THE HEADLINES AT 0800 ON THURSDAY 7TH DECEMBER

It's eight o'clock on Thursday 7th December.

The former head of the army has attacked his political masters and the Ministry of Defence's culture of targets.

Tony Blair is in Washington to talk about Iraq -- and will soon head to the Middle East.

The effectiveness of knife amnesties has been questioned, with figures showing crime returning to its normal level soon after an amnesty ends.

JACKSON 1

The head of the army - until he retired this summer -- General Sir Mike Jackson, has launched a fierce attack on how the Ministry of Defence runs the armed services. Delivering the Richard Dimbleby lecture on BBC One last night, Sir Mike attacked what he called a culture of commercial best practice which didn't meet the needs of soldiers. Our Defence Correspondent, Paul Wood, reports:

WOOD: Sir Mike believes the government has broken the two-way contract with members of the armed forces. "It is our soldiers who pay the cost in blood", he said: "The nation must therefore pay the cost in treasure". Soldiers and their families must be properly valued. He also attacked what he called the MoD's culture of targets and performance indicators:

JACKSON: There is a failure, even an unwillingness, to understand the fundamental nature of the ethos of soldiering. It is difficult to overestimate the importance of that ethos, the "can-do", the "us-us" approach, rather than "me-me". We can hack it.

WOOD: In a brief statement, the Ministry of Defence said Sir Mike's long service entitled him to his opinions; but, said an MoD spokesman, our priority is to support the troops on the front-line.

JACKSON 2

The shadow defence secretary, Liam Fox, told Today the target culture attacked by Sir Mike was indicative of the way the government does business; it measures not what is necessary, but what is measurable. Dr Fox said the government hadn't provided the money to match the scale of its military deployments:

FOX: You can't do those things which the government said they were going to do if, at the same time, you increase your commitments abroad, but you don't increase the budget to match. We're being asked to do more and more on the front-line, with less than we had before. Now, if you're going to increase your commitments like that, you can't reduce the size of the GDP spend you have in defence. It doesn't work.

WASHINGTON

Tony Blair and George Bush hold talks this afternoon at the White House, a day after a high-powered cross-party group delivered a damning verdict on the prospects that existing policies might be successful in Iraq. The Iraq Study Group, which included the former Secretary of State, James Baker, described the situation in Iraq as "grave and deteriorating". Tony Blair is expected to announce he'll visit the Middle East again soon in order to accelerate the search for peace between Israel and the Palestinians.

AFGHAN

An opinion poll in Afghanistan suggests optimism about the country's future has fallen significantly in the past year, but a majority of Afghans overall still believe the country is heading in the right direction. The poll was carried out for the World Service of the BBC and ABC News in the United States. More than a thousand adults across Afghanistan were questioned. Here's our World Affairs Correspondent, Nick Childs:

CHILDS: Events of the last year - including the upsurge in violence, and worries about a resurgent Taleban - have clearly taken their toll on public confidence in Afghanistan. There's been a twenty-two per cent drop in the number of Afghans overall who think the country is heading in the right direction, and yet they are still a majority - fifty-five per cent. A similar proportion still thinks security is better than under the Taleban. But the picture is dramatically gloomier in the southern provinces of Helmand and Kandahar, the scene of intense fighting between Nato and Taleban forces. Now, only four out of ten people there think things are heading in the right direction, barely half the figure of a year ago.

ASBO

An investigation into Anti-Social Behaviour Orders has discovered many are not effective. The National Audit Office looked at more than two-hundred Asbos -- and found the majority were being breached. The watchdog says a cheaper option -- a letter from police -- is often more successful.

KNIFES

Figures obtained by BBC News cast doubt on the effectiveness of knife amnesties. An analysis by the Metropolitan Police shows that knife-related crime returned to its usual level shortly after the end of an amnesty earlier in the year. Michael Buchanan reports:

BUCHANAN: More than ninety-thousand knives were handed into police forces this summer during a five-week nationwide campaign, and the amnesty was declared a success by ministers. But an analysis of concurrent but longer eight-week amnesty by the Metropolitan Police between May and July appears to question the effectiveness of the operation. In the months leading up the amnesty, Scotland Yard says there were almost thirty-five knife-related offences daily in London, and for most of the amnesty period, that figure remained the same. Towards the end of the operation, and for several weeks thereafter, there was a small reduction in offences, but, by mid-August, the numbers had returned to their previous level. A spokesman for the Metropolitan Police say they always recognised that a knife amnesty on its own was of limited effectiveness in tackling knife crime, and that it needed to be used in conjunction with other initiatives.

