Global Economics-15

The EU's "Eastern Partnership" initiative aims to forge closer ties with countries that Russia still sees as part of its sphere of influence - Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine.

It was proposed last year by Poland and Sweden, not only to boost the EU's fairly ineffectual "neighbourhood" policy, but also to act as a counterweight to the Mediterranean Union, launched with great fanfare by France last year to bring countries like Morocco and Egypt closer to the EU.

One word increasingly mentioned by diplomats when they talk about the EU's eastern neighbours is "instability". The war between Russia and Georgia last summer and the Russia-Ukraine energy row, which led to gas cuts to Europe in the depth of winter, have fuelled EU concern about events on the bloc's eastern borders.

More recently there was violent anti-government unrest in Moldova after a disputed election, and just this week an attempted army mutiny in Georgia.

The economic crisis, currently hurting the former Soviet Union as much as any other region in the world, only compounds those concerns. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8035710.stm>

Nearly double the size of the book giant's existing e-reader, Amazon's wireless Kindle DX has adopted a tabloid-like format for ease of reading newspapers and magazines such as The New York Times and the Washington Post which have announced they will launch pilots editions on Kindle DX this summer.

Although others, most notably the Japanese and the Dutch, have trials underway that publish tabloid-size digital editions for other handheld e-reader devices, Amazon with its mighty marketing clout represents the first mainstream commercial stab at the market.

Increased graphics resolution and the larger size of the tablet-like, the $489 Kindle DX is also a departure from previous e-readers on the market, although Japan's Fujitsu has a similar sized colour reader on the market for twice the price.

"Cookbooks, computer books, and textbooks - anything highly formatted -shine on the Kindle DX," claims Jeff Bezos, Amazon.com Founder and CEO underlining the new Kindle's purported better handling of detail and graphics.

Amazon already has a hit on its hands with the Kindle 2. The same heft as a paperback, weighing about eight ounces, such e-ink readers are basically handheld screens on which you can read words page by page reasonably comfortably.

Amazon says it has already sold more than 500,000 of its $359 Kindle e-readers, which buyers use mostly as a portable library downloading print media via a wireless connection.

The new Kindle DX, like other popular e-readers such as the Sony reader, employs "e-ink" technology that far enhances the reading of digitized print. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8037058.stm>

Recent economic data prompted some analysts to suggest it might already have reached the bottom of the current economic cycle. Many are expecting a recovery in the second half of the year.

If China's economy starts to recover earlier than those in other countries, it could challenge the assumptions we make about the world economic order.

Chinese companies, which are more cash rich than big corporations in some other countries, and with financial support from the government, have been scouring the globe for resources for some time now.

The global economic turmoil has offered them new opportunities to pick up under-valued assets elsewhere.

And yet this is a country that still receives hundreds of millions of dollars in aid from Western countries.

How should it be treated by the rest of the world then, as a "rich" country or a "poor" country, as one that needs to be helped or one whose economic strength we should fear?

From the top of Shanghai's tallest building, the World Financial Centre, tourists - most of them Chinese - gaze down on the city below them.

Rapid development in the past few years has created a skyline to rival that of Hong Kong's, New York's or Tokyo's.

Viewed from this height, Shanghai seems to be a rich, sophisticated, modern metropolis - and to a certain extent it is.

But at the foot of the tower it's a different story. You notice the pollution and the noise, the dirt and the traffic congestion.

Close up, Chinese cities are not always so pleasant. This country is in a hurry to remake itself, and laws to control construction and development are sometimes not well enforced here.

Andy Tsieh, who describes himself as an "independent" economist, argues that China is no longer a poor country.

"In terms of trade, China is the largest trading nation in the world today," he points out.

"In terms of gross domestic product (GDP), China is likely to surpass Japan as the number two world economy either this year or next year."

But he accepts that China's size complicates matters, making it harder to judge how to deal fairly with the Chinese.

"China's not a normal country - it's a huge empire. It's like the first world, the second world and the third world co-exist together inside China.

The Federal Trade Commission is looking at a possible breach of antitrust laws given Mr Schmidt's directorships at Google and Apple.

Both companies have competing browsers and phone operating systems, leading to possible conflicts of interest.

But Mr Schmidt told reporters: "If there are issues on competitiveness, I recuse myself."

He also said that it is well established that he leaves the boardroom whenever the discussion has anything to do with the iPhone.

That is the main finding of the so-called "stress tests" to see if the banks have sufficient capital to cope should the recession worsen.

"Our hope with today's actions is that banks are going to be able to get back to the business of banking," said US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner.

Other banks that need more money include Wells Fargo, which is said to require $13.7bn, and GMAC, the financial arm of General Motors, which needs $11.5bn.

Citigroup requires an additional $5.5bn of funds, and Morgan Stanley has been told to find $1.8bn.

Some of the banks have already indicated how they intend to raise the money they need by private means such as asset sales, rather than having to secure any additional government loans. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/8039096.stm>

April's figure was better than the 600,000 economists were expecting and below March's revised 699,000 jobs.

The Labor Department said that the unemployment rate rose to 8.9%, its highest level since 1983 and up from 8.5% in March.

The data showed job losses across most sectors of the economy, although hiring picked up in education, health services and government.

Chris Rupkey, an economist at Bank of Tokyo Mitsubishi said the economy may have reached a turning point and the labour market could begin to improve.

"The economy doesn't turn on a dime but it does look as if the pace of job losses is starting to slow from the turn of the year," Mr Rupkey said.

"You can make the case that the panic layoffs that we saw at the turn of the year are starting to ease."

There have been some signs that the worst of the recession in the US may be over.

Consumer spending, which plunged in the last half of 2008, grew in the first quarter of this year and some recent data on the housing market has been more upbeat.

The head of the US central bank, Ben Bernanke, has said he expects the recession to end this year unless there is a major financial setback.

But others are less optimistic and predict that unemployment will decline further.

"It's a terrible number but an improvement relative to the very terrible numbers we had before," said Jay Mueller, senior portfolio manager at Wells Capital Management.

The White House has asked Norman Augustine, a former aerospace industry executive, to lead a review of Nasa's manned activities and report by August.

The US space agency is due to retire its shuttles next year and is working on a new crew transportation system, to be introduced in about 2014-15.

Work on the Orion capsule and its Ares launcher was initiated in 2005, following a directive the previous year from President Bush in his Vision for Space Exploration.

The intention was to give the US a crew-carrier and rocket technology that could go beyond low-Earth orbit to more distant targets, back to the Moon and further.

The Augustine panel will now assess whether this is the correct strategy. The White House's chief scientist, John Holdren, said "it would be only prudent" to review the human spaceflight programme given the scale of its ambition and "the significant investment of both funds and scientific capital".

Nasa is currently spending more than $250m (190m euros; £170m) a month on replacement activities, which go under the heading of the Constellation programme.

The expenditure will continue through the review. The agency is preparing to launch a test rocket that incorporates key features of the new Ares vehicle.

In a statement, the agency said: "The Review of United States Human Spaceflight Plans will examine Nasa development programmes and possible alternatives.

"The goal is to provide options that will ensure the nation's human spaceflight programme remains safe, innovative and affordable in the years following the space shuttle's retirement."

Critics have asked questions about the technical scope of Constellation and Nasa's ability to manage its cost. Some have called for the Ares launchers to be scrapped in favour of adapting existing rockets.

The announcement of the review came as Nasa's proposed budget for the financial year 2010 was given as $18.69bn.

This represents a $903.6m, or 5%, increase on the 2009 budget request. All up, President Obama is looking to add an additional to $2bn to Nasa's budget line for 2009 and 2010.

By way of comparison, the European Space Agency spends just over 3bn euros ($4bn; £2.7bn) a year on its activities.

President Obama has yet to name a Nasa administrator. Christopher Scolese continues to lead the agency in an acting capacity.

Speaking about the human spaceflight review, Mr Scolese told the Associated Press: "Clearly if we are on the wrong path, we should change. If you are asking me if I think we're on the wrong path, no, I don't." <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_depth/8039835.stm>

As jets and helicopters pounded targets in the valley, the UN said it was threatening to become one of the world's biggest displacement crises.

The army says its "full-scale" assault had killed more than 170 militants in 24 hours, with the loss of 10 troops.

Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi told the BBC the purpose of the offensive was to "cleanse the area from insurgency and defeat militancy". <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/8039767.stm>

Just 12 months ago this was still a country in great shape. It had over the preceding decade escaped from the shadow of Britain. It had reversed centuries of emigration, each departure an indictment of a failing economy.

It had become a successful, self-confident country, sucking in investment and labour, sending out its best, not as economic refugees but as advertisements for a vibrant modern country that had - shock, horror - outpaced its neighbour and one-time master.

It had even delighted in derailing the EU's best-laid plans, rejecting the Lisbon Treaty by a healthy margin on a decent turnout.

Now, as they did almost a year ago in that treaty referendum, placards battle for voters' attention on lampposts across the land.

But the economic bubble has burst with a vengeance; construction is at a standstill, house prices have slumped, unemployment is at 11.4% and rising very fast and once again citizens are looking abroad for work.

So if anyone is looking for any debate about anything other than the economy as European elections draw near, look elsewhere.

And the debate - such as it is - about the relationship with Europe is completely overshadowed by anguished discussion of the Lisbon Treaty. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8039493.stm>

Bank of America said it planned to sell assets and raise capital to secure the $33.9bn it needs.

On Thursday, the US Treasury said that 10 of America's 19 largest banks needed to raise a combined total of $74.6bn of extra funds.

That was the main finding of the so-called "stress tests" which were carried out to see if the banks had sufficient capital to cope should the recession worsen.

The banks that require extra capital have been given until 8 June to finalise their plans to do so, and get them approved by regulators.

Separately, Fannie Mae, the mortgage finance company, has said it needs an extra $19bn in government aid after reporting a loss of $23.2bn for the first quarter. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/8040443.stm>

The Pope will go to sites important to Christians, Muslims and Jews, in Jordan, Israel and the West Bank.

But whatever the Pope's intentions, in each place his hosts will have practical ambitions for his visit.

Jordan is completely open about one of its principal aims for this, the first visit by a pope for nine years.

It wants a greater share of the huge international market in Christian tourism and more visits by some of the 150 million Christians who travel as pilgrims each year.

The Pope's visit is expected to generate more than $50m (£33m) for Israel, and trips by Christians there have increased by almost a fifth since Pope John Paul's visit in 2000. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/8041084.stm>

A private members bill going through the House of Lords is calling for it to be mandatory for web retailers to adopt age verification systems.

The bill on age-checking has the backing of charities who say it is too easy for children to buy alcohol, knives and violent video games online.

But video sites such as YouTube could be best enjoyed from a comfortable sofa rather than hunched over a computer.

The option to kick back and let the net come to the TV screen has been made possible by a range of devices from handheld games consoles using wi-fi to mobile phones.

Now a couple of TV manufacturers have built web functionality into some of their new TV sets - with an ethernet cable or wi-fi dongle replacing the more conventional aerial.

Samsung partnered with Yahoo to offer its customers widgets which guide them to specially constructed mini sites for weather updates, headline news feeds and picture-sharing site Flickr.

These widgets have been specially developed for use with this service. In the pipeline are far more widgets that can handle such things as video streams.

The content itself is optimised for viewing on a TV and is selected via a simple scrolling interface accessed using the remote control.

Sony has followed a similar route with its AppliCast feature. This means that once an ethernet cable connects a TV to a phone line, data from the web can also be accessed via the remote control.

Madame Genis shouts a greeting in her strong Catalan accent as she strides past my house.

A sunburned 75-year-old, she is clad, as always, in her working gear of an ancient blue and white checked pinafore and an old pair of men's leather boots.

She carries a sharp knife - not for repelling attackers, or even the wild boar which roam these hills - but for cutting reeds to support the runner beans she will plant now spring has come at last.

She never buys anything if she can grow it herself or forage for it, and she knows where to find wild asparagus and strawberries.

She chats to her hens in a mix of Catalan and French. They reward her with plenty of eggs.

Madame Genis' immaculately neat patch of land produces enough vegetables for her and her son.

Any surplus is swapped for a pot of honey with a beekeeping neighbour, or sold off from a box outside her front gate.

Land which is not planted with vegetables is piled high with what looks to me like junk, but which she insists might come in handy - rusty oil drums, old metal bed frames and ancient gateposts.

Sir Allen Stanford, who is accused of bank fraud, is the subject of an investigation by the BBC's Panorama.

Sources told Panorama that if he was a paid anti-drug agency informer, that could explain why a 2006 probe into his financial dealings was quietly dropped.

Sir Allen vigorously denies allegations of financial wrongdoing, despite a massive shortfall in his bank's assets.

But the British receiver of his failed Stanford International Bank - based in Antigua - told Panorama that the books clearly show the deficit.

Of the $7.2bn (£4.8bn) in deposits claimed by the bank, only $500m (£331m) has been traced.

The $6.7bn (£4.4bn) black hole in Sir Allen's off-shore bank affects 28,000 depositors - 200 of whom are British, who have collectively lost $80m (£53m) - and raises serious questions for the British Foreign Office and the American authorities.

Secret documents seen by Panorama show both governments knew in 1990 that the Texan was a former bankrupt and his first bank was suspected of involvement with Latin American money-launderers.

In 1999, both the British and the Americans were aware of the facts surrounding a cheque for $3.1m (£2.05m) that Sir Allen paid to the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).

It was drug money originally paid in to Stanford International Bank by agents acting for a feared Mexican drug lord known as the 'Lord of the Heavens'.

