The British government will have to start teaching the public too if it is to keep open the

The British government will have to start teaching the public too, if it is to keep open the option of joining up. In the run-up to the launch, schoolbooks will have to be re-written and the school curriculum changed so children learn about the Euro.Organisations for the blind insist that the new coins should be easily identifiable by touch. Aid groups will be taught how to take old people through the change.What will the notes and coins look like? Will the Queen's head stay?Experts are still working on the design. In many ways the change- over will be similar to Britain's decimalisation in 1971.Where will I get information? Will there be extra help for children, the elderly and the disabled?Perhaps the biggest education campaign in history will be launched to teach people about the single currency. Television will play a leading part.The European Commission is already planning the campaign and member states will get geared up soon.

On present rates, the Euro will equal about 83p.You will have to learn to calculate prices of groceries and other everyday purchases in Euros. During the six-month hand-over period, shops will probably have to display prices in Euros as well as pounds and pence, to help people make comparisons about values. Hence, they say, the origin of the legend of Lot's wife.The cities of the plain, the geologists believe, were important trading hubs involved in the salt and the mining of bitumen, a tarry precursor to oil. So, in modern terms, Gomorrah was in the oil business and Sodom was in marketing.. When will I be using the Euro? Although the launch of monetary union is set for 1 January 1999, with the locking of exchange rates, the public will not see the colour of their new money until 2002. Euro notes and coins will start to circulate in January 2002. After 1 July 2002 the pound will not be legal tender and only the Euro will be used. How will I understand prices in the shops once the Euro comes in?The value of the Euro will equal the value of one Ecu, which is Europe's present basket currency.

It is likely there will be a six-month period in which Euros will be used in tandem with existing national notes and coins. Lot, with his wife and daughters, fled the city the next morning, urged by the angels not to look back."Then the LORD rained on Sodom and Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the LORD out of heaven; and he overthrew those cities, and all the valley, and all the inhabitants of the cities, and what grew on the ground. But Lot's wife behind him looked back, and she became a pillar of salt."The name of Sodom thus became the epitome of evil and decadence in the Bible; and the sin of Sodom identified with homosexuality, possibly because Lot, the Sodomite made good, was later seduced by both his daughters in turn, and their offspring went on to found numerous tribes.In an article in the Quarterly Journal of Engineering Geology, two British geologists, Graham Harris and Anthony Beardow, have analysed soil and rock from the Lisan peninsula, which juts into the Dead Sea, and found them to be full of bitumen, and made of rock types which will liquefy in a sufficiently large earthquake.According to the geologists, the bitumen pits, which are also mentioned in Genesis, might burst into flames in an earthquake, which would also throw the waves of the Dead Sea into such confusion that salt-floes could rear up and form a momentary shape of a woman looking back at the cataclysm. ANDREW BROWN Religious Affairs Correspondent British geologists claim to have solved two of the most perplexing problems of Biblical scholarship: why did Lot's wife turn into a pillar of salt, and what exactly were the inhabitants of Gomorrah up to?According to the book of Genesis, Sodom was destroyed by God in a rain of brimstone from heaven after its inhabitants had attempted to gang- rape two angels who were staying there with a righteous man named Lot, and had refused Lot's counter offer of two virgin daughters. He said he would deal with matters of compensation in January after agreement is reached over figures.. Heighes sold his home for pounds 149,000 and, with an inheritance, had pounds 195,000 available for compensation.The judge told Heighes he had "grossly abused" the trust shown in him. Heighes was a member of the Christ Church College library and admits he abused the privilege to which he had access." He added that Blackwell's and Sotheby's are trying to recover the books they sold on Heighes's behalf.Patrick Eccles, defending, told the court Heighes felt "a genuine sense of shame and personal guilt" He said the don had used the money to pay off his mortgage.

Blackwell's sold it on after making a pounds 4,000 profit and Mr McGeorge said it was now in the United States and unlikely to return. Heighes admitted 12 charges of theft and obtaining property by deception and asked for 113 other offences to be considered.When Judge Francis Allen said it was extraordinary for Blackwell's to have bought some of the books, Mr McGeorge replied: "They were dealing with a man of eminence and respectability and a trustworthy academic. He told the dealer they had come from his late grandfather's collection.The court heard Heighes picked up the proceeds from six master works. Among them was a 1690 John Locke treatise and the rare Halley's Catalogus Stelliarum Australium.