CARBON

Housebuilders will today start planning for what the chancellor, Gordon Brown, has told them should be a carbon-free future. In one of the most surprising announcements in yesterday's pre-Budget report, Mr Brown said that "within ten years, every new home will be a zero-carbon home". He's offering a carrot -- exempting such properties from stamp duty. Our Business Correspondent, Nils Blythe, has been finding out more:

BLYTHE: According to a Treasury spokesman, what Gordon brown meant by a zero-carbon home is one that doesn't make an overall contribution to global warming; and that can be achieved by having solar panels or wind turbines that produce electricity. Of course, there will always be weather which means that the household will need to buy in power from the national grid. So to be zero-carbon, over the course of a year the house will have to sell more electricity to the grid on good days than it buys back. Experts say the technology for this does already exist, but only a handful of houses yet have it. House builders were surprised by the chancellor's announcement, and describe moving all new building to this standard as 'a challenge'.

SCHOOLS

Primary school performance tables for England show that the government missed its target in maths and English for eleven-year-olds this year. However, the tables do show an improvement in the results for maths and science from last year. Results in English remained the same.

ACEH

Oxfam says twenty-five-thousand families sent to emergency accommodation after the 2004 tsunami are unable to move out because of a lack of land rights. The charity says the absence of clear ownership, in the Indonesian province of Aceh, is holding up efforts to re-house families made homeless in the disaster. From Aceh, Lucy Williamson sent this report:

WILLIAMSON: According to the new research, land rights lie at the core of why twenty-five-thousand families are still living in emergency accommodation two years after the tsunami. Some remain homeless because the disaster destroyed their land or the paperwork which proved it belonged to them. But the majority had no paperwork at all, and relied on natural markers such as streams to demarcate their property - markers which were swept away. Others now in temporary accommodation were living in rented houses before the tsunami, or as squatters, building homes on land that didn't legally belong to them. Few aid agencies want to build on disputed land, and sorting out ownership rights in communities decimated by the disaster will take time.

NURSE

A nurse has been set free after a gunman held her hostage for more than an hour at Birmingham City Hospital. The man -- a patient -- had been demanding drugs. Police say an arrest has been made; the nurse is recovering from her ordeal.

ELDERLY

The leaders of forty-five local authorities have written an open letter warning they are facing an ever-growing crisis in care for the elderly. Writing in The Guardian, they say they are dealing with an increasing number of elderly people -- and funding has not kept pace with demand. More from our Social Affairs Correspondent, Alison Holt:

HOLT: The letter is signed by council leaders from authorities which serve both cities and rural areas across England. All say it's increasingly difficult to meet the demands for care for the elderly. The services they provide range from meals on wheels to home helps to residential and dementia care. The letter says ever-growing numbers of elderly people with complex needs, combined with a government grant that has failed to match money spent on other key areas, means services for the elderly are teetering on the brink. It concludes the present situation is unsustainable. But the Department of Health says funding for adult care services has increased, and that investment means many more people are getting the intensive support they need to continue to live at home.

LITVINENKO

The body of the former Russian agent, Alexander Litvenenko, is due to be buried today in a private ceremony in London. Detectives investigating his death have said they are treating it as murder.

MUSIC

More than four-thousand recording artists have signed an advertisement in this morning's Financial Times. The group -- including Eric Clapton and Dame Kiri te Kanawa -- are demanding what they describe as 'fair play' over copyright payments. Yesterday, a government report rejected the idea of extending copyright from fifty to ninety-five years. Here's our Media Correspondent, Torin Douglas:

DOUGLAS: This is a last-ditch attempt by thousands of musicians to win a battle they seem to have lost. The advertisement includes household names such as Katie Melua and U2 and those of little-known session singers and orchestral players. They're seeking parity with the United States, where the copyright period is ninety-five years, and claim that performers at all levels would benefit, not just superstars. But Andrew Gowers, the former Financial Times editor, who led the review, said most recordings don't last anything like fifty years, and a change would put up costs, while giving little public benefit.