The cheque was proof that Stanford International Bank had been used to launder Mexican drug money - whether or not Sir Allen knew it at the time. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/8029494.stm>

Groups representing hospitals, doctors, drug companies and insurance firms are due to confirm their intention to slash spending over the next decade.

The government's planned reforms include medical insurance for the 46 million Americans currently without it.

Confirming the deal with the health industry, Mr Obama is expected to tell Americans that "reform is not a necessity that can be postponed, but a necessity that cannot wait".

The six industry groups are due to formally deliver a letter to the president outlining their voluntary agreement to cut spending increases by 1.5% a year until 2019.

The White House believes it could eventually save families as much as $2,500 a year.

"I don't think there can be a more significant step to help struggling families and the federal budget," a senior administration official was quoted by the Washington Post as saying on Sunday.

Signatories to the deal include America's Health Insurance Plans, the American Medical Association, the American Hospital Association, the Service Employees International Union and the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America.

They were among the harshest critics of a similar health reform plan set out by President Bill Clinton in 1993.

But there is a sense among some industry groups that now may be the best time to act before public opinion, fuelled by anger over costs, turns against them, the Associated Press reports.

Obama administration officials predict the move will significantly boost momentum for the president's plans to get a reform package agreed this year.

Greece's data protection agency has banned Google from expanding its Street View service in the country, pending "additional information" from the firm.

Authorities want to know how long the images would be kept on Google's database and what measures it will take to make people aware of privacy rights.

A similar street mapping service, run by local ISP Kapou, was also suspended for the same reason.

In a statement, Google said that it had not seen the full details of the The Hellenic Data Protection Authority's request, but had taken steps to protect people's privacy.

"Google takes privacy very seriously, and that's why we have put in place a number of features, including the blurring of faces and licence plates, to ensure that Street View will respect local norms when it launches in Greece," the statement read.

"We have already spoken with the Hellenic Data Protection Authority to ensure that they understand the importance we place on protecting user privacy.

"Although that dialogue is ongoing, we believe that launching in Greece will offer enormous benefits to both Greek users and the people elsewhere who are interested in taking a virtual tour of some of its many tourist attractions."

First launched in the US two years ago, Street View has now covers nine countries, including the United Kingdom and Google wants to expand the service to cover all of Europe.

Users zoom in to a given location in Google Maps, and then drag the "Pegman" icon above the zoom bar on to a given street.

A picture view of that street appears, which users can control to get a 360-degree view of the area or to progress on street level, throughout the city.

Persistent illegal file-sharers should be cut off from the net, an alliance of UK creative industries will tell the government later.

The alliance wants the government to force internet service providers (ISPs) to disconnect users who ignore repeated warnings about sharing illegal content.

John Woodward, head of the UK Film Council, said illegal file-sharing was hurting film-making and risking jobs.

Mr Woodward said: "The growing threat of illegal P2P (peer to peer) file-sharing threatens [the creative industries], as films go unmade, DVD sales deteriorate and jobs are lost in production and distribution of content."

Nine creative bodies and five trade unions have signed a joint statement asking the government to force ISPs into banning users caught sharing illegally. It marks a significant hardening of their stance on the role of ISPs, which in the past has focused on education and awareness.

The creative industries, including the British Phonographic Industry and the Federation Against Copyright Theft, have issued a set of "urgent recommendations" that they want to be included in the government's Digital Britain manifesto.

They argue that many jobs in the 800,000-strong sectors of film, TV, music, and software are threatened by illegal file-sharing.

However, the Internet Services Providers' Association (Ispa) - a trade body that represents ISP's - said that users could challenge disconnections through the courts and, at present, the technology available for monitoring and detecting illegal sharers was not of a standard "where they would be admissible as evidence in court".

Instead, Ispa said that rights holders needed to rewrite their licensing agreements, to take account of "new models of online content distribution".

In a statement, Ispa's secretary general, Nicholas Lansman, said: "Ispa recognises that there is a problem with unlawful P2P file sharing, but it is important to recognise that a major part of the solution lies in licensing reform and the availability of legal content online."

Last year, the UK government told ISPs to take concrete steps to curb illegal downloads or face legal sanctions, but shied away from legislation that would force ISPs to ban repeat offenders.

Some advocate taking antioxidants like vitamin C and E to help protect the body from harmful chemical by-products it creates in breaking into a sweat.

But German scientists now believe these "free radicals" may actually be good for us and even buffer against diabetes, PNAS reports.

It is thought that antioxidant vitamins may be able to prevent damage to the body's tissues called "oxidative stress" by eliminating the free radicals which are said to cause it.

This damage has been implicated in several major diseases including cancer and heart disease as well as normal ageing.

But Dr Michael Ristow, of the University of Jena, and his team have shown free radicals may have a positive effect on the body by increasing its sensitivity to insulin - something that is lost in type 2 diabetes.

Venezuelan officials accompanied by soldiers have seized "temporary" control of a US-owned pasta producer.

Venezuela says the plant, owned by the big US firm Cargill, had violated regulations on price controls intended to guarantee cheap food for the poor.

The move further increases President Hugo Chavez's hold on the economy, after a series of recent take-overs of private and foreign-owned businesses.

Deputy Food Minister Rafael Coronado said the government would run the factory for 90 days, and would reassess the situation after that.

He said it has not been producing sufficient quantities of a type of pasta sold at cheap, government-established prices.

A rice mill owned by Cargill was taken over earlier this year, on the grounds that it was not producing rice at government-set prices.

Cargill had said it did not break the government's pricing rules on rice because the mill did not produce the plain rice which is regulated.

Venezuela has set quotas and prices for 12 basic foods including rice, powdered milk, cheese and tomato sauce.

Under the measure, 80% of all rice produced must be basic white rice. The measure also includes 95% of all cooking oil, coffee and sugar.

Last week Mr Chavez sent troops to take over oil service companies including hundreds of supply boats, and two American owned gas facilities.

The economies of the 16 countries that make up the eurozone declined by 2.5% in the first three months of 2009, the EU's statistics agency Eurostat said.

Analysts had forecast a drop of only 2%. A sharp fall in German exports was a key factor in the decline.

The German economy suffered its largest contraction since reunification, falling 3.8% in the first quarter.

Eurostat also said that consumer price inflation in the eurozone remained steady at 0.6% in April.

Thousands of workers from across the UK are taking part in a protest march in Birmingham to call on the government to "halt the jobs crisis".

The demonstration, organised by the Unite union, is part of a campaign to press ministers to do more to help manufacturers weather the recession.

Unite chose to hold the rally in Birmingham as almost one-in-10 people in the West Midlands is now unemployed.

He joined workers from firms hit by the recession, including steel giant Corus and car companies Vauxhall and Jaguar Land Rover, which has plants in Gaydon in Warwickshire, Castle Bromwich, Coventry and Solihull in the West Midlands and Halewood in Merseyside.

Workers from Corus-owned Teesside Cast Products in Redcar, where up to 2,000 jobs are under threat, are among those at the march.

Organisers say 5,000 people, many carrying red Unite flags and banners of union branches from across the country, are at the procession. The police have not given a figure.

Britain trades on a mythical reputation of democracy. The more you dig into the reality, the less you believe that myth.

Some say - always the comfortably off, the privileged and elite - that the exposure of MPs expenses has fundamentally damaged British democracy. That the focus on claims for 5p Ikea bags, manure, moats and bathplugs is prurient, and more about public curiosity than public interest.

Stephen Fry calls the scandal a "rather tedious bourgeois obsession" that is "really not that important. It's a journalistic made-up frenzy."

It's only the bourgeois who think that. And if it's a frenzy, then it's one entirely created by the Commons. Officials had the chance to publish the information maturely back in October 2008 which was when this full disclosure of MPs' second homes allowances was meant to take place.

Their continued suppression has given an unbearably compelling value to the claims. Secrecy has a tendency to do that. It's always the clubs we can't get into that seem the most glamorous. Once we're in we wonder what all the fuss was about.

So it is with MPs' expenses. The continued exclusion of the public has made the public very, very interested in this material.

Perhaps the editor of the Daily Telegraph and I should thank Speaker Michael Martin. If it hadn't been for his stubborn foot-dragging and feudal attitude to constituents' right to know, we wouldn't have had such fun the past week.

But let's not forget this is not just about chandeliers and helipads. The High Court judges themselves said this in their ruling: "We have no doubt that the public interest is at stake. We are not here dealing with idle gossip, or public curiosity about what in truth are trivialities.

"The expenditure of public money through the payment of MPs' salaries and allowances is a matter of direct and reasonable interest to taxpayers. They are obliged to pay their taxes at whatever level and on whatever basis the legislature may decide, in part at least to fund the legislative process." <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/8051577.stm>

Google apologised for what it called a "traffic jam" that resulted in slow service or even interruption on the internet search giant's main page.

Gmail and Google's news site were also reported as "sluggish" or unavailable to millions of users for about an hour.

"An error in one of our systems caused us to direct some of our traffic through Asia," said Urs Hoelzle, a spokesman for the company.

"As a result, about 14% of our users experienced slow services or even interruptions," he said. "We've been working hard to make our services ultrafast and 'always on', so it's especially embarrassing when a glitch like this one happens.

"We're very sorry that it happened, and you can be sure that we'll be working even harder to make sure that a similar problem won't happen again," said Mr Hoelzle, Google's senior vice president of operations.

Google's "efforts to have some of their services, in particular their apps, and to a less extent Gmail, treated as serious business services that one can use instead of locally installed and maintained apps could be seriously undermined by a major outage like that," said Ezra Gottheil, an analyst with Technology Business Research.

"This is bad news for Google's efforts to build up Apps, and to a less extent, Gmail, as critical business tools. If the mighty Google can stumble, then who can be trusted?" Mr Gottheil told Computerworld.com

Other industry watchers say the interruption might cause businesses to reconsider using these services.

"Maybe companies that are thinking about a cloud strategy - such as Google Apps - need to look into backup clouds" said Sam Diaz, a senior editor at technology news site ZDNet.

On the microblogging service Twitter the service failure became a major topic of discussion.

"Funny how something we lived without for the longest time is suddenly something we can't live without," tweeted simonnet.

While k_sasha tweeted "Sympathies to the Google servers. Happens to everyone. But this is why the world needs more than one search engine."

Napolebsis posted "The Google outage endorses my recent decision to move some services back to offline apps."

In February 2009, Google's Gmail service experienced a breakdown leaving millions of people worldwide without access to the free web-based e-mail service for a few hours.

India's Congress party is holding meetings to decide on its ruling coalition, a day after its decisive victory in the general election.

With all but two results declared, the Congress-led alliance is projected to win 260 seats with the BJP on 157.

The Third Front fell apart, with its prime movers, the leftists, suffering a huge defeat.

The focus now moves to the cabinet, with PM Manmohan Singh having already stressed the importance of youth.

He has said he hopes to persuade the rising star of the Nehru dynasty - Rahul Gandhi - to join the cabinet.

Mr Gandhi's decision for Congress to go it alone in India's most politically important state - Uttar Pradesh - and the ease of his campaigning style have won many plaudits.

Congress leaders have already been meeting smaller parties to gain the few seats of support needed to form a workable coalition.

US President Barack Obama said the elections had strengthened India's "vibrant democracy" and that the US would work to "enhance the warm partnership between our two countries". <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/8054077.stm>

Climate change, environmental degradation and badly planned urban development are more likely to affect populations around the world.

The report warns that millions of lives are in jeopardy because proper risk assessment is rarely carried out, particularly in developing countries.

The UN says money spent on risk reduction is a cost-effective way to reduce deaths and injuries.

The Asian tsunami of 2004, or last year's earthquake in China are natural phenomenon which can't be prevented.

But the Global Assessment on Disaster Risk Reduction says there is a lot we can do to reduce our own risk - the problem is, we aren't doing it.

We already know that climate change means more extreme weather events - but the UN's Assistant Secretary General Margareta Wahlstrom says most countries have failed to look at how that will affect their own towns and cities.

"We don't know enough of the impact of climate change at local level," she explained.

"We know a lot about the global parameters but how it is going to play out in local communities, we don't have enough research, knowledge and scientific basis for that yet."

The report highlights some staggering differences in risk assessment and reduction between rich and poor countries.

Japan and the Philippines for example have equal exposure to tropical cyclones - but for every one death in Japan, 17 people die in the Philippines.

This report is aimed not at the emergency services, but at governments and their planning and finance ministers.

North Korea has said it is cancelling all contracts with South Korea at a joint industrial complex, raising further tensions on the peninsula.

South Korea must accept the new rules unconditionally or leave the Kaesong plant, said the North in a statement.

The move came just hours after Seoul requested fresh talks over the Kaesong industrial plant, which is a big source of income for the sanction-hit North.

Some 38,000 North Koreans are employed at more than 100 South Korean firms operating at the border complex.

Pyongyang says it wants to draw up its own regulations on wages and taxes for its workers, and renegotiate land lease terms.

In April, rare economic talks about the plant ended without agreement after just 22 minutes.

"This is a measure that fundamentally threatens the stability of the Kaesong complex, and it is not acceptable at all," said a Unification Ministry spokesman.

"It is irresponsible for the North to say that [firms] should leave unless they unconditionally accept its measure."

The move also casts doubt on the release of a South Korean worker at the complex who was arrested in March for allegedly criticising the North's government. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8051447.stm>

Plans for a tunnel linking Bolivia to the Pacific Ocean have been unveiled by three architects who say it could put an end to a 130 year-old dispute between the landlocked country and its neighbour, Chile.

The three Chilean architects claim the tunnel would allow Bolivia to regain access to the sea since it was defeated by Chile in the Pacific War in 1879.

