As Paul George discovers, many women are forced into desperate measures in order to survive

THE record for the first ever 50-mile solo urban run is being claimed by a London advertising executive. Nigel Dixon, group head of classified advertising with The Independent and The Independent on Sunday, ran seven circuits between Canary Wharf in east London, where the newspapers are based, and Liverpool Street Station, in a time of 11hrs 9mins.

How much did high street cash tills jingle before Christmas? Not nearly enough, according to some retailers, although new figures show a surge in demand for cash in December. Diane Coyle, Economics Editor, investigates.

Talk about the classics of modern furniture and you are talking about Knoll. Since the 1930s, the company has built a reputation by beating a path to the doors of the world's best architects and designers. Now they are pinning their faith on two young and unknown Britons and a desk trolley called Homer. Ann Treneman charts a journey that started in the Bauhaus

The bubble may be bursting on alco-pops. The sweet-tasting drinks which prompted public outrage by supposedly luring the young to alcohol were dealt another blow yesterday.

Spitalfields Market will be trading in lucre alongside the lettuces when a magnificent new development designed by Sir Norman Foster is completed.

Privatisation is creating a retail boom in our stations, says Charlotte Packer

As a teenager, I eloped with an alcoholic, so when we ran out of money after two weeks, it seemed quite logical to go and find work in a pub. We were homeless, too, having realised that living in a van under Liverpool Street Station wasn't necessarily going to be a forever thing. (It was impossible to sleep after 6am, for a start.) So we ended up in a vast, gloomy barn of a place in north London; a brick Ark marooned on the Mount Ararat of a sloping, Tarmac car park. For a 10-hour day and a salary which amounted to my sixth-form pocket money with a nought on the end, we got a large, bare bedroom, a plate of lunchtime slop and one and a half days off a week.

A management consultant on a government project charged pounds 565 a day, five days a week, for five years, running up a total bill to the taxpayer of pounds 678,000.

Thousands of road protesters created traffic chaos in west London yesterday when theyblocked a motorway by holding a mass street party, writes Keith Nuthall.

It looked like a mission impossible: making a Hollywood blockbuster in the heart of London without making the movie-makers mad.

MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE Brian De Palma (PG)

Commons access: Row over prized passes shows how advisers hope to gain influence for clients