This has been one of Bolivia's main demands for years, and is still strongly voiced by current President Evo Morales.

The 150km (93 miles) tunnel would run from the Bolivian border to an artificial island created in the Pacific Ocean from earth dug to build the tunnel.

The Chilean Foreign Minister, Mariano Fernandez, has given the green light to further studies into the project, saying that Chile "is open to all suggestions that foster Latin American integration".

The plan was proposed by Chilean architects Carlos Martner, Fernando Castillo Velasco and Humberto Eliash.

Mr Eliash, the youngest of the three men, told the BBC that the idea came from an "informal chat" with his two colleagues, both of whom are famous architects in Chile.

"Poets say that we must build a bridge between Bolivia and the Pacific that jumps over Chile. We wanted to see if it could work in reality," he says.

Long tunnels are being planned around the world to connect places such as Russia and the US (through the Bering Strait), China and Taiwan, Tunisia and Sicily as well as Spain and Morocco, he adds.

"There is little doubt that the technical challenges can be solved. I think the economic problems can also be sorted out. The only barriers to overcome are political," he says.

But those political hurdles are huge in one of the few regions in South America where territorial disputes are still alive.

According to the plan, the tunnel would run under the so-called Line of Concord which separates Chile and Peru.

The reason, the architects say, is that this is an area free of mines or cables which could potentially complicate the project.

And there are doubts about whether there would be the political will at a time when Peru and Bolivia are arguing about Peru's decision to grant asylum to former opposition leaders from Bolivia.

In addition, the artificial island would be created in waters claimed both by Peru and Chile.

And both countries have recently taken a row over coastal waters to the International Court of Justice in The Hague.

However the architects believe this is another reason for Bolivia, Peru and Chile to agree on the project.

Chile and Peru would have to agree that Bolivia would have sovereignty over the tunnel, Mr Eliash says. And that in turn would open up discussions about the complex issues of immigration and security.

But the architect believes that other examples of tunnels linking different countries around the world have forced governments to update their view on these issues.

China's first sex theme park, aimed at improving both the sex education and the sex life of its visitors, has been torn down before it even opened.

The owners were "interested only in profiting from sensationalism," the China Daily reported one official said.

Due to open in Chongqing in October, Love Land was to have included displays of giant genitalia, naked bodies and an exhibition on the history of sex.

The officials called the planned park "vulgar, ill-minded and misleading", said China Daily.

"Sex is a taboo subject in China but people really need to have more access to information about it," the park's manager, Lu Xiaoqing told the China Daily state newspaper before the park was demolished.

"We are building the park for the good of the public. I have found that the majority of people support my idea, but I have to pay attention and not make the park look vulgar and nasty."

Sweden's Ikea has useful lessons for EU politicians in managing diversity, the BBC's Jonny Dymond reports, as he tours the continent ahead of next month's European elections.

Sweden is such a delightful place, it seems desperately unfair to focus on just one of their many gifts to the world.

But the question must be asked: has Ikea, the Swedish home furnishings-to-meatballs retail behemoth, done more to unify Europe than the European Parliament?

Perhaps that's the wrong way to phrase the question. Perhaps it should be: how does Ikea manage to unify Europeans around its brand and its products, where the parliament so often fails to do so?

The journey begins in a bedroom display unit on the first floor of an Ikea in Warrington, north-west England. It is situated aptly enough on Europa Boulevard and was the start of Britain's affair with the chain.

Perched on one of the beds are two Ikea "superfans", mother and daughter Annamaria and Nina Roberts.

They liked the display rooms so much that they bought them in their entirety, beds, bookcases, bedspreads, the lot - one for Nina and a different one for her sister. They chatter enthusiastically about how much they like the way the store gives them ideas for how to do up their house.

I ask them about the European Parliament elections. Neither of them plans to vote.

"I have to say that the European Parliament is something that I have no great knowledge of," say Annamaria. "I know of its existence, but I don't think that they have an impact on me personally."

"Like my Mum," echoes Nina, "I don't know who my MEP is, and how it affects me I don't really know".

A web tool hailed as a significant rival to search giant Google has gone live to the public.

Wolfram Alpha is called a computation knowledge engine rather than a search engine and wants to change the way people use online data.

It aims to give people direct answers to queries rather than send them to other sites where they may find what they are seeking.

Wolfram Alpha was unveiled in late April and since then has been publicly demonstrated and some people have had a chance to run queries through it.

Typically the results it returns are annotated pages of data rather than a simple list of other sites that might help resolve a user's query.

For example, if asked about the weather in Manchester it would present a graph of average temperatures, rainfall and other salient data.

The computational horsepower behind the main site works out answers to question as they are put by grabbing data from databases and consulting feeds of relevant information.

Wolfram Alpha can be asked known facts, such as the height of mountains, or be asked to generate new information such as up to date figures for a nation's GDP.

It can also handle complicated mathematical queries, plot statistics and produce charts of natural events.

The data it consults is chosen and managed by staff at Wolfram Research who ensure it can be displayed by the system. Behind the scenes Wolfram Alpha has about 10,000 CPUs spread across five data centres that it draws on when generating answers.

During a demonstration at Harvard University's Berkman Center for Internet and Society, Dr Wolfram said: "Our goal is to make expert knowledge accessible to anyone, anywhere, anytime." <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8052798.stm>

Scientists say they have begun to crack the genetic code that helps determine when a girl becomes a woman.

A UK-led team located two genes on chromosomes six and nine that appear to strongly influence the age at which menstruation starts.

The Nature Genetics study also provides a clue for why girls who are shorter and fatter tend to get their periods months earlier than classmates.

A second paper, published in the same journal, also concludes that one of the two genes highlighted by the first study plays a key role in the timing of puberty in both girls and boys.

Reproductive lifespan is closely linked to the risk of developing conditions such as heart disease, breast cancer and osteoporosis.

It is thought that the female sex hormone oestrogen - produced at higher rates during a woman's reproductive life - raises the risk of these diseases.

Held captive for months, job applicants refused rescue

Applicable Laws on Illegal Recruitment:

Presidential Decree No. 442
Articles 38 of the Philippine Labor Code"Art. 38. Illegal Recruitment. — (a) Any recruitment activities, including the prohibited practices enumerated under Article 34 of this Code, to be undertaken by non-licensees or non-holders of authority shall be deemed illegal and punishable under Article 39 of this Code. The Ministry of Labor and Employment or any law enforcement officers may initiate complaints under this Article.

Republic Act No. 9208
Anti-Trafficking in Persons Act of 2003"...the State shall give highest priority to the enactment of measures and development of programs that will...eliminate trafficking in persons, and mitigate pressures for involuntary migration and servitude of persons, not only to support trafficked persons but more importantly, to ensure their recovery, rehabilitation and reintegration into the mainstream of society."

Supreme Court Decisions“There is illegal recruitment when one purports to have the ability to send a worker abroad though without authority or license to do so" (Pp vs Villas, 277 SCRA 391)
“It is the lack of necessary license or authority that renders the recruitment activity unlawful or criminal." (Pp vs Borromeo, 305 SCRA 180)
“Failure of the complainants to ask for the receipts for the fees they paid, x x x, is not fatal to their case if they are able to duly prove by their testimonies the involvement of the accused in the recruitment process." (People vs. Comia, 136 SCRA 185)

About five hundred women were virtually held hostage in Manila, locked inside a decrepit six-story building, uncertain if the agency that recruited them would ever place them in jobs overseas.

But when government agents last week tried to rescue the illegally recruited job applicants, more than 400 declined to leave, still clinging to dwindling hopes that they would end up with dollar-earning work abroad.

Ninety seven of them did decide to go with their rescuers, telling the police stories of terrible living conditions and false promises made by a nationwide recruitment agency that the government had believed was "in good standing."

The Al-Alamia International Manpower Services Private Employment Agency had enticed the applicants from various parts of the country with offers to place them in overseas jobs as caregivers and domestic helpers in only two or three weeks.

But more than four months later, all of them were still locked inside the agency's "training facility" in San Andres, Manila and forced to use up their savings for their food and other expenses. They were told that they would be blacklisted with other recruitment agencies if they tried to leave.

Some of the applicants got desperate enough to contact the police, which mobilized the multisectoral Task Force Against Illegal Recruitment (Tfair) to conduct the rescue operation last June 16.

Even the seasoned task force members were surprised by the number of job applicants crammed into makeshift living quarters. “Nakakulong sila dun, hindi sila pinapalabas, naliligo sila ng sabay-sabay, pinagluluto sila, sila pa bumibili ng niluluto nila [They were locked up, they couldn’t go out, they had to bathe together, they were ordered to cook, and pay for whatever they would cook]," said police Senior Superintendent Gilbert Sosa, operations chief of the task force.

“Maraming gustong sumama pero sinasabihan daw kasi sila na iba-blacklist sila sa mga employer [Many wanted to come with us but couldn’t because they were told that they would be blacklisted with other employers]," said Sosa.

An agency 'in good standing'

Al-Alamia, a licensed recruitment agency with its main office in Ermita, Manila, has 12 regional branches nationwide, from Tuguegarao in the north to General Santos City in the south. GMANews.TV tried getting the side of Al-Alamia but was told that nobody of authority was available to speak for the agency as of posting time. Al-Alamia is owned by a Maria Dolores Elenany.

Elenany was not present at the training center when Tfair operatives raided it, said Sosa. “Nung time na yun, wala siya, yung lawyer lang yung nag-appear [During that time, she was not there, only her lawyer appeared]," he said, adding that the task force is preparing a case against her and her company.

“Malaki itong kumpanya na ito, parang one-stop shop ito eh, meron silang recruitment agency, meron silang training center, may assessment center [This is a big company. It’s like a one-stop shop – they have a recruitment agency, a training center and an assessment center]," Sosa said.

The agency recruited mostly women to work as domestic helpers, babysitters, drivers, and caregivers in countries like Kuwait and Qatar in the Middle East. Domestic helpers were supposed to get a monthly salary of US$200.

All 97 of those rescued executed complaint affidavits and promised not to withdraw, according to Sosa. More than half have returned to their home provinces, while the rest are still at a shelter maintained by the Visayas Forum Foundation, an NGO that assists human trafficking victims. The foundation declined a request to interview them over the phone.

A prosecutor has been assigned by the Department of Justice to assist the task force in pursuing the case. Chances are Al-Alamia will soon be delisted by the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA) as an agency in “good standing."

An uncommon nationality for illegal recruiter

These new victims add to the untold thousands, maybe millions, who have been cheated by overseas recruiters eager to cash in on a growing market of desperate job seekers.

Indicative of this veritable gold rush in illegal recruitment was not just the large number of victims in a single rescue operation, but the recent arrest in a separate case of a Briton, a nationality not previously known to be involved in this criminal activity.

The Tfair's Sosa identified the suspect as Steven Michael Randell, who has been accused of running a recruitment scam in the guise of a special student visa program.

Randell's Sawsee International Corporation and Smart Promotion also enticed applicants with high-paying jobs like chefs and nurses in the United States, Australia, United Kingdom, and New Zealand through their website.

According to the Sawsee website, the agency “was formed in 2004 and quickly established itself as a leading force in exchange programs and has been dedicated to the promotion of cultural understanding, academic development, as well as promoting educational enhancement."

But after an Analisa Ng, along with six others, complained that Sawsee was just ripping off applicants, the task force conducted an entrapment operation last June 11 at the agency’s Quezon City office.

“Ginawa niyang front ng kanilang recruitment activity ang pangako ng student visa na walang otoridad ng POEA [He made the promise of a student visa the front of their recruitment activity which was not authorized by the POEA]," said Sosa.

He said Randell has been charged with large-scale syndicated illegal recruitment for asking for hundreds of thousands of pesos from applicants as fees for non-existent student training programs.

The Briton is being held at the Philippine National Police Custodial Center in Camp Crame, Quezon City and is not allowed to post bail.

Unserved arrest warrants

For every illegal recruiter that ends up behind bars, many more remain at large. At least 276 Filipino individuals have a total of more than 20,000 unserved warrants of arrest for large-scale illegal recruitment. Each warrant represents a complaint from an alleged victim.

The top suspect, identified as Harleta Velasco, had 134 arrest warrants for illegal recruitment and estafa (fraud), which means she continued to prey on job seekers even after warrants were issued for her arrest.

Joining Velasco on top of the list were Rosemarie Liwanag (82), Maricar Inovero (79), Corazon Ventura (48), Amelia Gabriel (29), Beverly Tuazon (27), Maria Harleta Velasco (27) – suspected to be the same recruiter with the most number of arrests— Aminola Camarudin (24), and Marissa Biyalat (24).

According to HumanTrafficking.org, the Philippines has become a source, transit, and destination country for human trafficking. The website said that the Philippine government and non-government organizations estimate the number of trafficked Filipino women to range between 300,000 and 400,000. GMNews.TV <http://www.gmanews.tv/story/165415/Held-captive-for-months-job-applicants-refused-rescue>

The Arctic island of Greenland is assuming self-rule, in the latest step towards independence from Denmark.

The move follows a referendum on greater autonomy in November. It will see Greenland take a greater share of revenues from its natural resources.

The local government is taking control of the police and the courts. Greenlandic - or Kalaallisut - becomes the official language.

Copenhagen has ruled Greenland for three centuries. It granted the territory limited sovereignty in 1979.

But the new self-rule system takes the Arctic island and its 57,000 inhabitants closer to independence.

Greenlanders - most of whom are native Inuit - will be treated as a separate people under international law.

Much of the oil, gas, gold and diamonds the island holds has been inaccessible because of the Arctic ice covering most of the land mass.

But US experts believe it will become easier to exploit the island's mineral wealth as global warming melts the ice sheets.

Independence advocates hope the expected increase in revenues from minerals will help fund a final breakaway from Copenhagen.

But analysts say any push for independence is likely to be put on the backburner by Greenland's new leftist government.

Newly elected Prime Minister Kuupik Kleist has vowed to concentrate on tackling big social problems, such as alcoholism, domestic violence and a high suicide rate.

Ground has been broken on the construction site of Spaceport America, the world's first purpose-built commercial spaceport.

Those behind the project say that it will help provide a new chapter in space exploration.

When finished in 18 months' time, the facility will house Virgin Galactic's space tourism business and other firms working in the commercial space arena.

Steve Landeene, executive director of the New Mexico Spaceport Authority, said: "The future is here and we are not too far off a new age of space.

"It is not just about private astronauts going up, it is about bringing the cost structure down and about new medicines, solar power in space and the entire range of scientific benefits that can come from it."

Speaking to several hundred people who had made the journey to witness the event in scorching temperatures, New Mexico governor Bill Richardson said it was "gratifying to see Spaceport America finally become a reality".

Work will now start on a suitably space-age terminal and hangar building deigned by Foster and Partners to blend in with the desert scrubland here, while housing rocket-based spacecraft and all the safety hazards that entails.

A 3,000m (10,000-ft) runway will ensure that there is plenty of room on the tarmac for even the world's largest planes.

When finished, Virgin Galactic - which hopes to begin regular tourist flights into space not long after the spaceport is completed - will base its headquarters and operations here, providing much of the spaceport's business, though Spaceport America is keen to point out it will not solely rely on the company. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8111243.stm>

The German Finance Minister Peer Steinbrück has told the BBC that Germany must begin to reduce its dependence on foreign trade.

Germany was ranked by the World Factbook as the biggest exporter in the world last year.

The German government expects the country's economy to contract by 6% this year, largely because of very steep falls in exports.

Some economists have argued that Germany had relied far too heavily on foreign trade, which made it rich in the boom times but left it vulnerable to a global crisis.

Its finance minister Peer Steinbrück has now admitted in an interview with the BBC that the current balance between foreign and domestic markets must start to change. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/8119986.stm>

Swiss adventurer Bertrand Picard is set to unveil a prototype of the solar-powered plane he hopes eventually to fly around the world.

The initial version, spanning 61m but weighing just 1,500kg, will undergo trials to prove it can fly at night.

Mr Picard, who made history by circling the globe non-stop in a balloon in 1999, says he wants to demonstrate the potential of renewable energies.

The flight would be a risky endeavour. Only now is solar and battery technology becoming mature enough to sustain flight through the night - and then only in unmanned planes.

But Picard's Solar Impulse team has invested tremendous energy - and no little money - in trying to find what they believe is a breakthrough design.

One of the building's corners stands on a precariously buckled concrete pillar.

But the small assembly line swishes on in the middle of the vast room, spitting out blue-wrapped ice lollies.

Al-Wadiya group, Gaza's largest food manufacturer, suffered extensive damage during Israel's 22-day military operation in January.

But six months later, recycled scrap metal covers a gaping hole, and the factory is making ice-cream again. Just.

Before the conflict, Chairman Yaser al-Wadiya employed 276 people to make 127 food products. Now 45 employees produce only four items.

"They damaged everything," he says, flicking through an album of pictures of charred vehicles and pointing out a heap of rubble that was once a biscuit factory.

Recovery has been "very difficult," he says, because of the Israeli blockade, which includes a virtual ban on all exports, and on imports of raw and construction materials.

Israel imposed the restrictions in an attempt to end rocket attacks on Israel and weaken Hamas, which seized control of the Strip in 2007.

Israeli authorities say building materials can be used to make rockets, and to build the tunnels through which weapons and other goods are smuggled into Gaza from Egypt. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/8119457.stm>

Australian airline Qantas has cancelled an order for 15 of Boeing's Dreamliner 787 aircraft.

The cancellation came after Boeing this week delayed the launch of the Dreamliner for the fifth time.

Qantas said it revoked its $3bn (£1.8bn) order because of the worsening economic environment, not the delays.

Qantas made the order in December 2005. The "operating environment for the world's airlines has clearly changed dramatically since then," Qantas said.

The long-range, medium-sized Dreamliner is already more than two years behind schedule.

The airline's maiden flight had been due to take place on 30 June, but Boeing said it had now been delayed because of a need to reinforce a side section of the plane.

Boeing has received more than 800 orders for the Dreamliner, the planemaker's fastest selling model.

Mexican authorities intent on tackling the issues surrounding the production of biofuels are faced with one fundamental question. Should they have clean air, or cheap food to feed the country's poor?

In a country where, according to official estimates, 40 million people live in poverty and 30% of the maize consumed is imported, the answer not straightforward.

On the one hand there is the international commitment the government has made to promote the use of renewable fuels and to fight climate change.

On the other, environmentalists warn that producing raw materials for ethanol and biodiesel displace production of basic grains, especially maize, the staple of the Mexican diet.

"We could lose the ability to produce our own food," says Raul Benet, a spokesman for the activist group Rostros sin Voces, or Faceless Voices.

But the undersecretary of agriculture, Francisco Lopez Tostado, flatly rejects that there is any kind of conflict.

After more than 18 years studying the Sun, the plug is finally being pulled on the ailing spacecraft Ulysses.

Final communication with the joint European-US satellite will take place on 30 June.

The long-serving craft, launched in October 1990, has already served four times its expected design life.

The Esa-Nasa mission was the first to survey the environment in space above and below the poles of the Sun.

Data from the craft, published last year, also suggested that the solar wind - the stream of charged particles billowing away from the Sun - is at its weakest for 50 years.

"We expected the spacecraft to cease functioning much earlier," said Paolo Ferri of the European Space Agency (Esa).

"Although it is always hard to take the decision to terminate a mission, we have to accept that the satellite is running out of resources and a controlled switch-off is the best ending." <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8121625.stm>

A Chinese firm's bid to buy the gas-guzzling Hummer car brand will be blocked on environmental grounds, according to Chinese state radio.

Sichuan Tengzhong Heavy Industrial Machinery emerged as the surprise buyer for the brand earlier this year.

But China National Radio said Hummer is at odds with the country's planning agency's attempts to decrease pollution from Chinese manufacturers.

"The fact that it is from an article from a state media organisation does not mean it is government policy," the company said in a statement.

"Some people may have views and speculation, but the Chinese government has a process that we respect."

China's central bank has reiterated its call for a new reserve currency to replace the US dollar.

The report from the People's Bank of China (PBOC) said a "super-sovereign" currency should take its place.

Central bank chief Zhou Xiaochuan has loudly led calls for the dollar to be replaced during the financial crisis.

The bank report called for more regulation of the countries that issue currencies that underpin the global financial system.

"An international monetary system dominated by a single sovereign currency has intensified the concentration of risk and the spread of the crisis," the Chinese central bank said.

The dollar fell after the report was released. The US currency dropped 1% against the euro to $1.4088, and declined 0.8% versus the British pound to $1.6848. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/8120835.stm>

North Korea's economy expanded in 2008, thanks to high agricultural yields after contracting for two years in a row, South Korea's central bank says.

Last year the North Korean economy grew 3.7% compared to a year earlier, after shrinking by 2.3% in 2007 and by 1.1% in 2006.

The central bank said "temporary" factors, such as good weather, had helped boost agricultural production.

Agricultural production rose nearly 11% in 2008 compared with 2007. And coal, iron ore and other mineral production grew 2.3% for the year.

A deal agreed in 2007 gave North Korea 1 million tons of fuel oil and other benefits from the US and other nations, in exchange for disabling its nuclear facilities.

However in May 2009 North Korea walked out of international talks aimed at ending its nuclear activities, and the country carried out its second underground nuclear test.

South Korea's central bank releases yearly estimate of North Korea's economic growth, but North Korea does not release official economic data <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/8123082.stm>

As Delhi prepares for the Commonwealth Games in 2010, former BBC South Asia correspondent Sam Miller finds how the ancient city is changing at breathtaking speed.

The inhabitants of India's other great cities, Mumbai (Bombay) and Calcutta, used to sneer at Delhi with its much smaller population, and its supposed lack of sophistication.

"It's a collection of villages," they would say. "A fossil, a reminder of past empires. Not a real city."

They would joke: "Delhi has got no culture… just agriculture." They would say it was boring and sleepy.

But Delhi has begun to emerge from the shadow of Mumbai and Calcutta, and even provokes a certain amount of jealousy.

It is now - depending on how you calculate such things - one of the five most populous cities in the world, with a cultural life that equals or surpasses that of its Indian rivals.

Delhi attracts migrants from all over India (as well as some like me, from the rest of world) and is now the most cosmopolitan and fastest-growing of India's large cities.

It has one of the world's best metro railway systems, with more than 50 stations being added to the network over the next 15 months.

It is also visibly preparing for its next moment of anxiously anticipated glory, the Commonwealth Games of 2010.

Hell in earth

The current grow-your-own trend has sparked a new wave of interest in allotment owning. But before you get swept in the trend, the BBC's Paul Reynolds, has some words of warning. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/8119428.stm>

Doctors are urging the government to row back on its "dogmatic commercialisation" of the NHS to help protect services during the recession.

The British Medical Association (BMA) has attacked what it calls a "sledgehammer" approach to reform to the health service in England.

The union is calling on ministers to instead work with doctors to cope with the tough times ahead.

The government says it intends to take the East Coast rail service, run by National Express, into state ownership.

The troubled rail franchise, which is expected to have lost £20m in the first half of the year, is suffering from falling passenger numbers.

Ministers have refused National Express's requests for its contract with the government to be renegotiated.

The Department for Transport said that all East Coast services would continue and that tickets would be honoured.

BBC business editor Robert Peston said that National Express had tried to buy itself out of the franchise with an offer of "well over £100m".

However, transport secretary Lord Adonis decided to reject the approach "on principle".

National Express - which has made no secret of problems on the route - said that it expected to default on payments that it must make under the terms of its franchise.

The government said it would take over the franchise when this happened - though this may not be for some months.

The franchise would then be put out for tender to a new buyer from late next year.

On the outskirts of Lusaka, Zambia, next year's crop of bicycles is being watered by Benjamin Banda.

"We planted this bamboo last year," he says, "and now the stems are taller than me. When it's ready we'll cut it, cure it and then turn it into frames."

Mr Banda, is the caretaker for Zambikes, a company set up by two Californians and two Zambians which aimed to build bikes tough enough to handle the local terrain.

Co-founder Vaughn Spethmann, 24, recalls how it all started with a game of football.

"We were here on a university field trip and we organized a match against some locals. Afterwards we asked them what they did, and they said: 'Nothing'. They didn't have jobs.

"So we decided to come up with a business which would be a source of employment and provide a useful product."

That product was the rugged, bright yellow Zambike, assembled at the firm's smart red-brick workshop set in sun-browned farmland.

Other projects followed as the mechanics' skills improved: a sturdy cargo bike, a bike trailer and a bike-drawn "zambulance", now in use at 10 clinics around Lusaka. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/8125274.stm>

Fourth of July celebrations will take place across US cities and states on Saturday to celebrate American independence day. But they are likely to be subdued, with many cities cutting back or eliminating the elaborate firework displays that have been a key feature of the celebrations.

It is the latest sign of the fiscal crisis that is spreading across the nation as the recession has had a dramatic effect on state spending.

The state of California, with a GDP larger than most countries, has been among the hardest hit.

On Wednesday, it said it would start issuing IOUs rather than cash payments to its creditors after the state legislature failed to agree a budget deal.

The 50 US states play a much more important role in the US system than local authorities do in a European context. Together they make up about one-third of all public spending, or 10% of US GDP.

And the states also have an important constraint that the Federal government does not - they have nearly all passed laws in the past 20 years requiring them to have a balanced budget, and forbidding them to borrow money to pay for current spending.

States rely on sales taxes and property taxes at the local level to fund much of their spending.

At the same time, they have faced higher bills to pay for the casualties of the recession.

California dreaming California, the biggest and richest state in the US, has been particularly hard-hit.

It has an unemployment rate of 11.5%, well above the US average, and has been at the centre of the sub-prime mortgage crisis, with more properties foreclosed than in any other state.

Several of its biggest banks, including IndyMac, have been taken over by the federal government, and its manufacturing sector has been hard-hit by the crisis.

According to the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP), a Washington think tank, 48 of the 50 states are facing budget deficits this year, with a total deficit of $166bn, or 24% of their budgets. And it projects an aggregate deficit of $311bn by 2011.

With the new fiscal year for most states beginning on 1 July, their state legislatures have been under pressure to agree and package of higher taxes and fees, and cuts in services to balance their budgets.

Seven states have failed to reach agreement on a new budget - including many of the big industrial states such as Illinois, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, as well as Arizona, also hard-hit by the sub-prime crisis.

They are being forced to resort to measures such as asking banks to loan state workers their wages (in Pennsylvania) to a one-week temporary spending bill (in Ohio). <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/8130318.stm>

India could achieve growth of 7% in the current year and more in coming years if the right reforms are made, a report from the finance ministry said.

Among the reforms suggested was the reform of subsidies for fuel, food and fertiliser, a privatisation programme and investment in infrastructure.

Some analysts predict that the Congress Party's decisive election victory could speed up the economic reform programme.

The previous government's power-sharing arrangement meant there was political opposition to calls for reform from the finance ministry.

The Indian economy grew 6.7% in the year to the end of March 2009 but had grown by an average of 8.8% in the previous five years.

There have been warnings that the entire reform programme is unlikely to be in Monday's budget.

"It is wrong to assume everything will be announced in the budget," said Amitabh Chakraborty at Religare Securities in Mumbai. "It is the strategic intent, a clear roadmap."

The government is expected to announce a programme of greater borrowing to boost economic growth.

The finance ministry is keen for the government to stop subsidising fuel prices. It also wants to see the restrictions on foreign investment eased. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/8130070.stm>

Some 20 net users have come forward claiming they have been wrongly accused of illegally sharing video games.

It follows an investigation by Which? Computing magazine into a couple who were accused of playing a game they claim they had never heard of.

That case was dropped but other internet users have come forward, claiming to be falsely accused.

They face the threat of court action - or fines of up to £665 - for sharing copyrighted games.

Some 6,000 letters have been sent out by law firm ACS Law, on behalf of firms such as Reality Pump and Topware Interactive, who are the copyright owners of video games Two Worlds and Dream Pinball respectively.

The government is keen to crack down on pirates, and the recently published Digital Britain report said that they could be pursued through the courts.

"The government is basically calling for a crackdown on illegal file-sharers, which is fair enough, but we've got serious concerns about the process which identifies alleged file-sharers and we believe that innocent people are being accused," said Sarah Kidner, editor of Which? Computing.

The IP addresses of alleged file-sharers are initially obtained by anti-piracy firm Logistep which uses software that monitors file-sharing sites.

A court order is then sent to the relevant internet service provider, forcing them to reveal the identity of the person behind the IP address.

The Internet Service Providers' Association (ISPA) has admitted that the process could be flawed.

"We're not convinced of the efficacy of the software and not confident in its ability to identify users," it told Which? Computing.

Last year, the magazine highlighted the case of Scottish couple Gill and Ken Murdoch, aged 54 and 66, who were accused of sharing the game Race 07, published by Atari.

At the time, Mrs Murdoch told Which: "We do not have, and have never had, any computer game or sharing software. We did not even know what 'peer to peer' was until we received the letter."

The case was dropped and the law firm responsible for sending the letter, Davenport Lyons, is being investigated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8129261.stm>

Why did India's Maoist rebels end up taking over a tribal-dominated area barely 250km from the eastern Indian city of Calcutta?

The Communist state government lost control of Lalgarh in West Midnapore district last November. It took all of eight months and paramilitary troops to drive out the rebels from the area late last month.

Lalgarh, an embattled forest enclave on the borders of the eastern Indian states of West Bengal and Jharkhand, has been described as "the second Naxalbari" by Maoist leaders.

This indicates how important it was for them to take control of this tribal-dominated area.

Naxalbari, the site of India's Maoist-inspired uprising in 1967, is now a sleepy village in West Bengal bordering Nepal. It is inhabited by smugglers or struggling tea garden workers.

The only thing that is common between Naxalbari and Lalgarh is that both have predominantly tribal populations who are alienated and have not benefitted from the land reforms of the Marxist government.

"The tribals in Bengal's Junglemahal area (in which Lalgarh falls) have been completely alienated because in the last 30 years, they have got nothing from the Communist coalition government here. The Communist rulers have taken the tribals for granted," says Ranabir Sammadar, director of the Calcutta Research Group, who has worked on the area.

Maoist leader Kishenji claimed in a BBC interview that the mass movement in Lalgarh against "oppression of the establishment Left and its police" has given them a major base in West Bengal for the first time since the Naxalite uprising was crushed in the mid-1970s.

"We have 1,100 villages with us in the movement. The resistance they have offered in the face of massive state-led coercion has given us much hope, as did the mass boycott of the parliament polls in the area," he said.

"For the first time since the Naxalite movement, we have struck a place which is the weakest spot of the state and which automatically makes it our stronghold." <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/8127869.stm>

Credit card cheques are set to be banned and a new post created to help ripped-off consumers get their money back, the government has announced.

Measures to assist people facing difficulties with debt and at risk from rogue traders are also in the plans.

Figures from the Bank of England show that UK residents owe £233bn on credit cards, overdrafts and other loans.

The government plans - laid out in a White Paper - include the creation of a Consumer Advocate.

Under the plans, he or she would raise awareness of consumer issues and take cases of "national importance" to court on behalf of groups of consumers seeking compensation and refunds.

Outstanding credit card debt in the UK has reached £54.4bn - a figure that has started to rise in recent months after falling back in the course of last year.

The government wants action to make lending practices more responsible, with concerns raised about debt levels during the recession.

Credit card cheques are blank cheques sent out by card issuers to their customers, often with a statement, giving them an alternative way to spend on their card account.

They have proved to be controversial because consumers incur handling fees for using them, there is no interest-free period as seen with a card, and they do not command the same level of protection for customers if things go wrong.

The government has been under pressure for some time to ban them. It announced earlier in the year that it was planning to stop companies sending out unsolicited credit card cheques and it now says these will be banned unless a customer specifically opts-in to receiving them.

Research from the price comparison website, Uswitch, suggested one in five people had seen their credit card limit increased in the past 12 months without them asking for it.

"Can you think of a more complicated question to ask?" says Deb Roy, as he explains the genesis of his work.

In 2005, the artificial intelligence researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Media Lab set out to understand how children learn to talk.

"We wanted to understand how minds work and how they develop and how the interplay of innate and environmental influence makes us who we are and how we learn to communicate."

It was a big task and one that years of research by scientists around the world had only begun to scratch the surface of.

But now, Professor Roy is beginning to get some answers, thanks to an unconventional approach, an accommodating family and a house wired with technology.

A US judge has banned publication of a book promoted as a sequel to JD Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye.

US District Judge Deborah Batts ruled that Swedish author Fredrik Colting's novel too closely mirrored Mr Salinger's 1951 classic.

Mr Salinger brought the lawsuit against Mr Colting, with his lawyers calling the book a "rip-off pure and simple".

Mr Colting claims his book, featuring a character based on Salinger's hero, is a literary commentary not a sequel.

But Judge Batts, in her 37-page ruling issued in Manhattan, said the main character in Mr Colting's novel - Mr C - was "an infringement" on Mr Salinger's main character, Holden Caulfield.

She said the Swedish author's claim that he also wrote the book to critically examine the character Holden Caulfield, was "problematic and lacking in credibility".

The judge said Mr Colting had "taken well more from 'Catcher', in both substance and style, than is necessary for the alleged transformative purpose of criticising Salinger and his attitudes and behaviour".

A descendant of India's last Mughal emperor has been rescued from a life of penury in Calcutta by getting a job with the state-run Coal India.

Madhu is the illiterate great-great-granddaughter of emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar and has been employed to run errands in Coal India's offices.

A letter of employment will be formally handed over to her by the coal minister at a function in Calcutta next month.

"It will be great to have Madhu working for us. Actually, it will be a great tribute to the last Mughal emperor who played a key role during the first war of independence in 1857," Coal India Chairman Partha Bhattacharyya said.

The move by Coal India follows sustained efforts by a Delhi-based journalist Shivnath Jha, who launched a campaign to rescue her from poverty.

Madhu's cause was one of several highlighted by Mr Jha and his wife Neena in an initiative to rehabilitate descendants of the forgotten heroes of India's independence wars.

Mr Jha told the BBC that he first hit upon this idea when he tried to raise funds for one of India's greatest classical musicians, Bismillah Khan, earlier in the decade.

"We published a pictorial biography of Bismillah Khan and raised some funds. After his death, we institutionalised this movement," Mr Jha said.

Last year, he persuaded India's former Railway Minister Laloo Prasad Yadav to help the descendants of Tantia Tope, one of the leaders of the 1857 mutiny which many Indians say was in fact the country's first war of independence. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/8130627.stm>

Dozens of baby girls in southern China have reportedly been taken from parents who broke family-planning laws, and then sold for adoption overseas.

An investigation by the state-owned Southern Metropolis News found that about 80 girls in one county had been sold for $3,000 (£1,800).

The babies were taken when the parents could not pay the steep fines imposed for having too many children.

Parents in rural areas are allowed two children, unlike urban dwellers who are allowed one.

But if they have more than that, they face a fine of about $3,000 -several times many farmers' annual income.

The policy is deeply unpopular among rural residents, says the BBC's Quentin Somerville in Beijing.

Nearly 80 baby girls in a county in Guizhou province, in the south of the country, were confiscated from their families when their parents could not or would not pay the fine, Southern Metropolis News said.

The girls were taken into orphanages and then adopted by couples from the United States and a number of European countries.

The adoption fee was split between the orphanages and local officials, the newspaper said.

Twitter users who lack an audience for their messages can now buy followers.

Australian social media marketing company uSocial is offering a paid service that finds followers for users of the micro-blogging service.

Followers are available in blocks starting at $87 (£53) for 1,000. The biggest block uSocial is selling is 100,000 people.

USocial said businesses and individuals were queuing up to use its follower finding service.

Leon Hill, chief executive of uSocial, said the company finds potential followers by searching Twitter and working out what individual users are interested in. It also profiles where people are so it can more closely match users with those they might want to follow.

USocial then sends messages to potential followers telling them about the new Twitter user they might want to follow.

"It's up to the user to follow them or not," said Mr Hill. He added that uSocial continues to look for followers until the specified number had signed up.

USocial has about 150 customers that had bought followers and had another 80-90 campaigns about to roll out.

A broad range of clients had signed up to buy followers, said Mr Hill including educational organisations, companies and marketing firms.

"A woman who runs yoga classes is one of our clients," he said. "So are some religious organisations including one man that just wants to get the word out about God."

"Twitter started as a way for just friends to keep in touch," said Mr Hill. "As with any social media site once they get big, every business or marketer jumps on the bandwagon.

USocial estimated that each follower on Twitter was worth about 10 cents a month to a company that got them to sign up. The money would be made from adverts and sales on websites that followers click through to.

Robin Goad, a research director at Hitwise who has analysed Twitter growth, said businesses were definitely starting to sign up to the micro-blogging service.

"At the moment, it's mainly media and internet content businesses," he said. "Transactional companies are struggling to find a way to drive real pounds and dollars from it.

"Companies are building up as many followers as they can and trying to monetise them in the future," he added.

The growing commercial use of Twitter was presenting the network with a few problems, said Mr Goad.

In particular, he said, Hitwise was starting to see the hijacking of hashtags - labels that bring all the messages about a subject together.

In late June, furnishings firm Habitat used tags associated with protests in Iran to attempt to drive people to its site. The firm has since apologised for its actions.

Some Twitter users were also starting to send out messages that are only about a product or service - effectively spam, said Mr Goad.

Twitter might cope better with the creeping commercialisation than other social media sites, he said.

"It's interesting in the way it has developed," said Mr Goad. "Hashtags and re-tweets have developed organically rather than been designed from the top down.

"One advantage it has over other services is that it can change quickly if hashtags become a polluted medium and it might keep one step ahead of the spammers," he said.

Climate change is causing a breed of wild sheep in Scotland to shrink, according to research.

Scientists say milder winters help smaller sheep to survive, resulting in this "paradoxical decrease in size".

Classic evolutionary theory would predict that wild sheep gradually get bigger, as the stronger, larger animals survive into adulthood and reproduce.

Reporting in Science journal, the team says this shows the "subtle interplay" between evolution and the environment.

Scientists first began studying Soay sheep, on the island of Hirta in the St Kilda archipelago, in 1985.

Since then, the sheep have decreased in size by 5% - their legs getting steadily shorter and their body weight decreasing.

This strange phenomenon was first reported in 2007, but the reason for it remained under debate.

The lead researcher in the study, Tim Coulson from Imperial College London, said the island provided an ideal opportunity to tease apart the factors driving the sheep's physical change.

"The island is almost like a natural laboratory - there are only the sheep and the vegetation there," he said.

He and his team had access to detailed information about the sheep that had been collected over more than two decades.

"We have so much great data," said Professor Coulson, "that we were able to write a ledger of how much of an effect each of the different factors had on the sheep."

They used a formula called the "Price equation", which was designed by evolutionary theorist George Price to predict how a physical trait, such as body size, will change from one generation to the next.

With all of this data, the team was able to "rearrange the equation" and use it to work out how much of a contribution each driver made to the sheep's body size.

They found that the local environment had a stronger effect on the animals than the evolutionary pressure to grow larger.

"In the past, only the big, healthy sheep and large lambs that had piled on weight in their first summer could survive the harsh winters on Hirta," said Professor Coulson.

Because of climate change, he explained, grass for food is now available for more months of the year on the island.

"Survival conditions are not so challenging - even the slower growing sheep have a chance of making it, and this means smaller individuals are becoming increasingly prevalent in the population," he said.

The team also found that younger sheep tended to give birth to smaller lambs - a phenomenon they termed "the young mum effect".

This effect, said Professor Coulson, combined with environmental changes had "overriden what we would expect through natural selection".

As for the future of the sheep, the team believes that they are still shrinking.

"The next step is to extend our description of past change into a predictive model," said Professor Coulson.

A national report on Aboriginal social and economic trends in Australia has shown their condition has deteriorated.

In particular it showed that the gap between indigenous and non-indigenous citizens has grown wider in areas like child abuse and domestic violence.

It revealed that Aboriginal children are six times as likely to be abused as non-indigenous children.

The Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said it was a devastating report on an unacceptable situation.

The new government report contains a grim inventory of statistics, which indicate that the longstanding gap in living standards between black and white Australians is, if anything, getting wider.

One finding, that Aboriginal children are six times more likely than non-indigenous children to be abused, represents a significant increase.

The report also revealed that the indigenous homicide rate was seven times higher than the non-indigenous rate; and that Aboriginal people were 13 times more likely to end up in jail.

The report measured 50 key indicators of disadvantage, and found that there has been no improvement in 80% of them.

In an otherwise bleak assessment, one of the few areas of improvement was employment.

Mr Rudd started his term in office with an apology to Aborigines for past injustices and pledged that his government would aim to close the gap.

Speaking in the country's Northern Territory, the home to many Aborigines, Mr Rudd called this a devastating report which was unacceptable and required decisive action. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8129820.stm>

Music entrepreneur Allen Klein, blamed by many for contributing to the demise of The Beatles, has died in New York at 77 after suffering from Alzheimer's.

In a career spanning five decades, Klein earned a reputation as a ruthless operator, extracting lucrative deals from labels for his clients.

Later managing The Beatles, he tried and failed to secure control of copyrights on their behalf.

Though reviled by many, others admired his ability to negotiate with record labels.

"Don't talk to me about ethics," he once told Playboy magazine. "Every man makes his own. It's like a war."

He said John Lennon had hired him to protect his interest in The Beatles, because he wanted what he called "a real shark - someone to keep the other sharks away".

Klein helped the Stones negotiate a new contract with their label but the relationship soured after he bought the rights to the band's 1960s songs and recordings - classics like (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction and Jumpin' Jack Flash - from a former manager.

Keith Richards later described Klein's time with the group as "the price of an education".

The Beatles hired Klein in 1969 over the objections of Paul McCartney, who preferred his father-in-law, Lee Eastman.

At the time, a New York Times profile referred to him as "the toughest wheeler-dealer in the pop jungle".

"Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, because I'm the biggest bastard in the valley."

His copyright battle for the Beatles came as tensions among the four reached breaking-point.

Eventually he did score a rich recording deal for The Beatles but by then John, Paul, George and Ringo were not even on speaking terms, and the band dissolved in 1970.

One year later, however, George Harrison hired Klein to put on the all-star Concert for Bangladesh at Madison Square Garden in New York - the forerunner of the mammoth charity gigs of the 1980s and 1990s. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8134795.stm>

The Ushers brewery in the Wiltshire town of Trowbridge used to produce award-winning traditional British real ales. After an extraordinary journey, it's now being used to brew a beer dubbed the "Pride of Pyongyang".

Nine years after the brewery was sold to the secretive government in Pyongyang, its new brew - Taedong River Beer - has made international headlines this week after inspiring what is thought to be North Korean television's first beer advert.

How the brewery plant was sold, dismantled and shipped to the North Korean capital is a curious tale. Pyongyang's warming relations with the West (since cooled), international trade, and the Koreans' thirst for a decent beer all played a part.

It began around 2000 when North Korea's leader, Kim Jong Il, decided he wanted a world class brewery for his country which was just coming round from a devastating famine.

The Ushers brewery was on the market at the time, having been deemed no longer cost effective by its new owners after a management buyout.

Briton Peter Ward, of brewing company Thomas Hardy Brewing and Packaging, bought the plant and sold it to the North Koreans through a German agent. He remembers the deal vividly.

"When I was first approached about selling the brewery to the Koreans, I assumed it was the South Koreans," he said.

Surprised to discover that it was the North Koreans who were buying, his first thought was, "Am I going to get paid?".

His other concern was security. What if the North Koreans, who were pursuing a secret nuclear weapons programme at the time, were buying the brewery to make not beer but biological weapons?

"There's not a lot of difference between plant for a brewery and one for pharmaceuticals or biochemical activities. Brewing equipment could be used for other things," he said. Again, the Germans assured him that Kim Jong-il was after beer, not bugs, and the deal went ahead. Before long a team of North Korean engineers, workers, translators and officials had arrived in Trowbridge to dismantle the brewing equipment. They got to work immediately and did not stop until they had finished.

"They worked extremely hard and long hours. The didn't go out and spent most of their time in their lightweight boiler suits," Mr Ward remembers.

"Engineering-wise, you would be turning back the clock 50 years. From a mechanical point of view they were happy to take a blow torch to it rather than dismantle a piece of plant.

"They were going to rip it up without drawings, but we helped them taking it down and marked it all up for shipping to North Korea."

Within 18 months of shipping the plant home, the North Koreans had the brewery up and running.

Uwe Oehms, the German agent who was asked by the North Koreans to find a brewery, remembers the deal as "one of the most interesting" of his life.

Though the North Koreans had limited experience of modern technology, he bought them a series of books on the latest brewing techniques.

"Despite their lack of English I was surprised that they were learning how to do this quite well," he recalls. "The quality of the beer was quite good in the beginning but when they couldn't buy good foreign ingredients the quality decreased.

In Trowbridge itself, the memory of the Ushers brewery, which began brewing in the town in 1824, is fading fast.

Though the building's facade is still standing, plans to redevelop the site are still incomplete. Part of it will be housing, another part will be a major supermarket.

Town councillor Clive Blackmore says selling the brewery was a major blow to the town.

"It was a big employer but it's just one of a number of businesses that have left the area, " he says, before adding: "You can't blame them for taking it abroad. There's no bad feelings towards the North Koreans."

But would the Pride of Pyongyang ever take the place of Ushers' award winning ales?

The Serious Fraud Office is to investigate the circumstances surrounding the demise of Birmingham-based carmaker MG Rover in 2005.

BBC business editor Robert Peston says Business Secretary Lord Mandelson will issue a brief written statement on Monday confirming the move.

The four executives in control of MG Rover at the time said there was "no suggestion of improper conduct".

A spokesman for the MG Rover directors said: "The directors have at all times willingly accounted for their actions, which kept MG Rover alive for five years."

When the MG plant at Longbridge, Birmingham, closed the government announced a £150m support package for those losing their jobs and for the estimated 12,500 people affected in subsidiary firms. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/8134981.stm>

David Cameron is to pledge to cut the number of unelected quangos to save money and increase accountability.

A Tory government would close one schools quango, while another - media regulator Ofcom - would be stripped of its policy-making role, he will say.

The Tory leader will ask shadow cabinet ministers to identify which bodies within their areas should be cut back.

This weekend the government announced a review of public bodies in a bid to ensure cash goes to frontline services.

Mr Cameron will call for a cut in the 790 quangos - or quasi-autonomous non-governmental organisations - which cost £35bn a year, in a speech to the Reform think tank. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/8135460.stm>

Shares in the online ad firm Phorm have fallen by more than 40% after BT said it had no immediate plans to use the service that tracks online behaviour.

Phorm serves up adverts related to a user's web browsing history, which it monitors by taking a copy of the places they go and search terms they look for.

However, it came in for considerable criticism from privacy groups and prompted an EU investigation.

Phorm builds a profile of users by scanning for keywords on websites visited and then assigns relevant ads.

It has proved controversial because it scans almost all sites a user visits and there is an ongoing political debate about how a user gives consent.

Phorm had conducted trials of its technology with BT, which it marketed as Webwise.

A spokesman for British Telecom, Mike Jarvis, told the BBC that they were not completely closing the door on Phorm's Webwise service.

"We're interested in this area [targeted online advertising] but for now we have no immediate plans.

"It's more a case that we have other stuff to work on - Project Canvas, rolling out the fibre network and so forth - so we've taken a step out of Phorm and will see how it develops.

"[Our decision has] nothing to do with cost or privacy, it's about resources and priority," he added.

In April, Amazon blocked Phorm from scanning its web pages to produce targeted advertising, as has the UK government, citing privacy concerns.

Phorm declined an interview request, instead issuing a statement saying its activities "remain ongoing" and that it was looking forward " to creating the conditions necessary for UK ISPs to move to deployment".

"We continue to focus considerable effort on faster moving overseas opportunities," the statement read.

"In so doing we have already minimised our dependency on the deployment by any single ISP or in any particular market.

"In addition to making excellent progress in South Korea, we are engaged in more than 15 markets worldwide including advanced negotiations with several major ISPs." <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8135850.stm>

The private gene testing industry must be more tightly regulated, peers say.

The House of Lords Science and Technology Committee said a code of conduct was needed to stop bogus claims being made.

The report also said the tests, which predict the risk of disease later in life, needed to be more thoroughly reviewed before being marketed.

But the unequal provision of services in the NHS was criticised as well. Experts welcomed the report.

The completion of the human genome map in 2000 has led to a boom in genetic research and services.

Until then, much of the focus was on single-gene disorders, such as Huntingdon's and cystic fibrosis.

But the breakthrough led to the possibility of new and better screening and treatment for a range of more complex disorders.

Health firms have already started to exploit the issue by offering genetic testing, which can give people an idea of the risk they face of getting a range of diseases from heart disease to Alzheimer's.

The committee said it was concerned that unproven claims were being made and that individuals were not being offered the proper support and counselling to understand and cope with the results.

It said a voluntary code should be introduced to improve standards - official regulators are powerless to act as many of the companies offering such tests are based outside the UK and sell their services over the internet.

The peers said the EU could also re-classify genetic testing from low to medium risk to reflect the psychological impact the results can have.

It also said mainstream NHS staff outside specialist genetic departments needed more training to help them deal with the "increasing demands" being placed on them by people worried about test results.

But the committee also said there was unequal access to genetic services provided by the NHS.

Genetic testing and subsequent treatment is already available for a range of disorders, such as breast cancer, as well as to work out which drugs an individual responds best to.

The report said individual trusts needed more help to develop and set up specialist genetic services as the issue was only going to become more pressing in the future. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/8136776.stm>

The worst of the UK's recession is over, according to the British Chambers of Commerce (BCC) business group, but talk of a recovery is premature.

Its report, based on a survey of 5,600 companies, found there had been "welcome progress" in confidence levels between April and June.

But the BCC is still predicting that unemployment will reach 3.2 million by the middle of 2010.

The manufacturing and service sectors both recorded improvements in the second quarter of 2009. Although manufacturing saw the greatest progress, the sector still remains in "a worse condition overall", the BCC said.

Last week, the Office for National Statistics sharply revised its GDP data for the UK, saying the economy shrank by 2.4% in the first quarter of 2009, compared with its earlier estimate of a contraction of 1.9%. With these heavy revisions, the BCC said it was far too early to say that recovery is secure.

It said that without continued focus on limiting the impact of the recession, there was still a risk that the economy could "drop off suddenly" and the UK could be heading towards a "W-shaped" recession.

"It is absolutely vital that the improvement in business confidence is nurtured," said BCC director general David Frost.

"Our economy is based on confidence, and wealth-creating businesses need to know they will be given the freedom and flexibility to drive the UK out of recession and into a sustainable recovery."

He added that the proposed increase in National Insurance contributions in 2011 was a "tax on jobs" which should be scrapped.

He also called for banks to continue lending and said that businesses expect the government to sort out "the appalling state of the public finances". <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/8137424.stm>

Lower inflation props up stocks amid security concerns

MANILA, Philippines - The lower inflation helped Philippine shares extend their gains for the second day on Tuesday with the market shrugging off the successive bombing incidents in Mindanao.

The benchmark Philippine Stock Exchange index (PSEi) rose 22.66 points or 0.93 percent to 2,471.76 while the broader all-shares index jumped 13.98 points or 0.89 percent to 1,582.80.

Market breadth was positive with 60 gainers against 34 losers and 52 stocks which closed unchanged.

Five of the six sectors ended in the green, led by holding firms' 2.15-percent ascent and industrial 1.97-percent leap.

Service index was the only sore spot for the day, slipping 0.061 percent.

"Political concerns on the poll automation have been resolved and as an additional bonus, inflation was low," said Emmanuel Soller, EquitiWorld Securities trader.

He noted a number of foreign brokers were selling various issues such as Manila Electric Co. (Meralco) following hoarding of shares of Metro Manila's power distributor.

"The market has already discounted the anticipated rate cut by the BSP in its meeting this week. Based on graphical analysis, the PSEi still has an upward bias," he said.

Inflation was recorded at 1.5 percent in June, the lowest in 22 years.

In the foreign scene, US stocks ended mixed.

While the Dow Jones industrial average and broader S&P 500 were up, tech-heavy Nasdaq declined.

Majority of the Asian bourses were trading in the green led by Indonesia, Taiwan and Singapore's.

However, stock markets in Japan, Malaysia and Australia were trading lower.

On the local front, several bombing incidents in the southern island of Mindanao since Sunday have killed and wounded a number of civilians, with authorities still investigating who was responsible for the attacks.

Despite these security issues, Soller said players were more likely enticed to snap up stocks considered to be at bargain prices.

Telecommunications giant Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co., the day's most active stock, was flat at P2,365.

Meralco, the country's largest electricity distributor, surged by P8 or 5.23 percent to P161.

Philex Mining Corp., one of the Philippines' largest miners, gained P0.10 or 1.35 percent at P7.50.

Metropolitan Bank & Trust Co., one of the country's largest lenders in terms of assets, dipped P0.50 or 1.56 percent to P31.50.

Property giant Ayala Land Inc. was steady at P8.20.

Volume traded, however, was lower with 832 million stocks worth P1.635 billion changing hands. GMANews.TV <http://www.gmanews.tv/story/166776/Lower-inflation-props-up-stocks-amid-security-concerns>

Leaders of the major industrial powers, the G8, have begun their annual summit with a working lunch in an earthquake-stricken Italian town.

L'Aquila was where nearly 300 people were killed in a quake in April, and an evacuation plan is in place in case a tremor should hit during the summit.

The leaders' agenda includes the global financial crisis, food security, climate change and Iran.

US President Barack Obama arrived on Wednesday, as did British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has arrived fresh from talks with Mr Obama in which they agreed a framework for new nuclear weapons cuts in Moscow.

But Hu Jintao, China's president, cancelled plans to attend the summit and address G8 leaders, instead flying back to Beijing amid continuing unrest in China's western region of Xinjiang. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8139364.stm>

Worldwide economic growth is expected to recover to 2.5% in 2010, says the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

That is higher than the IMF's earlier estimate of 1.9% growth next year, made in April, with the increase expected to be led by India and China.

For the UK, the IMF has revised down its 2009 economic forecast by 0.1% to -4.2%, but it now expects the economy to expand by 0.2% next year.

The IMF had previously said it expected the British economy to contract by 0.4% in 2010.

Its latest estimates for the UK are consistent with those from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, but much weaker than forecasts from the government and many independent analysts.

"The global economy is beginning to pull out of a recession unprecedented in the post-World War II era, but stabilisation is uneven and the recovery is expected to be sluggish," said the IMF.

It says that the main policy priority remains restoring financial sector health.

The IMF has also published a revised financial stability report, in which it warns against complacency .

It says that the "risks to the global financial system have moderated from the extreme levels identified in April", but that vulnerabilities remain. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/8140357.stm>

Several major Western oil corporations are in dispute with the Iraqi government over contracts to run six oil and two gas fields.

Only one of the 32 approved bidders for the contracts, which include Shell, BP, Exxon and Total, has agreed to the oil ministry's terms.

The government has asked the rest to reconsider resubmitting their bids for the contracts that are left.

BP and China's CNPC have agreed to run the 17-billion-barrel Rumaila field after Exxon Mobil turned it down.

With only one contract in place so far, energy analyst Alex Munro sees the agreements as a cautious first step.

"The model that Iraq has introduced is a service contract that doesn't give the companies a share of the oil that's produced," says Mr Munro.

"From that standpoint, the terms vary from other areas in the world, where the companies have an entitlement to physical barrels that are produced and can then benefit from upward changes in commodity prices, or even changes in rates of production, offering greater returns on the investment."

David Horgan, managing director of the Irish oil company Petrel Resources, thinks the deals on offer could be risky for them, especially given the uncertain business climate in Iraq.

"You're asking people to give you money without ownership title and with quite a lot of uncertainty about when, or even if, these deals will be ratified and implementable," he says, "whether there'll be sufficient co-operation from the Iraqi executives and workers to make these things work."

One reason Western oil firms are prepared to go back into Iraq on such unfavourable terms is competition from the Russians and the Chinese.

"Even if the Western companies act on commercial grounds and hold their fire, the fear is that the Chinese or the other national oil corporations will gazump them," said Mr Horgan.

Leaders of the G8 leading industrial countries have agreed to try to limit global warming to just 2C (3.6F) above pre-industrial levels by 2050.

The summit, in the Italian city of L'Aquila, also set targets for carbon emissions considered necessary to achieve the goal.

But analysts say there are several questions over the announcement, and no indication of how targets will be met.

They say the main problem is that no interim targets have been agreed, and developing nations appear unprepared to accept big cuts to their emissions until developed nations pledge more financial assistance.

Difficult talks still lie ahead as negotiators try to firm up the ambitious goals, correspondents say.

Also, the cut in carbon emissions is only a target and will need the co-operation of rapidly industrialising such as China and India.

Our environment analyst Roger Harrabin says: "This is another example of how the politics of climate change is lagging behind the science. For the first time the G8 has accepted there are scientific limits to the amount of greenhouse gases we can emit - the Bush administration wasn't willing to accept that.

"But scientists insist that the rich nations should cut between 25-50% by 2020 to stabilise the climate - and that's a step too far for the G8. The rich nations will now ask the emerging economies to stem the growth of their own emissions - but India will accuse the West of failing to the action that it knows is necessary." <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8141352.stm>

A rural town in Australia has voted overwhelmingly to ban the sale of bottled water over concerns about its environmental impact.

Campaigners say Bundanoon, in New South Wales, may be the first community in the world to have such a ban.

They say huge amounts of resources are used to extract, package and transport bottled water.

The discarded plastic bottles then end up as litter or go into landfill sites, the "Bundy on Tap" campaign says.

More than 350 residents turned out to vote at the public meeting in the town hall.

Only one resident voted against the ban, along with a representative from the bottled water industry, ABC news reported.

The BBC's Nick Bryant in Sydney says locals have promised not to set upon visitors if they ignore the ban, but they will be encouraged to fill a reusable container from water fountains in the main street.

Campaigner John Dee said local opinion had been incensed when a drinks company announced plans to tap an underground reservoir in the town.

"The company has been looking to extract water locally, bottle it in Sydney and bring it back here to sell it," he said.

"It made people look at the environmental impact of bottled water and the community has been quite vocal about it."

The ban has been supported by shopkeepers in the town, which has a population of about 2,500.

"We believe Bundanoon is the world's first town that has got its retailers to ban bottled water," said Mr Dee. "We haven't found it anywhere else."

New South Wales Premier Nathan Rees has backed the cause, ordering government departments to stop buying bottled water and use tap water instead.

A US judge has rejected a last minute request by a group of personal injury claimants to delay the sale of the profitable parts of General Motors.

There is now nothing to stop GM selling the best parts of the business to a government-funded "new GM".

Once that has happened, the way will be clear for the carmaker to emerge from Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.

GM has scheduled a news conference in Detroit on Friday morning, but has not confirmed what it will be about.

Judge Lewis Kaplan rejected the request for a delay from a group who are pursuing a product liability claim relating to the Chevy Malibu on the grounds that delaying the sale would probably lead to the liquidation of GM.

The emergence from bankruptcy would be unusually quick for a company the size of GM.

It has been helped by the legal precedents set in cases relating to Chrysler's bankruptcy when opponents of the deal tried to block it.

GM filed for bankruptcy protection on 1 June, saying it would be forced to liquidate if the plan was not approved.

In effect, a new, smaller GM is being created with a reduced workforce, smaller dealer network and less debt.

It will operate the best parts of the old company, including its Chevrolet and Cadillac brands. Its European operation, Opel, is being sold off.

The firm is getting $60bn (£37.3bn) in financing from the US Treasury, which gives the US government a 60% share in the "new" GM, while the United Auto Workers union will have 17.5%.

Google has announced which hardware firms have pledged to build machines that will run its Chrome OS.

The search giant said it was working with many firms on Chrome OS hardware including Acer, Asus, Freescale, Hewlett-Packard, Lenovo, and Toshiba.

The software is designed to work with the web and Google said it was most likely to appear on smaller portable computers known as netbooks.

In a blog post announcing the hardware partners, Google said that the code for the Chrome OS would be open sourced in late 2009. Google said that the software will be free to download and use.

The first netbooks that can run the software will be ready in late 2010. Since Asus launched the first netbook the cut-down computers have proved hugely popular.

Analyst firm Gartner predicts that 80% more netbooks will be sold in 2009 than sold in 2008. However, so far, the small computers only make up 8% of the total PC market.

The Chrome OS will be designed to work with Intel chips that appear in the vast majority of desktop PCs, laptops and netbooks as well as the Arm chips that power most of the world's mobile phones. Texas Instruments and Qualcomm, who both build devices based around Arm chips, were also unveiled as partners on the Chrome OS project.

In a blog post announcing some of the hardware partners, Google also said it was working with Adobe on the operating system. This could turn out to be significant because of the wide use of Adobe's Flash software.

Flash is used to power many multimedia websites but Adobe has been working hard to extend its capabilities via the Air technology and make it more web-centric too. Microsoft is developing its Silverlight technology to do a similar job. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8141964.stm>

The Netherlands has returned to Iraqi ownership dozens of ancient artefacts that were stolen from the country after the US-led invasion of 2003.

The 69 items were surrendered by Dutch art dealers after Interpol disclosed their illegal origin.

Among them was a terracotta relief of bearded man praying, believed to be more than 2,000 years old.

Tens of thousands of items are believed to have been looted from Iraq in the chaos which followed invasion.

Despite international efforts to track items down, fewer than half of the artefacts have so far been retrieved.

Ronald Plasterk, the Dutch minister for education, culture and science, said the world should "cherish and honour" Iraq's history as the cradle of civilisation.

"These objects lose a lot of their value if they are stolen from their site," he said.

Mr Plasterk said the items were surrendered by Dutch art dealers once police informed them they had been stolen.

The artefacts are expected to be put on display in the Dutch National Museum for Antiquities until they can be returned to the Iraqi National Museum in Baghdad.

Dutch archaelogist Diederik Meijer said they should not be bought and sold, and their return sent a signal to the international art market.

The Dutch culture ministry said the items were symbolically handed to the Iraqi ambassador in the Netherlands, Siamand Banaa.

Correspondents say the looting of Iraqi art was one of the greatest scandals of the post-invasion period.

US troops stationed at the museum in Baghdad had no orders to intervene as an estimated 15,000 pieces were stolen.

Leaders of developed G8 nations are to unveil new efforts to boost food supplies to the hungry, during the final day of their summit in Italy.

They are expected to commit as much as $15bn (£9.2bn) to efforts to help poor nations develop their own agriculture.

Leaders from both developed and developing nations agreed that global temperatures should not rise more than 2C above 1900 levels.

That is the level above which, the UN says, the Earth's climate system would become dangerously unstable.

On Friday, the summit in the Italian city of L'Aquila is turning to the issue of food security.

BBC economics correspondent Andrew Walker says the idea is to put more emphasis on helping people feed themselves.

That is to be achieved with more investment in the agriculture of developing countries, and the G8 are expected to pledge significant resources, our correspondent adds.

However, World Bank President Robert Zoellick, who is at the summit, emphasised that food aid would still be necessary.

Political breakdowns and weather problems will disrupt supplies he said, but he is keen to see more effort made to develop the farming sector.

US President Barack Obama will be meeting representatives of Angola, Algeria, Nigeria and Senegal, before embarking on an African tour later on Friday. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8143566.stm>

A British engineering company has admitted it was involved in overseas corruption and breaching UN sanctions.

Mabey & Johnson tried to influence officials in Jamaica and Ghana when bidding for public contracts.

It also paid more than $200,000 (£123,000) to Saddam Hussein's Iraq regime, violating the terms of the UN oil for food programme.

The Reading-based firm, which builds temporary bridges, said it regretted its past conduct.

Mabey & Johnson pleaded guilty to ten charges of corruption and sanctions violation at Westminster Magistrates Court.

The successful prosecution is the first of its kind against a British company operating overseas.

"These are serious offences and it is significant that Mabey & Johnson has cooperated with us to get to this landmark point," said SFO director Richard Alderman.

Mabey & Johnson said that it had brought the matter to the attention of the SFO itself, following an internal investigation.

Commenting on Friday's proceedings, the company's managing director Peter Lloyd said: "We deeply regret the past conduct of our company and we have committed to making a fresh start, wiping the slate clean of these offences."

Five of Mabey & Johnson's eight directors have resigned since the allegations came to light.

Europe's Herschel space observatory is set to become one of the most powerful tools ever to study the Universe.

The "first light" data from its three instruments demonstrates a remarkable capability even though their set-up is still not complete.

Galaxy images released on Friday by the European Space Agency show detail previously unseen in the objects.

The pictures - and the thousands that will follow - should give new insights on star formation and galaxy evolution.

"We have some excellent images; they're not calibrated, but they look spectacular," said Dr Göran Pilbratt, Esa's Herschel project scientist.

The G8 summit in Italy has closed with world leaders pledging $20bn to help boost food supplies in the developing world.

There were also agreements among both developed and developing nations that global temperatures must not be allowed to rise to dangerous levels.

BBC correspondents at the G8 give their analysis on the main developments. Follow the links below to jump directly to their analysis. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8145584.stm>

UK supermarkets should be forced to reveal how much packaging they produce, local councils say.

The Local Government Association (LGA) said only Morrisons, Waitrose, and Marks & Spencer responded to its request for details on packaging.

The remaining five it asked, including Tesco and Sainsbury's, referred the LGA to the waste reduction body Wrap.

However, Wrap said it publishes data only for the grocery sector as a whole, not for individual stores.

Supermarkets log how much packaging they produce with Wrap, a government-funded organisation, under a voluntary agreement.

Wrap said this resulted in zero growth in packaging in 2008 and claimed that changes could already be seen on supermarket shelves with Marks and Spencer abandoning plastic trays in their packaging of beef joints and steaks.

"The next objective for the agreement is a 100,000-tonne reduction in grocery packaging by 2010," it added.

"Supermarkets must be open with people about how much packaging they are producing," said Margaret Eaton, chairman of the Local Government Association, in a letter to Environment Secretary Hilary Benn.

Millions of migrant workers live in Russia, with many of them coming from Central Asia, especially Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan.

But since the onset of the global economic crisis many of them have lost their jobs.

This has led to a big reduction in the amount of money sent back to Central Asia. Tajikistan relies on such remittances for around one-third of its income, but the International Organisation for Migration says Tajik remittances could fall by up to 30% this year.

Food prices soared in 2007 and early 2008, throwing hundreds of millions of people around the world into poverty.

Rioting took place in Egypt, India, Indonesia and other countries over the rising cost of rice and wheat.

But despite this, the BBC's own research suggests rising food costs remain a major problem for lots of people in lots of places.

In 2007 and early 2008, various factors were at work. There were poor harvests in grain producing countries. Rising oil prices led to increased transport and production costs.

At the same time, an increased use of biofuels meant less land was available for growing food.

Finally, there were increases in food demand in some emerging economies, notably China, coupled with changes in diets - meat uses more resources to produce than grain.

As a measure of the scale of these cost increases, the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) food price index rose 82% over two years, reaching its highest level in June 2008.

This index measures the movement of wholesale prices of five basic food categories: meat, dairy, cereals, sugar and oils & fats.

Since last year's peak, some of the factors that caused food prices to shoot up so rapidly have gone into reverse.

Poor harvests have given way to bumper crops. For example, the 2008 global wheat harvest was the best on record.

This year's wheat harvest is likely to be the second best yet, despite crop failures in Argentina.

Recession in many countries has taken the pressure off demand for food products.

Despite these trends, the BBC's own research suggests rising food costs remain an issue for many people.

For the last 12 months the BBC Food Price Index has been tracking what shoppers pay for some basic foods in seven cities: Washington DC, Delhi, Jakarta, Brussels, Buenos Ares, Nairobi and Moscow.

In Nairobi, our index suggests food prices rose by nearly a third. In Buenos Aires, the increase was almost a fifth. Both these cities are in the developing world.

However, in the two wealthiest cities, Washington and Brussels, the cost of staple products actually fell sharply - by 17% in the US capital and by 10% in Europe's hub.

In Prague, in Cairo, in Moscow and now in Accra, Mr Obama has translated his campaign message of shared values, hopes and dreams into an ambitious foreign policy agenda.

Even as the international economy deteriorates and challenges to American power loom ever larger, Mr Obama has chosen to vigorously push for two grand goals - a world free of nuclear weapons, and the spread of good governance and development.

This, then, is the bold but simple approach of the Obama administration - rally the people of the world to take on the most challenging issues of our generation. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8146286.stm>

Upton Towans beach in Gwithian and the lighthouse on nearby Godrevy Island are widely thought to have inspired the Virginia Woolf novel To the Lighthouse.

As a child, the author spent many holidays in a St Ives guest house from which she could see the lighthouse.

Auctioneers expect bids for the beach and the lighthouse to start at about Â£50,000, with money raised going to Truro's Hall for Cornwall theatre.

Although Virginia Woolf's 1927 novel is set in the Hebrides, the author used her recollections from childhood as inspiration for her most famous novel. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/8146986.stm>

Facebook driving mobile net usage

The study, published by mobile research firm CCS Insight, found that access to social networking sites was driving the take-up of mobile internet services.

Facebook is more popular than Bebo, MySpace and Twitter combined, it found.

Its study - into mobile usage among 16 to 35 year olds - also found that the service most youngsters wanted on their phones was the BBC iPlayer.

The suggestion that Facebook is more popular than Twitter chimes with a recently published Morgan Stanley report on internet and mobile usage.

Compiled by a 15-year-old intern, the report said that teenagers favoured Facebook over Twitter.

"Teenagers do not use Twitter. They realise that no-one is viewing their profile, so their tweets are pointless," Matthew Robson wrote in the report.

He echoes the words of CCS Insight analyst Paulo Pescatore.

"Forget music and video downloads, social networking is where it's at and Facebook is king of the hill," he said.

Charging models

The 24-36 year-old age group are those most likely to buy content on their mobile phones, the report found.

The revelations will be good news to mobile operators, desperate to fill some of their revenue gaps with the money to be made on mobile internet usage.

One third of respondents said they would like to see the BBC's iPlayer available on their mobile phones.

But people will expect charging models to be fair even when they are using bandwidth-hungry applications such as the iPlayer, said Mr Pescatore.

"The challenge operators face is balancing demand for these services with the bandwidth they consume. Networks are going to think carefully about how they charge for mobile internet access," he said.

There appears to be a gender divide when it comes to mobile internet usage with twice as many men as women accessing the web via their mobiles.

"It's clear that the industry could a better job marketing to women. It needs more than pink paint to succeed," said Mr Pescatore.

CCS Insight predicts that by the end of 2009 some 44% of mobile users will access data via their handsets.

In separate news, a report from research firm Juniper has revealed that the number of mobile application downloads will approach almost 20 billion per year by 2014. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8149652.stm>

US bank Goldman Sachs has unveiled a net profit of $3.44bn (£2.1bn) for the April to June period - beating forecasts from analysts.

It comes after the bank startled Wall Street by reporting it made $1.8bn in the first three months of the year, despite the financial crisis.

However Goldman paid $771m in dividends to holders of preferential shares, taking actual profit to $2.7bn.

Analysts have predicted that the annual payout for its 28,000 staff would near $18bn.

The firm has recently paid back $10bn in government aid intended to help it steer through the global turmoil.

And it also took a one-off charge of $426m related to the repayment of its government loan under the Troubled Asset Relief Programme (Tarp).

Six months ago, Goldman saw its first quarterly loss since going public in 1999, after being battered by the economic crisis.

However it said its profit had been buoyed by strength in its trading and underwriting businesses.

Observers say it has capitalised on turmoil in the markets - making bets in the right direction on commodities and volatile currencies as well as shares.

"Things are very fragile but they manage to make money in all environments, which is what you're supposed to do," said William Smith, chief executive of Smith Asset Management.

The oil market is volatile at the best of times. But the last year has been extraordinary even by those standards.

A year ago the price came close to $150 a barrel. At that price even many oil producers thought the commodity overpriced.

And yet, some analysts were forecasting $200 a barrel before long and oil producers were under international political pressure to do something.

Producers, however, had such little spare capacity that there was not very much they could do.

King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, the world's largest oil producer, hosted a conference in Jeddah in June to discuss the problem.

In the event, a recession undermined demand for energy and sent the price diving. Since then it has dipped below $40 and is now back to about $70.

Oil prices have been a factor, sometimes the most important one, in several recessions over the last few decades.

While the oil price was high it added to business costs and left consumers with less to spend on other items, including perhaps mortgage repayments.

So the price of oil might have contributed to the financial crisis, or at least exacerbated it.

Recent news suggests the economic situation might have stabilised (or at least is deteriorating more slowly), which suggests demand for oil might do so too.

Central banks policies to expand the money supply and heavy government borrowing have begun to raise concerns about future inflation.

Buying oil and other commodities could provide some protection against that for investors.

Opec, the oil cartel, has recently cut production and member countries - unusually - implemented many of those cuts.

Member states are often tempted to produce more than their allocation to get the extra cash.

The relatively high compliance by Opec this time round probably reflects the alarm they felt as the price dropped rapidly.

Japan's love hotels are attracting interest from more than just couples looking for a place to spend a few private hours.

Investors are also interested; this vast market seems to be proving more resilient to the recession than luxury business hotels.

There are about 25,000 love hotels in Japan which are visited an estimated 500 million times a year.

Clustered around train stations, they are doing a brisk business despite the worst recession in living memory.

Flamboyantly designed and exotically named - Hotel For You, Sunpalace, Asian P-Door - they offer rooms by the hour, euphemistically marketed as a short rest or a longer stay.

Contact with staff is kept to a minimum. This is a business that runs on discretion.

Some have underground car parks and entrances, while others provide screens to shield visitors' number plates.

Plenty of customers are using love hotels to indulge in affairs or to meet prostitutes, although many are couples looking to escape the narrow confines of Japanese apartment living. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8137746.stm>

The ebb and flow of thousands of pieces of household rubbish are to be tracked using sophisticated mobile tags.

It is hoped that making people confront the final journey of their waste will make them reduce what they throw away.

Initially, 3,000 pieces of rubbish, donated by volunteers, will be tagged in New York, Seattle and London.

"Trash is almost an invisible system today," Assaf Biderman, one of the project leaders at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, told BBC News.

"You throw something into the garbage and a lot of us forget about it. It gets buried, it gets burned, it gets shipped overseas."

The Trash Track aims to make that process - termed the "removal chain" - more transparent.

Friends of the Earth's Senior Waste Campaigner Michael Warhurst said the project could be a "useful tool" for highlighting the impact of rubbish.

"[Waste] doesn't simply disappear when we throw it away, and all too often it ends up causing damage when it could be recycled instead.

"People must have much better information on - and control over - where their rubbish and recycling ends up."

In order to monitor how the pieces of rubbish move around the cities and beyond, the MIT team has developed a small mobile sensor that can be attached to individual pieces of waste.

"It's like a miniature cell phone with limited functionality," said Carlo Ratti, another member of the project.

Each tag - encased in a protective resin - continuously broadcasts its location to a central server. The results can then be collected and plotted on a map in real time.

"It's like putting tracers in your blood and seeing where it moves around your body," said Mr Biderman.

Because cell phone technology is cheap and - importantly - ubiquitous, the system should be able to track rubbish around the globe.

This could be important when tracking computers and electronic waste, which is often disposed of incorrectly, according to Mr Ratti.

The team aims to tag different types of waste from computers and cell phones to bags of garden waste.

The results of the US studies will be shown at two exhibitions in Seattle and New York during September.

The team stresses that it has tried to limit the impact of its study and of the technology, and limit the amount of extra waste it contributes to the "removal chain".

"We are adhering to the highest standards in terms of environmental impact," said Mr Biderman.

"The impact this could have on waste management and removal… could be significant, so these kinds of experiments could be much more useful than harmful for the environment."

The MIT team has previously revealed the movements of people around cities, such as Rome and Copenhagen, by analysing mobile phone signals.

They used a similar method to show how crowds moved around Washington during the inauguration of US President Barack Obama.

The tags used to track the rubbish are a departure from these more passive studies of city movements.

Ultimately, the team hopes that the technology can be miniaturised and made cheap enough that the tags could one day be attached to everything.

England's planning system is plagued by box-ticking and target-setting and does not deliver the homes needed at local level, a think tank says.

The centre-right Bow Group is calling for a new approach based less on regional plans and more on a flexible system focused on neighbourhoods.

The government says regional plans allow local authorities to work out homes and transport for themselves.

The report argues that the current system is top-down, is not delivering for communities and in some areas has produced a massive oversupply of flats.

A public planner told the Bow Groups interview panel: "What the government doesn't seem to realise is that while regional plans might set targets for housing, it's quite another thing to actually see a local community or a council accept those targets, particularly when a perception exists that they've been set centrally."

The push for higher densities, says the report, does not have to equal high-rise development, as so much of our surviving Victorian and Georgian housing stock shows.

The report argues that the government's decision to give more power to regional development agencies has damaged the fabric of local democracy and that the resultant regional plans are unpopular, expensive and undemocratic.

It says better urban design is the key to improving a system which has provoked conflict and strife in many local communities.

As models of good practice it points to the developments like Poundbury in Dorset - modelled on Prince Charles's ideas - and the Millennium Village in Greenwich.

These are both examples where councils, local communities and developers discussed the design before any planning application was submitted.

A Communities and Local Government spokesman said: "Regional plans allow local authorities to work out for themselves the best way of building new homes, building business parks, siting green energy sources and routing transport links.

"This process is led by local government leaders and now scrutinised by regional select committees.

Desert dreams of the solar age

As regularly as one hour follows the next, e-mails arrive in my inbox from people claiming to have the solution to the world's energy woes in their factory or garden shed or back pocket.

Most, as you'd guess, turn out to be no more convincing than a dentist's reassurance that "this isn't going to hurt" - why on earth does anyone bother inventing perpetual motion machines anymore? - but sometimes, what starts off as an idea with apparently insurmountable technical, political or economic obstacles turns out, eventually, to be a real contender.

Global Economics-15

EU reaches out to troubled East

The rise and rise of e-readers

Is China a rich or poor country?

Google boss won't quit Apple job

Ten US banks fail 'stress tests'

Pace of US job losses is slowing

Obama reviews post-shuttle plans

Thousands flee Pakistan fighting

Strikes cripple French universities

In search of Europe: Ireland

Banks unveil cash-raising plans

Jordanian hopes high for papal visit

Sites fail age verification check

TV screens double up as browsers

Neighbourly help in high Pyrenees

Stanford drug informer role claim

Obama to get health reform boost

Greece puts brakes on Street View

Call to 'disconnect file-sharers'

Vitamins 'undo exercise efforts'

Venezuela seizes US pasta company

Eurozone economies contract 2.5%

Workers call for action on jobs

Public interest or public curiosity?

Google apology for slow service

Congress plots Indian way forward

Disaster risk increasing, says UN

N Korea scraps deals with South

A tunnel to unite old rivals?

China sex theme park demolished

In search of Europe: Sweden

Wolfram 'search engine' goes live

Women's menstruation genes found

Held captive for months, job applicants refused rescue

Self-rule introduced in Greenland

Work starts on New Mexico spaceport

Germany 'must rely less on trade'

Solar plane to make public debut

The perils of five-star reviews

Gaza industries struggle to rebuild

Qantas cancels Dreamliner order

Mexico's gamble on biofuels

Light goes out on solar mission

China 'to block' Hummer takeover

China argues to replace US dollar

North Korean economy sees growth

Secret parks and forgotten ruins

Hell in earth

Doctors condemn 'commercial' NHS

East Coast rail to be state-run

From bush to bike - a bamboo revolution

US states face budget meltdowns

Indian growth of 7% 'is possible'

Innocents accused of net piracy

Rising ambitions of India's Maoists

Credit card cheques to be banned

Big brother untangles baby babble

US judge bans 'Rye' book sequel

Job for Indian royal descendant

China babies 'sold for adoption'

Twitter followers 'can be bought'

Climate change is shrinking sheep

Gap dividing Aborigines growing

Beatles 'shark' Klein dies at 77

From Ushers with love

Fraud probe into MG Rover demise

Tories pledge to cut back quangos

Phorm shares fall as BT opts out

Call for tougher gene test rules

Worst of the recession 'is over'

Lower inflation props up stocks amid security concerns

World leaders meet in quake zone

IMF more upbeat on 2010 recovery

Firms challenge Iraqi oil auction

G8 set new global warming targets

Australia town bans bottled water

Judge refuses to delay sale of GM

Hardware makers support Google OS

Dutch hand back looted Iraqi art